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SW Gray Tales 16: The Force Shows The Way
🕑 Added 2025-07-11 18:30:18 +0000 UTCEdit: Got some ideas to refine the chapter as well as an major idea addition so updated it to incorporate that.
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And so, my life fell into a new, strange pattern. Vasha, now fully convinced she was harboring some kind of secret wunderkind, became my personal book mule. She'd make trips to Jon's shop and return with more advanced texts.
I'm sure the old Besalisk was suspicious as hell, but according to Vasha, she'd spun some story about how she wants to make an collection for study material for me just in case. He was her friend, anyway.
After that initial, frantic binge of learning, I decided to slow my roll. The stuff I already knew from my past life was easy to relearn, a quick flash of psychometry to bridge the terminology gap and I was good. But the new concepts? That took actual work. The Force echoes could only give me the "what," not the "how." I still needed to practice, to apply the knowledge, so I set aside a few hours every day for dedicated study.
In the process, I discovered something amazing. The hardware in this galaxy was absolutely busted. Not the basic circuits—those were familiar enough—but the computing chips. The slicer tech. I don't know what kind of black magic or nano-engineering went into them, but they had processing power that made the best chips from my old world look like primitive abacuses.
It made sense, I guess. Droids were true A.I., capable of learning, reasoning, and even developing their own weird little personalities. You don't get that with silicon and copper wire. I took one look at a schematic for a thousand-year-old processing core I found in a datapad and my brain just noped right out. There was no way in hell I was going anywhere near that. I'd be perfectly happy working with the pre-built interfacing languages. Eventually.
I also had a horrific realization about data security in this galaxy, which was less like a realization but more of an glimpse of reasoning behind something that happened in star wars media, namely: how the fuck are droids like R2D2 or chopper were able to hack any thing they connected to.
Because there was just no damn algorithm or encryption that was secure. The tech had reached an level so advanced that they had just in-practice, no worries about time or space complexity of programs. Any thing computer and network related that was even remotely of concern to security of the computer system are secured using some form of encryption, so no Tom, Billy or Anthony could walt in and yank the data or hack the mainframe
Now the thing is, even the most advanced encryption in my past life could theoretically be hacked, by simply using every possible combinations of passcodes, its just that it would take thousands or even trillions of years. But here? Not only had they had hardware so advanced that they could dare to use brute force, any sufficiently advnaced computing chips have QPU, Quantum Processing Unit, which can use algorithms that can crack these types of encryptions in seconds.
Quantum computers were just made in my previous life, but here they have reached an unprecedented level of sophistication with them. This all made me grow a new level of respect for tech in this universe.
The only way to keep your data and computer secure in this galaxy was to keep them off network, and keep them in places where you no one but only certified people can reach. How funny was that? The best computer security here was physical security.
Those thigns aside studies were only one part of my new routine. I didn't neglect my training with the Force.
Sensory abilities were great, but in a real fight, you needed to actually do stuff. Move things. Push things. Crush things. The bread and butter of any self-respecting Force-user was telekinesis.
My early attempts back at the old house hadn't been great, but I wasn't discouraged. Hyper Perception and psychometry seemed to be my unique talents, but maybe my struggle with telekinesis was what normal Force training actually felt like. Slow. Frustrating. Grueling. There was a reason they started training younglings when they were barely out of diapers.
So, even though every session left me physically and mentally drained, I kept at it. A pebble, a spoon, a discarded bolt. Trying to lift them, pull them, push them. The results were piss-poor, but they were what it were. All I could do was have patience.
And just like that, the days bled into weeks, the weeks into months. My life in Vasha’s little apartment settled into a rhythm as predictable as the rising and setting of Lothal’s pale sun.
Mornings began with the pathetic groans of my seven-year-old body being forced through a workout that would make a toddler laugh. Push-ups, sit-ups, stretching—you gotta build a good foundation early, especially when most of your day is spent cooped up in an apartment.
Once Vasha left for work, the real training began. That was Force time. When she came back in the evenings, the books came out, and I became the diligent student. For all she knew, I spent my days watching HoloTV and studying. The thought worried her sometimes, that I must be lonely. A quick dose of "you're all I need" (which was mostly true) usually settled her down. It's not like there were high standards for parenting on a backwater planet like Lothal, anyway.
Studies were progressing steadily. I'd started tinkering with small circuits, and the hands-on work felt good, familiar. But my telekinesis? It felt like it was moving backward. The practice rock on the floor now vibrated with a bit more enthusiasm when I focused on it, like a cell phone on silent, but lifting it was still a pipe dream.
Was it supposed to be this hard? It couldn't be, right?
But while the ‘doing’ part was a bust, the ‘sensing’ part was a whole different story. My Hyper Perception was blooming. I could keep it active for three, maybe four seconds now. The microscopic detail hadn't improved much, but I'd gained fine control, able to dip into an object's history without getting completely lost in its story. Most importantly, the radius was growing. Slowly, but noticeably.
