‘We were about to reach the infirmary when a high-pitched beeping alert resounded in the corridor. I looked around, searg for the source of this sound.’
‘In the meahe ga-... I mean, Tano’s master released a loud sigh after he checked his wrist unicator. So that was the source of the beeping. He stood aside and looked at me, already annoyed by the ining call.’
“Uhm, what was your name again?”
‘He asked, somewhat embarrassed for not even asking my name all this time.’
“My name is Nizzal, Nizzal Grey, and what is yours?” — ‘I guess I was the same in that regard…’
‘I sensed genuine surprise from him, I see. He was used to everyone knowing his name. I was right, that he is sidered some kind of big shot here. No surprise with that crushing force presence.’
“Anakin Skywalker.” — ‘Stated, watg my rea thoughtfully.’
‘Didn’t ring a bell. He looked at my unmoved expression with even more surprise, well he covered it up reasonably fast as he tinued.’
“Sadly, I ’t escort you the whole way. The cil is waiting for my arrival to give my report. On the bright side, we have almost reached it already. You go down this corridor and tur. The infirmary is ihird room on the right side. There is a medical cross pstered over the door. You couldn’t miss it even if you tried. Tell Soka that master says hi.”
‘With that, he bolted away, running towards the cil room. I looked after him as he finally answered the call. A familiar voice could be heard dripping with sarcasm.’
“Hi there, my former padawan. It feels good that you finally deemed to answer my call. Was I b you, perce I would call back ter, but the cil would bee a bit dejected, I am afraid.”
“Argh, get off my back, Obi-Wan. I got into a mess with the kids here.”
“Oh yes, I could imagine half the temple eaking about your dueling escapades. I only hope that you reached a new height of enlighte from beating up thirteen-year-old girls in your heroic deeds. Because you will to expin this situation to the cil.”
“It ’t be that bad...” — ‘The young man stated tentatively.’
“Maybe you should tell that to Master Windu when you finally arrive. He is waiting through the holo call for about ten minutes now.”
“Great! He will give me another rant for disrespeg the elders...” — ‘Anakin whined while heading down the corridor.’
“Maybe you should follow his advice for ond there wouldn’t be a need for repe-...”
‘Their voices were cut off by the automatically closing air pressure door behind him.’
‘Heh, I khat Anakin was reminding me of someone equally infuriating, should have known that his master was that Obi-Wan guy. They had too many simirities.’
‘Suddenly finding myself having nothing else to do, I decided to follow his advid soon enough reached the pce easily.’
‘I knocked on the dhtly, then walked in. I didn’t want to trouble any patient that may want to sleep here. It turned out that I was worried for nothing. It was a somewhat small room, and there were only six beds here.’
‘In one of those beds, a familiar togruta girl was resting.’
‘She seemed to be extremely bored. Our eyes met, and she immediately became livelier from seeihat made me feel kind of unfortable. Why was she so happy? We only met, and I already caused some trouble. Even if I didn’t want to.’
‘I felt strahat someohat I hardly knew was this happy from seeing me, or maybe I was just overthinking things. Children were supposed to bee attached to people easily. Ohing that was definitely not true for me, in my memories I saw so many people, so many dead, friends, and family all gone, again and again, and again.’
‘Of course, I khat I needed some social iion to stay mentally healthy, but the amount of the needed iion was very small in my case.’
‘I could stay alone, not talking or seeing anyone for months, and I wouldn’t feel the need for versation. I would simply live for my hobbies: reading, painting, pying games, and so on.’
‘Well, being closed in an almost empty room with nothing to spend time with is still a big no, but if I do whatever I want, I easily occupy myself for an unholy amount of time.’
‘On the side, I have to say that I don’t hate speaking with people. It is a good activity. I simply never really had the ce to speak or meet with many fresh faces, or create new bonds.’
‘If you are someoh thousands of years of memories, you would also bee aced to being alone. Being alone is not a bad thing, but you should not mistake it as being lonely. That is entirely different. Being alone is a choice you make for yourself, while being lonely is something that others decide for us, most likely against our will.’
‘I choose to be alone because it would be very hard, if not impossible, to hide what I really am from someone who gets that close to me. I don’t want to figure out what would they do with me if they realized that I am practically a walking and talking holo.’
‘Ohat has enough sith and jedi knowledge amassed to ge the tide of the current war. Suowledge in the hands of shhted beings that at best only think in the length of a few years and not in lifespans would lead to a catastrophe.’
