It was a five hour flight to Daggobah at the fastest speed I could muster out of the shuttle, but it was still not long enough to process the surrealness of the last few days – nor, very frustratingly, short enough to make my delivery on time. I was at least grateful that I had a pretty good reason for my tardiness, and even made sure to keep the official Imperial “inspected” seals on my delivery datapad. However, as I breached the planet's thick clouds and barreled down to the surface, I could make a out a solitary figure in the landing area, standing arms crossed and probably tapping their feet with impatience. Come on! I was only a few hours behind! Surely, that wasn't that bad?
Rushing the landing sequence as quickly as safety would permit, I leapt out of the shuttle. Almost immediately, I was covered in a thin film of sweat, courtesy of the sweltering, damp heat of the planet. My datapad in hand, I had all my explanations set to go, but my brain chose that rather impractical moment to go to mush as it registered the sight of the “person” waiting for me. I was only able to squeak out,
“Dee-Three-Pee-Oh?”
“Doctor Dee-Three-Pee-Oh,” corrected the unmistakably haughty voice of the brass-coated protocol droid, as its flat, unyielding visual receptors scanned me, recording everything for its report. “Delivery-man Tim, You are two hours, thirty three minutes and twenty-six seconds late. Were you not made aware that this delivery was time-sensitive?”
“Yeah, look... I came as fast I could... I was stopped by an Imperial inspection,” I replied handing over my delivery datapad, bracing myself to be upbraided and reprimanded. Sure enough,
“I see,” the droid said, after a moment inspecting the Imperial seals on my documents that included a brief flashing of its eyes as it copied them into its records. “Nevertheless, according to Rule 68 slash B subsection 5, entitled 'Commitment to Effective Time Management Strategies' you should have accounted for the possibility of being stopped and adjusted your departure accordingly.”
“Yeah, well, I did my best,” I muttered, giving up on all my well-crafted excuses; assuming this really was Dee-Three-Pee-Oh or one of its copies, it would futile attempting to reason with the damned droid and its inflexible list of rules and regulations.
“I have made a note of what happened, and your record will reflect your lateness and lack of foresight for your next review,” the droid announced. Yeah, whatever. At least, it didn't seem to recognize me, which was definitely a good thing, as it would have gotten its wiring into an infuriatingly sanctimonious knot and lectured me about my record from the Deeeeath Star to “make a heuristic and constructive point.”
Sucking back all the words that would have landed me into more trouble, I turned to get back on the shuttle, thinking of finding a nice quiet planet filled with bars and easy women, but the fucking droid wasn't done with me. Motioning with one of its arms, the droid pointed to the shuttle, saying, “Delivery-man Tim, I am requisitioning your aid in carrying this delivery into the facility. While your compliance is optional, it will be duly noted on your record.”
I was so very tempted to flick the bastard off, but, figuring some easy brownie points could always come in handy, I headed over to the cargo-hold, grumbling, “Yeah, fine.”
With the droid stacking boxes on my arms with brisk, eerily familiar movements, I couldn't help but wonder if it was the same droid I'd known that was somehow recovered and reconstructed for the Rebellion. I knew I should have let it go, and try to get this done as quickly as possible, but, considering the wacky events of the last few days that effectively made anything possible, I felt my grasp on reality was dependent on my asking:
“Dee-Three... Uh, Doctor. This may be a strange question, but were you on the Deeeeath Star? It's just that I knew a droid who looks exactly like you...”
“Please secure those packages, Delivery-man Tim,” Dee-Three-Pee-Oh criticized yet again, before answering, “No, I have not been to the Deeeeath Star. However, another of the Dee-Three-Pee-Oh models may have been there. I would be happy to verify. Accessing datasphere...”
“No no no! That's not necessary!”
“Indeed, a Dee-Three-Pee-Oh was on the battlestation designated as 'Deeeeath Star' with the status as Head Chef. That instance of Dee-Three-Pee-Oh was unfortunately destroyed. We Dee-Three-Pee-Oh's mourned that day,” the droid announced with a static note of sadness. “I am pleased to note that it had uploaded its core to the datasphere prior to termination. I can download its personality so you can speak with it if you wish.”
“No!” I said quickly; at least with this version of Dee-Three-Pee-Oh, I had a slightly cleaner slate. “I mean... No, thank you, doctor. It would be better to respect its service by letting it rest.”
