Chapter Text
Inspired by a Second Chance at Martyrdom by Minoke.
1.1
I woke up, and everything felt wrong. An unsettling lightness to my body, waking up in an unfamiliar place.
What happened? Where was Scion? I remember the rig, it’d gone badly, and we’d been trying to regroup for another attempt. And then… I’m not sure.
I glanced around the room, searching for something. Anything really. My first thought was that it belonged to a child. There were toys and pillows spread about. Stuffed toys of strange alien creatures. A desk in miniature, with some electronic device lying on it. There was a strange roundness to the design of the architecture and furniture, even the door and shelves were at least somewhat circular.
Where… where were my bugs? I couldn’t sense them anymore. Was I out of range? Did I not have my powers?
I realized the problem when I moved to get out from the covers. I was wearing some beige pajamas, and it took too long for me to reach the floor with my feet. I’d somehow… become a child again? My limbs too tiny, both arms as well.
What the hell had happened?
The sun crept in through the cracks of the blinds in the window. I fumbled my way over to it. The limbs were both unfamiliar, and yet the muscle memory didn’t trip me up. I looked for some mechanism to open them, nothing but a button on the wall. I pressed it, and was momentarily blinded as the sun beamed into the room.
I took another look at everything, an almost alien sense of contentment settling on me. That wasn’t right. I looked for a mirror, something to look at myself. My room had a mirror, large enough to reflect my entire body in it.
I resembled myself in some plain pajamas. As though I’d gone back to being an elementary schooler. Why? How? Who’d done this?
More importantly, why could I remember things from whoever this was?
…
I felt bad that morning. The girl whose life I had awoken in had a nice family. They were farmers. Lived a pretty simple life. She had a father named Davals, a mother named Andriax, and an older brother named Tamet. Oddly, the girl’s name was Taylor, Taylor Hesenex.
I was somehow avoiding having a panic attack as I started processing the information. She, we, lived on a farm, an orchard that grew fruits. Except with fantastical technology. Massive harvesters, autonomous robots, and things that I didn’t think had been invented for such casual use. Was this some alternative world, far more developed? It would definitely explain things. But then, she had memories of creatures, other sentient species. Aliens, people who had tentacles instead of hair and worked with her family, somehow.
Space travel was apparently a thing. There were other worlds out in the galaxy that people could just casually visit. Thousands and thousands that she barely knew about, because she was a child still learning her alphabet and how to read. Something called Aurabesh, standard, across those many worlds, despite the variety of species. The planet I was on wasn't even Earth. It was an ‘Agriworld’ called Hestria, located in the ‘Mid Rim’ of the galaxy.
Could there still be an Earth?
…Was I even still in the same galaxy?
…
Living in this new body was strange, even if I was getting increasingly comfortable in it. I managed to avoid falling down the stairs as I came down for breakfast. I had to be careful, taking a step at a time while holding onto the guardrail. Whatever the food was, it smelled delicious as I arrived.
Meeting her parents was a strange experience. I had to remind myself that for them, today was like any other. There was something a bit demeaning about needing a booster chair to sit at the table, but considering I couldn’t exactly eat properly otherwise, it was something I could simply live with.
Davals and Andriax were pretty average, from what my memories and my short time at breakfast told me. Andriax mostly stayed at home, doing various chores and light farmwork while she cared for me and my brother Tamet. Davals owned and managed the farm. Tamet would spend much of the day going to school, driven there by Andriax in a hovering car that had a concerningly high speed to it.
On a normal day, I’d either end up staying in my room playing until Andriax returned, or go with her for the drive and any errands she had to do. Today however, I broke tradition, at least by their perspective, by asking instead to spend at least some of the day with Davals.
He acquiesced to my request and was nice enough to answer any questions I had about the planet while I rode with him in the futuristic crop harvester. It was surprisingly quiet as it floated over the ground.
I tried to keep my questions simple, almost childlike in their framing, to try and not draw any suspicion. I asked what he was farming, and he explained that a certain fruit grown on this entire continent was shipped off for the production of wine within the rest of the Galactic Republic, but their biggest buyer was a planet called Alderaan.
…how large was this republic that such a large chunk of the planet was entirely devoted to just growing a single type of fruit for wine?
Then I tried asking different sorts of questions, about the family history and about where we lived. I asked if he had lived here his whole life. He had, so had his ancestors. That they’d been on Hestia so long that any records left that you could find had their name somewhere in the region. I had so many relatives that even he struggled to remember all of them.
