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SW Gray Tales 14: The World Just Keeps Giving
🕑 Added 2025-07-10 16:20:45 +0000 UTCMy next day was a blur of psychometry practice. Turns out, reading the life story of a sun-root is way more entertaining than it sounds. I relived its entire journey from a stubborn seed in the dirt to getting yanked out of the ground by a grumpy farmer-droid. Fascinating stuff.
I spent hours just picking up random crap in the apartment and diving into its history. A spoon. A loose floor tile. The half-eaten meiloorun from last night. Each one had a story. Mundane, maybe, but a story nonetheless.
Time flew. Before I knew it, the sun was setting, casting long shadows across the living room. Vasha had promised she’d try to duck out of work early so we could hit up that used-goods shop.
I was already dressed and vibrating with impatience. I’d washed my own clothes in the 'fresher last night while she slept, thank the Force, so at least I wouldn't have to go out looking like I was wearing one of her tunics. A small mercy.
The lock on the apartment door finally clicked open.
"Ready to go, kiddo?" Vasha called out, her voice a mix of weariness and excitement.
The shop was less of a store and more of a hoarder’s paradise. It was way bigger than I’d expected, a cavernous space where towers of junk threatened to topple over and create a very permanent, very dusty tomb for some unlucky shopper. Half of it looked like Maul-certified scrap metal. The air was thick with the smell of old oil, ozone, and forgotten things.
Vasha squeezed my shoulder. "Okay, my friend is over there. I'm going to see what he recommends for… you know, basic studies." She gestured vaguely. "Don't go too far. And don't touch anything that sparks."
She headed toward a grizzled-looking Besalisk behind a counter made of stacked starship hulls, leaving me to my own devices. I caught a snippet of their conversation as I shuffled away. "He was homeschooled, I think... so, whatever seven-year-olds learn?"
Right. Good luck with that. Ezra’s real parents were broadcasters, not teachers. His early education was probably limited to knowing which Imperial propaganda to ignore.
I let Vasha handle the logistics. My eyes were already locked on the real prize. Tucked away in a dusty, dimly lit corner were the books. Dozens upon dozens of them, stacked on groaning shelves and piled in precarious towers on the floor.
Datapads, flimsiplasts, even some hardbound codices. My new library.
I tiptoed into the book alcove like I was entering a sacred tomb. Which, given the smell of decaying paper and the sheer age of some of these things, wasn't far off. Cracked synth-leather spines sat next to shiny, modern flimsiplast covers. A whole history of publishing, right here in one dusty, poorly-lit corner.
The books at the front of the pile were clearly the deep cuts. I pulled one out, a heavy thing with a dark blue cover. Foundations of Repulsorlift Field Dynamics. Sounds fun.
I flipped it open.
Nope.
It was pure, unadulterated gibberish. Complex equations and technical diagrams swam before my eyes, written in Aurebesh I could read but couldn't comprehend. The text didn't bother with introductions. It just assumed you already knew what a graviton emitter matrix was and went from there. It was like picking up a graduate-level textbook on quantum mechanics when you hadn't even learned basic algebra yet.
My engineer brain screamed in frustration. This was my jam. Or, it should have been. But without the foundational knowledge of this galaxy's physics, I was just a kid staring at pretty shapes.
I slid the book back into its slot with a sigh. One day, you beautiful, incomprehensible bastards. One day.
For now, though, I needed something a little less… ambitious. I started carefully navigating the stacks, sidestepping a tower of flimsiplasts that looked like it was held together by static cling and pure spite. A book-alanche was a deeply embarrassing way to go out. Twice.
I squeezed between two towering shelves, digging deeper into the pile. My mission: find the kid's section. Or at least something with pictures.
I scanned the titles, my hope dwindling with each one. Advanced Droid Heuristics, The Metaphysics of Hyperdrive Theory, A Treatise on Crystal Harmonics. It was all impossibly, infuriatingly advanced. There wasn't a single book here for someone who didn't already have a PhD in space-sciences or wizardry.
I glanced over my shoulder, hoping to catch Vasha's eye. No luck. She and the grizzled Besalisk were now leaning over a busted-up motivator, gesticulating wildly. She was in her element, completely engrossed.
