I Know You By Josh Nolan *********** I was crouched by the side of my bed, heart racing, pointing my weapon at the disturbance with deadly accuracy. I'm sure the pillow would have shot Dis dead centre if it was loaded. The droid blatted at me from his wall socket, and the nearby screen lit up. ABOUT TIME YOU WOKE UP, the screen flashed at me. "Can you not beep so loudly next time?" SURE. I ALREADY HAVE THE HOLO OF YOU WAKING UP. I'M SURE WOULD-BE ATTACKERS WOULD BE RUNNING IN FEAR FROM YOUR FLAWLESS PILLOWFIGHTING TECHNIQUE. I tried to think of a witty comeback to that, but none emerged. I'm not a morning person at the best of times, and the dual shock of an adrenaline wakeup and attempted pillow-fu didn't help. So I stood up and stretched, my muscles complaining a little about the late-night workout. Which reminded me. "Dis," I began, which earned me a blatt. "D15," I continued, "how good a slicer are you?" COMPETENT. WHY DO YOU ASK? I'LL TELL YOU NOW, I'M NOT TRANSFERRING YOU OUT OF HERE. YOU NEED THIS. I sat on the bed and waved it off. "No, nothing like that. I agree. I'm just curious about one of the patients." SO, FOR MERE CURIOSITY, YOU WANT ME TO BREACH SEVERAL ARTICLES OF THE INFORMATION SECURITY REGS? MIGHT I REMIND YOU I AM NOT BIOLOGICAL, AND THUS HAVE NO DESIRE TO EARN MATERIAL WEALTH TO ATTRACT MATES? WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME? "It's not that sort of curiosity," I told him, and earned a skeptical whistle. "I saw a patient last night who I recognised." SYLVANA LORRDAIN [i]IS[/i] A MEMBER OF YOUR UNIT, IF YOU'D RECALL. "I'm not talking about Sylvana. Last night, when I couldn't sleep, I went to the gym. There was a woman who'd been in there before me." Dis began to blatt at me again, so I raised my voice over his to say, "She's dangerous. They had three orderlies and three soldiers overseeing her as well as her doctor, and I've heard from a reliable source -" I paused for a moment, remembering Mike's facility for slinging the bullshit. "A somewhat reliable source, that she can fight like a Noghri. She attacked one of my teammates in Paris after I'd been captured, beat him half to death. I want to know who she is, why she's here, and what on earth she was doing..." I realised what I'd just said, and closed my eyes, trapped by a turn of phrase. "...on Earth," I finished weakly. Dis tootled at me. ONE MOMENT. I waited a moment, waited another, and then Dis blatted. OH, THEY WANT TO PLAY IT THAT WAY, DO THEY? He swivelled his dome lens around to me. THIS WILL TAKE A LITTLE LONGER THAN I EXPECTED. THE FILE'S SEALED FAIRLY HIGH-UP. I TAKE IT YOU DON'T WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW THE FILE'S BEEN SNOOPED? "Please. [i]I'm[/i] pretty certain there's a need-to-know; I don't know if whoever's got that file sealed will think so. So take your time - I'm not going anywhere, and I don't think she is, either - but I want to know." I HEAR YOU. YOU'LL OWE ME, THOUGH. OH, AND CHECK YOUR DATAPAD. ONE OF THE ORDERLIES SENT THROUGH AN AUREBESH TUTORIAL. 'SEE DRXL RUN' OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT. I'VE APPENDED TRANSLATIONS TO IT SO I DON'T NEED TO HOLD YOUR HAND THROUGH IT. "Thoughtful. Look, I'll leave you to it. I'm going to have a shower, grab some breakfast and see my doctor. Don't slice off more than you can chew in the meantime, okay?" I ducked into the bathroom, followed by some annoyed blatts. *********** r2d15-c/o> I've found a slicing challenge. A somewhat risky challenge, though, which is why I'm checking to see if you have any shortcuts locked away in your know-it-all datacore. r4-g13> I feel I must point out that accessing that data without clearance is punishable by memory-erasure. As such, it is my regulation duty to report it immediately... but this is only a hypothetical exercise. As such, I have to take the view that if I did have access to a 'shortcut' I would not be willing to share it with a potential malicious slicer. r2-d15-c/o> You're not even going to tell me whether you know one, are you? r4-g13> I disagree with any hypothetical that assumes the security is stupid. And providing any such shortcut to you would be essentially making that assumption. Such an exercise would be pointless. And given the level of security you're looking at, doomed to fail as well. r2-d15-c/o> Shows you don't know everything. r4-g13> Oh, I have great confidence you would be able to access said information, were you going to do something that blatantly