“Understood. Very admirable,” the droid blipped approvingly, as it lead me through a series of pressurized doors into the main building.
The place was all of what you'd expect of a medical facility with its uniform greenish-white walls, starkly-lit halls, assortment of gurneys and unavoidable smells of disinfectant. What was the catch though? Wasn't this a front like Cloudy City? I strained my eyes peering at the corners and walls, looking for tell-tale signs of secret passage-ways or holo-barriers masking the house of revelry or den of sin that, to be honest, I wouldn't have minded taking part in. Yet, it seemed the real deal. Everyone there very much seemed like they were doing the standard medical, clinical-type things, like tending to patients and carrying trays of pills and syringes.
“This way, Tim,” Dee-Three-Pee-Oh motioned impatiently through a door it was holding open with an extended leg attachment. “Due to your lateness, we are not able to follow protocol and head to the pharmacy. Instead, we will have to go directly to the patients requiring their doses”
Obediently following the droid's clackity-steps, I shuffled through the door with my armload of morphine, and stepped into a patient hall divided into twenty-odd semi-private areas by a series of curtains. The droid motioned for me to set my packages on an empty gurney and called out,
“Nurse, come and help me. I have the morphine. Begin administering 10cc to everyone here, and continue with another 5cc every two hours.”
There was a rustling of movement from one of the beds, and a tired voice replied as it emerged from behind one of the curtains, “Yes, doctor, but I'm not sure all of them need it.”
“Nurse Sally, this is a previously resolved discussion...” the doctor began officiously.
“Tim!” Sally yelled out as soon as she saw me, and ran to hug me.
“Sally!” I answered, my spirits raising and finding myself comforted by the familiar face and the feel of Sally's embrace. I hadn't seen her since we'd been freed from Jubba's slave pits, and I was happy to see that her hair had grown back and her scars had faded to thin pink lines on her face and arms.
“What are you doing here? I thought you were on Hawth!” Sally asked, the rigid Dee-Three-Pee-Oh forgotten, as she held me at arm's length to look at me.
“I'm running deliveries now! I was made operational!” I said summoning the pride that lacked the vividness it should have had. “I didn't realize you were here. What are you doing here?”
“That's so great for you!” Sally beamed. “Well, I'm a nurse here and I...”
“Nurse Sally, if you wouldn't mind continuing your duties,” Dee-Three-Pee-Oh buzzed impatiently. “Had I realized this man would have been a distraction I wouldn't have brought him.”
“Yes, doctor,” Sally replied, pushing me gently aside and motioning not to get involved. “But as I said, I don't think some of them should be continuing with their course of morphine.”
“Nurse, my records note that this question has already addressed three days ago, and I have given you a satisfactory response that has also been logged,” Doctor Dee-Three-Pee-Oh said, emphasizing its pronunciation of “nurse.”
“Doctor, please listen to me. I've been treating these people for months, and I'm pretty sure they don't need painkillers any more,” Sally said, her frustration mou
nting. “Take Ben Kenobei for example. He doesn't need it. And, at this point, all we're doing is...”
“Wow! Ben Kenobei? The Ben Kenobei? He's alive? He's here?” I cried out, unable to resist being star-struck by the teacher, the inspiration, the hero Louke had talked about so frequently. I was going to ask more about him, but I was silenced by Sally's glare of death.
“Nurse, as the Doctor of this facility,” the droid snipped, taking a step close to tower over Sally in both height and status. “I make the final decisions on the treatment of the patients in our care.”
“But it makes no sense! I'm telling you that...” Sally said making another ill-fated attempt to be heard.
“Nurse Sally!” the mechanical voice lifted a few decibels and silenced Sally, as the droid switched sharply into its “strong manager” mode. “Administer the treatment I have prescribed or I will find someone who will.”
“Yes, doctor,” Sally replied through her gritted teeth.
Satisfied that the lines of its pre-programmed org-chart had been made clear, the droid blipped contentedly, and whirled around to stomp off to its other patients. It felt like an impossibly long period of watching Sally assemble the series of morphine hypos and my feeling like a royal dick, before I bashfully touched Sally on the shoulder, and said,
“Sorry about that Sally. I shouldn't have said anything...”
“Damn right,” Sally growled angrily, without bothering to cast me a glance.
Shit. I couldn't think of anything to say that could make the situation better – and I really did want to make it better, to hug her, to tell her that I believed what she said, not that fucking droid, and, hell yeah, let's go tell that fucking machine to fuck off. Instead, I said miserably,
“Sorry. I should go. It was nice to see you.”