Betrayed. Abandoned in a literary wasteland while my supposed guardian geeked out over antique tech. The injustice of it all.
And then it hit me. A thought so obvious, so brilliantly simple, that I felt a profound sense of self-loathing for not thinking of it sooner.
Holy shit, I am so dumb.
I have a literal superpower for sensing things, and I'm just… walking around, using my eyes like a chump. It’s like owning a starship but using a team of banthas to pull it. Wait, that analogy made no sense. Whatever.
I took a quick, paranoid look around. The shop was quiet. Just a couple of Rodians haggling over a rusty droid leg near the entrance. Vasha was still deep in her tech-huddle. Nobody was paying attention to the small kid in the dusty book corner.
Okay. Coast is clear.
I took a couple of deep, centering breaths and focused. The familiar, non-sound of a circuit clicking shut echoed in my mind.
My perception instantly blasted outward, expanding to its current maximum range of about two meters. The world dissolved, and I became the book alcove. I felt the usual symphony of raw data—the cool, gritty floor, the dry, brittle paper of the books, the faint hum of the shop’s lighting. I was getting better at filtering the useless noise, pushing it to the background.
But this time, something else was present. Something different, yet strangely familiar. It wasn't the what that was familiar, but the how. A richness. A density of echoes.
The sensation was strongest in the stacks of books right in front of me. The weight of their existence, the passage of time imprinted on them, the echoes left behind by their owners... it was all so much louder here than it had been in Vasha's apartment. The river stone had been a quiet hum. Her tunic had been a clear, single voice. This? This was a choir. A chaotic, overlapping mess of a thousand different voices and a million different moments.
Why? What made these objects so different?
The brief window of my hyper-perception was already closing. The sense of it all began to recede, the world threatening to snap back into its solid, boring state.
My original goal was forgotten. Finding a kid's book seemed trivial now. What stories did these things hold? What secrets were hiding in the echoes of their pages? The frustration of a student cramming for an exam? The eureka moment of an engineer finding a solution?
I could feel the pulse of the ability about to end. Acting on pure instinct, I narrowed my focus, aiming all my perception at the heavy textbook still in my hand—the one on repulsorlift dynamics. I didn't try to understand its contents. I just tried to feel its life.
The fleeting sensation of history shifted. The texture of paper, the scent of aged synth-leather, the faintest vibration of the shop’s energy grid—all that faded, replaced by something entirely new.
It was… a pattern. A complex, intricate pattern woven from pure understanding. It was a landscape of knowledge, a sprawling vista of interconnected concepts. And it was alive. Pulsing with a faint, rhythmic energy that felt almost cognitive.
Oh my goodness.
This wasn’t the story of the book’s physical existence. This wasn't geologic time or the slow, persistent growth of a sun-root. This was the echo of a mind. Of a consciousness grappling with ideas, struggling to connect dots, achieving moments of sudden clarity.
I was no longer just touching a book but more like touching the process of understanding.
The experience was overwhelming, yet strangely compelling. I felt a disembodied curiosity, a phantom drive to untangle the knotty complexities of repulsorlift theory. Fragments of thought swirled around me. The ghost of a frustrated sigh. The electric thrill of a breakthrough. The mental image of a diagram resolving into elegant simplicity.
It was like diving into a collective mind, a thousand readings and rereadings distilled into a single, potent impression. Someone had studied this book. Someone had wrestled with its concepts, returned to its pages again and again, forging a deep, intimate connection.
And now, I was feeling it. I felt the echo of frustration turn to comprehension. Equations that had seemed like alien glyphs to me moments ago now flickered with a nascent sense of meaning.
I sensed the faint stirrings of old earthly analogies being joined to this new science of high tech magic, concepts aligning themselves in my mind like gears sliding into place. Newton’s laws, electromagnetic fields, calculus, the theory of gravitation, and a dozen other things, I could almost feel them overlapping with the content of the book, of myself.
I could almost taste it, I could almost understand it.
The moment was intoxicating. A dizzying sense of intellectual vertigo. I had the overwhelming urge to go deeper, to trace the contours of every idea, to map the whole damn landscape.
“Ezra?”
