Chapter 2: Living the Dream

It did not take long for Nan and Grievous to realize that the ship they were on was none other than the Mirage. It was a startling coincidence. This also explained all the space heaters. Kevin and Kate had never been able to crack the Mirage's security code that controlled its internal defense system and for some reason, the central heating. The security code was voice activated and Nan had been the one to set the last override sequence before she and Grievous left the Mirage over ten years ago.

"So what is the override sequence?" Asked Kate.

"An erection lasting longer than four hours," said Nan.

"Oh, I've had that," said Kevin.

Before he could get into specifics, a bunch of blasters came out of the ceiling and started shooting at him, Kate, and Grievous. Nan had spoken the override sequence, which did not recognize anyone other than her as ship personnel. Nan let them dance for a bit, avoiding blaster fire, then told the ship to stop. There were a number of fires that day from dust burning in the disused central heating system.

Grievous decided to change his name like he'd planned a while ago.

"What's a good dragon name?" He asked.

"I don't know. Smaug?" Suggested Nan.

But Grievous picked the name Gregory because it started with the same letters as his old name and would be easy to remember. That is what we shall call him from now on.

"What kind of name is Grievous anyway?" Asked Kevin.

"My mother named me that because she said I grievously ruined her figure," said Gregory.

It did not take long for Nan and Greg to realize that SCD was heaven. There was food, drink, TV, and a bunch of planets untainted by civilization. Atherosclerosis had awesome beaches. Tuberculosis had great skiing. This system had everything and the droids had learned to brew some great beer, especially after they stopped adding motor oil to it. Nan and Greg began to live the dream.

They picked a planet and went camping…in style. Some droids followed them with a shuttle so they always had food and lots of drink. Greg felt that he'd failed Nan in his previous life because Count Dooku had killed her so easily. Greg hadn't taught her well enough. He decided that in this life, he would make up for that. They lived on a strange schedule. During the day, they went rambling around the woods or beaches. During the evening, they drank booze until they blacked out. In the morning, evil and hungover, they trained.

Kevin and Kate had rescued Greg's four lightsabers when they took his body and now they returned the weapons. Greg could still fight with four arms like he was used to, though he couldn't spin the lightsabers at 1000 rpm anymore. Nan also got a lightsaber, but it was not a Jedi's. Kevin was a friend of a crystallographer known only as Pale Dan. After Count Dooku's death, Palpatine let Pale Dan have Dooku's lightsaber so he could try to get a crystal structure. Pale Dan came with the others to SCD. When he heard about Nan and Greg's training sessions from Kevin, he remembered the red lightsaber he'd put away years ago and let Nan have it, the blade that had killed her.

"Does that make you a Sith?" Asked Kevin.

"Red is just a color," said Nan.

The training sessions were quite brutal, mostly because of the hangovers. Kevin didn't understand why they did it. Surely they would never need to fight anymore? Nobody fought at SCD for real. Nan and Greg would just look at each other but they never said it out loud. They knew it in their hearts, though, that they could not stay at SCD. They were war criminals and murderers and their task was to spend the rest of their lives fighting for good, though this reprieve was a commodity they allowed for now.

Mila came by every now and then to check up on their x-rays and CAT scans. Greg took most of the little saws and crap out of Nan's back because she nearly cut off her ears with that stuff. He left her one pair of pliers and a lock pick. It turned out that the metal tail was also a problem. Nan discovered that it had a fitting on the end for various tools and decided to attach her lightsaber so she could spin it like Greg used to with his old body. Before he could stop her, she did just that. Crash, smash, scream, wail, stuff broken, blood all over the place, and they just couldn't find Kevin's finger.

One day, they were all in a common room of the Mirage. Mila told crazy stories about her family (whose violent deaths she did not seem to mourn at all).

"After my first year at college," she said, "I got really fat. My parents thought I was knocked up but they had too much tact to mention it. They kept leaving abortion pamphlets in my room. I threw them out, confused. Finally my parents decided I wanted to keep the baby and they begged me to let them raise it so I wouldn't drop out of college. I said I was just fat. They told me to get the hell out of their house until I had lost the weight. Funny thing about Kaminoans. We go along with things and just never ask questions until the last minute."

Greg asked Kevin and Kate about the nutrient broth that had saved his and Nan's lives. Kevin told him about the ducks and Kate's attempt on his life.

"Kate tried to kill you and you're still living with her?" Said Greg.

"It's totally okay, she only tried it on two other occasions over the past ten years."

Clare floated in, dribbling and with two of her tentacles tied into a knot. Nan had never asked what was wrong with Clare. She guessed it pretty well.

