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:: An ongoing episodic story of fan-fic set after Episode VI Return of the Jedi, and inspired by George Lucas' historical draft concepts ::
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VE Episode XI : Luke and Leia discuss the Force....
30th November 2024 |
| As I did with the progression of the Virtual Edition Episode X, I will post below sections of the prose for Episode XI as I draft it.... Luke and Leia question what they understand of the Force and the Whills, and in turn wonder why they were guided to Ansenne Five and the Stone Circle... |
It was early evening on Ansenne Five, and inside the small communal cabin of the P-Wing, Luke was absent-mindedly watching Artoo Detoo play out some holograms he had recorded from the stone circle. They were detailed close-ups of the faint carvings at the base of the outer stones. Threepio was regarding the images, chattering away to himself as he proposed and compared old scripts and iconoglyphs at a near-unintelligible speed.
The Grand Master Jedi was musing over the incident with the stone that had mysteriously led him to his old homestead on Tatooine.
“The stone felt different under my touch...” he mumbled to himself. “The Force ‘allowed’ me to enter it, and then through... through what ? Space ? Another dimension ? I don’t think I travelled through time necessarily... Tatooine felt current... not a vision of the past... Is this what Leia experiences when she seer-journeys ?”
There was a familiar tingle in the ether around him, and he glanced up and to his right. His sister, dressed in the white formal under-tunic and skirt of the Grand Master, materialised on the bunk seat beside him.
“No, I don’t think so,” she smiled. “I have the sense of travelling, even though the passage can feel very quick, and I know I’ve seen the past as well as the present.” Her brow furrowed as she considered it further. “I think what you were able to do was something quite different. And older ?”
Luke nodded. “Yes, I had the impression that this was the Force from the dawn of time... This was what created the rocks and the planets.... This was the energy of the dust of stars !” He gazed at his sister, eyes de-focusing as he mused out loud. “But why did I experience this now ? What has happened for the Force to reveal itself in this way to me now ?”
Leia shook her head softly.
“I don’t know Luke. Is it this world ? Is this the source of the portal ? Is the Force telling you that you are now ready for this insight ?”
Her question piqued his interest.
“What do you mean, Leia ?”
“Oh, I don’t know... I... I just feel... I just feel that I am moving through stages ? Stages in my understanding of the Force, and my role in it.”
“Well, that’s understandable... As students of the Force we are gaining new insights, often personal to ourselves, all the time. After all, only you have been able to seer-journey, no matter how you’ve described it and tried to show me and Alana, we have been unable to do so.”
“Of course, but I think I mean something else.... Luke, I need to tell you this.... and I’m a little scared.... I think I’m transforming into something else.... away from being me, a human, into....”
“What ?”
Leia shook her head again.
“I don’t know.... I want to say... a... a Whill ?”
Luke couldn’t help but splutter his reply : “A Whi... a Whill ?!”
“I... think so ?” his sister replied quietly, meekly.
Luke leaned back, and exhaled.
“What little we know of the Whills of the Force, Leia, as you know, came from what Palpatine had archived in the Temple, and from the insights passed on by the Ghosts of Yoda and Obi-Wan. We know of the Guardians of the Whills who used to reside at the Jedha Temple. We’ve heard of the Journals of the Whills.” Luke raised his hands and half-shrugged. “For want of a better word, the Whills are the gods and we are their playthings.”
His sister nodded.
“I know. We live in a galaxy founded on science... hyperspace travel, laser weapons, droids... yet we know there is something deeper, something fundamental underpinning all of that, and we call it The Force. We know there are other societies that also recognise it but call it by another name. We know that, living side by side with us, there are societies that are deeply religious.”
Luke pondered her words.
“We know how the Force works in us and for us. It aids us and it inspires us. The midichlorians reside in all living things, and they act as our conduit through which we understand the Force. We can see and measure the midichlorians in our cells, even though we cannot see and measure the Force.” Luke rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “We had assumed that the old words The Whills were simply a way of describing the midichlorians before the Jedi scientists had discovered those organisms and their symbiosis. “
Leia leaned forward, an earnest expression fuelling her emotion. “But what if there is something out there, if not dictating what we do, then... at least... watching us ??”
Luke leaned back and shook his head. “I ... I don’t know Leia, I’m sorry... I don’t know...”
Leia sighed. “I wish I could bring you along with me as I seer-journey. There’s this... old lady... I sometimes see... well, it seems she comes to me... and she seems to be guiding me and teaching me...”
“Teaching you ? And you don’t recognise her ?” intuited her brother.
Leia shook her head, and looked away. “And... and it feels as if the teaching’s already been done... as if I’ve already made my choice... And she’s there just... shepherding me, as it were.”
Luke regarded her gently, aware that his sister was desperately trying to perceive an answer.
“And... and there’s something else, Luke.” She looked up at his directly. “I don’t think I can tell where I am... I mean... where my real body is...”
Luke’s eyes widened in alarm.
“You look real enough to me. I can feel you here in the Force beside me...” he added, puzzled.
He reached out towards her, and his fingers gently closed around her arm.
His sister gave a small chuckle. “No, that won’t work,” she said. “I know I can appear pretty solid to everyone else, including fellow Jedi.”
“What do you mean, then ?”