Unfortunately, Davals was not of a particularly worldly sort. He’d never been off of Hestia himself, his family had been farmers, as had he. He had some relatives who had, for various reasons, but the extent of his knowledge of the greater galaxy was limited by his perspective. He could tell me about regulations and taxes, handed down by the capital of the Galactic Republic. The city world of Coruscant, has trillions of people living in it.
There were a few others as well, but of much lesser importance in the grand scheme of things. The planets that were nearby regularly traded with Hestia. The industrial world from which much of the farming equipment was bought. Then there were the names of some of the nearby planets in our region of the galaxy, though he had little to say about them beyond their names.
Then I asked about the droids I saw working in the field. Robots that were piloting the same type of harvester Davals was driving, plucking the fruits as they went. He waved to one nearby as we passed, and it waved back with its large hand. He explained that the droids were purchased to help expand the farm. That as long as he could remember it was common for there to be a mixture of human labour supplemented by using droids for the simpler tasks. Driving a fairly automated harvester was well within the range of tasks for the type of droid that they used, though there were countless models that existed for all sorts of tasks. From translation, to mechanics, or even simply to play music.
I spent hours talking to him, filling what would have been a fairly boring ride with all sorts of questions. He indulged me, but was readily able to simply say he didn’t know the answers to some of it. Eventually, we returned home out of a mix of tiredness and hunger. Andriax knew the schedule well enough that she’d already had a meal cooking when we came through the door together.
…
The rest of the day was uneventful. I helped with ‘chores’, ate dinner with my family as my father returned home, and watched some sort of Galactic sport on a hologram that showed an entire stadium.
After that, it was off to bed.
Well, they thought I would be going to bed. In reality, I waited maybe twenty minutes after my light was turned off and the door closed, before I did my best to get out of bed quietly to return to my desk. I didn’t really feel like sleeping, I had more productive options. Like practicing reading Aurabesh on the holopad. I’d rather not be caught unprepared in the future, and figured now was a better starting time than any.
I’d brought a cup of juice with me as well, a sort of watery minty blend that had been my favourite. The actual reading was fairly boring, despite my interest in learning. The holopad had a handful of books saved on it, meant for a small child’s reading level. What I really needed to practice was understanding the letters. The words themselves seemed to be the same as English, for whatever reason. Well, mostly anyway. Aurabesh also seemed to include a sort of conjunction of letters in some cases, combining them together into a sort of shorthand character.
It wasn’t until over an hour later that I decided it’d been enough for tonight, trying to familiarize myself with the alphabet. I powered off the holopad and went to lay it down on the desk when I bumped my half-empty juice, sending it rolling off the desk.
I panicked. I could still hear that Davals and Andriax were awake downstairs, and the sound of a glass falling, even if it didn’t break, would draw their attention. I lunged to try and catch it midair, but I’d still not really adjusted to my tiny arms, and it slipped through my fingers, tumbling just out of reach.
And then it stopped, a few inches from the ground. I simply hung there, as though frozen in time. It didn’t fall, even as I took a moment to examine it. Was that me, or did they somehow have hover cup technology in this world and I just didn’t know about it?
I snatched the floating up, to set it back on the table. An intrusive thought came to me, and I extended my hand again, focusing mentally on making the cup float. When nothing happened, I tried picturing it again. Still nothing, which was slightly frustrating. I decided to go to bed. Maybe I’d ask my new parents about it.
The next morning, I asked about it at the table, bringing the glass down with me. I’d thought about it all night, and for the morning while I got dressed. There were hover vehicles after all, it was clear that sort of technology existed to some extent, and was so widely available we had it for farming fruit. Maybe someone had the bright idea to make self-catching cups, especially good for small children being clumsy and knock things over.
I could tell very quickly that wasn’t the case. Tamet just looked at me like I was crazy, which dispelled much of my conjecture. More concerning was how Davals and Andriax were more distracted sharing concerned looks at each other instead of telling off Tamet for calling me a fruitbrain. Made even worse when they tried to brush it off, saying I must have dreamt the whole thing.
It wasn’t exactly hard to tell that they were doing that thing where a parent lied to their child to seem to be calm and knowledgeable, so as not to concern their child. If the parent freaked out, the kid would think to freak out.
I decided to stay home today. I had more reading to do after all, and it would be easier to do that here, than trying to read while riding in that land speeder.
…
A week passed by, without much happening. I’d devour more and more stories put onto the datapad, forcing Andriax to have to go pick up more to upload for me to read. I ended up getting to more than a dozen a day. Honestly not very hard given the contents of them.