The voice was distant, muffled. Like it was reaching me from a galaxy far, far away.
No. Not yet. I was on the verge of… something. A breakthrough. A sudden, seismic shift in my understanding.
"Ezra?"
The voice again, a little louder this time. A note of concern cutting through the haze of my focus. It was Vasha.
Damn it. Almost there… just a little further…
A sudden, sharp tug pulled me back. The world snapped into sharp focus. The towering stacks of books, the musty air, the weight of the book in my hands. Reality flooded back, washing away the fleeting landscape of thought.
I blinked, disoriented. Vasha was standing a few feet away, her brow furrowed with worry.
"Hey, you okay? I've been calling you for a minute. You were staring at that book like it ate stole your candies."
"I... uh..." My throat felt like sandpaper. My brain was still trying to reboot, caught between the ghost-echoes of repulsorlift theory and the solid reality of Vasha's concerned face. "Sorry. Got distracted."
I shoved the heavy textbook back onto the shelf, maybe a little too forcefully. My hands felt tingly, my nerves humming with a strange residual energy.
Vasha's gaze flickered from me to the book and back again. A small, amused smile touched her lips, chasing the worry away. "Distracted by Repulsorlift Field Dynamics? You're a weirder kid than I thought."
She held up two thin, brightly colored flimsiplasts. "My friend here thinks we should start with these. Have a look. If you know this stuff, we can move up."
I glanced at the childish covers. One had a cartoon Wookie gleefully writing letters on a chalkboard. The other featured a bunch of smiling, six-legged insects. Fun with Aurebesh and Counting with Crickets.
Ughh seriously?+
I gave them a quick, dismissive once-over. "Isn't this just counting and letters?" I asked, letting a bit of genuine indignation leak into my voice. "My mom taught me this stuff already."
It was the truth, even without the Force fuckery. I might not know galactic physics, but I could damn well count past ten.
Vasha blinked, surprised. "Oh! That's good!" A relieved smile spread across her face. "Here I thought we'd have to start you off in the first standard."
She took my hand and led me back toward the front counter. The grizzled Besalisk, Jon, was now leaning back in a rickety chair, picking at a bit of grime under one of his four thumbnails. He looked up as we approached.
"So? The shorty satisfied?"
I shot him an annoyed look, which I'm sure came off as a cute, childish pout. It was profoundly irritating.
"Nope, actually," Vasha said, placing the two basic flimsiplasts on the counter. "He already knows this stuff, Jon. You have anything a level higher?"
Jon's thick eyebrows rose. He looked down at me, a wide, patronizing grin spreading across his face. "Oh? Knows his counting already? Ain't he a smart one for his age?"
Oh boy, his tone was pissing me off. But then, I reminded myself, I am literally a child. It wasn't technically patronizing if it was accurate. My face just burned a little.
Vasha just gave a warm chuckle, completely immune to his teasing. "I suppose. So, you got them?"
Jon gave his few strands of greasy hair a flick. "I have everything, my dear." He heaved himself out of the chair and disappeared behind a towering stack of what looked like old astromech droid parts.
Huh. So the children's books were in another corner? No wonder I couldn't find them in that crypt of advanced science.
A moment later, Jon returned, blowing a cloud of dust off a small stack of slightly thicker books and one very thick, heavy-looking codex. "Alright, brainiac," he said, plopping them on the counter with a thud that sent a puff of more ancient dust into the air. "How about these?"
He tapped each one. "Children's Guide to Lothal. Basic Sciences - The Comprehensive Compendium. And Tales of the Outer Rim for Younglings. Should keep you busy for a month or two, at least."
My eyes immediately locked onto the compendium. That was the one. The key.
I stood on my tiptoes, reaching over the counter to grab it. My fingers hooked onto the thick spine, and I pulled. Bad idea. The book was way heavier than it looked, and its weight pulled me forward. For a terrifying second, I was pretty sure I was going to face-plant right into a pile of spare droid fingers.
A hand shot out and steadied my back. "Whoa there, easy."
I looked up to see Vasha holding me, a suppressed giggle making her shoulders shake. My face burned. Great. Saved from a book-related injury by my fake-mom. I shook off the embarrassment and, with her help, wrestled the massive tome off the counter and onto a nearby crate where I could actually open it.