“Just that,” she shrugged. “I don’t know if I’m really here, or if I’m back at the Temple, or if I’m with Alana or Han or Flo-Ra or any of the others. I can’t tell !”
Leia reached over and took her brother’s left hand in her own. Luke glanced down at the warmth in her hands.
“Your hands are warm,” he noted.
“From your perception, I am here right now, having just appeared to you. But I can feel your hand in mine. You are as real to me as I am to you. When I seer-journey to another person, I will be just as real to them.”
She cocked her head to one side. “The old lady showed me a glimpse of everything, everywhere, the past, the present, all at once, just a moment of it all, and I could hardly bear the weight of it.” Leia paused, and took a breath. “That’s what she could see. And I think that’s what I’m leading to.”
Her eyes watered. “I’m scared, Luke.”
Her brother leaned in and wrapped his arms around her, and they held each other in a tight embrace.
“Oh ! Oh ! Master Luke, Master Luke !” Threepio’s voice suddenly called out.
The Skywalker twins broke their embrace, and turned to face the two droids.
“Yes Threepio, what is it ?” asked Luke.
“We think we’ve found a functional cipher !” the golden droid jerkily pointed to the holograms that Artoo was displaying.
The squat blue and white droid blurted some electronic noises.
“Well, yes, alright, Artoo, your pictogram overlays enhanced the de-aged layering of the carvings,” conceded Threepio.
There were several horizontal bars of holograms, each about a half metre in length, but what was note-worthy was the similarity in patterns ; overlaying these bars were coloured snippets of primitive hieroglyphics that matched shapes found in the underlying originals. Below these colourful segments were two lines of partial text, one an ancient runic script, the next the standard aurabesh.
Luke squinted at the aurabesh translations.
“The phrases are broken and incoherent,” noted Luke. “Have you managed to piece them together ?”
“Well, yes, we believe we have, sir. After all, my record banks store over six million different forms of...”
“And what have you found ?” asked Leia politely.
“Well, madam, it’s really rather interesting. And we think...”
At this, Artoo beeped indignantly. “Artoo believes that it was Master Luke’s reported exploits earlier that have helped determine some of the marks.”
Threepio pointed at the floating holograms.
“Artoo recorded carvings within a metre height from the base across seventy percent of the stone circle. The runic marks show a variety of simple pictograms, ranging from lines to curves to dots. The marks are entirely missing from three stones, and one stone, the last one in the apparent sequence, has less marks. We noted that the indigenous creatures included these last four stones in their apparent cleaning schedule, so we must presume these plainer stones are also significant.”
Threepio leaned forward and pointed at a series of slightly larger circles bound within the lines and curves.
“We can see a collection of lines appearing to connect to these larger circles. Although the ochre colours have faded, Artoo believes the photo-chemical analysis of the trace dust suggests a red hue and a blue for each circle. What we found interesting is that sixty percent of the circumference of the stone circle had these colours, and then the final two carved stones appear to be the red ochre only.”
Artoo beeped and whistled.
“Yes, yes, Artoo, I was coming to that ! In addition to the disappearance of the blue colour, the curvo-linear marks make way to the more angular lines.”
Artoo blurted again, and Threepio sat up in what appeared to be an indignant and haughty manner.
“It is Artoo’s assumption that the two generic types of marks, the curve and the line, represented at least two clans or tribes, until a time when a splitting event occurred, and the curvo-linear tribe departed.”
Threepio turned to regard Luke.
“Upon seeing Master Luke disappear into the standing stone, and then re-emerge soon afterwards, we have proposed that the mark-makers – these tribes – could travel via these circles, in a manner akin to what Master Luke accomplished.”
Artoo gave out a long plaintive-sounding whistle.
“Yes, Artoo, and they presumably travelled to worlds in far flung star systems without the aid of starships.”
Both Luke and Leia turned to regard each other : one had recently travelled in real-time to another planet, while the other had evolved a unique skill to perform this without the aid of any physical portal.
“Can you deduce what caused this splitting event ?” asked Leia with interest, returning her attention to the golden droid.
Threepio shook his head.
“I’m sorry, Master Leia, we are still trying to analyse and decipher the carvings.”
Luke laid a hand on his sister’s arm.
“Leia, why don’t we both enter that stone, and you can experience what I experienced ?”
His sister’s eyes widened as she entertained the thought, not a little anxious at the prospect of trans-locating in a manner different to what she had intuitively learnt to do, and what had seemed to be only her provision.
“Ye-yes, I suppose we could...” she agreed cautiously.
“Now that the droids have given us a possible context for what the stones could offer, I wonder if I could control where we go ?”
“Be careful Luke, don’t rush. I sense a darkness that way...”
But Luke was keen and eager.
“Yes, I sense it too,” agreed Luke quickly. “When I was inside that stone I was aware of something beguiling and inviting... but not necessarily dangerous... Remember, Leia, you did send us here, this might be the reason... ?!”
“Luke, those stones are seducing you !” admonished his sister, but with a laugh.
Luke held a serious expression on his face. “The Force brought us here, Leia. We must explore it further...”
Leia nodded slowly. “I can’t argue with that,” she agreed. “The Force guides us and moves us.”
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| Nathaniel Reed, 30th November 2024 |
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