8
"…They memory wipe the person, then drop them on another world, somewhere terrible. The person has no memory of who they are or what they can do. It is a game for the Syndicat. They bet on how long the person will survive. A probe droid follows them and sends back holo-pictures of what happens. Most do not survive."
The boy was sleeping soundly when the Syndicat guards came back. The door to the cargo hold opened and the three guards stepped through. The boy did not stir. He remained in his oblivion. One of the three paused at the doorway and stared at the boy. He couldn't understand what made him pause. It wasn't some sort of moral dilemma. He had seen enough people renewed and helped with the process. He recalled an old Phindian rebel who begged him to kill him instead of renewal. The old rebel pleaded and even tried to choke himself, but a couple jabs with a force pike rendered those attempts useless. He thought it was very funny at the time; watching him squirm and mewl. He still thought it was funny. That old rebel looked like a little worm rolling on the ground. He'd even made unintelligible sounds because someone had jabbed his neck.
He didn't last long. It was about five hours if he could remember correctly. He mistook a pint of some sort of caustic degreaser for a beverage. From there he and his fellow Syndicat guards bet on how much and how long the old rebel would expel the contents of his stomach. It was really funny and very profitable. He had won that bet much to the dismay of his fellow guards. Sometimes you got lucky.
So it wasn't some sort of moral crisis. It was his job and he found ways to make it interesting. Looking at that sleeping human boy he was reminded of his own son Trada. They looked about the same age. The Phindian smiled lightly. Trada was probably shirking his chores right about now. He wondered what he would do if Trada were in the human boy's place. The thought left him disturbed and he looked at the boy again to make sure it wasn't Trada. He inwardly sighed. It wasn't Trada; it was just a human.
What was a human boy doing on Phindar anyway? Phindar wasn't exactly a tourist attraction. The boy obviously had to be a rebel. Why else would he come to Phindar? The blockade around the planet made it hard for unwanted guests to arrive. Some people, however, were determined. But the boy was only a boy. Surely he had someone else on the planet with him. A father perhaps? Did that father miss his son right now? Did he know what happened? Did he know that his son didn't exist anymore?
The guard didn't know why he paused. It was only a rebel. The other guards jarred the boy awake and hauled him to his feet. The boy was afraid, but he also had that pitiful blank look on his face. It really got old after awhile. The guards roughly pushed him out of the cargo hold and laughed about some joke. The boy was doing fairly well. At least he hadn't had a panic attack yet. Some of the renewed became so terrified that they died. Their hearts stopped working. Those were called dead bets. No one usually profited from those. They come from the most unlikely of people. Sometimes you can look at a person and say, 'he'll last a week for sure.' and then he falls down dead on the spot.
He shrugged. Those dead bets really annoyed him sometimes. He'd lost a lot of money on this one they were going to send to Sullust. Well, he couldn't dwell on the negative. He'd won a few ones too.
He trailed after the boy and his comrades. They were laughing and pushing the boy along.
"Hey Mali!" One of them named Bervic called behind them. "What did you bet again?"
"200 on Four days to a week." He answered.
The other two laughed.
"Well, which is it? Four days or a week?" Bervic asked.
Mali looked at the boy's blank face and paused again. His son's image popped into his head again.
"A standard week." He answered.
"You're a crazy fool Mali, but I'll take your money any day!" He answered and laughed.
Bervic pushed the boy roughly and the boy stumbled forward. They were nearing the end of the ship and Mali felt a sense of dread overwhelm him. Was his bet a bad one? He really was crazy to bet 200 credits on a boy who couldn't be older than sixteen. He really couldn't tell ages in humans.
The four got to the end of the ship and stopped. The boy looked at the door with interest as if studying and memorizing every detail of it. Bervic smiled impishly.
"Ready to face your new life?" He asked the boy.
The boy continued to look at the door. Mali believed that Bervic had a little too much fun at his job. There was enjoying what you did and then there was getting high off of it. Anyone could see that Bervic loved to gamble and that wasn't a sin in itself if used in moderation. Bervic didn't know when to quit. If he lost he just found another person to renew and he'd win some of it back. Bervic was living on the edge and he got a strange elation out of it.
Bervic opened the hatch and a wind blasted in the four faces for a few seconds. They looked out at the Gala spaceport hanger. Pilots and other Galacians milled about minding their own business. The boy froze at the sight of so many beings. Mali nudged him forward, but the boy was paralyzed. His mouth opened and his eyes went abnormally wide. Bervic chortled and roughly pushed the boy down the ramp. The boy caught his balance before he fell and then ran up the ramp back towards the three guards. He was visibly shaking.
Bervic pushed him again this time more roughly and the boy tumbled down the ramp. He ran back up the ramp and tried to get past the three guards and back on the ship. When he realized the impossibility of the situation he grabbed hold of one of the guards.
