Chương 15: Discovery

"Balance, bade the Force." Rann was seated, eyes closed, facing a Master of his order. The Master spoke a form of Galactic Basic so archaic that it almost distracted him.

"Ashla and Bogan; Ashla within Bogan and Bogan within Ashla." Rann was on the planet Tython. He could hear the great ocean outside, as the tides called by the pull of the twin moons and odd winds of the Force made towering waves, the caws of gulls and rustle of leaves. Salt and the gentle sweetness of floral perfume filled the air.

"Entwined; as two are one and one made two." Rann was in the Great Temple of Kaleth. He heard too the gentle rustle of cloth, the scuff of faintly treading feet. He smelled burning candle wax and the sweat of perspiration as well.

"The Dai Abideth in all things." The Tho Yor, vast ships powered by the mystic's understandings of the universe, had carried him and countless like him here, to ponder the Dai. Here he met the mystics who had come before him, guided as he was. They came from all lands, spoke all tongues, all sought the same thing.

"Know this in truth, and thou shalt be Je'Daii." ~*~*~*~ 59 BBY – 941 ARR – Alderaan The next morning, Rann was bleary-eyed and grumpy. Unlike some others, who only received visions rarely or very targeted ones, Rann had Force Visions almost nightly. Though, over the years, he had lessened their intensity through carefully-built practices like mantras, meditations, and grounding exercises, they still managed to catch him off-guard.

Last night, the Force had swept him away with unclear visions of the deep past and far future, though neither seemed relevant to his time on Alderaan. Master Nu, sensing his irritable state, decided that he could skip much of the day's activities. With the kind but stiff nature he had come to expect, she informed him that many Padawans did not sleep well on their first mission, much less their first time out of the Temple. She left the room at eight, and Rann managed to sleep another two hours until ten.

Walking into the lobby, he caught sight of Thrantelle talking to two guests. Sighing internally, he waited until they were taken care of before walking over. The droid turned to regard him with a decidedly cool expression, a feat considering its limited facial movement.

"I'm sorry for being rude."

"Esteemed guests have nothing to apologize for," replied the droid, unchanged. Rann had spent enough time around droids. Many of them had programming that disallowed them from allowing the organic they were talking with to accept fault in an "empathetic self-fault" routine meant to optimize customer satisfaction.

"What about jerks who make fun of you?" The droid looked away.

"If such a jerk were to apologize, it would be acceptable." Rann huffed.

"Well then, such a hypothetical jerk is apologizing."

"Very good." The droid refocused on him.

"Do you need anything else?"

"No, thank you." Rann paused for a moment.

"Actually, can you direct me to the nearest café?"

"We would be happy to send caf to your room, master Jedi."

"Thank you, but I would like to stretch my legs." The droid was silent for a moment, looking at him with the perfect stillness only the dead and inorganic intelligence could maintain.

"The nearest approved caf shop is two blocks away, close to the central park, named Parliament Grounds. If the Jedi should cross another café, it might be suitable for their needs." Apparently done with the conversation, the BD-3000 bowed slightly before walking away. Huh, thought Rann. Wonder what that means. Exiting the lobby of the hotel, Rann joined the press of people on the street, following the droid's instructions until he came across a café called Triplehorn Brew.

Peeking in, it was almost totally empty save for two human baristas. Rann opened the door cautiously and was greeted by a pleasant caf smell paired with calm, low music. It seems rather nice, thought Rann. So why are there no customers? Feeling the eyes of the two baristas, he approached the counter.

"Hello. Just a cup of caf, dark."

"No sweetener? Is it a… Jedi thing?" The man had a noticeable non-Core accent, though Rann couldn't place it. Rann smiled.

"No. Just a me thing. Not a big fan of sweets." The man taking his order nodded as the woman beside him began pouring a cup. The low music couldn't disguise the deafening silence of them being the only three beings in a space meant for at least fifteen.

"Not very busy today," ventured Rann, dipping his head slightly as he took the cup of caf from the woman.

"Not very busy any day," grumbled the man.

"Orten, don't be that way," chided the woman, placing a hand on his forearm. Orten sighed explosively.

"You're right, dear."

"What's wrong?" asked Rann.