‘I also pn to be around for the five hundred years, so if I don’t pn to bee the subject of a force experiment on immortality or as a living holo, while they try to forcefully extract memories from me...’
‘I shivered from the thought alone.’
‘Then I probably shouldn’t get too close to anyht now, especially not a jedi.’
‘I already began to slow my natural aging through the force, therefore I will be in this child's body for the fifty or sixty years if everything goes well.’
‘Why wouldn’t I wait until I became older, you ask?’
‘If I wait, for example, until I bee eighteen or twenty, then I would lose five or seven years of my life. Not that big of a deal, right?’
‘Wrong!’
‘That seven years of lifetime elongated by the force would bee seventy years, and that is kind of a big deal for me.’
‘There is a stretch to the level of the length which you elongate your lifespan through the force, if you go beyond that which is by the way about ten times slower than normal aging, some of your bodily funs will slow down to aent that would seriously endanger your life.’
‘For example, your brain funs would bee so slow that you would only try to take a breath every minute, hour, or day.’
‘Your rea to an ining attack would also slow down so much that you wouldn’t be able to react to it at all.’
‘The healing of your wounds would bee so slow that it would t as ent.’
‘Overall, you would bee aehat is mostly out of real-time. You would slow down so much that the world would seem to accelerate around you.’
‘It’s no wonder, sihe teique that we use for this purpose was inally a force hibernation teique.’
‘With an ingenious variation of the teique that you have to keep activated to a lower extent all the time, you slow down ying process to a certain degree.’
‘You may wonder why these side-effects only became troublesome after your bodily fun is beyoimes slower?’
‘The ao this question is simple: the force. To be more punctual, my bodily reas are already slowing down arouimes of their normal versions, which means without the use of the force, my body would heal ten times slower, and so on.’
‘With the help of the force, however, I qui my rea times and desired bodily processes to the level of a normal force-sensitive, but that ability also has aent, and its maximum is about twelve times your normal rea time.’
‘Jedi use this teique all the time on an instinctive level to hasten their reas to danger and such. What I do is simply to lift that instinctive process to a partially scious level, choosing specifis over others. Creating an incredible level of trol over my body’s internal processes.’
‘Anyway, if you use the hibernation teique to its full power, you must be wary about your surroundings and the sequences.’
‘You don’t want to die in a pitiful and really ge-worthy way, like being stu a tree that grows out of the ground under you then a few hundred years ter the tree get struck by lightning, or the branch you end up on breaks under you and you fall to death.’
‘After all, entirely activating the teique, theivating it at the minimum takes about five hundred years of time.’
‘So don’t try to use it as an excuse for skipping the undry like master Cil-Cil Muz did, that halfwit gungan...’
‘He was lucky enough that his family realized what he did, and they pced his body in a er of the house like a statue, where he was at least dusted a few times a year for the eight geions.’
‘What an idiot. Sometimes I am surprised that our memory line is still going.’
“Yoda is right ihing. The force works in mysterious ways. Ouch!“
‘Something flicked me on the forehead. I looked around, a bit fused. I was sitting on the side of Tano’s bed while a nurse was treating my lekku, c it with a bandage coated in bacta.’
‘Then I remembered Ahsoka began to rant about her master injuring me instead of properly apologizing and not even showing his face to visit her. Then I got distracted by my own thoughts while I was waiting for the o e over since Vokara, the lead healer, was occupied in another room with much more critical cases.’
“Ouch!”
‘This time I was ht smacked on my forehead. I looked at Ahsoka, the perpetrator, with obvious disbelief in my eyes.’
“What? You were ign everything I said i ten minutes, so don’t give me that betrayed look now!” — ‘She lectured me aloud.’
‘Ugh, was I distracted for that long?’
“Sorry...” — ‘I said, eventually.’
‘The nurse chuckled behind me whenessed or antics. Both of us turowards her with fused gres.’
‘She happily shared with us her reason for the ughter.’
“Don’t bme your friend little Ahsoka, it is quite normal for twi’leks to be easily distractible after lekku injury. You both have leks, but their physiology and therefore their funality is not the same. Which is hardly a surprise being members of two different races inating from different ps.”
‘Ahsoka looked ashamed after hearing that expnation.’
“I... I didn’t think I didn’t mean to... Sorry...” — ‘She apologized quickly.’
‘The nurse ughed again as she finished my first aid treatment. Then she left us for our own devices, walking away hastily. There must be a lot of injuries in this chaotic time of gactic civil war.’