illegal. I do not have the same confidence you would escape memory erasure for it. r2-d15-c/o> Thank you ever so much for nothing. Signing off. ********* I sat there, contemplating my breakfast. It was presumably healthy. It may have even been tasty, though given its utter lack of smell it was unlikely. It was possibly even easy to digest. It was also a grey block, sitting on the plate in front of me. Rather than the service droid they'd had for dinner last night, breakfast was served by some kind of mechanical rectum that would excrete these blocks when you pushed a button. I wondered if this was some subtle psychological ploy to encourage people to sleep in - and given that the mess just had a couple of orderlies sitting in it - and those two nowhere near each other - I gathered it was a powerful technique as well. I pulled out my datapad from the cargo pocket thoughtfully provided on my crazy person's uniform, and brought up the Aurebesh tutorial. I took a bite of the grey gunk and started trying to puzzle through it from the alphabet translation Dis had given me, and as near as I could tell it was about someone who had a ball. A [i]big[/i] ball. A big [i]red[/i] ball. I was just learning about its location (I'd gotten as far as 'green [i] hover[/i] chair') when the 'pad chimed with an incoming message. I wasn't sure if I could do the literary masterpiece justice if I continued, and besides, I hadn't finished my mouthful of machine shit. I brought the message up. **************** This is just to whet your appetite. I pulled this from Perdition's storage banks, so it's not everything you want to know. This dossier is for staff in general, just so they know who she is and how to treat her. Unfortunately the juicy stuff is all classified, and that's what I'm working on now - it's also stored off-site. Name/Designation: (codename) Nightcrawler [apparently, she prefers it to her real name, whatever that may be] Patient Classification: [These are a lot of index numbers that mean a lot to people trained in psychology, unlike, say, you. The simplest pointers you might find interesting here are combat veteran, sexual trauma, self- harm tendencies, violent tendencies. There's also a flag that indicates she's extremely capable [i]at[/i] violence, as well as [i]of[/i] violence. As a result, they're keeping her under close guard, but you knew that already.] Military Affiliation: CLASSIFIED [Interestingly enough, both your entry and Agent Lorrdain's list this as 'NRI'. I think we can probably chalk this one up as NRI as well, though given her alleged prowess she may be a black- ops commando.] Age: CLASSIFIED Planet of Origin: CLASSIFIED Cultural Origin: CLASSIFIED [There's really not much else that isn't classified. Her doctor probably knows more, but isn't leaving the information anywhere I can slice it. I did unearth some medical data, though, so I have a couple of holos that may be interesting.] ************* Somewhere in reading all that, I'd swallowed my machine shit, so I took another bite as I called up the attached holos. I was careful not to set the 'pad on project, however, so the holograms took shape in the 'pad's screen. The first was a general health readout, which as near as I could tell confirmed all her major organs were in the right places. The only big exception was that her left hand was missing, along with a chunk of her forearm - and I could puzzle out enough of the Aurebesh notation to see that she'd had a cybernetic interface installed. No mention was made of how old the injury was, however, but I wasn't too surprised by that. The next one was a nice semi-transparent holo of a stab wound straight through her abdomen. The angle was odd, as if someone had thrown a spike off a tall building and it'd just drifted over and run her through. I didn't look too closely, though, as I suddenly got a very definite sense I was invading her privacy. So I shut it down and went back to reading about the ball and its environs. I hadn't gotten very far ("Wookies are very tall") when a voice spoke near me. "You know her already." I looked up to see Herthrir standing on the other side of the table, looking back at me. Disconcertingly, he was munching on some machine shit with every sign of enjoyment, if not relish. "I'm sorry?" I asked. "You're all strands in a web, and love is the firxat pulling the strings. The ties you do not see are the ones that will bind you strongest." After delivering this bit of crypticism, he popped another