an illustration to the part eight of the "Mirrors of the Force" story, a very unique StarWars fanfiction written by my dear & adorable friend Sebastian (to comment and +fav on the literary aspects of our collaboration - please leave comments under Sebastian's submission of the story itself [link] )


************************

Sebastian Buchner

Mirrors of the Force
Part VIII

“Have you told him of his fate, sister?” It is the older one who asks. The word sister carries hints of fear, envy and condescension. Might she have desired to be chosen for the post that Ti has – does she want to be mouthpiece to the Sith entity?
Ti nods. Where I saw grace and coldness before, I see rigid control and suppressed fear now. I remember the warmth of her body as I held her and now I only wish to comfort her, to take away the droning and commanding voices in her head. As we walked back to the others, I made her a gift. I showed her how to focus a thought in such a manner that it repeats itself constantly in her mind, dulling and softening the demand of the Sith voices. Among other things this has made it easier for me to read her.
“We shall move on, then. Fate waits for none.” Ti’s sister grins mirthlessly. Her threats do not harm me. She has little will to resist the Sith voices, even actively demands them, so she will never counteract any of their commands. The danger she poses to me is eminently predictable.
The people gather; first in small groups, friends, families; then the groups grow, reluctantly, as people who are connected by nothing but the will to survive band together, slowly accept their common purpose. There are no raised voices, even the armed soldiers who watch over the group call out commands in hushed, abrupt tones. But there is a constant murmur. It is a prayer, not consciously spoken, escaping from their unguarded lips. They think they complain or mutter some meaningless comforts to each other, but their collected murmurings are a prayer for their survival. The children watch the dejected adults, some adopting their poses of hopelessness, others moving with resolve or with puzzlement. I’m not surprised to see my brother walking in the center of the group, his face hidden by an elbow, then suddenly made visible.
We used to have a game. I would dive into the azure water until I could sit on the sand below and he would stand on the pier above, bend low and slowly submerge his face in the water. At first he was a smudge of colour, as he bent I saw him more and more clearly, his features made into a moving mask by the waves and then, at last, his face would break through the water, suddenly so impossibly clear and sharp. Then I said a word or sometimes an entire sentence. This word, this sentence, was captured by a bubble of air that slowly rose towards Li’s face. He would stay still, his face submerged, and watch the rising bubbles, waiting for them to rise towards him, waiting for them to burst against his face, so that he could hear what I had said. He pulled his face from the water and I pushed myself upward. After I climbed the pier, I asked him what I had said and he would tell me.
Once more I am submerged. Once more he peers into the world I have submerged myself in. Once more I speak but this time there is no bubble, only the naked word that soon dissolves. The group shifts and Li is gone. A soldier pushes me to move. Lost in my thoughts I push the man the way I was taught to and he loses balance and crashes to the floor. He was both taller and stronger than me and I see a few heads turned in surprise as I walk past the group, searching the faces. I search not for Li, but for the girl Laar. I promised that I would come back for her.
I cannot find the girl. She is not among the group. The little mound that she has built for her mother is still there, glowing faintly in the dark.
I call for Laar, but there is no answer. I let myself be guided by a mood of panic, but all I feel is peace, as if my vision had me numbed to all outward influences and emotions. I look through empty doorframes, into chutes of elevators, behind debris, but I can’t find her anywhere.
When I return to the little mound, I see nobody. All the others have gone. I cross into the vast library room. Ti waits for me there. It feels effortless, necessary when I embrace her and kiss her. I can hear the sentence that courses through her thoughts, a strange connection that changes the very fabric of my memory and my emotion – as if Li and I had traded places and now I stand above the waves and listen to a voice caught inside of them. Holding Ti close to me feels like something long lost that is now, unexpectedly, returned to me.
“I lost Laar,” I tell Ti, when we stop kissing.
She doesn’t say a word, but I can see thoughts playing behind her eyes. She soon reaches a decision and pulls me after her, into a different corridor away from the others.
“They will look for us.”
Ti nods and kisses me once more. Then we start to run.
“We must find Laar and then…one of those men, half machine, that were fed to the ship. The voices spoke about them to me…” When I mention the voices, Ti’s face screws itself into a momentary grimace of pain. “Do you know where they are?”
Ti nods again. She is amazingly agile, moving and twisting though narrow corridors, ducking pipes and pieces of metal that have broken from the walls. As I run after her I realize that I have put myself in the greatest possible danger. If Ti’s concentration breaks and the voices that whisper inside her take control again, I could die. But death is not more than a distant thought now, less important than the stars that I can glimpse through the occasional window. I know that this is where I want to be, here, with Ti, holding her hand, running through the dark. My life depends on the force of her mind and there is no sweeter feeling than that.