"I like the new Clare," Nan said. "She's a lot more chill."

The conversation shifted to various problems of living apart from civilization such as the lack of a good dentist, crappy old equipment, seeing the same assholes all the time, etc. Kate suddenly attacked Nan and Greg because they were not doing research.

"SCD is a place for people to do research without the government interfering," she said. "All you guys do is fight and drink."

"Actually, we're working on an experiment," said Nan. "It is titled 'The Effect of Time on Nan and Greg's Ability to not Kill Kevin and Kate.'"

"What are your results so far?" Asked Mila.

"It helps when they keep their mouths shut," said Greg.

But, just for the hell of it, they did start working on a real experiment. Nan had been influenced by Mila's talk of the Force and healing and made her own theories on how the Force shaped their universe. Nan believed that without the Force, evolution would be 10,000x slower and most planets would be desolate rocks. She and Greg did computer simulations on a planet where there was no Force. They called it the Thought Planet, because if intelligent life ever evolved, thought is all it would have. The simulations did not suggest intelligent life would evolve anytime soon. Nan wondered if natural disasters could help.

The simulations could not be considered real work. Nan and Greg did not do much real work except for their morning battle training. They were having a great time. They really took to the beaches of Atherosclerosis and had the droids build a little hut (with a bar, of course). They liked to drink wine in a hammock while watching the suns set. Large predators, if there were any, stayed away because of Greg. Kevin sometimes joined them but Kate hated nature. Kevin sometimes remembered his home planet Ryloth when he was on the beach and it made him feel something like guilt. He had, after all, abandoned his people to civil war.

"What am I supposed to be doing? What am I supposed to be doing?" He yelled and ran around the hut.

Nan and Greg slowly swung back and forth in their hammock, pretending to ignore him because he did this pretty much every time he was on the beach.

"Isn't this the life?" Said Nan. "Just you and me, the only two intelligent beings on this entire planet."

"But Kevin's right behind us."

"I repeat, just you and me, the only two intelligent beings on this planet."

"I suppose it is a good life. It's a shame it won't last."

"Don't ruin the moment."

"I'm going to do it!" Yelled Kevin. "I'm going to do it, finally!"

Considering what was just said about his guilt, you may be deceived into thinking that he had suddenly decided to go back to the Empire and help his people. Actually, he finally decided to man up and do an entire shot of vodka. He threw up trying to swallow it.

One day, Greg and Nan were curled up together, sleeping and cute as can be. They were on the Mirage and Kate decided this was her chance. She had drugged their dinner and an explosion could not have woken them up. No, she was not out for revenge (Nan and Greg had dumped her and Kevin on a planet called Diarrhea as revenge for the ten year thing. Kate killed a pig with her bare hands and nearly became wild while Kevin starved.) Kate wanted to find out what would happen to Greg if he were released among the unintelligent white dragons. Would they try to kill him? Would he try to kill them? Greg obviously didn't want anything to do with "his" species so Kate acted in her own interest.

"Aw," said Kevin, looking at the sleeping animals. "Should we really do this? What if something bad happens? They're such a sweet couple."

"We could put your brain in one of those dragons," said Kate. "Mila is hankering for another go. She thinks she could have done better on this one."

Greg wouldn't have liked to hear that, but he was asleep.

Kevin looked at his protruding belly and wondered if maybe he should get a brain transplant. Meanwhile Kate ordered some droids to drag Greg into a shuttle and take him down to Thrombocytopenia. The droids left him not far from a group of dragons. The dragons behaved somewhat like wolves. They lived in packs and hunted together, but they didn't have a leader and members came and went. They were the dominant predator on the planet and had nothing to fear (except mad scientists).

Greg woke up with the meanest hangover to date and wondered if it was time to quit the drinking games. Was it really improving their fighting skills? He looked around. "Holy crap, I must still be drunk," he thought. "I'm sure I fell asleep on the ship." He got up and ambled over to a stream to drink. The place smelled as if he'd already been in it, but he didn't remember it. He followed the scent to a clearing where some white dragons were lying around in the sun. Oh shit, Kate! Greg knew what was up immediately and looked around for the shuttle. He saw sunlight glinting off something a few hundred feet away but he had to cross the clearing to get there. It would be better to go around, he decided. He did not have his lightsabers and had not practiced dog-fighting nearly as much with Nan.

The dragons smelled him and looked up. One battle-scarred veteran got up and came his way. Greg began to climb a tree. Surely Nan would rescue him any moment? The old dragon approached the tree and looked up at him, Greg imagined, hostilely. But what did he know about animals? Nan had been trying to convince him that shit does not smell bad to animals the other day and that went badly for the droids, who had to clean up the vomit. Clearly his brain had not received animal instincts.