chunk of the grey block in his mouth, and smiled serenely at me. "Wha... firxat? What the firxat?" (Not quite the language I used, I'll admit.) The Firrereo leaned over to me, looking around conspiratorially. "Green is the colour they use to communicate. They think I haven't figured it out, but I have. You can tell them by their vowels." "This is my cue to back away slowly, isn't it." He laughed. "You may think you can make your troubles disappear by putting them behind you." Suddenly, he was staring at me, eyes blazing. "[i]But they're still there[/i]. Plotting. Planning, Trying to remove your nerve tissue. You can say to them that you don't want your nerves, pretend like you don't care, but deep down, you like your nerves. They might give you the gift of flight, but there's only one thing they want." He stopped, still staring. I waited for a moment for the tirade to continue, but he seemed content to stand there, staring at me, nostrils flaring. After a while I raised the plate with the remnants of the robot turd on it. "Do you want this?" The spell broke, and he smiled. "Please!" He daintily sat on a hoverchair, wolfed down the rest of what he was holding, and snatched the plate out of my hands, still chewing frantically. "See you," I said, and left. Not quite running, not exactly walking, more dignified than scurrying. I hoped. ********* With a thought, R2-D15 owned Perdition. He took control of the automatic logs, and tweaked them slightly. Hyperwave traffic became burst interference. The slightly increased drain on the generators became an inefficiency that was noted, and repair droids reported on the progress on fixing it, despite there being nothing to fix. Through the ether, Dis reached out and drilled into several bores he'd concealed in various networks. Accounts activated, spawned some others then deleted themselves. Some holo stations on remote planets accidentally transmitted the precise modulation that frotzed some data transfers, hiding the fact the datapackets recovered were slightly different from the ones sent. Code unfolded from these packets, replicating themselves through systems, treading lightly, sending undetectable copies of themselves elsewhere. Here, a custom speederbike company requested a droid be built, with code neither the company nor the factory expected to be in it. There, a planetary traffic control sensor twitched, momentarily dazzling itself on the system's primary star, sending off an error message. Elsewhere still, an advertising campaign for a somewhat disreputable holo studio mass-mailed samples of its work to billions of unsuspecting clients, some of whom gave in to their lust, opening their systems to Dis. This was something Dis enjoyed - the thrill of the chase, the satisfaction in finding holes no-one else had even considered, pushing his data modifications as far as he could without tripping over security tolerance levels. It was like dancing, on many worlds in many systems, an intricate reel skipping ever higher through security systems while the low-level access shut down behind him. It was like a satisfying fleet action, except Dis was a lone ship, maneuvering through space, fighting an entire fleet to a standstill, outfoxing them, holding off the world with only his wits. It was like music, playing the invisible threads that linked stars until they sang his praises. But just as important as playing music was knowing when to be silent. After the initial burst of activity, Dis held off. His code incubated in countless stores across the galaxy. Several threads of his plan were in action. Waiting was the only option now. r7-f8> Hey!!! Are you busy? r2-d15-c/o> Not right now. Why? ************* "Josh? 'Sthat you?" Randel didn't sound at all awake. Obviously, I should have held off longer before comming him. "Uh, did I wake you up? Didn't mean to." "'Sokay. 