Turning away, I headed to the door my tail between my legs, but Sally snared my elbow and sighed, looking at me with tired, lined eyes, “No, stay. I don't want you to go. I haven't seen a friendly face in a long time. Sorry about being testy. It's been frustrating working here sometimes.”
“I know what you mean,” I said, surprised but very happy at her request – surprised too at how soothing it was to have her touch rest on my arm.
“I finish in twenty minutes. Do you have to leave soon?” Sally asked, as she smiled with a warming honesty and sincerity I hadn't felt in some time.
“No, of course not! I'd be happy to hang out,” I said happily returning her smile.
“In that case, you can help me load these hypos and I can start giving the injections sooner,” Sally said, sliding next to me and taking my hands in hers to show me how to pop morphine capsules into the injectors. Looking at me with a twinkling in her eyes, she teased, “Hopefully, you're better at this than your weeding.”
“What? My weeding was great,” I replied indignantly, relieved as the tension dissolved into more comfortable territory. “The tools you gave us never worked properly.”
“Don't blame the tools, if you can't admit that could never figure them out.”
“Whatever. I was the best at using the tools you gave us.”
“To kill the plants, you mean?”
“Don't get on me about the delicatas again. I swear, that was an accident.”
“Bullshit, you hated cooking with them. I know you did it on purpose...”
With our teasing and happy reminiscing about our times at the Center, I doubt that we went any faster than if Sally had loaded the hypos herself. Just for the record, we'd never been a “thing” back in the day at the Center; but now, after all the bullshit and insanity, seeing a familiar, friendly and safe face, I felt a sudden and urgent desire for intimacy. Though I tried to deny it later, my chest was engulfed with an irrespressible urge to tell her everything and share everything that I'd hidden from everyone and myself – and I was surprised and relieved when I found that Sally felt the same.
Considering the task, we stood unnecessarily close, and touched each other unnecessarily frequently, as our pleasant chatting grew to flirting and comfortable silences. Clearly, there were other priorities at play besides time and efficiency. In the end, finding comfort in each other and in the familiarity of our experiences and pains was our unspoken priority – which made the inevitable flow of events of our “hanging out” not at all unambiguous. Interestingly, there was nothing really about her physically that made her attractive to me – and I suspected the same could be said for her about me. Looking at it from the outside, it was, admittedly, pathetic: two broken, fucked up people drifting to together and fucking our sorrows away.
Afterwards, as we lay there chatting – Sally with a leg draped over me, while I had my arm around her waist, holding her tight – I realized that I finally felt an easing of the throbbing pains of my shattered mind. Nothing in particular had happened: we'd chatted and had a spin in the sack, of course, but there were no tears, no break-downs and not even any substance abuse of any kind. Perhaps, simply no longer having the need to “keep it together” or to hide our festering wounds were in themselves healing. In the comfort of our shared traumas, my nightmares and my crippling fear of my nightmares felt comfortingly distant and manageable.
I impulsively kissed Sally in mid-sentence, causing her to accuse me of not listening to her – which was true, but I did want to kiss her, and we did start to making out again. Somewhat inappropriately though, I remembered something from earlier that I'd wanted to get back to, so I interrupted our kissing to ask,
“Hey, is it true? Is Ben Kenobei here?”
I received a smack in the chest in response followed by, “Hey, assshole, you're stopping a kiss to ask about an old bastard?”
She had an excellent point, but, as I held her hand to stop her from whacking me any further, I replied, “The guy's a fucking legend. Can't blame for wanting to meet him. So is it true? Is he here? I thought he had passed into the Powaah or something.”
Covering her hand with her eyes, Sally groaned, “Yeah, he's here. He's alive. Sometimes I wish the guy would have passed into the Powaah though. I guess you want to meet him, huh?”
“Of course!”
“Alright, I'll see what I can do,” Sally grumbled.
“Yes! Thank you!” I replied excitedly, as I leaned in to pick up where we left off. But, pushing me back, Sally looked away and said,
“You know, he isn't like the stories. He isn't as great as they say.”
“That's not that surprising to me, I guess, but I'd still like to...”
“In fact, most of this place isn't as great as I thought,” Sally said bitterly. Thinking I'd pissed her off somehow, I started moving away to a safer distance, but she drew in closer and squeezed my hand. “I thought I came here to treat Rebel soldiers and help them recover – and I guess we are, but I didn't expect...”
