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SW Gray Tale 33: Brain Goes Brrr
🕑 Added 2025-08-02 14:14:23 +0000 UTCAfter getting my metaphorical skull blended into smoothie by the Staff Experience (™), I officially declared today a nope day. Rest mode fully activated. Chill. Vibe. Mentally reboot. There’s only so much face-bashing, ego-dissolving, soul-crushing combat trauma a half-sized person can take before something short circuits. I was running at maybe 30%—physically, emotionally, existentially. Like a phone on low battery with 47 background apps still open and no charger in sight.
The experience with the weapon? Complicated. If I’m honest, it was a weird mix of “never again” and “wait, maybe just one more try.” Not the usual psychometry deal either. Normally I touch a thing, get a sad memory slideshow, feel bad about it, move on. This time? It shoved me into some kind of full-sensory Force-induced VR combat simulator. First-person mode, pain included. No pause button, no tutorial.
Pretty sure the Force in that staff didn’t just want me to see something. It wanted me to be in it. And not just for the vibes—it was training. Brutal, inescapable training. Like the staff decided that if I was going to learn anything, it wasn’t going to be the shortcut kind. No cheat codes. Just trial by Force fire.
Which left me sitting there afterwards, drained and annoyed, wondering if this was some kind of elaborate martial arts lesson. Or worse—some cosmic-level “get good” arc I never signed up for. Was I actually supposed to practice instead of downloading skills through psychic osmosis?
Gross. That was not the plan.
I’d been hoping to fast-track my way into melee godhood with minimal effort. Just pick up the ancient relic, get hit with a wave of tragic memory-juice, and walk away stronger. But now it’s looking like I might actually have to put in work. Disappointing. RIP to that dream. Press F.
And if that’s true for the staff... maybe lightsabers work the same way. Maybe the real combat lessons were the concussions we collected along the way.
I could just walk away from it. Get a regular weapon like a sensible gremlin. Something non-haunted, non-Force-infused, non-soul-punchy. But the staff kept calling to me. Something deep in my lizard brain whispering that I wasn’t done. That I wouldn’t beat the final boss unless I finished this side quest.
And yeah, I kind of hated how much that made sense.
A part of me wanted to see where it went. Test my limits. Maybe break something. Cry a little. Grow as a person.
After that, the rest of the day felt tame. Just fixed some broken nav-computers, stitched together a squad of half-dead droids like I was doing amateur Frankenstein cosplay. Six in one day. Not bad.
My problem-solving brain was kind of firing on all cylinders, though. Starting to feel like I was pushing into “child tech-prince of Lothal” territory. Still not enough to impress any Force ghosts, but at least I had a good playlist and Vasha’s vaguely affectionate insults to keep me grounded.
But yeah, as I slumped into the bed that night, I had one thought:
It’s time.
Not for more trauma-simulations. Not for weird weapon dream fights. No.
For something worse.
Introspection.
Yup. I was gonna look inside my own body. Not in a gross, surgery kind of way. I meant through the Force, obviously.
And look, I’m not proud of how long it took me to even think of trying this. Two years of being an edgy Force nerd, and only now do I go, “huh, maybe I should use my god-tier perception to scan myself?”
Peak genius. Big brain moves. 500 IQ.
Nope.
This was actual brain rot. Like, was this plot-induced stupidity? But there’s no plot. This is a slice-of-life arc with a side of emotional damage. Nobody’s scripting me. So who do I blame?
Me ofcourse.
Classic dumbass maneuver. Blame the meta-author for forgetting to check under the hood when I was the one holding the Force flashlight the whole time.
Anyway.
Time to see what secrets my dumb little meat-shell is hiding.
Maybe I’ll find enlightenment. Maybe I’ll find trauma. Maybe I’ll find a tiny version of Yoda sitting in my spleen whispering “try harder, you must.”
I don’t know. But I’m about to find out.
So, I finally did it.