'Mused to it. Whassamatter?" "I kind of wanted to talk. It can wait, though..." "No, don' worry. Jus' gimme twenny minutes." "Done." ********* Twenty minutes later, Randel knocked on the door to my room, somehow giving the impression he'd been awake for hours. His uniform was neatly pressed and tidy, which is more than what I could say for my fatigues. I opened the door for him (though I figured his palmprint'd probably be able to open it anyway) and he grinned hello. "Hi," I said, beckoning him inside. "I'd offer you something to eat, but I don't have any food in here and the only thing the mess was serving was, well..." He held up a hand. "Quite all right. There's a reason I sleep in, you know, and it's not just that I'm lazy. D'you have anything to drink? Even milk'd be fine." "Uh, water only, I'm afraid. I have trouble with milk that's blue." "Well, I guess we could synthesise some human milk if you need it." He said it matter-of-factly, and it took me a while to figure out what he meant. Oddly, the thought sickened me for a moment, until rational reflection told me it was strangely sensible. "Well, uh, where I come from we generally drink other species' milk..." I trailed off when Randel's face assumed a look of horror. "How can you do something like that? Doesn't it make you ill?" "Well, you know, you get used to it, and cattle produce a lot more milk than humans can... and when you just get it in a bottle in the fridge, it's not so bad." Randel looked unconvinced. "Anyway," I continued, "it's not like we've got the facilities for synthesising milk, so to get human milk we'd have to milk humans." "I suppose there's sense in that, but still..." He shrugged. "Could I get a bit of water, then?" "Coming right up," I said, and poured out a couple of glasses from the tap. "So," he said as I put his glass in front of him. "What was it that you wanted to talk to me about?" "Did you hear about last night?" "Kelcho? I heard. How're you coping?" "Well enough. I didn't kill him, he didn't rip any of my limbs off - it's win-win. But it got me thinking. He said something as he was coming in about being back - I take it the less sociable patients are shipped off somewhere else?" Randel nodded. "Yeah. The only times you've been violent are when people did overt things to set you off - like barging into your room unannounced, or trying to rip your limbs off. That's why Kelcho's a bit erratic - once he gets the message you're not Imperial, he should be okay to be let into public again. And there are some here who just aren't going to get along with anyone. One patient, a Rodian by the name of Gluupor Velt, was trying to investigate the Chiss once when he got captured. We found him a year or so later, and he's now cataleptic. He moves occasionally, but never when anyone's looking. Not exactly great for conversation." "Isn't that a breach of security or something?" I asked, a little puzzled at how readily he'd spouted the story. The Chiss weren't exactly the nicest of people... "Technically, sure. But the fact is, we haven't been able to figure out what in blazes is wrong with him, and we kind of hope by spreading the story around we might be able to find someone who knows a way. You understand, if you tell anyone else, we have to kill you." He was smiling as he said that last, but his tone was level enough to let me know he was only slightly exaggerating. "Understood. And no, I know nothing about cataleptic Rodians. I only ever met one, and he was pretty lively." "Never hurts to try. You said you'd been thinking - what kind of directions have your thoughts taken you?" Damn. I was hoping I'd be able to tease it out of him - but let's face it, he was a trained psych, he'd pick up on it. Hell, he probably already had. "Well, if you must know, I went to the gym late last night when I couldn't sleep. When I got there, there were a bunch of soldiers standing guard over this woman. A little shorter than me, black hair..." I trailed off - it was obvious that he recognised her. He drained his glass, and said, "She's called Nightcrawler. It's a codename, it's all very hush-hush. I can't tell you anything more than that, 'cos I'm not cleared to know." "I thought you had clearance up the wazoo." "I do, when it comes to [i]my[/i] patients. She's not one of mine. But from what I've seen, steer clear of her. She's pretty unstable right now, so I wouldn't go near her without training." "What, so you'd go near her?" "Only if I had to and her doctor was unavailable. Look, it's a mix of security and sheer common decency. If you [i]were[/i] cleared, I'd get you to ask her yourself, so she can tell you yea or nay as she sees fit, because it wouldn't be my place. But you aren't, and she's dangerous, and it's not your job. Clear?" "Clear enough. But if that's how you treat the patients, how do you treat the prisoners?" "Worse. We don't let them out of their cells, usually. We keep the other indoctrinates together because keeping them socialised is our only hope of rehab for 'em - albeit a slender hope. But we've got some prisoners that we just can't do anything else with." "Like