The skydocks were a miasma of activity, an odyssey of expansion, an era of appropriation. Ships of every conceivable size, shape, and model cruised by at a multitude of speeds, defying gravity and with every possible articulation of purpose. Peddling cheap wares, laboring cargo, offering services, enforcing laws, enlightening scriptures, transporting tourists....the motivations for the myriad of pilots and carrier was as diverse as the galaxy itself.
Eric sidestepped a cadre of wounded soldiers returning from a devastating disaster on a faraway war on a forgotten planet. he medical facilities here were the closest that could treat their unique wounds. "Excuse me?" he asked the least wounded of the soldiers. "Can you possibly direct me to the Spire of Winter?"
The man's sunken eyes burned with the sorrows of a thousand witnessed tragedies. "No," he said simply. "But since you asked something of me, may I do the same?" From his pocket he withdrew a circular transparent dome, a hemispherical contraption embedded within a many-buttoned holding disc containing a 4G Lightweight Bolster-Infused Gyro-balanced power supply. "I've no family and no means to live. I'll see my love again when all the breath has left my body. Please give an old shell of a man the means to eat for another night." Thumbing a button on the case, the globe burst forth with color and substance, forming a 3D model of a fascinating landscape. An old amphitheater, pockmarked and barren on the shredded world of Deneter, was to be the site of conqest for the war between man and machine. On the screen it was a rather elegant inside, with many rich tapestries and elaborate designs. Eric saw infantry droids running everywhere, sniper droids up on the stands, shooting down, and a commander droid directing from the back of the amphitheater. The rafters were too narrow for droids to balance on, but one, called the confetti rafter, was very wide and built to support more weight, and droids were shooting from up there. As the shooting and chaos continued, Eric thought of the men that must have been killed by tens charging up the wide open, coverless fields to reach the theater.
On the screen, a missile blasted through the ceiling of the amphitheater and exploded into the ground in a fiery whirlwind of flame. On the screen, a droid was silhouetted among the fire as it dove out of the flame, rolled, and came up. Eric was momentarily shocked to see a commander's epaulets written in Aurebesh on its back. It looked at the commander, picked up a blaster on the ground, and then was swallowed up by the wave of droids hectically retreating toward the back exit of the amphitheater. After their escape, the screen was rather still, except for the fire from the missile slowly growing and eating the entire theater. Eventually, soldiers rushed onscreen and started trying to extinguish the flames and look for remaining survivors. On the screen, Eric could see soldiers being swallowed up by flames. Eric almost felt sick, and tried tapping the screen to stop the holovid, but it kept playing.
The plaque talked about how a platoon of droids, deployed here from Zonama Sekot, held off the soldiers for some time, but finally a pyro-missile penetrated the stronghold and forced the droids to retreat. Even so, the battle is considered a Separatist victory, since the retreating droids were able to escape without being captured by the soldiers, which was the soldiers’ primary objective for the entire battle. Apparently, one droid had top-secret information, and the soldiers could not stop it from relaying the info back to the Separatist leaders. "Only two quid," the man croaked in a gravelly voice, a voice weighed down by the barren vestiges of time.
"I apologize, but perhaps once I've located the Spire of Winter." Eric continued on his walk, climbing over many palettes of a foreign substance racked to the seams with illegal products. Security was high on this planet, but in many circuits it was not unheard of for law enforcement to look the other way for the benefit of high-class traders and their contraband.
One such man was cataloguing his wares using a sheet of transparent clippings with a dragonfly pen. When first he saw the sprightly youth approach, his furrowed eyebrows twitched in trepidation, but his seasoned eyes soon typecasted Eric as a harmless landlubber not worth his time. "Pardon me my good man," offered Eric. "I am looking for the Spire of winter. Can you direct me?"
"I'll only talk if you're looking to buy," the man growled. Casting his hands over his wares, he briefly cast his eyes across his selection. "I risked my life for these goods, more than any man here. I originally worked for a Black Sun Boss, named Veneda. One day, a creature, I later learned it was called a Ghosp, came by, claiming to want to work for Black Sun. Called himself ëXanadu.’ He had black and red tattoos covering his entire face, and his eyes glowed red.
I brought him to Veneda where with a single double bladed scimitar he killed every being in the office. For reasons I don’t know, he let me go alive. ëSomeone needs to,’ he told me. Exact words."