Everything had been fairly quiet and relaxed, until there was an actual spaceship landing on my front lawn. A giant red and white half disk, managing to dwarf the nearby farming equipment in the lot. We’d been eating breakfast when they arrived, called out by all the noise. Neither Davals, nor Andriax seemed to really understand what was going on. They were looking at each other confused, it wasn’t the sort of ship that would have picked up the harvest, nor would it have been time for it.
Then, a sort of landing ramp opened up, letting out some pneumatic hisses as it impacted the ground. A handful of armored men led a procession and watched the surrounding areas. They were wearing red and white armour and had the symbol of the republic emblazoned on their pauldrons. The most interesting of their group was the last to walk down the ramp, a man wearing brown robes, with a nearly bald and massively elongated head. I had to assume he was some sort of human-like alien species, either that or some impressively concerning mutation.
Davals approached, leaving the three of us on our porch to watch what was happening. Andriax had her hand clamped on my shoulder as she stared at the group. Whoever these people were, the robed man gave a small bow to Daval once he got closer. A gesture Daval mimicked after a second of confusion. There was a short conversation, quiet enough that I couldn’t make out the words from here.
It didn’t take long for Davals to return, waving his hand to have us follow him. “He said to come aboard his ship, it’s about that thing we discussed, Andri.”
Whatever that was about, Andriax didn’t seem to question it. The four of us walked over, following the robed man up the landing ramp, and into the spaceship.
It certainly had a bit of an odd design inside. Smooth metal floors, bright lights, and light beige padded walls. We didn’t get very far, before the alien gestured towards a door leading off from the more open atrium section of the ship, “Please, this might take some time, and we have a comfortable meeting area perfect for these sorts of things.”
He led us to what seemed to be a casual space, a room large enough for more than a dozen people, taken up by a massive circular table, with two couch chairs ringing opposite sides of it. Daval led us to slowly shuffle along one side, while the alien slid across from us.
“A belated welcome aboard, Mr. and Mrs. Hesenex. To you two as well, Taylor and Tamet. I am Master Ki Adi Mundi. I happened to be in the area when we had an alert about Taylor here, so I ended up as the first to respond, to investigate things.” He explained, pressing a hand to his chest.
I sucked in a breath involuntarily, stupid. It must’ve been about the cup thing, I doubted he was here to check up on my reading level. Taylor knew stories about the Jedi, I’d encountered a few stories involving them as well, but they’d seemed so fantastical as to be more myth than reality. I was starting to wonder if that was the case.
He must’ve noticed my rising panic, an eyebrow raised towards me. “You’re not in any trouble Taylor, perhaps in many ways the opposite. You might say that this whole situation was caused by a minor clerical error. Normally, member worlds of the republic would test newborns for various things. Various diseases traceable through your genetics or a blood test. One of those tests however, is on behalf of the Jedi Order. We test for the potential to wield the force, one of the requirements to be inducted into the order. Thankfully, we can correct that now that we’re all here, if you’d consent to it.”
Andriax gave me a look, seemingly confused by what he’d said. “You call it a clerical error, but how did that happen?”
He put on a smile as he pulled out some small metallic device, the size of a finger except flat, “These sorts of things happen more often than we’d like to admit, but for quite understandable reasons. According to what records I could find before my arrival, Taylor here was a home birth. Hospitals include this test as a routine addition to every other check to make sure newborns are healthy, but there isn’t much scrutiny for situations like yours. All we’ll need from you is a bit of blood, if you’d place your finger here. We can chat for a bit while we wait for it to finish analyzing.
I stared at the device. A blood test, so easily performed? Then again, with the state of every other piece of technology I’d seen here, I’d have to just assume any field would surpass any sort of knowledge I’d had before. I hesitated for just a moment, but it wasn’t as though I could simply leave the situation. I pressed my index finger down on the device, feeling a tiny prick before it dinged.
“Excellent, thank you, Taylor. It should only take a few minutes to get the results back, we’ve only needed to test for something called Midiclorian density. Those who have a connection to the force, tend to have those microorganisms in far greater counts than a normal person, so it makes for a fairly simple cut-and-dry test to see if you pass our thresholds. I can answer any questions you might have, either about the galaxy or the Jedi, while we wait a short time” He smiled at me, knowingly. Pedeliberately was routine for him, and he did this sort of thing all the time. Oddly, he didn’t reach for the device on the table, perhaps it transmitted things remotely?