The old dragon growled. That was definitely hostile. Greg climbed higher. He could see the shuttle. The dragon did not follow him up. It dragged some dry twigs from a bush and piled them under the tree. Greg got a bad feeling about this. Who knew these dragons were so smart? Or so evil, for the old dragon blew fire on the dry twigs that started to spread up the tree.

"I didn't know they could breathe fire," thought Greg and Kate (who was watching with no intention of helping.)

It soon got too hot to stay in the tree. Greg leaped to the ground and ran with the old dragon close behind. The rest joined in the chase. Greg was actually in better shape than all of them and could have outrun them with time to spare for a gloat. Unfortunately, Kevin's conscience took over at that moment and he shot some laser beams at the dragon hunting party. Did Kevin know how to shoot and aim lasers? How the fuck would he know that? Greg was lucky he wasn't annihilated on the spot. As such, the lasers hit the ground in front of him and sent him flying against a rock. He whacked his head hard.

"You fool!" Yelled Kate. "You're not supposed to interfere with the experiment!"

Just then, they heard the soft whoosh of a lightsaber being turned on. Nan had woken up alone on the Mirage. She tracked them and went down to the planet.

"Kate, I'm going to cut your balls off," said Nan. "Kevin, I was seriously beginning to think better of you."

She saw that the dragons were regrouping after being scared off by the blast. She ran out of the shuttle and toward the clearing. Greg woke up. He looked dazedly at the other dragons for a bit. Before Nan could throw him a lightsaber, he attacked the closest one and tore its throat out so quickly and efficiently that the others jumped back. He attacked them without pause, tearing at their hides with four arms. Though it was five against one, even the old dragon realized this was suicide and they scattered. Nan ran toward Greg, happy that he was okay. She stopped just in time or he would have snapped her head off. Nan had some animal instincts left and she could smell rage. Confused and afraid, she leaped onto the rock and turned on her lightsaber. Greg followed, darting his head forward and making her jump higher up the rock.

"Greg, what the hell?" She asked, but it seemed obvious that he was having some sort of attack of madness. Nan did not want to cut him but there was not much hope that the idiot scientists would help. She slashed his shoulder lightly, hoping that would knock him out of it. The pain only made him crazier. She was out of rock and jumped back to the ground. She ran for the ship, yelling, "Shoot a tranquilizer dart!"

Kevin and Kate sent a droid out with a tranquilizer gun because they were too conscious of the risk to go outside. Greg attacked the droid before it could shoot. Nan ran into the ship, grabbed another stun gun, and shot Greg in the stomach several times. He only collapsed after a few minutes. Nan called Mila and had the remaining droids take Greg onto the shuttle. They complained that this job was not supposed to be fatal and none of them had been destroyed since they'd been in the war.

"I'll put your friend back together," said Nan, "and give him some common sense this time."

They took Greg to an examination room and brought over some equipment. Mila arrived and checked him physically. She did an MRI and looked at the scans for a long time. Nan sat next to Greg. Kevin sewed up his shoulder. Kate did nothing useful. She just said negative things.

"It's probably because his brain is not compatible with the body after all. I don't know why we expected it to work."

"Shut up, Kate," said Nan.

"Maybe the body is rejecting the organ," continued Kate anyway. "Despite the nutrient broth of antibodies that we used to soak the brain, I doubt all of his original markers could have been erased."

"Shut up, Kate," repeated Nan.

"Now we can expect a steady rate of neural degradation," continued Kate. "Soon he won't be able to talk and then his brain will just rot in his skull."

"Shut up, Kate!" Yelled Nan but this time she threw the contents of a tray at her.

"My sperm!" Yelled Kevin.

Several things occurred to Nan, not the least of which was that the Erlenmeyer flask she had been eyeing suspiciously did indeed contain sperm. Nan also realized that she had not touched the tray that she overturned onto Kate. There had been a scalpel on that tray and it was now embedded in Kate's chest. Kate ripped it out like it was no big deal and glared at Kevin.

"What did I tell you about properly labeling things?" She said.

Greg woke up soon and he was perfectly fine. He barely remembered what happened after the ground exploded under him.

"You can thank Professor Lamebrain for that," said Nan.

Mila asked to get a full body x-ray of Greg. They all went to the x-ray room. Clare floated after them, gurgling happily like a baby. Maybe she thought it was a party. Greg went into the chamber while Kate turned on the computer. Clare floated into the chamber with Greg. Nobody bothered to remove her.