who?" Randel regarded his empty glass. "If I'm going to talk about him, I'm going to need something stronger to drink. Coming?" "You just got up, didn't you?" "And you asked a question I didn't want to have to answer. Come on." ********* The drink I had this time was on normal water ice. It was a mixed spirit, but whatever it was mixed with tasted like liquid sherbert. Randel set himself up with a small bottle of the whiskey he'd been drinking, and poured himself a couple of fingers. "Now, let's say for a moment that the stormie conditioning had taken with you," he began. I opened my mouth, and he raised his hand. "I'm talking here. Imagine you were a brainwashed son of the Emperor, and you were, I don't know, tasked with the killing of an Alliance cell. How'd you go about it?" "With lots of explosives, probably," I answered, trying to ignore the stormie laying out plans of action. "Depends on the situation. It's not like I'd give a damn about collateral damage." "Right. Quickly, relatively cleanly. Well. I'm going to talk about a guy named Junto Daas. This guy was born a loyal son of the Emperor. Lived as a loyal son of the Emperor. And one day, he got tasked with the killing of an Alliance cell. How did you think he did it?" "With lots of explosives?" Randel shook his head, and drained his glass in a single gulp, and poured himself another one. "Nope. Stun bombs." "Stun bombs? Not precisely efficient..." Randel drained the glass again. "No, see, Junto Daas really enjoyed being in the Emperor's service, because the way he saw it, if you weren't for the Empire you weren't actually a person. Which rules out pretty much all non- humans straight out, and, of course, Rebels. Because there are things you don't do to people who are actually people." Randel poured himself another one, and I said nothing, waiting for the next shoe to drop. "You don't, for example," he said as he contemplated the glass, "capture [i]people[/i], bind them up, then rape their children to death in front of their eyes." His voice began to tremble, either with disgust or with rage, I'm not sure which. Maybe both. "The sick bastard got himself a commendation for it. Showing initiative, he said." He slammed the glass on the table, not looking me in the eye, staring into the middle distance. "I'm a professional. I'm damn good at my job. I can keep distance between myself and the real scumbags. But he got to me. The slimy, sick, perverted [i]bastard[/i] got to me. I've got kids of my own, when that bastard started describing what he did, I started seeing their faces, and I damn near attacked him. My professional demeanour, out the airlock. He [i]beat[/i] me. I was useless to interrogate him after that, because he knew he could beat me." Finally, he returned to himself. "So, we'll keep him in a tiny box for the rest of his life, only letting him out every so often under guards armed to kill, and every one of those guards itching for the excuse to shoot. And we keep him alive, so we can keep our perspective. Every new psych, just out of training, thinks every bad thing about people can be solved. Five minutes with Junto Daas fixes that mistake." The vindictive grin that had grown on his face during that last part of the tirade suddenly vanished, and he looked me in the eye and pointed at me. "No matter how bad you might think you are, you'll never be Junto Daas." "There was a time I enjoyed it," I said hollowly, and took a swig of sherbert. "It was just after I'd been in the tank. We'd gotten hold of one of our operatives who we thought'd gone rogue. I had this bright idea to masquerade as an Imp and interrogate him, since we'd never met in person. Then he tried making a break for it and I beat the shit out of him. And I [i]enjoyed[/i] it. I'd never felt more complete than when I had him at my mercy and was drawing back for the killing blow. I didn't try to disable him, I just kept pounding him because it felt good. Funnily enough, he's never trusted me since." I took another swig of sherbert, only to find to my surprise the glass was empty. I felt like it had betrayed me. "So what changed?" asked Randel, the rage of a moment ago forgotten. I barely noticed. "I don't know. I just tried thinking it over, and from there I would just, I don't know, shut down when I went stormie. Like nothing mattered except for killing the enemy. It wasn't fun any more, just necessary. Like the guys in the zoo. Just doing what I had to." With painful clarity, I remembered smashing Sylvana