An ordinary morning for a typical youngling in the Jedi Temple began as usual.
Wake-up at eight in the morning, then an ultrasonic shower and getting into uniform.
The undershirt was a loose, light-gray tunic with a sandy-dust hue.
The material was dreadfully reminiscent of thick, coarse fabric, and the cut had a unique neckline all the way down to the navel.
This marvel also had something like extremely wide lapels that could be wrapped closed.
Over that went a sleeveless beige robe with stiff shoulder-pad inserts.
Gray trousers, something like Japanese hakama, with a cutout for the tail.
Not bad, comfortable.
If it weren’t for the high-tech materials, I might have overheated in an outfit like that, with my thick, coarse fur, despite the invigorating atmosphere — but as it was, quite comfortable.
Oh, right, allow me to introduce myself.
Mirr-ra-Mrr, a five-year-old member of the Cathar species and, concurrently, Mikhail Alexandrovich Ivanov, former ordinary citizen from the planet Earth, thirty-five years old.
A lover of fantasy and science fiction, who in his last years, before his banal death in a car accident, worked in the field of modern technology.
Worked as a so-called “IT guy.” At the time of my death, I had discovered the world of fanfiction.
Honestly, if I hadn’t gone to check for updates, I might have stayed alive.
How I ended up in this body and in a fictional universe — I have no idea.
As for telling you what it’s like, forgive me, I see no point.
You still won’t understand until you try it yourself.
I’ll only say that I went through all five stages.
Yes, yes, those very ones: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
After the local physical exercise and a hearty breakfast, the Jedi larvae went off to classes — uh-huh, right after a nice hour of meditation.
Today we had history of the Order-Republic, combined with propaganda-pumping, in principle quite an interesting topic, even if most of the kids don’t share my opinion.
But after lunch, we were supposed to be swinging training lightsabers under the guidance of the Grand Master himself.
The very one, the great, short green pointy-eared one who loves to speak in riddles, rearranging his words, and squinting meaningfully with hmms and humphs.
Everyone who’s seen the movies remembers how Ani-killer came to him for advice when he was looking for Kamino, and in the background there were little kids in helmets — well, we’ll be playing those for a couple of hours.
While half of the “Mouse Claw” clan, sent off for an afternoon meditation, was sleeping, and the other half was honestly trying not to join them, I indulged in melancholy and longing.
In the six months I’ve been in this world, I’ve managed to wring the memory dry — and, incidentally, those same meditations helped quite a bit with that.
Alas, regarding the canon of “Star Wars,” I could only rely on the movies and a certain number of fanfics, most of which took very liberal liberties with the original storyline.
There were even several where the authors actively pushed Emperor Skovorodkin in.
Or his wife.
Optionally — just original characters.
In short, I know the main villain and have a purely conditional idea of some of the key characters.
Although, the same Dooku, Qui-Gon, and a number of others are common knowledge anyway.
That’s sort of a plus.
Key events, like the “Clone Wars” itself, its outcomes in the form of Order 66 and the Jedi Purge, Luke and Leia, the “Death Star” that destroyed Alderaan and was destroyed by the younger Skywalker, and so on.
All of that — sadly — without any reference to exact dates.
Especially in this very far, far away galaxy, there are huge problems with a unified calendar anyway.
If I didn’t know that in half a century we’d all be facing a big, terrible end in the form of the Yuuzhan Vong, who would reduce the intelligent, highly developed population of an entire galaxy by hundreds of trillions, I would have ratted out Palpy without a problem — who currently isn’t even Senator Palpatine yet, but just…
I had to think.
The simplest data collection, thanks to the local analogue of our tablets, called a datapad here, and access to the Temple network, yielded a staggering result.
In this far, far away galaxy, there are over 300 billion stars, and a population of 100 quadrillion beings, represented by tens of thousands of races and species.
At the same time, only about 20 billion systems are even somewhat populated.
Almost seven percent of the galaxy!
It’s clear that somewhere billions live, and somewhere there won’t even be a hundred thousand, but overall, the rough average across the board is about six million per system.
What three-million-strong Republic army can we even talk about under such conditions?!
Don’t make me laugh.
The Jedi alone, of Knight rank and above, number almost fifteen thousand.
Only a third, very roughly, can be considered combatants.
In the canon, as far as I know and remember it, absolutely everyone was mobilized, from healers to archivists, and they commanded, as Generals, no less than a legion each.
Roughly speaking, close to ten thousand fighters each.
And there were units run by officers from the Judicial Corps, and even those led by clones.
Three billion, or at least one, I could still somehow believe.
The CIS included tens of thousands of star systems!
Of course, the lion’s share fell on the Outer Rim worlds — but even on those, millions of beings lived.
What kind of conquest and minimal territorial control is that?
Maybe a couple of companies per system.
Ridiculous.
The “Clone Wars” was a landmark event, not just because of its political and social consequences, but also because it wasn’t a sandbox squabble.
And how would a three-million-strong army, even with the notorious one-to-ten, or even one-to-fifty, efficiency, be able to stand up to the same B-1s?
The industry of just the Trade Federation alone could churn out close to a hundred million of those pathetic robots every month.
And there was also the Techno Union and other large organizations with comparable capabilities.
During the war, if memory serves, planetary armies were also put into service — and there weren’t that few of them, by the way.
The Trade Federation, for the blockade of Naboo, by the way, brought no fewer than several dozen Lucrehulk-class ships.