“Do you have a mother?”
The ghost boy stops, turns around and smiles at me. Then he turns back again and walks on. He probably has some big, fat mother that keeps telling him stories and feeds him cookies or whatever else ghost boys like to eat. If he didn’t he wouldn’t have smiled like that. But he doesn’t seem to be looking for her. If I were as little as he is and I had no mother, I’d be looking for her.
“A father as well?”
He stops, turns around again and rolls his eyes. I can’t hold it back and start laughing really loud. Then I can’t stop laughing and I laugh until my belly hurts and my eyes water. I didn’t know it feels so good to laugh. It’s like chasing something really bad away, feeling how it leaves my body. In the end I just gasp for air and my face is so hot and my cheeks so wet that I don’t know if I’m laughing or crying. When I’ve got myself together again, the ghost boy turns around again and walks on. I didn’t think it’d be so funny, walking through the ship with a ghost. I hop after him in some sort of silly, child-like dance. I can’t help it. I feel like a child now, not even happy, just careless. There’s nothing I need to care about, now that I’m lost. All I have to watch out for is that I stay alive. I don’t even remember why I was so scared a while back.
“If you need a sister, little ghost boy, I’m right here for you.”
This time he doesn’t react. He has found some sort of grid on the floor. There is light coming through it, throwing another grid, one of light, on the ceiling. He walks next to it and I can see the light on his face and I think he’s still a little creepy like that. Still, he’s my ghost brother now, so I kneel down next to him and we peer through the grid together.
Down there is one of the machines that I saw from far away when Makos and I were walking along the bridges. It looks a little like a transporter, for goods or pieces of metal. It has a glowing underbelly that makes it seem very dark from above, but there is some kind of console on its upper side. The light coming from its underbelly is soft and has a tinge of blue. It looks like it’s waiting there for someone to use it. I look at the ghost boy and he looks straight down, so I just grab the grid and pull until I manage to open it. It’s not nearly as heavy as I had thought it would be. I jump down on the glowing transporter and it sinks a little and tips a little to one side when I land on it. I have to hold on to the edge, so I don’t slip off. I don’t want to take a look, but I think it’s a rather steep fall if I slip. There is a seemingly endless tube up ahead.
“It’s alright. It will carry two,” I call up to the ghost boy and he jumps down. He must be light as a feather, because the transporter doesn’t sink or tip at all when he lands on it. “Do you have any idea how to use these?” I ask, pointing at the consoles.
The ghost boy looks at me with mild eyes. They are larger than any eyes that I’m used to so he’s still a little creepy. I try some buttons at random – miraculously without endangering our lives – until I find a touch-sensitive console. I put my entire hand on it and the ship moves according to the pressure I put on the console. More pressure on my fingertips and it moves forward. More pressure on my palm and it moves backward. If I push down it sinks and if I release the pressure it rises. A button right next to it looks suspiciously like the accelerator. “Are you sure that’s where we need to go, ghost brother?” A brief glimpse shows that the path ahead is clear and I push it.
I can’t help crying out loud because of the sudden motion. For a few moments I think that the tube is blowing air in my face, then I realize that we’re moving so much faster and we’re pushing against the air. “Faster!” I feel like someone is trying to blow me off the transporter. My muscles are clenched, immobile, my whole body is set in stone, except for my hand which moves subtly and steers us through the tube. Up ahead the tube branches and a hand, light as a feather, touches my left shoulder, so I steer left. Now there are lamps on top of the tube and we move from dark to light, from dark to light, from dark to…light? A subtle shift in air pressure and the transporter lurches downward. My stomach is suddenly a hundred feet above the rest of me. Left and right strips of light are racing upwards and I realize that we are now in one of those abysses, one of those chasms crisscrossed by thousands of bridges…and we’re falling.
How deep do they go? How deep? Bridges are rushing upward and in absolute panic I release the touch sensor. A soft humming as the transporter stabilizes and with chattering teeth I wait for my stomach which slowly, like a feather caught in the wind, settles down on me.
