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SW Gray Tales 10: Micro-Perception I
🕑 Added 2025-07-07 20:58:14 +0000 UTCMy brief, glorious career as a seven-year-old engineering consultant was over before it began. I slumped back onto the couch, defeated. My confidence from this morning, so bright and shiny, had tarnished into a dull, humiliating ignorance.
Forget it. Engineering was clearly a long-term project, something requiring actual schooling and probably a lot of minor electrocutions. My enthusiasm for pursuing a new degree had evaporated.
But there was another project. A more immediate one. My own personal, outrageously broken superpower.
I'd decided to call it Micro Perception. "Micro-Sensing" just sounded… clunky. A bit too on the nose.
My initial theory, born in the dusty dark of the cellar, was proving to be basically correct. It was a secret organ I never knew existed. Or, more accurately, a muscle. Not a physical one, but a metaphysical one. And like any muscle, the more you practiced, the stronger it got.
The best analogy I could come up with, and trust me, it was a weird one, was the art of… well, holding back when you're on the edge. The principle was the same, just on a completely different scale. It was about intense focus, feeling the build-up of a sensation, and learning to ride that wave, to pull back right before you lose control and everything comes crashing down.
From the barely-half-a-second flicker I'd managed in the cellar after that first cataclysmic event, I could now hold it for a solid second, maybe a touch more. I couldn't time it with a stopwatch; the snap in and out of that state was too seamless, too disorienting. But I could feel it. A small, internal hunch told me it was getting better with each attempt.
I still had no clue how that first time had lasted so long and felt so… comprehensive. It was like the Force decided to give me a full-featured, all-access trial version before slapping me back down to the free-to-play level, locking all the good stuff behind a massive XP grind.
That aside, I was learning more about the ability itself. The most crucial discovery was that the longer it was active, the more information my brain could actually process.
Don't misunderstand. The amount of raw data I received was never limited. It was an infinite, roaring tsunami of sensory input. The bottleneck wasn't the Force; it was my very human, very limited brain. It needed time to make sense of the flood.
The emotion-sensing trick I'd pulled on Vasha worked so well because it was instinctual. My mind knew how to interpret the static of compassion or frustration without conscious thought. But trying to understand the resonant frequency of a power converter or the molecular structure of the couch cushion? That required active processing power I didn't have in that split second.
So, I had two clear goals for my training.
First, endurance. I needed to stretch that one-second activation time. To train that metaphysical muscle until I could hold it for five seconds, then ten, then for as long as I wanted. The goal was to reach the realm where I could turn it on and off like a light switch.
Second, focus. Being everything in a two-meter radius was amazing on paper, but practically, it was too much. I needed to learn to "zoom in." To tell my new sense, "Hey, just focus on that hydrospanner. Feel its texture, its temperature, its molecular buzz. Ignore the floor grime, the dust motes, and the lingering sound waves from the singing droid head." By limiting what I perceived, I could work more efficiently.
But before any of that metaphysical muscle-flexing, I needed fuel.
My brain felt like a fried circuit board after those two hours of wrestling with alien engineering. I was completely, utterly empty.
I padded into the kitchenette, my bare feet silent on the cool floor. Vasha hadn't mentioned anything about lunch, and a tiny, ungrateful part of me worried she might have forgotten.
My assumption was rendered spectacularly wrong.
There, on the small counter, sat a plate covered by another, upside-down plate to keep it warm. And next to it, a small, folded piece of flimsiplast. I picked it up. Written in simple, clear Aurebesh script was a single phrase:
For Ezra.
Somebody please call an ambulance. I think I'm dying of kindness.
The food Vasha had left was a testament to simple, hearty living. It was a thick, peppery stew of what I guessed was chopped bantha meat and some kind of tender, earthy root vegetable, all suspended in a rich, dark gravy with plump, purplish legumes that tasted a bit like spiced lentils. Grav-lentils? Sounded about right. Alongside it was a thick slab of dense, crumbly bread that was perfect for sopping up every last drop. It was the kind of meal that sticks to your ribs, a fortress of calories against a cold night or an early morning.
I devoured it like a starved loth-cat, then sat back, feeling a warmth spread through me that was more than just a full stomach. This woman was a keeper.