I kicked off the basic structural layer of Hyper-Perception but pointed it inward. Like, instead of using it to scan droids or watch Vasha forget her tools for the fiftieth time, I decided to aim the sensory nuke at myself.
It was... weird. Less in the “oh no, what have I done” way, but more in the “why the kriff haven’t I done this before” way. Like, I’d been walking around with a lightspeed-capable scanner and just never thought to run a diagnostic on the meat suit I was wearing.
I blame internalized plot immunity.
The first thing I noticed? Double vision. Or rather, double feeling.
See, the reason I never thought about what my body looked like through Hyper-Perception before is because, duh, I already feel my body, right? Like, if my arm itches, I know. If I stub my toe, my nervous system sends a hate mail. That’s just normal human OS functioning.
But now?
Now I had two OSs running at the same time.
It was janky as hell to explain, so I’m not even gonna try deeply. But the vibe was: baseline biological feedback plus super-charged Force-fed sensory input, all stacking over each other like a badly optimized UI mod. I could feel everything.
Every twitch of muscle.
Every puff of lung expansion.
The literal sloshing of blood as it yeeted itself through my veins.
And the neural signals made me go Oh boy. Imagine your whole body being a giant fiber-optic rave, where every synapse fired like disco lights trying to one-up each other. It was chaos. Beautiful, glorious, terrifying chaos.
It felt less like being in my body and more like owning it. Like, really being behind the wheel for the first time. You ever get that feeling when you clean your room and suddenly remember it’s your room? Yeah. That, but flesh version.
And the wild part was that I’d never gotten this kind of clarity from using Hyper-Perception on others. Even with the recent improvements where people started being less blurrier blobs and more high-def meat sacks. My own body? Next-level.
I decided to take it a step further, because obviously, the only thing better than vibing with your nervous system is trying to go deeper.
I focused on one spot, trying to zoom in. Like a microscope, but powered by the Force and sheer stubbornness. I’d seen molecular outlines before, that was already in my perception bag, and since cells were way bigger than molecules, this should’ve been cake, right?
And yeah, I did it. I saw cells. Little blobs doing blob things. Cell walls, nuclei, all the usual suspects.
Too bad it was hella crowded in there.
Every time I tried to look for anything specific, it turned into that moment in an RPG where the loot chest explodes and you can’t find the one rare drop because your inventory is just soup. Organelles everywhere. Mitochondria flexing. Ribosomes probably throwing a rave.
And, of course, no sign of midichlorians.
Not that I expected to see them. I didn’t even know what they looked like. Little spark bugs? Glowing worms? The microscopic version of that one guy at the gym who swears he could’ve gone pro?
So yeah, I gave that up. Time for Plan B.
Second layer. Force vision time.
The moment it activated, everything changed. The world went dark—not creepy dark, but calm, intentional, meditative dark. Like everything turned the brightness down and whispered “shhh, something cool’s about to happen.”
And then the stars came out.
Tiny lights. Faint at first. Then brighter. Inside the cells. All of them. Each one lighting up like someone flipped a switch and said, “Let there be aesthetic.” And from each of those points, a soft stream of energy, one that was glowing, pulsing, alive — began to flow outward.
I just sat there (internally), blinking like a stunned jawa.
Because it wasn’t just one or two cells. It was all of them. Every single cell in my body had this tiny, shining star tucked inside, giving off this radiant, organic energy. They weren’t isolated, either. Each stream linked up with others, crisscrossing and weaving until the whole thing turned into this living, breathing web of glowing threads.
And then it hit me: it was flowing. There was a direction. A cycle. Every stream merged with another, streams became rivers, rivers turned into a river network, and all of it was moving toward my head.
The convergence point.
The apex.
And then the energy dispersed again, down through the body, feeding each cell in return.
Loop. Cycle. Pulse.
Harmony.
It was like my body wasn’t just a meat container anymore. It was an ecosystem of meta-physical energy and a star map all combined in one.