When the frustration with my stubborn rock got to be too much, I'd just stop trying to move things and… listen. I’d sit on the floor, close my eyes, and let my awareness sink into the hum of the universe. I could feel the thrum of the building’s power conduits in the walls, the faint, skittering life of a loth-rat in the ventilation shaft below.
This growing sensitivity had a side effect: I was getting scary-good at reading people. When I’d first met Vasha, I could only sense the big, primary colors of her emotions—pity, weariness, kindness. Now, I could see the whole palette. The quiet flicker of pride when I managed to fix a sputtering power converter, the background radiation of loneliness that clung to her some nights, the subtle spike of annoyance when a client was late with a payment.
Since I was hitting a wall with telekinesis, I started exploring another avenue: mental manipulation. I had no guide, no teacher, so I just experimented, building on my emotional sensing. What if I could make one feeling stronger than the others? A sort of mental telekinesis. The start was rough, and it was still rough, but I was getting better. I couldn't create emotions out of thin air, but I could amplify ones that were already there.
Strangers in the market became my practice range. On our weekly trips for groceries, I’d turn it into a little game. I’d find a grumpy-looking vendor, feel the hard knot of his irritation, and just… nudge it. A gentle, psychic push towards amusement, or maybe generosity. It wasn't mind control, just a little help, like getting a stuck wheel moving.
The vendor's scowl would soften, he'd knock a credit off the price of some joogan fruit, and Vasha would look down at me with a smile, like I was her personal good-luck charm. It gave me valuable experience, and hey, it got us cheaper space-apples. Win-win.
After a couple of months, even Vasha started noticing.
"You're a good luck charm, you know that?" she'd say, eyeing a pile of discounted nerfs at the butcher stand. "Every time you're with me, I get the best deals."
I'd just shrug, giving her my most innocent smile. "Maybe they just like me?"
She'd ruffle my hair, a fond, exasperated sigh escaping her. She probably thought I was just charming people with my big eyes and quiet demeanor. Which, to be fair, was part of the act. But the Force nudge was the real MVP.
My days continued, a tight schedule of physical training, Force practice, and academic study. The electronics book, the Young Tinkerer's Guide, had been completely absorbed. I’d moved onto more advanced schematics, pulling them up on Vasha’s datapad when she was out.
The psychometric learning was still my golden ticket. I'd found that if I focused on a schematic, I didn't just get the abstract understanding, but sometimes a faint echo of the engineer who designed it, their process, their thought patterns. It was like a crash course in alien design philosophy.
I was slowly, painstakingly, building a new mental database. My old-world engineering knowledge was like a powerful engine, and this new Force ability was giving me the fuel and the blueprints to adapt it to a whole new galaxy. I was starting to see patterns, to intuitively grasp why certain components were designed the way they were, even if I couldn't yet build them myself.
The desire to build something, anything, was starting to get overwhelming. I itched to get my hands on tools, on raw materials, to actually create something functional in this new world. But for now, it was still mostly theoretical. I was a child, after all, and my budget for components was precisely zero credits.
My physical Force abilities, however, remained stubbornly underdeveloped. The best I could do with telekinesis was a slight tremor in small objects, like a barely perceptible shiver. It was frustrating. I watched the HoloNet, saw Jedi in old propaganda films throwing droids around like rag dolls, and here I was, struggling to make a pebble roll.
It solidified my belief that whatever kind of Force user I was, it wasn't the kind that threw lightning or swung lightsabers. The path that the Force was showing was in the mind, in perception, in the subtle currents of emotion and information. I was the galaxy's weirdest librarian, cataloging the universe's vibrations.
Still, a tiny-no, scratch that, a big stubborn part of me refused to give up on the physical Force.
—
Today was another thrilling installment of "Ezra Fails at Space Magic."
I was cross-legged on the floor, my oversized tunic already plastered to my chest with sweat. Apparently, intense glaring is a full-body workout. The grey river stone in front of me was doing its usual frantic hummingbird impression, vibrating like it desperately wanted to achieve orbit. I, too, desperately wanted it to achieve orbit. Or at least lift.
But no. It was stubbornly, infuriatingly earthbound. It was probably judging my technique.
The problem wasn't the Force itself. That thing was everywhere, a constant background hum in my senses, like the universe's most powerful Wi-Fi signal. No, the problem was me. My ability to actually use said universal Wi-Fi was akin to trying to stream a holodrama through a dial-up modem powered by a nervous loth-cat. It was, in a word, pathetic.
My first theory had been about stamina, and I wasn't entirely wrong. Using the Force, even my feeble attempts, was exhausting. Not like my muscles were sore, but like my very cells were protesting and my skull was trying to escape my head. Think pulling an all-nighter, multiply it by ten, then cram it into a seven-year-old body that considered walking and chewing at the same time a major athletic achievement. Twenty minutes of this, and I was ready to nap for a week.
But the real kicker, the thing that made my progress slower than a Hutt in a hurry, was the channel. My metaphysical pipeline to the Force. Mine felt like it had been installed by the lowest bidder and subsequently used as a womp rat's nest. Every day, my practice was like trying to clear a hopelessly blocked drain with a single toothpick. I'd widen the channel by a micron, maybe two, only to feel it shrink back by morning out of sheer spite.