I stiffened, as I braced myself to hear even worse than what I've seen already. What was it this time? Child slavery? Organ harvesting? I wasn't sure I could take any more. I relaxed when Sally said, “I didn't expect they'd be running an opiate black market here.”
“Is that it?” I said, laughing in relief. Ok. Now I knew what they were doing on the side at the facility; nothing as dramatic as Cloudy City, but it did fit the general picture. “What do you think I was delivering before I came here? I'd just finished dropping off a huge shipment of weed! I figured there might be something worse like child-slavery or organ harvesting or something.”
“What? They run weed too?” Sally said, sitting up and looking at me.
It was my turn to look away this time in embarrassment, as unresolved thoughts returned to me, “Yeah, I think that's it though, but I don't know for sure...”
“I guess weed isn't really illegal,” Sally said tentatively, as we both rationalized what we'd learned against our will.
“I figured that the Rebellion needs to fund itself somehow,” I repeated to myself.
“Yeah, I suppose,” Sally's hollow voice replied.
Unable to mu
ster the right words or thoughts, we tried to find solace in holding each other tighter. None of it sat well, but neither of us were willing to mention – or, more pointedly, to deal with our disillusion and feelings of betrayal. And yet... and yet, we both knew we were only delaying admitting the truth to ourselves. It was a matter of time before casual fucking or mind-jumbling substance abuse would no longer be effective and we would crack. To be honest, if you haven't already guessed, I was pretty fucking close to that already.
I blurted out, “Let's run away, Sally. Start a new life somewhere.”
“Yeah? Where to, Tim?” Sally answered, looking at me with amusement.
“Y'know. Planet Somewhere or planet Anywhere,” I sighed and closed my eyes.
“They sound like nice places,” Sally said, laying her head on my chest. “What would we do though?”
“Dunno, maybe start a spiritual Center. How about that?”
“Oh, fuck me!”
“One without bullshit.”
“Well, in that case, I'm in.”
We enjoyed the fantasy in silence, hugging each other sadly, knowing it was unlikely the Rebellion would let us go easily – not without a lobotomy which wasn't looking all that terrible right now. Run as we might though, we'd done too much, seen too much, been complicit in too much to feel as if we could be free of anything. Ultimately, the only escape was death or drugs. Speaking of which, I asked,
“Hey, do you have any weed? I could use a puff.”
“Yeah. Good idea. I have my stash in my purse. Can you grab it from the closet? I'll get some papers.” Sally replied, pointing in the general direction of her closet, as she got up to rummage in her night table.
“Sure, no probs,” I said, getting up as well.
After untangling myself from the snarl of our clothes in our floor, I made my way to the closet, which positively exploded when I opened it and a mess of clothes tumbled out. Aw, crap. How the hell, am I supposed to find it now?
“Purse, purse, purse,” I muttered to myself, rummaging around the pile of clothing. Obviously, Sally wasn't the most orderly of people; though, to be fair, her room was more like a glorified utility closet.
“Sorry, it's a mess there,” Sally said. “Do you see it?”
“Not yet. What's it look like?”
“It's black with stripes on it. Need help?”
“No, no. I got it. Wait a minute...” I answered amidst the mess I'd made, realizing that I probably should have started out more systematically. Damn it, how difficult can it be to find a fucking purse?
I was about to give up and ask Sally to look for her damned purse, when something sparkly caught my eye. Breathing became difficult, as memories surged back to me and I felt my fingers spasm as they attempted to repeat motions they'd done millions of times under the threat of being whipped or beaten. I somehow found the courage to pick up the cheap, tacky purse.
“No, not that one, Tim. That's a shitty one management gives out to us as gifts,” Sally said, glancing back at me.
“This purse, Sally....” I said quietly, holding the gawdy piece of crap.
“No, the other one, Tim. The black one? You see it?” Sally repeated.
“This purse...” I said, feeling a long suppressed anger rise, as my hands clenched tighter around the thing. It took all my strength to resist tearing it apart and screaming at the top of my lungs.
“The other one, Tim. It's okay, I see it...” Sally said, coming over to me.
“Sally,” I managed to say through a strangled voice, as I held out the crystal-studded purse to her. “This purse. I made it. I made thousands like these in Jubba's pits.”
CHAPTER 18