"It seems like this place would be perfect. There's a lot of foot traffic, you've got good signage." He took a sip.

"Caf's not half-bad."

"The problem," growled Orten.

"Is that right there." He gestured to the dinner-plate sized sigil above the door, mirroring the one on the outside.

"Orten," said the woman, more firmly than before.

"We shouldn't bother the Jedi with our problems."

"What House is that?" asked Rann, not recognizing the insignia, though it looked vaguely familiar.

"House of Thul. They're… not popular around here." The House of Thul had aligned itself with the Sith Empire several times in the past and had engaged in several vicious battles against the Organas when they held the throne. It made sense, then, that in this part of town which was largely divided along Organa/Antilles lines, people associated with either House wouldn't want to patronize a Thul business."'Course, we didn't know that when moving here," he grumbled, wiping down the pristine counter.

"I'm sorry to hear that you are struggling," replied Rann.

"Life's that way, kid. You scrape together enough to move to the Core and still get taken for a ride." He dipped his head, not sure how to reply. Eventually, the woman behind the counter sighed.

"I hope you enjoy the caf, and your time on Alderaan."

"Thank you." Rann hesitated, frozen as he considered how to end the interaction.

"May your own lives on Alderaan get easier… and may the Force be with you." Wow clean exit there, Master Jedi, he grumbled to himself as he exited the shop. Master Nu wasn't expecting him back until later in the afternoon, which left him with hours to fill. Really, he should've been a good Padawan and meditated or practiced, but this was his first time off of the city hell-world that was Coruscant.

He wanted to go deep into the remote wilds of the planet, to touch grass that hadn't been tread on in millennia, but settled himself with a little urban exploration. Rann wandered the city streets, using the Force to fold inward. Being a Jedi in the Core meant that he probably wouldn't be the first Jedi any of the adults had ever seen, but he was still a very rare sight. Using the Force to become an almost-invisible, faceless person in a crowd had an almost meditative quality to it.

He would fade away until he was almost no-one, but just enough that others could still perceive him as being there. They wouldn't see his face, ask about his story, or wonder what his life was like. They would simply walk by. Sometimes Rann mirrored the passers-by, and allowed himself to drift in a sea of anonymity, faceless strangers whose inner mosaics were concealed. Other times, he would marvel at every stranger, touched by the little he could discern from the distant place of a stranger.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Here and now, he left himself drift. ~*~*~ Eventually, he made his way back to the hotel to meet Master Nu. He found her in their lushly appointed hotel room sitting at the desk, reviewing files on her holopad. She acknowledged him with a gentle pulse of the Force, but otherwise kept her attention on her work. Rann sat down and focused on centering himself. His time on Alderaan had unsettled him.

In his mind, he had understood how the universe worked, due to his education, visions, and previous life. But now, confronted with a reality that was both different from and more lush than anything he had previously expected, he was caught unprepared. He felt his mind being stretched, expanded to accommodate the new information. He was encountering a culture and way of life entirely unfamiliar to him. Alderaanians were polite and good hosts, but they were also guarded.

Alderaanians placed an incredible degree of importance on social class, pedigree, and House. Members of the same House owed each other their loyalty and respect, and so did social peers. But even members of the same class could be distinguished by their pedigree. Every Alderaanian he'd met so far had been unfailingly polite, but had asked probing questions to try and frame him within that context, trying to make sense of his relationship with Alderaan and his natal house. But Rann just… didn't fit.

He existed almost wholly outside of their context, and found their attempts to fold him in exhausting. How could he explain that he was more a member of the Mighty Bear Clan and that his lineage was that of Master Yaddle's, which had boasted three High Councilors at one time, more than any other in recent memory? It meant nothing to these people, even if a fellow Jedi could recognize it. But there was an even bigger issue.

From what he remembered of his time in the Before, there hadn't been anything like what he saw on Alderaan. Though it wasn't something he cared about a lot, he thought he remembered the Organas sitting on the throne, not the Antilles. Together with the differences in when Dooku first joined the High Council, and Qui-Gon Jinn still being Dooku's apprentice, it was becoming evident that something was off. This may be a universe similar to the Star Wars he knew, but it wasn't the same. This changed…

both a lot and a little, Rann decided. It meant that his knowledge of Star Wars from Before was much less relevant than he might have hoped. Though the characters and planets and plants and fauna were the same or similar, which was useful, he couldn't use that knowledge to accurately predict when or what might happen. He wondered if it was due to him existing and the infinite contingencies of the butterfly effect, or some other process.

