I’m now ten years old by the standard Galactic calendar.
My first real milestone.
Birthdays were not really celebrated on Tatooine.
Life revolved around harvest seasons and moisture yields, and the Lars family was no exception.
The local calendar did not even match the standard galactic one.
To make matters worse, I did not actually know Luke’s real birthday.
The date listed in the records was obviously fabricated and off by nearly half a year.
Then again, official paperwork was not exactly popular on Tatooine.
Honestly, I nearly gave myself a headache trying to understand how authority on this planet actually functioned.
My greatest achievement that year was finally being enrolled in the local school, grandly named the Agricultural Academy, in the nearby settlement of Anchorhead.
Calling it a town would have been generous by galactic standards, though by Tatooine’s standards it practically qualified as a metropolis.
More importantly, it meant I was finally allowed to leave the moisture farm on a regular basis and begin exploring the world.
Well…
Tatooine, at least.
I embraced that opportunity enthusiastically.
It added some much-needed variety to what had previously been a painfully repetitive schedule of Force training, helping around the farm, devising plans for future galactic domination, repairing droids old enough to remember Chancellor Valorum’s administration, exercising, and sleeping.
Qui-Gon Jinn’s Force ghost continued appearing from time to time, though never with any consistency.
The man clearly had only a vague grasp of time.
Over the previous six months, his visits had become less frequent, but once I gradually abandoned childish whining in favor of speaking like an actual adult, he became far more willing to discuss the history of the Republic and everyday life within the Jedi Order.
Sometimes it felt as though he was adapting an ancient Jedi youngling curriculum to suit the current state of the galaxy.
At the very least, there was remarkably little preaching about peace and diplomacy.
Recently, he had told me about the Ruusan campaign and the war between the Army of Light and the Brotherhood of Darkness.
Naturally, he skipped the parts involving children my age being thrown into battle as expendable soldiers, but even the sanitized version left quite an impression.
Lord Hoth was simultaneously insane and incredibly impressive.
I still was not entirely sure what lesson Qui-Gon had intended me to take away from that story.
Whether it was this is what a Jedi should do or this is exactly what a Jedi should never do remained frustratingly unclear.
Apart from school, two other developments occupied most of my attention.
The first was Uncle Owen beginning to teach me how to operate the family’s aging X-34 landspeeder.
It was hardly surprising.
Frontier families taught useful skills as early as possible, and I enjoyed every second of it.
Unfortunately, I still could not lift Owen’s ancient blaster rifle without assistance from the Force.
Judging by its appearance, the weapon might have personally participated in one of the old Sith Wars.
That was fine.
There was plenty of time.
Besides, at my current level, it was probably easier to drive a Force-enhanced knife through an angry Tusken Raider’s forehead than haul that relic around all day.
Naturally, nobody trusted me behind the controls without supervision, but I fell in love with repulsorlift vehicles almost immediately.
Perhaps there was simply something irresistible about flying above the ground.
Or perhaps the Skywalker genes were speaking.
After all, the original Luke would eventually jump from piloting a civilian airspeeder to flying an X-wing starfighter and somehow survive.
The Force certainly helped.
I had no intention of relying on miracles quite that heavily, but piloting was one of those skills that was never wasted in this galaxy.
The second development was considerably more interesting.
Constant exposure to large numbers of people, combined with Qui-Gon’s guidance and my steadily improving command of the Force, finally convinced me my control was precise enough to begin experimenting with practical telepathy.
Obi-Wan’s little mind trick had left a lasting impression.
I was certain the Jedi possessed an official name for the art of rummaging through another person’s thoughts, but Qui-Gon clearly had no intention of teaching those techniques to a ten-year-old Luke anytime soon.
That left experimentation.
I refused to practice on Owen or Beru.
There were several reasons.
First, there was the possibility of being caught, whether by Obi-Wan or Qui-Gon.
If my teacher concluded he had accidentally nurtured the larval form of a future Dark Jedi and stopped appearing altogether, I would lose my only dependable source of knowledge for years.
Even worse, Obi-Wan might decide that eliminating one potentially dangerous child was preferable to risking another Darth Vader.
After all…
He had a spare Skywalker.
Leia existed.
Second, there was the possibility of making a catastrophic mistake.
The sort of mistake that left me homeless, penniless, and stranded on Tatooine.
Even if Obi-Wan eventually intervened, deliberately creating problems for myself seemed idiotic.
Most importantly, I genuinely cared about Owen and Beru.
Maybe it was not love.
Not yet.
But it was certainly affection.
Luke, somewhere deep inside me, screamed that the Lars family had to survive their eventual encounter with Imperial stormtroopers.
To make that happen, canon would have to break.
Of everyone in this galaxy, Owen and Beru felt the most human.
Perhaps it was impossible not to care about people who had spent years feeding you, raising you, and changing your diapers without expecting anything in return.
As a result, experimentation on family members was officially declared unethical.
Persuading them through ordinary conversation later?
Perfectly acceptable.
Melting their brains with the Force?
Absolutely not.
So I found other test subjects.
My classmates.
Teachers.
Random strangers.
Anyone unfortunate enough to cross my path.
I had no desire to torment children, so with them I limited myself to subtle emotional nudges, gently encouraging feelings of trust, friendship, and goodwill.
One teacher, however, became an unfortunate lesson.
A Rodian instructor.
My first serious attempt at directly entering another person’s mind seemed successful right up until the moment he nearly choked to death while taking a drink from his flask.
Fortunately, Qui-Gon never appeared outside the Lars homestead and remained blissfully unaware of my extracurricular activities.
Meanwhile, my classmates received carefully cultivated emotional associations connected to Luke Lars.
Trust.
Friendship.
Loyalty.
The plan was to build a dependable network over several years of gradual influence.
At least, that was the theory.
One worked with the resources available.
Besides, several of Luke’s future friends would eventually distinguish themselves.
The potential already existed.
Our little circle eventually absorbed most of the human children in Anchorhead around my age.
The human-heavy composition was not intentional.
There simply were not many children nearby.
The Rodians largely kept to themselves, while everyone else was either too old to influence effectively or too young to be useful.
Naturally, the undisputed leader of our gang was Luke Lars.
That surname had been my idea.
After sensing strange disturbances in the Force and discussing them with Qui-Gon, I had convinced Owen and Beru, through relentless pleading and strategically deployed whining, to register me under the Lars name whenever possible.
Not that paperwork mattered much on Tatooine.
My equivalent of a birth certificate had only been created a few months before school enrollment.
Specifically for school enrollment.
Nothing else.
The situation actually made perfect sense.
Neither Hutts nor Tusken Raiders cared about identification papers.
As for the Imperial administration, it technically existed.
It even accepted bribes at the spaceports.
Actually challenging the Hutts, however, was an entirely different matter.
The two biggest troublemakers in our group were Janek “Tank” Sunber and Biggs Darklighter.
Enhanced memory, sharpened by the Force, immediately informed me that both would eventually play roles in future events.
Unfortunately…
Both of them would also die.