It occurred to me that I didn’t actually know what I was getting into here. Storybooks hardly painted a clear picture. “I’d like to know what it means to be a Jedi. A real one, and what it’s like to join you.”
“A very good question, perhaps the most pertinent for your situation. Unfortunately, the answer is quite complicated, one could spend a lifetime pondering the answer, but I can at least give a simple explanation. The Jedi occupy quite a few roles, varying between each Jedi. Some are academics, philosophers, or doctors. Others assist in capturing criminals, battling pirates and slavers, or might mediate political matters like trade disputes. Most Jedi are all of those things, able to assume whatever role is required of us by the galaxy at large. We work alongside the republic to that end, for the betterment of all. ”
The rest of the family seemed suitably awed by his explanation. It lined up well enough with the stories I’d read, but I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t some sort of elaborate propaganda for the organization. It was Davals who had the next question, “If she is accepted, and she goes with you… What happens to our daughter then?”
Mundi looked at my dad, meeting his gaze with a neutral expression. “Then she comes with us, for our return trip back to Coruscant. Luckily, this happened when it did, she’s nearly at the cutoff the order has for taking in younglings like this.”
“You only take young children?” Andriax asked.
“Ah, yes. There’s a variety of factors and reasons involved, but to give a layman’s explanation for it, it helps simplify things. To be sensitive to the force as we are, is to have great power over others. It can cause great difficulty to anyone’s training, when there are strong emotions and attachments. They can get in the way of our political neutrality, among other problems. Typically by the age of six or so, we consider it too risky to develop their talents further.”
“There’s danger to the condition?” I wasn’t sure how true that was. Frankly, it sounded a bit closer to indoctrination in a lot of ways. Get the kids in while they’re young and didn’t know any better, to be loyal to their order.
“More in a mental sense, than a physical one. It’s hard to say how many beings exist out there in the galaxy, in a situation similar to yours where they manage to slip through testing and end up living fulfilling if mundane lives without causing waves. The problem comes from those who test themselves too greatly, trying to train themselves without order. Galactic history is rife with examples of tyrants who had the powers of the Force. It is for that reason that we try to safeguard things preemptively, as part of our duties as stewards of the republic.
Whatever further questions we had were interrupted when one of the armored soldiers knocked on the doorframe of the room. A single nod, before he left us once again to privacy.
“Congratulations, young Taylor. It seems that your test came back positive. With that concluded, I would formally request that you come with us back to the temple, to be inducted as an initiate of the order.”
The offer was tempting, in a way. Not the particulars of the order itself of course, that sounded like a politically well-connected militant cult when I thought about it. The real question was what the alternative even offered. Life on a farm growing wine and fruit?
Thinking in those terms made it easier to say yes to the offer. I could always just run away if things didn’t work out.
After that, it was a fairly simple affair. I didn’t exactly have much to pack. Not that I had much to begin with, but Ki-Adi-Mundi had stated that I wouldn’t need more than a change or two of clothes, for the journey to Coruscant. The order would provide everything else I might have needed. I did take the memory chip out of the holopad though, to at least have something to read for the few days it would take us.
Maybe I should have felt sadder as I said goodbye to the other Taylor’s Mother and Father, but it was hard to do so. Sure, they were nice enough people and loved the other Taylor very much, but they weren’t my parents. Not really. We’d only really known each other for a week.
I carried a backpack with what worldly possessions I still had with me up the ramp, hearing it close behind me. Ki-Adi-Mundi is leading me gently forward with a hand on my back, towards the cockpit. Two of the soldiers, helmets off, were doing their launch checks.
If I hadn’t been looking out the cockpit window, I might not have even noticed how smooth it was as we took off. We flew low, for a time. Slowly gaining altitude as we cruised past the landscape. A wonderful aerial view of all the orchards of our farm and the ones nearby.
The scale of it all was breathtaking, when viewed from on high. Orderly, yet still with some natural beauty. It was a short time later as we climbed through the clouds, and the colour of the sky changed as we left the atmosphere.
As we reached space, I could look down at Hestria in all her glory. A green and blue orb, with splotches of white clouds drifting across the surface. Then I looked to the other direction, at all the countless stars dotting space in all directions.
I heard some chatter from the pilots, something about engaging hyperdrives, whatever that was. Mundi simply flashed a smile at me when I looked at him for answers.
Then the stars began to elongate, blurred blue lines as we shot off towards our destination.
…
Hey Everyone, thank you for reading!
I want to thank Minoke and Fen210 for beta-reading and helping make this chapter and fanfic what it is!
See you next time, and may the force be with you!