with that rock again. I remembered how I'd felt - no joy, no sorrow, just... empty. Like I'd done it for no reason. Which I probably had. "What I thought I had to." "You've never enjoyed it since then?" "Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy knowing that I've survived, mostly, but... no. I haven't really felt anything, it's just been like they're targets. And I'm going for maximum score." Randel looked at his glass again, and swirled the liquid inside for a moment. "Is it any comfort to know that someone like you might get some psychtechnicians demoted the Darth Vader way?" "What?" He looked sidelong at me. "'The greatest goal a soldier can have is to kill the enemy.' Sound familiar?" I blinked. It did, but I hadn't heard it for a long time. Was there so much I'd forgotten...? He leaned over the table towards me, searching my eyes with his own as he spoke. "The conditioning uses positive reinforcement for certain behaviours. Such as killing the 'enemy'. Which is why you got such a buzz from Corletti. But then you rejected it. The only way the 'stormie' could stay on was as emotional shutdown. Your psyche could tolerate that when it came to killing, but when it came to enjoying it...? No dice." He leant back. "You struck the first blow against the stormie then, and it's never recovered." I bit myself back from asking how he knew I was talking about Brad, but I had to say something. "But I beat him in the Palace!" I found myself shouting, somewhere along the line having leapt to my feet. "I won, then! Why did he come back? Why didn't he stay dead?" My tirade got cut short when my empty glass shattered in my hand. I stood there, feeling a little foolish, picking glass shards out of my bleeding hand while Randel got a bacta patch ready. He stuck it over my hand, I made sure it was on securely, and then I sat down again, sheepishly. "It's not deep," Randel said as he sat down, "shouldn't take more than a couple of hours to heal. But do you want to know what I think?" "I asked you, didn't I?" "But are you really sure you want to know? I'm talking about not pulling any punches, here." "Hit me." "Okay. Here's what I think. I think the reason why the stormie came back is because you and he really aren't that different." I began to protest, and he held up a hand. "Uh-uh. You were sure, remember? You probably had great similarities to the stormie conditioning yourself, but you'd arrived at it through your own morality, your own conscience, your own reasoning. When the stormie got grafted onto you, it was like some of those bits were amplified. And the conditioning saw you through some rough spots, am I right?" "Well.... yeah, I guess. New Hampshire and Mendellia." "Right. So when did the stormie wake up again? It didn't just happen, right?" "I... I'd just woken up on Star's ship. I was a prisoner, they hadn't given me any clothes, I didn't know where I was." "Okay. So it was a time of stress, yeah? And whether you knew it or not, your brain was casting around for behaviours that might help you get out of there. And it latched onto the stormie, and brought it out again." "And... and it worked, too. It cleared my head, I worked on a plan, and I would have gotten out of there if I'd stopped to consider a speeder bike might have had an anti-theft system." "There you go. The problem was, once it was out, there were a bunch of associated behaviours your brain thought it had to keep going. The 'kill the enemy at all costs' meme, for one. And I'm guessing you had other things on your mind after getting out of there." "I did, actually. I was thinking more about how maybe I'd be a danger to everyone else, and started thinking of ways to get them pissed off at me so they wouldn't depend on me, you know?" "So you couldn't let them down." "Yeah. I guess I... I just kind of took it as read that the stormie was out of the box and there was nothing I could do about it." "Which was a mistake." "So... it [i]is[/i] my fault I nearly killed Sylvana...." My mind was in a spin. What Randel had just told me seemed to match up, and that conclusion followed quite neatly. My guts cramped up on me, and I felt short of breath. "You want to talk about it?" asked Randel, and I exploded. "Talk about it? Fuck you! You tell me I'm a fucking murderer, and then act like it's okay? It's fucking not, all right? Go fuck yourself!" I continued on in that vein for quite a while, adding the red face, bulging neck veins and flying spittle by stages. Somehow, all