With a full stomach and a mind buzzing with a strange mix of gratitude and focus, I returned to the main room. But before settling down to my main task, my eyes were drawn to the display shelf on the wall, a collection of items I hadn't properly noticed in my earlier daze.
There, in two or three small, metallic frames, were pictures of Vasha. In each one, she was with a younger male Twi'lek. He had the same shade of blue skin, the same bright, curious eyes, though his were filled with a more mischievous light. Her brother, had to be. In one holopic, they were grinning, covered in grease, in front of a rusty-looking freighter. In another, they were standing shoulder-deep in a muddy river, holding up some kind of slimy, tentacled fish. There weren't any pictures of her parents, though.
She'd mentioned pirate raids. That, combined with the conspicuous absence of parental photos, didn't exactly paint a wholesome backstory. My little con felt even cheaper now.
I shifted my attention to the other trinkets, which seemed more ornamental. Among them was a collection of smooth, multicolored stones—deep blues, streaked whites, earthy ochres—arranged on a small, 3D-printed diorama of a riverbed.
River rocks?
I'd seen things just like them in my past life, sold in little mesh bags at riverside tourist spots. Sentimental value, then. A memory of a happier time, maybe from that same river she and her brother had been fishing in.
I carefully picked one up, a flat, cool stone the color of a stormy sky, making sure not to knock anything over. I walked back to the center of the room, plopped down cross-legged on the floor, and pulled my datapad from the couch.
Tapping the screen, I brought up a simple timer function and set it for thirty seconds. It was a contingency, a safety net. A stark reminder that I was playing with something that could unmake me. If I went too deep into my concentration and the timer went off without me noticing, well, at least Vasha would find a very serene-looking child's corpse instead of an empty apartment. That was my morbidly comforting thought, anyway.
I held the stone in my palm, its weight a cool, solid anchor to reality. But for now, it wasn't my focus.
First things first. A warm-up.
I was going to practice activating Micro-Perception in its raw, unfocused, gross state. The goal wasn't to learn anything new, but simply to hold it. To stretch that metaphysical muscle for as long as I could, pushing the boundaries of that one-second flicker.
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and focused.
Click.
The world vanished.
Whoosh.
I was the cellar again—no, the apartment. I was the worn fibers of the couch, the cool metal of the datapad, the faint vibration of the building's life support thrumming through the floor. It was a familiar, terrifying symphony of raw data.
But this time, I wasn't panicking. I wasn't drowning.
I was holding on.
It felt like clenching a muscle I didn't know I had, a deep, internal straining against the tide of dissolution. Hold. Hold. Hold. My sense of self, that fragile thing, was a single flickering candle in a hurricane of sensation, but it wasn't going out.
SNAP!
I was back. Stuffed violently into my own skull. I gasped, my head throbbing with the aftershock. The datapad beside me chirped softly, the thirty-second timer finishing its countdown. I hadn't needed it.
Again.
Click. Whoosh. I held the state, fighting the pull. The thrum of the building, the dust motes dancing in a sunbeam, the faint scent of Vasha's soap clinging to the blanket. SNAP!
And again. And again.
After about the tenth repetition, the strain became a sharp, physical thing. A dull ache bloomed behind my eyes, and a wave of exhaustion washed over me. It was a familiar feeling, but far, far less draining than my one and only attempt at telekinesis.
I still told myself that experiment had been a success. The rusty nail I'd spent an hour glaring at had definitely moved. By at least a micrometer. I was sure of it. And if I kept telling myself that, with enough conviction, maybe one day it would become true. Wait, no. I am able to use it. I am able to use telekinesis.
Can't let my propaganda campaign against my own mind fail due to self-reasoning. The first rule of self-delusion is you do not talk about self-delusion.
Okay, break time. My brain felt like a wrung-out sponge.
I picked up the datapad, my small hands fumbling with the controls for a moment before I navigated to the HoloNet browser. Time to let my mind relax, to fill it with something other than metaphysical training and existential dread.
I browsed the streams. The HoloNet News was a slick, polished firehose of Imperial propaganda. Triumphant music swelled over images of gleaming Star Destroyers cruising through pristine systems. A smiling, human-centric news anchor spoke of glorious new production quotas being met on Sullust and the capture of "dangerous radicals" in the Outer Rim. It was so blatant, so cheesy, it was almost comforting in its predictability.