"She's creeping me out," said Greg.

"Stand still for a bit," said Kate.

She took the x-ray. Kevin made a muffled exclamation and ran into the chamber. He started pummeling Clare without explanation. Greg observed this and made a wry remark.

"And you guys think I'm the one that's going mad?"

"She has my finger up some orifice of her body!" Yelled Kevin.

Kate looked at the x-ray and confirmed this to be true. The question of whether the finger got lodged up there by accident or, more disturbingly, whether or not Clare put it up there herself, was never answered.

"What's wrong with the metal prosthetic I gave you?" Asked Mila.

"It's not as good at nose-picking," said Kevin.

The others examined the x-ray while Kevin extracted his finger, which was too slimy and rotten to be reattached, plus Clare nearly took his entire arm off while he had it up her orifice. Her muscles were quite strong despite their squishy appearance.

After a few days, Mila determined that Greg's aggressive behavior was due to some abnormality in his brain that had not been there before. It was not a tumor, thankfully, but it was not operable. Mila did some experiments on Greg in a locked room. She sent a droid in there to bang him lightly on the head. Just mild contact caused him to lose his mind like he had in the clearing and tear the droid to pieces, then attempt to do the same to the room. He always came back to normal after being put to sleep with gas. Kevin felt truly guilty but Nan didn't blame him as much as she blamed Kate. She stopped talking to Kate, not that the scientist noticed or cared.

Eventually Mila and Nan built a small device that they attached to Greg's head behind his ear. It emitted waves that counteracted what happened when his head got bumped. It worked very well and he was soon doing the same things as before; drinking, fighting, and fooling around. He and Nan went back to living the dream.

One day, for no reason in particular, Greg and Nan became nostalgic. They recalled their escapades on the Mirage of yesteryear, how they had cunningly foiled Governor Systo's plot, how they led the Separatists by the nose, Admiral Trench and the fly, etc. They did not speak of their deaths. It was a subject that still bothered them and both tended to grow silent when they thought of it. Perhaps they really should have stayed dead? They died the best of friends, together, the ultimate sacrifice. What if life ripped them apart and the next time they died, they would be alone?

To avoid thinking about that, Nan asked Greg to tell her more about his early life. It had sounded rather boring the first time he described it so Nan hadn't asked again in a while.

"Please don't complain about your old ma this time," she said.

"Fine, but her breath was horrible and she really did sound like a screeching cat," said Greg. "I'll tell you about my dad instead. He was a dick. He refused to believe I was really his son. Every year I resembled him less and he was tired of supporting a bastard. When I was ten, he got some money together for a paternity test. Before he could send it in, I challenged him to a duel because I was tired of him too. Duels were really the best way to settle things on my home planet. I was a much better fighter than him even though I was just a kid. I'd been skipping school to participate in an underground fight club. I beat him and then I killed him because I didn't want him whining around our house.

"Ma didn't stick around much after that. She abandoned me and only left a note saying, 'You went too far. It will be me next.' She was probably right. I joined the army and many years later, I searched for her for some reason. I found her dying in a hospital for the poor. She couldn't talk anymore but she did leave me a note that said, 'He really wasn't your father.' Huh.

"I gained honor and renown in the army but it didn't pay well and I was tired of living in a crappy barracks. I moved to the capitol city and got a position as a police officer. I was really there to find a stupid rich girl and marry her for her money. It was something my ma had suggested. I was in luck. The king had an elite group of soldiers serving him and I took to hanging out with them. One of them was a kid named Ramuud whose father was extremely rich and he had a sister. He was sixteen years old and wanted to be the best soldier ever. It was too bad that he had a blood-clotting disorder. He had only discovered this a few months before I arrived and it was causing him a lot of emotional torment.

"Through Ramuud I met his sister Saati.[1] She was a do-gooder and a truly selfless person. I should have left her alone because of that, but I didn't realize how destructive such tendencies can be at the time. I decided to marry her somehow because her father was old and dying. I needed to get rid of Ramuud, the male heir, first. That was not hard to do. He was so distraught over his medical condition because it prevented him from becoming a soldier. I got him nice and drunk one night and convinced him that he had no reason to live if he couldn't be a fighter. We went to an empty room in his palace and he was going to kill himself, but then he had a moment of clarity and realized he'd be leaving his sister with the likes of me. I had to do it for him and make it look like a suicide. Luckily, I'd already gotten him to write a note.