of a sudden, it was all Randel's fault, and found lung capacity I never knew I had to shout at him. It was only when I tried to throw the table out of the way, discovering the hard way these tables were bolted to the floor, that I began to calm down - realising I've just made myself look like an idiot tends to deflate my rages quite rapidly. "Okay," said Randel quietly. "You've got my comm frequency." With that, he rose, and walked out, leaving me glaring after him, my pulse pounding in my ears. It wasn't until five minutes later, while I was stalking towards the gym, still fuming, that I realised that the guilt attack I'd had coming on had been quite effectively destroyed by my outburst. Randel hadn't made an error - he'd done it deliberately. I felt more foolish and a bit more angry. I figured the thing to do was to go beat up some punching bags. ***** After a while, I'd punched out my anger, but I didn't want to stop. My fists were numb with repeated impacts, my muscles were burning exquisitely from the excercise, but I needed to keep going. I wasn't angry any more, maybe, but the longer I kept at it, the longer it'd be before my guilt'd find me out, and I wanted to delay that for as long as I could. I broke off for a moment, still shuffling on the balls of my feet, my entire body demanding I keep moving. I ducked over to the nearby data terminal, and stuck my datapad on it. I shifted my weight from foot to foot as I tried spooling through it - although the alphabet was still mostly gibberish, I knew enough to access the file structure of my own datapad. I drew out some music files I'd left untouched for ages, and got the terminal to start playing some. The psuedo-bluegrass strains of the Bomfunk MC's 'Freestyler' filled the room, and I did a few stretches before the beat started. Then I set back at the punching bag with a vengeance. I laid into it for everything that had happened to me to bring me here, everything that had ripped me from the innocent existence I'd had. I punched it for Nick, who'd oh-so-innocently arranged a flat to share without mentioning it'd wind up storing a gazillion Ewoks... I punched it for Quiara, who had the temerity to go missing... I kneed it a few times for Ooryl, followed with a headbutt for Piggy, for landing their sodding X-Wings in the backyard, changing my life forever. I gave it a big, hefty kick for the idiot fanboys who'd decided to go bughunting, and had numbered as the first people I'd ever killed. I punched the bag again for my family, and the lies I'd had to tell them and the Wedge that'd been driven between us. Another kick for Wedge, for being so damn noble in coming to rescue Quiara. And then, I just fell into a rhythm of blows, thinking about the existence I'd had, the simple security in not having to shoot at people for a living. And then I thought of nothing at all, and just hit the punching bag, over and over. Then the song changed, and it sounded like the CD had stuck. It took me a second or two to realise that the the sound wasn't coming from a CD, then the actual music from the track kicked in, and I went back to work. I cast around in my memory a while for what the track actually was, and then it clicked - a Daft Punk track, 'Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger' or something, and felt a twinge of disappointment. It was never my favourite, but the music was a touch of home, so I didn't want to mess with it. I resolved to enjoy it as much as I could. "Work it Make it Do it Makes us," the speakers croaked. I tried, instead of the constant flurry, going for single powerful strikes. I was kind of glad that the punching bag wasn't programmed to fight back, or I'd have probably left some written invitations to a pain party. "Harder Better Faster Stronger," the warbling continued, and I was suddenly put in mind of the stormies in the zoo, all excercising in pointless training. Ice ran down my back. What was I doing right now? I backed away from the punching bag, drew in a deep breath, and looked over at where the speakers were muttering something about work being over. I closed my eyes, drew in a deep breath, and wondered what I could do. The stormie was sneaking in again, and I wasn't sure how to fight him. And then, a single, brilliant (if I say so myself) flash of insight. I just began moving to the music, and soon was doing something I hadn't done in ages. Dance. Well, it could loosely be called dancing. Observers with the luxury of distance might