I switched to entertainment. There were trashy action holos about handsome smugglers with hearts of gold, and goofy family sitcoms like "My Favorite Wookiee." I ended up watching half an episode of a crime drama about a grizzled detective on Coruscant. It was terrible, but it was a mindless, welcome distraction.
After about an hour of glorious, brain-rotting media consumption, the headache had receded and the mental exhaustion had faded to a low hum. I felt refreshed. Centered.
Time for part two.
I turned off the datapad and picked up the smooth, cool river rock again. I rolled it in my palm, its weight a familiar anchor. The warm-up was over.
Now for the real work. The focusing exercise.
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and prepared to dive back in. This time, I wouldn't be trying to embrace the whole world. I'd be trying to find a single, tiny island in the storm.
With the stone resting in my open palm, I took a slow breath and dove in.
Click. Whoosh.
The roaring symphony of the apartment flooded my senses, but I pushed it away, my focus a narrow beam aimed at the single object in my hand. The background noise of the couch, the air, the floor—it all faded into a distant, muted hum.
Suddenly, I was the stone.
The transition was less jarring this time, more like stepping through a doorway than being shot out of a cannon. I was its hardness, a dense, unyielding solidity. I was its smooth, worn surface, polished by a forgotten river. I was its roundness, a comfortable weight settled in the vague impression of a palm that was no longer mine. It was a state of pure, simple being. A quiet, ancient existence.
I felt a surge of curiosity. Let's go deeper. Let's see what this thing is really—
SNAP!
The connection shattered. I was back in my body, my heart thumping. I’d pushed too hard, too fast. My focus, still new and shaky, had buckled under the intent.
I took a few deep breaths, letting the phantom sensation of being a rock fade from my limbs. Okay. Slower this time. Less brute force, more finesse.
I tried again.
Click. Whoosh.
Back to the stone. This time, I didn't linger on the macro-level details. I bypassed the feeling of roundness and hardness, and immediately pushed my perception deeper.
It wasn't a microscopic vision. I couldn't see anything. It was a different sense entirely. I felt the stone's internal structure. I was a composite of smaller things, a tightly packed collection of granules and crystals all oriented in different directions, yet bound together with an ancient, geological uniformity. It was a complex, interlocking texture, a mosaic of sensation.
Good. I was getting somewhere.
Now, smaller. Deeper.
I pushed my intent further, like focusing a lens. The sensation shifted again. The granules dissolved, and I became aware of a new layer of reality. I felt myself as a collection of countless, almost infinite constituents. Lattices. My mind, ever helpful, supplied the scientific term from my old life. A vast, three-dimensional grid of interconnected points, humming with a faint, structural energy.
I pushed deeper still, trying to resolve a single point in that lattice, to feel one individual node. But no matter how deep I went, the pattern just repeated. The lattices seemed to get "bigger" in my perception, more prominent, but they remained an abstract, endlessly repeating pattern. I was still too far away to observe them individually. It was like looking at a fractal, an infinite complexity that revealed more of itself the closer I looked, but never its fundamental building block.
Perhaps this was the limit, at least for now. Maybe I could train this sense to go deeper, to perceive the un-perceivable. Or maybe not. But one thing was crystal clear: a rock wasn't the most scintillating study partner. I mean, what was I expecting? It was just a rock. A very, very complex rock, but a rock nonetheless.
My focus snapped back.
This time, the re-entry was rough. I gasped, my eyes flying open. I was on the floor, my hand still cradling the stone, but the feeling of being a rock lingered. For a terrifying moment, my body felt like a rock—unbending, unmovable, a dense statue of flesh and bone. I tried to wiggle my fingers, but the signal from my brain seemed to hit a wall of pure, stubborn immovability.
A spike of real panic lanced through me.
NO! I roared internally. I am NOT a rock!
With a supreme act of will, my consciousness violently reasserted its dominance over my physical form. Sensation flooded back in a painful rush. The itch on my nose, the cramp in my leg, the air against my skin.
I could move.
Oh boy. I let out a shaky breath, setting the stone aside as if it were radioactive. I stretched my arms over my head, wiggled my fingers and toes, and rolled my neck. Every small movement, every flex of a muscle, was accompanied by a newfound, profound joy.
The simple act of being a creature that could move felt like the greatest gift in the galaxy.
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