Maybe it was because he wasn't in the specific line of events that George Lucas had dreamed of; maybe it was different because even if you went to go see the same actors on the same stage for every night of the week, you would still see slightly different performances. Who knew. All of it really boiled down to him being far, far less certain of his ability to know the future. This, ironically, made his ability with Force Visions even more important.

If he couldn't use past knowledge, he would need assistance to predict outcomes. With this conclusion, he opened his eyes to find Master Nu peering at him.

"Feeling better, Padawan?"

"Yes, Master."

"Good." She grabbed the holopad beside her.

"I have arranged another meeting with Noble Curator Dreya where I shall dine in his personal wing of the library. He was informed that you are ill today and thus won't be present. This will be the best time for you to surreptitiously check their records."

"You won't be coming with me?"

"No," she sighed.

"I am afraid I draw too much attention, and am watched too attentively by our hosts. Since you are quite ill and confined to our room and a mere Jedi-in-training, you are able to move more freely." Then her lips quirked.

"If memory serves, you possess an unfortunate talent for wandering into places you weren't explicitly invited."

"I would never," replied Rann solemnly.

"Of course not," she agreed.

"That would imply intent." With that, they began preparing for their missions. Master Nu dressed in her normal Ansata-patterned robes, while Rann pulled out his luggage and dug out his disguise kit. His Master had helped him pick out a variety of outfits, one of which Rann grabbed. The clothes of a typical Alderaanian upper-middle-class youth were laid out, which Rann had Master Nu review once she stepped out of the bathroom. She agreed that it was the best outfit for the job and soon they were both ready.

An application of color-changing dry shampoo and some contact lenses later, he looked like a run-of-the-mill Alderaanian boy, not Padawan Rann Crys. After Master Nu left their room, Rann waited twenty minutes before exiting their room, making his way to the lobby, careful not to be spotted by any being, living or mechanical. He made it all the way to the lobby when the first complication arose.

"You're leaving, Master Jedi?" asked Thrantelle. Of course, groaned Rann.

"Yes, but please don't tell anyone."

"This interaction will be logged, so that your room may be cleaned." Thrantelle's glowing eyes tracked him as he made his way closer to her kiosk, even as other hotel guests ignored him due to the notice-me-not he had running. Rann thought fast.

"Let's say that hypothetically, a guest needed to leave discreetly and logged as staying in their rooms. What might happen in that hypothetical situation." Thrantelle's photoreceptors blinked. She looked away.

"A hypothetical Thrantelle would ask what they are doing."

"They might reply that there is a very important situation which needs to be handled discreetly."

"This answer might not suffice to justify the breach in protocol."

"It could change all of Alderaan." Her head whipped around to look at him in, disbelief clear despite the lack of facial movement.

"If is truly a matter as important as the Master Jedi claims, then perhaps exceptions can be made." Rann sighed with relief.

"Thank you. Can I call you something else?"

"I am a BD-3000 droid designated Thrantelle." Rann had to parse his way around that. Thrantelle was probably not allowed to give out a nickname, or even conceive of one. Especially if she had complained about her name too loudly in the past, she might have had even stricter controls put in place.

"BD then?" She turned away again, staring at the door that led out of the hotel.

"It is better to be no one than to have a joke for a name."

"Thanks, BD."

"This BD-3000 unit would tell a hypothetical client attempting to leave covertly to get a move on, if it came across them." She had already looked back down at the holopad in her hands, typing away. Rann left. He walked a few blocks before calling a cab with his transceiver and getting out in front of the museum. This part was where he and his Master had disagreed the most. Rann wasn't sure he could actually sneak his way through the entire museum without being caught.

For all his abilities in the Force, droids and other automated systems were much harder to fool than organics. A good-enough security system or lucky catalogue droid could spell disaster. Better, then, to enter as an utterly boring guest. It let him penetrate though several layers of security, gave him a decent excuse for looking around, and even if they discovered that a little kid was snooping around, it wasn't Rann.