"Shirk, what is he doing?" Bervic asked the guard that the boy grabbed.
"I don't know! I think he likes us!" Shirk answered with amusement.
Bervic kicked him and the boy cried out but still hung on to Shirk.
"He's got a nice grip," Shirk commented. "You don't think he thinks we're his parents or something do you?"
Bervic waved away the statement.
"That's stupid. He doesn't think we're his parents." Mali said.
"Obviously," Bervic began. "He thinks you're his mother."
"What?" Shirk protested.
"Well, you have that motherly air about you."
Shirk took a swing at Bervic who dodged. The boy let go of Shirk and ran back into the ship. Bervic and Shirk cursed loudly and ran after him. They found him back in the cargo hold with his face against the cool metal hull. He looked calm once again.
"We had the same problem with this little rebel we were going to drop on Ryloth. He grabbed hold of a seat restraint, don't ask me how, and he wouldn't let go. We had to knock him out and then throw him in some alley." Shirk said.
"You had to carry him all that way?" Mali asked.
Shirk nodded.
"At least the locals didn't mind. One told me to throw my garbage elsewhere, but that was it."
"Garbage," Bervic chuckled. "That's a good one."
"I don't want to carry him all that way." Mali complained. "They don't pay us enough."
The two nodded in agreement. They stood staring at the boy and pondering what to do about the situation.
"We could pick him up and throw him out." Shirk suggested.
Bervic and Mali considered it for awhile and decided it was the best they could come up with.
"Who's going to do it?" Mali asked.
They looked at each other and knew that not one of them would volunteer. They put their right fist in front of them and pounded it three times against their left palm. At the end of the third slap Shirk and Bervic had two fingers out while Mali had his hand flat. Mali cursed his luck and moved towards the boy. He knew if he paused now Shirk and Bervic would mock him. He couldn't help but think of Trada again. He missed his son. When he got back to Phindar he was going to do some sort of father-son thing.
The boy cowered away from Mali as he approached, but kept his hands on the flat wall. His eyes were at that strange blank state instead of fear. That was good. They were easier to control when they were passive. Mali picked the boy up with a heavy grunt and made his way back towards the ramp of the ship. As he neared the door the boy began to tense up. He noticed that the boy closed his eyes and held on to him tighter. Mali walked down the ramp and threw the boy with a great heave. The boy hit the ground with a loud thud and he rolled on the ground.
"Have fun!" Bervic yelled after him.
Mali quickly ran up the ramp. A probe droid floated down the ramp and hovered over the fallen boy. Once inside the ship Mali looked at the boy one last time until the door closed. Bervic and Shik called after him and Mali quickly joined them.
"Now the real fun begins." Bervic said.
Mali nodded and brought out a holo of his son Trada. He looked nothing like the renewed boy. The holo was a funny one. Trada was in a crouching position and had his long arms at strange angles. Mali smiled and shook his head.
"That your son?" Shirk asked.
"Yeah." Mali answered.
"He looks just like you." Shirk commented.
"He's not that ugly." Bervic jested and they all laughed.
The boy got off the ground slowly and deliberately. He didn't know what had happened. One moment he was in the familiar place and then the next he was being carried away from it. He didn't move at all and someone he got somewhere new. How did that happen? He was at a loss as of what to do. Everything around him was different. It was too much. There were other things walking around. They went one place and then they went another. Most times they stayed in the same place and started making loud noises.
The boy felt the familiar panic rise up inside of him again. When he was first taken from his familiar place and saw the new place he was frightened. How could so much exist at the same time? How could anyone keep track of it all? He looked around the space hanger in fear and awe. It was the noises that scared him the most. Not only did the moving beings make loud and angry noises, but the large objects they were near made strange whining or humming sounds. When a whining sound was made it was followed by angry sounds coming from the beings.
The boy took several deep breaths and closed his eyes. The world was larger and as the world became larger he became smaller. As he took in each new detail he realized that he was becoming less important with each second. With only the first beings he encountered it was only the four of them. They were the whole world. Now… There were so many and because there were so many an individual was insignificant. Upon coming to this realization the boy began to calm down. There may have been many, but they were all the same which made him the same as well.
He took one last look around the space hanger and began to walk in a random direction. He heard a whirring noise behind him and he looked to see a small floating object with a shiny lens following him. He looked at the shiny black lens and saw a tiny boy in it which was his reflection. He reached out for the image, but the probot backed away. The boy wondered why and how a littler boy was stuck in the tiny floating object. Was there a way to get out? Perhaps the littler being that he saw on the floating object was like the thing that lived inside of his head. The pain had stopped in his head so did that mean that the being had gotten out?
The boy didn't know. He didn't even know his name. He thought he knew he should have a name, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe since there were so many beings that no one had a name. The boy accepted and moved on. He began to walk in the direction he had chosen before, but suddenly stopped. He didn't want to go that way. He turned around and walked in the opposite direction and began to walk. A lazy smile appeared on his face. It was a good direction he felt. The right direction.