“Right.” I resist the urge to vomit and can feel the light, cold hands of the ghost boy on my shoulders. His touch makes me feel strange, his fingers are like needles pricking my skin, cold as ice, but they draw all the fear, all the panic that fills me to them. I remember stories of creatures that would suck the blood from your body and I can’t help thinking that this is what the ghost boy does – he sucks all those emotions from me. I should feel fear, but all fear is immediately taken from me. He makes a noise, it almost seems like he is pleased. Does he enjoy that? What will happen if he enjoys it too much and thinks he can take all he wants from me? I feel my thoughts change, becoming colder as if something else is thinking for me. The images of our corridor and of my mother that I keep in my head are overlaid with a plan of the entire ship – and how huge it is! I follow all those corridors in my head, my thoughts split and branch and search for ways to reach our goal…I know our goal now, it’s a room in the very center of the ship and it pulsates and throbs like a heart, bloody and slimy amidst diagrams and blueprints. What is there? The navigation chamber. Something that is alive and dead at the same time, a heart that is connected by electronic wiring instead of veins and arteries.
But, and I can see as much from that strange new knowledge that flows into me, the navigation chamber is sealed from the rest of the ship, tightly closed so that nobody can intrude. It is a sphere right at the core, surrounded by channels of empty space. My thoughts circle the sphere, unable to find a way inside. There is frustration and I have a hard time with it until I realize that it isn’t my feeling at all – it is part of that new knowledge, part of the ghost boy entering me through his cold fingers on my back.
The air around me has begun to move again. We have begun to move again. I don’t enjoy the feeling of speed as much as I did before, but I see the transporter and ourselves as a dot moving across the mind-diagram. It’s a little like watching a group of little bugs and guessing what they are going to do next, but I’m both watcher and bug. New information comes faster than I can process it…there are the pylons. Six of them. We are in the pylon that was originally built for scientists, as Makos had guessed or known. Other than that there are pylons for workers, soldiers, artists, priests and one for…I cannot see clearly what it is for, for storage perhaps, but there is also a small inhabited part. There is a gigantic superstructure surrounding and connecting the pylons and separating them from the engines and life support systems. This is where we must enter. This is the fastest way to reach the sphere at the center. I wish Makos would still be here – he would be happy to see all this.
There is more…little markings on the mind-map show me where the group that I left behind is. Jerek’s there and Iason and Ti. They are closely followed by another group, people from the soldier pylon. I know why they follow them…they need slaves, workers to improve their own pylon. What are you showing there, my little ghost brother? Our group is heading for the unidentified pylon, the one that is closest to the engines and the life support. In order to reach it they will have to cross the artist’s pylon and in doing so they will bring the inhabitants of another pylon close to slavery and destruction. There must be a way to protect the other pylon…the soldiers come from the pylon that neighbors our own. On the other side they are bordered by the workers’ pylon, which can only mean that they have already conquered that pylon. Next to them is the priests’ pylon, but from the information that I receive I can tell that the priests are not conquered. Very little of our scientist heritage has survived, we have become as useless as Makos mentioned. The soldiers must have preserved more of their traditions, creating a culture of battle and strife… I suddenly remember the image of Ti holding her red lightsaber. Might there be jedi among the soldiers? This makes no sense.
Ghost brother, clear up that confusion for me. There is so much, but it makes no sense. Why does our group make for the unidentified pylon? How can we protect the artists’ pylon? Is it possible to seal it once our group has entered it? How do they treat fugitives? Will they welcome our group? We have to make for that pylon. I know that you need to reach the sphere at the centre, but I simply have to get to the pylon and see for myself what can be done. We don’t know how to get into the sphere anyway, so maybe we need to gather more information or find someone to help us. What do you say, ghost brother?
He has removed his hands from my back. It’s a shock to be myself again and only myself. The mind-map that was so clear a moment ago has vanished. My own thoughts feel so small and confused in comparison. Just guide me to the artist’s pylon, will you?
I wait, hovering in the dark, listening to the sad hum of the ship. I’m not brave enough to turn around and look at him. He must help me, he must. I don’t know how to get anywhere on my own. It feels so lonely to wait, to be too cowardly to turn around.
At last I can feel the touch of one finger. We are connected again. It is such a relief to see the mind-map again. I touch the sensor pad and the transporter races off into the dark.
-------------------------------------------------

part I [link]
part II [link]
part III [link]
part IV [link]
part V [link]
part VI [link]
part VII [link]
Part IX [link]
Part X [link]