Just a minute — that vessel has a diameter of three kilometers and is, in fact, a capital-class ship.
A peaceful, defenseless planet, for whose siege an entire fleet of warships was needed.
No joke, a perfectly peaceful planet considered virtually defenseless.
The funniest part is that under local law, this whole fiasco was, or rather will be, treated as a banal dispute between business entities.
In general, here, dealing with competitors or smart-alecks violating copyright is done using lethal weapons and raises no questions from anyone.
The law of the strong in all its glory.
Actually, it was the Force-users who established it.
Whether deliberately or it just happened that way — I won’t presume to judge.
But all wars end by wiping out the enemy leadership, and those who are true patriots and haven’t grasped this rule — well, they’re just unlucky.
History knows dozens of intelligent species destroyed as a biological entity — simply because they didn’t calm down when the Force-users had already put their leaders to rest.
Wild and implausible?
Well, yes, from my point of view.
Just like not using a blaster, not wearing armor, following the Code to the letter, and many other things.
Alright, you don’t go into someone else’s monastery with your own rulebook; time to go swing a sword and build up Force precognition.
The Force is the cornerstone of all “Star Wars” and a completely unknowable something.
It’s not very big on intelligence, though.
Again — my personal opinion.
But it definitely has something like a meaningful will.
A wild combination, but that’s how it is.
Let me put it this way: the Sith are idiots.
How can you, being a little fish in the ocean, consider yourself capable of ruling it?
Crazy.
The Jedi, to draw an analogy, are jellyfish.
Wherever the current takes us, that’s where we drift.
Even onto the shore to dry out under the blazing sun.
Alright, philosophy aside — what’s much more important is the practical side of the matter.
As is known, every Force-sensitive has symbionts in their cells, the so-called midi-chlorians.
Actually, they exist in every living being in this particular faraway galaxy, but that’s beside the point.
For myself, I draw parallels with a cell phone.
You can call and chat with a subscriber using a no-name Chinese handset for a thousand, or with a fancy branded gadget for tens of thousands.
The difference, honestly, again in my opinion, won’t be that great.
Things get much more interesting with sending SMS messages.
While you’re typing something on the first one, you’ll wear your fingers down to the bone.
Applied to the Force-sensitive — it all comes down to the amount of training required to master a particular skill.
That same principle where what’s fearsome isn’t the warrior who repeated a thousand techniques once, but the one who repeated one technique a thousand times.
With my measly seven thousand symbiotes and the future Chosen One, with over twenty thousand, we’ll both choke anyone with basic telekinesis just as effectively the first time, but by the hundredth time, Anakin will be more effective.
Maybe even by orders of magnitude.
Though, somewhere around the thousandth “client,” we’ll probably be killing them just the same as the first.
Completely identical.
Such are the pies with kittens.
Speaking of kittens.
After the blessed dinner and the mandatory hour of meditation, we get free time.
Most spend it in the playroom.
Girls — with dolls, boys — however they like.
Mostly with local computer-type entertainment.
Though the girls don’t shy away from that either, but they still prefer messing around with real toys.
Advanced technology provides a full immersion effect.
A gamer’s dream.
Of course, even little squirts like us, due to our awakened Force sensitivity, can’t fully fool ourselves with illusions, but it’s still cool.
It’s just a shame the selection isn’t rich.
Nothing but simulators.
Clearly, the wise instructors chose the games for the kids with intent.
Like it or not, you’ll learn to control anything that flies, floats, or even just moves around somehow.
Naturally, no one is going to give five-year-olds a full-fledged simulation of a spaceship pilot’s seat, and they don’t let us shoot either, but racing around at breakneck speeds and competing — that’s welcome.
There’s even something like intra-clan and inter-clan competitions.
Both individual and group.
I found it, to put it mildly, a bit boring with my peers.
Since childhood, I preferred strategy games among all genres — which, incidentally, aren’t available here.
Apparently, so we don’t learn to think.
So my favorite games became technical simulators.
There were some of those too, quite advanced.
At the first level, you just bolt a plate onto the hull; at the tenth, you already weld it on; and at the fifteenth, they even give you a hammer, like a sledgehammer, to straighten it out first.
I’m exaggerating, of course, but the principle, I think, is clear.
While the kids, with whoops from under the visors of their bulky helmets, were having fun, building maneuvering and other control skills, I was learning robot assembly and disassembly, repairing ships, and doing other fascinating things.
A Force-user’s virtuoso flying skill relies on the Force, more specifically — precognition.
Flying a ship isn’t like swinging a sword.
The second is based on your personal physical capabilities; the first relies entirely on the technical specs of the machine.
You can twist yourself inside out, but you can’t affect the maximum acceleration, while joint flexibility, agility, reaction time, and physical power can all be improved considerably.
But there’s a nuance: superhuman abilities are built on the basic foundation of the body.
If you can’t do a split without tearing ligaments, no amount of Force will change that on its own.
Again, the very conditional and completely arbitrarily interpreted standards for control interface design lead to the necessity of learning specific equipment from scratch.
So there’s no point in knowing how to steer some particular virtual speeder.
The chance that in real life you’ll have to use a model from another manufacturer is very high.
There might even be a downside: you get used to the throttle being on the right, but it turns out to be on the left, and then you have to waste time monitoring your own actions, scattering your attention.
Forget it, forget it.
With spare parts and other little components and thingamajigs, it’s just the opposite.
Standards are strictly observed, and modular architecture is held in high esteem.
For a zoo like the GFFA — a great achievement.