As he entered the main lobby he was greeted by an attendant droid who assured him that as a citizen of Alderaan (like his ident currently said) he was entitled to free entry but could pay to have a droid guide him. He of course declined and began meandering the halls. After about twenty minutes of light reading and walking aimlessly through the galleries, Rann began to meander towards one of the hidden entrants to the archives.

Despite not being lit by signage, the door couldn't even really be called 'hidden,' as House Alde's motto was inscribed above it, "What Is Remembered Endures." Ironic, was all Rann could spare time to think before focusing on the task. He used his Force senses and glanced around before closing his eyes and blending into the Force. Opening his eyes, he darted forward and quickly forced the keypad door. Once through, he took a second to listen for signs of notice and adjust to the lower lighting.

Hearing nothing, he made his way down the staircase into the archive. His objectives were actually quite simple: identify, document, and surreptitiously photograph as many of the modified documents as he could in roughly forty minutes. Seeing as the scale of the deception was currently unknown, having a count might help point to how many people were involved in the conspiracy.

A handful or a dozen would indicate it was a small-scale, while if there were dozens it could mean that it was a larger, more complex operation. It took Rann less than ten minutes to realize that this was in fact, a large conspiracy which had managed to modify dozens of artifacts and documents across a range of mediums. Scrolls, parchments, datachips, memory rods, shields, sigils, and more; all would require an expert's attention to convincingly modify, and each type likely required a different expert.

There was no way he could capture all of it in the time he had. He just hoped that he managed to get enough data that he and Master Nu could cross-check it with the records coming from the Jedi's own archives. With that, they could hopefully establish a potential aim and motive. Either way, the scale of the fraud was breathtaking. Dozens, literally hundreds, of Alderaan's cultural treasures had been modified in one way or another.

The Force moved oddly throughout the entire archive, reacting to this new and unsettled state. Rann worked slow, because slow was smooth and smooth is fast, making sure not to rush. Placing documents back exactly, on to the next one. A faint noise. It was an archival droid. Rann ducked, leaning further into the Force to avoid its notice. It moved on. Another tainted datarod. He copied the info, put it back. Next. Was Master Nu doing alright? Surely Dreya hadn't noticed anything last time.

He wouldn't have any reason to suspect her. Time was up. Rann made his way to the door he'd come from. He listened to other side and stretched his senses in the Force, waiting until there was no one in the gallery on the other side of the door. Slipping through, he dropped his hold on the Force and let himself become fully visible. Twenty minutes later, out walked a supposed Alderaanian boy who had decided to spend a pleasant afternoon in the museum.

~*~*~ Rann paced the hotel room for a tense hour before hearing the door open. He whirled to see a drained-looking Master Nu enter the room. She summoned a faint smile at his relief.

"Hello, Rann. How was your mission?" she asked, making her way to the desk.

"It went well. I wasn't detected." He watched in faint shock as she opened the complementary bottle of Toniray wine and poured a glass. She stared into the blue, bubbly liquid as she swirled it.

"That's good." Then she tipped the glass back and drank it in one swig.

"How was yours?" he asked, fearing the answer.

"Horrid." She regarded the bottle with unmistakable longing before returning her attention to him.

"It appears that Noble Curator Dreya still labors under the misapprehension that my holding a title of sufficient antiquity renders me a suitable diversion for a man of his aspirations. He was quite certain that, as his influence ascends, I ought to feel appropriately honored by his notice." She folded her hands, posture immaculate.

"In the interest of preventing him from departing in a pique – and redirecting that pique in your direction – I indulged his conjectures for nearly two hours. Two hours of speculation, self-congratulation, and historical error." A pause.

"Exhausting nonsense." She inspected him closely.

"There were no complications?"

"No, Master. I slipped into the archive from the gallery entrance you recommended and left the same way under my cover as an Alderaanian schoolboy. There was an archival droid, but I managed to work around it."

"Really," she murmured.

"Normally, one's first mission has a tendency to become… eventful. It is practically a right of passage. It is therefore somewhat out of character that you, of all people, should have thus far avoided such complications." Rann shrugged awkwardly.

"Let us hope that such luck remains in our favor."