I flipped through the pages. Okay. This was more like it. It wasn't just counting and alphabets, but it also wasn't advanced calculus. Simple diagrams of levers, planetary systems, explanations of energy cells, the water cycle on Lothal. There wasn't much math, but that made sense for an elementary book. I could see familiar concepts, a foundation I could actually build on. It was a perfect start.
My gaze drifted to the other two books Vasha was now holding. A travel guide and a book of stories.
Ugh. Seriously?
As if I had time for fairy tales about fuzzy Ewoks or whatever. I had a multidimensional knowledge gap to fill and a future galactic empire to build. But then I caught myself.
Right. Seven-year-old. Seven-year-olds like stories about fuzzy Ewoks. It was part of the uniform.
I looked at the three books, then up at Vasha. The compendium alone looked like it cost more than the meiloorun we had last night. "Are... are these expensive?"
Vasha just laughed, a warm, easy sound, and ruffled my hair again. "Don't you worry about that. And no, they're not. Right, Jon?"
Jon snorted, leaning back in his chair so it groaned in protest. "These things? Nah. Nobody buys physical copies much these days anyway. Everyone wants a datapad. That whole pile of advanced science you were drooling over?" He gestured with a thumb toward the alcove. "It's been collecting dust for years. Practically giving it away."
My ears perked up. Internally, a cash register ka-chinged. An entire library of advanced, forgotten knowledge, just sitting there, waiting for someone with a very specific, very weird superpower to come along and download it all for pennies on the credit.
Oh, isn't that just a golden opportunity gift-wrapped for me? Hehehe.
"Hey, Jon?" I asked, pushing my luck. "Do you have any books on circuits? Or electronics?"
The Besalisk blinked his four eyes at me. "Whoa there, little guy. That's a bit out of your league, don't you think?"
He wasn't wrong. But he also wasn't right. I had a theory to test. The repulsorlift book was too abstract, its physics built on principles that didn't exist in my old world. But electronics... sure, the components would be different, the power sources alien, but the fundamentals had to be similar. Voltage, current, resistance. A circuit is a circuit. During that brief psycho-fuckery, I'd felt my old knowledge trying to find purchase, trying to build bridges to the new concepts. This was a subject I could work with.
Vasha knelt beside me, her expression gentle. "He's right, Ezra. That stuff is really complicated. Let's just stick with these for now, okay?"
I could see the argument was lost on logical grounds. Time to bring out the heavy artillery.
I let my shoulders slump. I looked down at my feet, scuffing a worn spot on the floor. Then, I slowly looked up at her from under my bangs, widening my eyes just a little.
"But..." I pitched my voice to maximum pathetic orphan. "I want to help you. In the workshop."
I looked from her to the massive science book and back. "If I learn about circuits, I can be a real assistant. Not just... wash legumes."
Vasha froze. Her lips parted, then closed. She let out a long, slow sigh, the sound of a fortress wall crumbling. She looked over at Jon for support, but he just shrugged, a smirk playing on his wide mouth. He was enjoying the show.
"Oh, Ezra..." she breathed, her resolve melting like ice on a sun-drenched dune.
She stood up, defeated. "Alright, alright. You win." She turned to the shopkeeper, shaking her head in fond exasperation. "Fine. You got anything simple? Like, 'Circuits for Dummies' simple?"
...
A few moments later, Vasha was nudging me toward the exit, a heavy bag filled with my new library slung over her shoulder. Jon had actually found a flimsiplast titled Basic Power Conduits: A Young Tinkerer's Guide. It was perfect.
"Come on," she said, shaking her head with a weary smile. "Let's get out of here before you try to read that entire stack and your brain actually melts."
Too late for that.
As we walked out into the dim light of the lower levels, I risked a quick glance back into the cluttered depths of the shop. The book alcove looked so ordinary now, just a dusty, forgotten corner. But I knew better. It wasn't a graveyard for old knowledge. It was a goldmine.
A slow, hungry grin spread across my face.
Oh, galaxy. You have no idea what's coming. Forget boob engineering. Somebody's about to become very, very smart.