It led me to a nagging suspicion, cobbled together from half-remembered lore. Midichlorians. These supposed Force-mitochondria were the biological interface for all this space magic. It made a grim sort of sense. The original Ezra was strong, but he wasn't Skywalker-level Chosen One material. He was just a talented kid. And my current teeny-weeny chassis was probably the bottleneck. Bigger body, more cells, more Force-power. It had a depressing credibility.
But one thing that theory still didn't explain: My sensory abilities. They were a different story, though and through.
Hyper Perception and psychometry weren't just developing; they were flourishing. I had a hypothesis about that. Sensing was passive. It was about receiving information, not projecting power. My Force-body was like a high-sensitivity antenna, brilliant at picking up signals, but a terrible emitter.
It was a frustrating thought, but I wasn't going to let it limit me. Whatever the Force intended for me, I wasn't going to just sit back and be a glorified radio receiver.
With a final, frustrated grunt that sounded like a loth-cat being denied a treat, I released my focus. The stone stopped its mocking vibration. The headache receded to a dull throb. I slumped back against the couch, utterly defeated. At this rate, by the time I was fifteen, I might be able to reliably levitate a spoon. Maybe.
Just as I was sinking into a particularly deep wallow of my own inadequacy, a familiar hiss snapped me back to reality. The front door.
Vasha walked in, kicking off her boots with a sigh that seemed to carry the weight of the entire dockyard. She looked more tired than usual, her lekku drooping slightly. "Rough day?" I asked, already sensing the low thrum of exhaustion and mild irritation radiating off her.
She managed a weak smile. "You could say that. Some idiot tried to reprogram an astromech with a datapad meant for a protocol droid. Scrambled its logic circuits so bad it thought it was a tooka-cat." She rubbed her temples. "Took me three hours to untangle the mess. Some days I wonder why I bother."
I scrambled off the couch. "Can I get you some water?"
Her smile softened. "That'd be nice, Ezra. Thanks."
While I was getting the water, I felt a sharper spike of something, a quick flash of anxiety mixed with frustration. It faded almost as quickly as it came, replaced by the usual weary resignation. I knew her patterns by now. This was probably about money. Another dockyard fine for a late repair, or a surprise bill.
I brought her the water. She took a long sip, then sighed again, a little less tense this time. "Thanks, kid. You're a lifesaver."
"Anything for you," I said, leaning against the counter. It wasn't just an act anymore. This place, this weird, kind Twi'lek—it was home. And she was... family. A weird, unexpected family, but family nonetheless.
She drained the glass. "Alright. Dinner time. What do you feel like tonight?"
As she started pulling ingredients out of the small 'fresher, I got an idea. An impulse, really. Something had been nagging at me, a low-level hum of suspicion from my earlier explorations in the market. The sudden spike of anxiety I'd just felt from her, combined with her earlier comment about why she bothered...
"Vasha?" I asked, my voice carefully casual.
She glanced over her shoulder. "Yeah, Ezra?"
"Are things... okay? With work, I mean?"
She froze for a split second, her hand hovering over a bag of sun-roots. Then she slowly turned, a slightly too-bright smile pasted on her face. "Of course, kiddo. Why wouldn't they be?"
The lie was obvious, radiating off her like heat from a fusion generator. My Force senses flared, picking up the truth beneath the surface: a deep-seated worry, a fear of financial instability, a feeling of being overwhelmed. It was all there, clear as day.
I wasn't an idiot.
"Just asking," I said, trying to look innocent. "You seemed... tired."
She gave a relieved chuckle, the tension draining slightly from her posture. "Yeah, just tired. Long day, that's all." She turned back to the food, but I could still feel the worry, like a persistent echo.
I chewed on my lip, my mind racing. I could nudge her towards optimism, sure, but that wouldn't solve the underlying problem. My emotional manipulation was subtle, not a miracle cure. But maybe... maybe I could use my other gifts.
My eyes drifted to the workbench. Tucked in the corner, half-covered by a greasy tarp, was the reason for a lot of that background stress. It was the torso of a high-spec protocol droid, its silver plating dulled and its chest cavity wide open, exposing a tangled mess of wires and circuits.
The rest of it was also here, it was all just disassembled.
She'd brought it home from the docks a couple of months ago. It had been fried in some kind of power surge, and after none of the dockyard techs, including her, could get it running, it was scheduled to be scrapped. Vasha had salvaged it instead, talking about how it was a waste to trash such an advanced model.
The unspoken hope was that she could fix it and sell it for a nice credit boost. But it had been a frustrating, unsuccessful venture. Now it just sat there, a monument to a good idea that hadn't panned out.
She'd sometimes call it her "little pastime," but I could feel the low-grade annoyance it gave her every time she looked at it.
I wondered if I could help with that?
Not with just the droid of course , getting it running might be an short-term solution, but wouldn't better anything to the core problem itself, but it would be a good start.