"I was there for Saati while she grieved her brother's death. I bought some romance novels and made a big deal of courting her. She said yes when I asked her to marry me. It was a summer wedding. We had our honeymoon on an actual moon. She had a child whom she named Beck. I was getting tired of waiting for the old man to die but he finally started to croak. I should have paid attention, but the dying old man made me feel uncomfortable and I stayed away. I told Saati I wanted her to spend all her time with dear father, but really I was just scared of death. I noticed that lawyers were present often and figured he was writing his will.

"It never occurred to me, what they did. I was completely flabbergasted when I learned that the old man left most of his money to charity. Saati had a very wrong view of my character and never even asked if I'd be okay with it. She thought I'd be happy to help the poor. After the father died, the palace was sold and the jewels. The servants were gone. We moved into an apartment. I was stunned for weeks after it happened. Saati assumed I was just sad over her father's death. When it finally hit me that I'd wasted years of my life just to end up in the same financial situation I'd been in before, I took it out on my wife.

"I didn't beat her. I did to her what she'd done to me. I left her no money. She went around in rags. She didn't have enough to feed herself and the child. She starved and cried herself to sleep many nights. She didn't understand how I could do this. She was a self-deceiver, like all of us. She had honestly believed that somebody could love her for something other than her money. I went back to the army. We were in a war with Isstar, as you well recall. I reveled in blood and murder. It was all that made up for my lost wealth. The poor never even saw that money, for crap's sake. The Separatists took over my planet and the money went to fund their war machine. One night I told Saati that I had killed her brother, the final twist of the knife.[2] I think that would have killed her, if it wasn't for Beck. I don't remember much about the child. Saati told him to hide whenever I was home in case I hurt him.

"Beck was three years old the last time I saw him, or was aware of him. I knew the Separatists were going to kill the lot of us if we didn't surrender, but the king didn't see the sense in that. They burned the capitol. I saved my steed and left Saati and Beck to cope however they wanted. I raced to a Separatist camp with a white flag and asked to join. You know the rest."

"Yes, I do indeed," said Nan icily. She had a metal claw attached to the end of her tail because she had finally succeeded in controlling it. The claw left three scars on Greg's cheek before he knew what was what. She cut to the bone. There was blood everywhere. Nan left Kevin and Kate to patch it up. A few hours later, she found Greg drinking at the bar on the beach to lessen the pain. She knocked the glass out of his hands.

"I deserved that," mumbled Greg. The wound made it hard to talk.

"Speak louder, I can't hear you," said Nan.

Greg sighed and repeated himself more clearly. Nan snorted. He repeated himself again. The white gauze on his cheek started to turn red again from the strain. Nan drank a shot and threw the cup into the bushes. She paced and criticized him.

"That was your wife and child! You tormented them and left them to die! Your child—do you know what I would give to have my children back? And the worst part is that you're still mad about that money! All these years later, after everything you and I have learned about ourselves, and you're still mad about that!"

"It was such a waste," he whispered.

"I ought to give you a matching set, but I think you'd bleed to death," said Nan.

She refused to talk to him for several days after that. Greg moped around, not eating and feeling guilty. Then he found her crying in the room where they'd first woken up.

"I'm no better than you," she said. "I…I wouldn't give everything to have my children back!"

"I know," he said. "I saw that in your dream one time."

"I wouldn't give up you to have them back. Everything else, yes, but not you. Because…because…they were just animals! There, I've said it. They were like kittens you'd drown in a pond."

"I'm afraid, Nan, that I have not reached a heartbreaking epiphany about my lost family. I did not care for them then and I cannot cry for them now, not like a true husband and father. I am sad and guilty about the pain I caused them but I do not feel it like I should. I'm sorry."

"Apologize to them, not me."

"They're dead."

"How do you know?"

"Hmm…"

Nan urged him to bend down and licked his cheek. He'd have the scars for the rest of his life. The tank was still there. Greg poked the computer with his tail and it played back something he'd said (or thought) in that beautiful female voice.

"That's what I sounded like the entire time and you never changed it?" He said. "You jackasses."

They went out to the common room where Mila, Kate, and Kevin were watching TV.

"Are you guys done arguing about something stupid?" Asked Kate.

"Can I give her one too?" Asked Nan and made the blades of her tail spin.

Nonplussed, Kate said, "If you guys are done, I'd like to ask you, Nan, if you've practiced using the Force since that time you spilled Kevin's sperm on my chest."

Footnotes

[1] Yes, she is named after a little girl (computer program, whatever) from the third Matrix movie.

[2] The last line of T. S. Eliot's "Rhapsody on a Windy Night." Ironically, the last twist of the knife there is delivered by the rather humdrum experience of getting ready for another day.