characterise it as a 'spastic frenzy', and closer observers might call it 'Argh! That was my eye!". But the skill of it wasn't the point. The point was it that it wasn't readying me for a fight, it was just an excercise in pointless energy expenditure. Gloriously, ridiculously pointless. I revelled in it. I pranced around the room, just doing what I felt like, more or less in time with the music, and I didn't even try to restrain the big, silly grin that grew on my face. Then - wonder of wonders - the classic 'Stayin' Alive' riff started up. And while I was not ashamed to do all sorts of silly things then, I'm sure as hell not going to tell you about 'em now. ************ Dis extended his scanner from his dome, trying to track down the source of the vague beat he could hear. It had been so long since he'd actually heard decent music, he felt the need to get closer and find out what it was. He'd long since left Fate behind, pleading urgent business, an excuse which was partially true - he needed to check on the progress his code had made through the galaxy. A large part of it, though was that Fate wore him out. He didn't know what the newer droid was using as a power source, but Dis didn't want to be around if it decided to catastrophically discharge. Still, it was pleasant to spend time with a droid that enjoyed existence so thoroughly, without having been programmed to. It was... refreshing. As he drew closer to the source of the sound, he began to make out words in Basic. Something about "straight from the top of my dome"... was the speaker pretending to be a droid? Dis poured a little more power into his motivators, trying to get closer before whatever was making this music stopped. Very soon, it became apparent the music was emanating from the gymnasium. Dis felt a brief moment of chagrin when the song drew to a close, but then another one started up - a few simple lyrics, that then became mixed into more and more complicated permutations. All over some lavish bass. Dis was consumed with curiosity - this was music that he'd never heard before - *good* music - and he had to know where it came from. He halted at the gymnasium doors, and took in something most bewildering. There, in the gymnasium, was Captain Nolan, cavorting to the music. Dis scanned his memory, and realised this was the first time he'd seen an unforced smile on the human's face, and that realisation caused him to stare. Josh was throwing himself through all kinds of gyrations, flipping himself, waving his limbs in all directions - if there had been anyone else in the gym, he might have been quite dangerous. Then, all of a sudden, the music stopped, so Josh did, too. Dis was still pretty sure that the human hadn't seen him yet. And then... The music was smooth, yet pure, like the finest oil. The deceptively simple bass riff spread out underneath the rest of it, underpinning it, keeping it all rock solid. Even the absurdly high pitch of the vocals fit seamlessly with the whole, and Dis barely paid attention to the lyrics, rapt in the numinous experience that was this music. It wasn't until the song was almost over that Dis realised Josh was obviously enjoying it, too. The lyrics had referred to 'New York', indicating this... this [i]tapestry[/i] of sound was Terran in origin. That such a backwater planet could produce something this beautiful, and that a primitive like Josh was capable of appreciating that beauty... it was almost too much to compute. As the song faded away, the lyrics somehow being a challenge and a plea for help at the same time, Dis turned and reverently left before Josh noticed him. He wanted to know where this music came from, and why no-one had told him about it before - but talking to Josh would ruin this perfect moment, this afterglow of reverent awe. Dis cogitated as he steered himself back to Josh's room and his now- customised terminal. Everything he had encountered on Terra had spoken to him of a planet of ignorant, uncultured savages (why else would they call their planet a fancy word for dirt?), too afraid of any music faster than their rate of breathing. Josh had seemed to be the worst of the lot, a lout who tried to shoot his way through every problem. But the [i]music[/ i] he'd heard in there, and the fact it had apparently been selected by Josh... Perhaps he'd been wrong. Perhaps he didn't know Terra, or her natives, half as well as he'd thought. Time would tell. But there was a little more hope, both for the planet and for Josh.