A symphony of life energy, and the Force was just casually vibing through it like a DJ mixing soul beats on a galactic scale.
I don’t cry easy — not unless there’s onions or severe physical trauma involved — but I swear something about that moment almost made me tear up.
Because it was beautiful.
Not dramatic beautiful. Not holodrama beautiful. But that quiet, overwhelming kind of beautiful you feel when you realize how deeply alive you are.
Yeah.
This?
This was the good stuff.
So I leaned in—way in—because once you glimpse the cosmic Force river flowing through your cells, you can’t just look once and bounce. You gotta stare until your eyeballs burn or your brain leaks out of your ears. Whichever comes first.
And as I watched, it hit me like a crumple-zone meteor:
This is the Living Force. The same pulsing life-energy that glows in every creature I’ve ever scanned. But until now, with everyone else it was just a fuzzy lantern floating in the mist—one big blob of “Oh hey, you’re alive.” Never in 10,000 hours of training did I appreciate how much mass this energy has. How heavy it feels. Like a cosmic plank of wood that each cell is a nail hammered into.
I could’ve sworn I sat there for hours. Maybe it was minutes. Time doesn’t exist when you’re face-deep in existential glow-worms. But slowly, almost sneakily, I noticed something new:
Every single cycle—every convergence at my head, every dispersal back to my cells sent out a tiny pulse. A toot. Like my body was exhaling “Here I am!” into the big honking galaxy. And it wasn’t telekinesis, my arms didn’t twitch or anything. Nor was it Hyper-Perception scanning outward. It was just… me, breathing Force.
Why the hell am I broadcasting? I thought, heart suddenly doing parachute flaps. I mean, I guess Emotion Sensing stirs ripples in the Force field, but this was… constant. Every damn breath. Every cell cycle. If I’m always radiating this signal, any Force-sensitive droid, Jedi, Sith, or inquisitor with half a clue could ping me from a parsec away.
I panicked—metaphorically. Then literally, because panicking in Hyper-Perception mode feels like your nervous system is running a million tabs of tabs of tabs. So I tried to test my theory:
Could I actually trigger a bigger pulse by dialing my emotions up to 11? Classic rookie move, but hey, science. I closed my eyes and dove for my memory bank, but years of semi-normal life had shoved all the juicy trauma into a dusty corner. No epic Sith betrayal screams, no orphaned-in-the-cellar sob-sessions. Just... quiet nights fixing droids and Vasha joking I was a “professional headache distributor.”
Crap.
I needed some emotional spice. So I went with the next best thing: mental scenario—“Someone flirts with Vasha.”
I could feel the bile-spike in my gut just imagining this sleazeball parading compliments like “Your precision is just as sharp as that hydrospanner.”
My blood pressure jumped. My fists clenched. My little heart went full “Not on my watch, buddy.”
MY STORY WILL NOT HAVE NTR TAG!
In the moment the thought clicked, the Force-streams in my vision roared. What had been a leisurely celestial creek turned into rapids.
The glowing threads didn’t change cycle or pattern—still flowing cell→head→cell in that elegant loop—but the intensity shot up. Starker light. Faster pulse. And the ripple I’d been broadcasting? It slapped outward like a sonic boom.
I swear I felt the echo through my ribs.
Holy kriff.
...
That confirmed it.
The ripple wasn’t some random quirk or mystical background hum. It was emotion. Emotion being yeeted into the Force like a cosmic mood tweet. That was what I’d been sensing all these years using my little emotional-nudge skill: ripples like this. Emotional broadcasts.
The good news being that everybody’s doing it. Constantly. Nobody shuts up emotionally in the Force. Which means I wasn’t special or screwed just because I glowed a little extra.
The bad news?
If anyone isn’t broadcasting emotion—like, if someone’s out here raw-dogging the Force without leaking anything—then congrats, that’s your cue to pack your things, fake a planetary ID, and dip. Because either it’s a Jedi on the run (which means an Inquisitor isn’t far behind), or it's already the Inquisitor themselves. Both flavors are nightmare fuel. Jedi are self-righteous narcs who couldn’t mind their own business if it was duct-taped to their lekku. Even if one was chill, their trail always ends with black robes and red sabers.