He was walking through the hanger and he passed a being that made a strange gesture at him. The boy ignored it and continued to walk. A strange light was coming from an opening and he went towards it. The light blinded his eyes for a second, but when they adjusted the boy stood still. The world suddenly became immense and infinite. The boy looked up and saw what he knew to be the sky. It was a pale blue color and it was everywhere. There was no end to it. It kept going on forever. The source of light shone faintly, but enough to warm the planet. The streets were paved and scores of pale beings thronged them for a myriad of purposes.
The boy was no longer frightened by the sheer number of them anymore. He already knew that there was many. He accepted that it was beyond his knowledge and ability to know how many. The number of them rose exponentially every time he checked. Perhaps they too were infinite like the sky and there was no way to measure their limit. The boy accepted and moved on.
What interested him now were the large buildings that rose from the ground and towered over him. They were impressively large and different from each other. Some looked the same, but there were always differences. Some were smaller and some were larger. Some had little clear openings and others looked like they were shedding parts of themselves. The boy wondered if the small buildings were younglings and the larger were adults. It certainly seemed that way. The ones that looked the most decrepit were the elderly ones.
The boy accepted and moved on.
He looked behind himself and saw the black floating probot again. He turned around to face forward. His blank eyes became confused. He remembered the little black probot. It was the thing that had the little boy trapped inside. He remembered the three others who he had first met. The ones that took his name. He wondered if he would see them again like he saw the black probot. He hoped he would. He remembered them. Perhaps they would give him his name back. The boy walked forward. The thought was soon forgotten and he moved on.
The boy noticed that the walking beings on this larger place looked much different from the first three he met. Their skin was pale and sort of blue. The boy stared at it for a second, but then moved on. It was interesting. Everything was interesting in its own way, but none of it seemed to matter. Maybe it had meant something to him before, but he couldn't recall anything of before. The shape their faces made or the decay that he couldn't see stirred no feelings inside because he had nothing to base them off of.
He didn't know what he was or even if he was. The most important question he didn't know was why he was. Why was he here? Was this where he belonged? Why didn't he have a name? Why was that little boy stuck in that floating black object? There were too many whys to count. Part of him could not accept this, but he still moved on. He didn't have a purpose, but he continued to walk. He felt that it was right.
Soon he did not bother to look around himself. It became as insignificant as he was. The pale people sometimes bumped into him, but he had already moved on by the time they turned around to see what they hit. Some gave him dirty looks, but the boy didn't bother to see them. He walked like one determined, but he had no purpose. His legs started to ache as the path he was on inclined upward.
A rather large pale being stepped out in front of the boy and he stopped suddenly before colliding into the man. He was at a loss of what to do. He saw one of the man's meaty hands descend upon his shoulder and wondered if he would be crushed beneath it. The boy was surprised to see that he wasn't.
"You!" The large man rumbled.
The boy stared blankly and dazedly ahead. He waited for the man to move out of the way. He didn't.
"Do you know what I told myself when I woke up this morning?" The man asked in his deep voice.
The boy did not know. Was he supposed to? Why was this man here? Did the man know his name? The boy wondered if he was supposed to respond and if he could. The boy remained silent and his eyes blank.
"Are you deaf boy? I asked you a question!" The man snapped and gripped the boy's shoulder harder.
The blank expression left the boy's face and he focused on where the pain was coming from. The hand of the large man was causing him pain. He stared intensely at the hand and then trailed it with his eyes to the source. He looked into the man's eyes. Why was the man causing him to hurt? The boy became afraid. This man was hurting him and he didn't know why. It was more frightening than realizing how large the world was. The boy wanted to be far away from the man, but couldn't move because the man was still holding him.
The boy's eyes became wide with terror and he started shaking again. He wanted to go back to his familiar place. It seemed so far away now. There may have been pain there as well, but at least it was familiar and the large pale man wasn't there.
"Just humor me kid." The man said gruffly.
The context of the sentence was completely lost on the boy and he became extremely confused. The probot circled around the two and recorded everything that was going on. The man's eyes darted towards it and then focused back on the cowering boy. His eyes were filled with suspicion, but also keen intelligence.
"You're a hill person spy!" He hissed and reached for the vibro-shiv hanging on his belt.
A/N: Yeah! Less than a month! Hopefully with summer coming I'll be able to get somewhere in this fic. I dare not say it without crossing my fingers but god forbid I might finish it… Oh great I doomed myself. Yes, Tiamath I did make up that part with Nivva. I like to bring in characters that I'll most likely only mention once. I think they add to the realism. If you consider how many people you know and how often you mention them then Guerra and Paxxi surely knew a lot more people than their family and Kaadi.
Quick question to you all: Did any of you cry during Episode III?