Anyway, now that I’d unlocked the “Emotional Transmission Theory 101” in my growing diploma in Force-ology, the real question came punch-dancing into my brain:
Why the hell is my telekinesis still garbage?
Not just TK either. All my externalizing Force powers were stuck at “sad little puff of wind” tier. I’d tried enhancing my limbs with Force—y’know, the cool Jedi parkour buff thing—to maybe get that juicy leg day multiplier or punch strength. Nada. Barely a tickle. It was like asking the Force to help and it just handed me a passive-aggressive note that said, “try harder.”
I let go of the deep-layer vision and came back to the real world. Darkness peeled away like a curtain, and I found myself once again inside my very mundane, slightly messy room. The real world felt so flat now, like going from IMAX Ultra 4D back to a 2006 CRT monitor.
Mind and body both needed a sec to reset.
I grabbed the lukewarm caf on the side table. Basic. Bitter. Beautiful. Sipped it like it held answers, which it didn’t, but caffeine never judged.
Then I placed the mug in my palm, holding it like a lab subject.
Hot.
Right. Let’s test some theories.
I activated Hyper-Perception again—but this time, I made it do the full thing. Bubble mode. Inside and outside. Not just my body or the mug. Me. The environment. The whole damn vibe.
And there it was.
The living Force kicked in, humming through my cells like before—cell→head→cell, all glowy and wholesome—but now I paid attention to the second stream. The movement that happened whenever I tried to do something. Like raise my hand.
I moved my hand toward the cup, real slow, focusing.
And holy shit.
I felt it.
The moment I intended to move the cup with my mind, the flow inside me shifted. Not just the usual inward pulse of energy—it changed direction. Instead of the elegant body cycle, it launched upward toward my head. Like the cells were reporting in. And then—
Boom.
A pulse fired back from my head. It wasn’t explosive. More like a precise instruction. A focused “go here, do this” signal, riding back down through the arm I’d raised.I rolled my eyes at the empty silence between me and the mug—until I decided to put my money where my mystical mouth was.
I wasn’t a total no-show with telekinesis. After two years of drilling my Force muscles on wrenches and datapads, I could already levitate small stuff in arm’s reach like a pro’s apprentice. So I focused on the caf mug, curled my fingers as if I were going to actually grip it, and dialed in.
Inside me, that familiar pulse glowed: cells → head → arm → hand, the whole luminous loop. And this time, I felt the signal make it all the way out of my finger-tips—weak, trembly, but definitely there. The mug quivered. A tiny crack in its aura.
I willed harder. Everything inside me surged. The mug lifted an inch. Then two. Definitely moving.
Victory?
Kind of. It hovered—slow, wobbly, like a shaky hologram of itself—before dropping back with a soft plunk.
So yeah, I moved a mug. But with the amount of effort I poured in, I might as well have been bench-pressing a speeder bike. The outgoing pulse still got mangled on the way out; it just had enough juice left to nudge the cup a little.
Curious, I eyed the bedside table next. Solid plastimetal, loaded with tools. If I raised my hand toward that, would I get the same half-hearted lift?
I tried. Signal lit up internally, pulsed outward—but this time, as soon as it left my wrist, it flat-lined. The table wavered like a bad holo-projection… then froze. No motion. It was like my Force signal hit an invisible “weak object” filter: anything above mug-size just vapor-locked.
I sighed, letting the bubble of hyper-perception collapse. Mug back on the table, table exactly where it was.
My body was broadcasting. Constantly. I was wired into the Force like a damn antenna.
But somewhere along the chain, between intention and action, my control cable got snipped.
And I had no idea why.
Yet.
Comments
Car Crash
TFTC
Benjamin Black
Looking forward to that “yet”!