The man took a puff on his tobacco-free e-cigarette. "Then he blew up the entire station. I barely got away in a stolen ship. I flew to New Rome, where I warned the head of Black Sun, Headmaster Lex. He had scores of the Galaxy’s fiercest men defending the fortress, and all his dons had bodyguards as well. Xanadu still got in. Killed every one, single-handedly. Would’ve killed me, too, but I played a final, desperate trick.” The man unlocked a metal pouch on his belt, and drew out a glass vial. Inside was a very strange-looking substance. “Xabar Paralyzing fungus. From Xagobah. Shuts down all your life systems; you stop breathing, seeing, thinking, living. You’re practically dead, except it only lasts for about thirty minutes, based on how much you use. A single touch’ll do it. It saved my life that day.” He stashed the vial back in his pouch. “When I woke up, I’m guessing about an hour later, he was nowhere. I searched the entire fortress. Nobody was alive. I robbed the place of as much stuff as I could find, and believe me, there was a lot. Credits, gold, dÈcor, documents, everything. I escaped with a normal security landspeeder, and started a very generous bank account with Medici. I never told anyone about Xanadu or what happened on New Rome. I didn’t want Xanadu to catch word of my survival. I heard stories about a different person who survived there, and blabbed to the feds. He met his just desserts, and I was scared to death that Xanadu would somehow find out about me, and finish the job cleanly." His eyes bore into Eric uncomfortably. "But poverty has stayed my hand, and I must take to the streets again. Purchase something, anything, and I may help you locate the Spire of Winter. But not the fungus. I will never live a day without my fungus."
Eric exhaled for the first time in the story. "I shall examine the prices of your competitors and let you know," he said politely. Leaving the man, he seeked out the spaceport information booth. The man on the other end was of a studently persuasion, and removed his crooked nose from the book he was reading to examine his customer. His mouth spoke no words, but his body language conveyed a desire that Eric ask his question and then leave the man be. "Good sir," began Eric, "I have been trying fruitlessly for hours to locate someone who could direct me to the Spire of Winter. I fear that no mean on this port is intelligent enough to merely give me a simple clear and concise map to the the ship of my choice."
"Well, if it's smarts you're looking for, I'm your man," the young man responded, with an airy politeness that put Eric's blue-collar etiquette to shame. "I'm studying to become a major of philosotology at the University of Wan. Its very prestigious, one must already master a certain field of study before they'll even glance at your application. Personally, I specialize in the anatomy of the extinct Sematur cat. It is a rarity of its breed, a feline that consumes only plantlike, the only herbivore in its genus. Native only to the Bonlaucian system, it has long curved eyeteeth, like a Saber-toothed cat, but the Sematur's teeth are flat and bowled, like a spoon, as it uses them only to dig for roots. A few months after becoming a scientist, I discovered a small vestigial bone located below and to the left of a Sematur's torso. This bone, to my understanding, serves no purpose, but remains there for the entire lifetime. Whatever purpose it may have served in the past has become the subject of debate by those in the field. It has been dubbed, as a joke, the ëJose bone’, since ëjose’ is similar to the Wan word for "super useless". The discovery bought me some credibility as a scientist, and also helped me fund my trips to the neighboring planet of Roon. Roon is home to the legendary Roon stones, which are very valuable, and can store vast amounts of information. They are very useful for storing all of my data, though they are rare, and I usually only pick up around two or three a trip. However, one Roon stone can hold 5 terabytes of data, so I try to keep a few handy.
The man cleared his throat. "Though I need all the data I can get my hands on, for I have an unfortunate malady; my father was crossbred with a mayfly, and hybrids of my sort live five years for every one human year. I am really only sixteen years old, though I have the body of thirty-two year old. I age so fast; I’ll be lucky to live to forty. Lately, I’ve been trying to reverse the effects of the growth acceleration. I’ve kidnapped a fellow hybrid, and recently I’ve been using testing DNA samples to find the code or mutation that causes growth acceleration. The results finally came in. It’s more than just a mutation; it’s a completely altered genetic code. hybrid chromosomes are different from normal human chromosomes, the molecular level re-wrote a new form of genetic makeup where the growth acceleration is normal, and unalterable.
"That's terrible!" gasped Eric.
His storyteller nodded sagely. "If this was all, I’d be doomed. However, I’ve also discovered that hybrid makeup is highly unstable. Not in a physical case; there’s no way a hybrid could genetically unbalance in normal circumstances. But in a laboratory, with scientists running various tests and diagnoses, it’s possible to create factors that significantly alter a hybrid’s genetic make-up. This I found out at the expense of my test-hybrid. But I didn’t need another test subject: I already had the data. If I could alter my own make-up by running certain molecular tests on myself, I might be able to re-organize myself into a growth-acceleration-free being. It won’t be easy. I already have an entire lab on Tyrault being prepared. It will not be ready for another few years, and I have used my entire credit-bank to build it up where it is. I have been forced to borrow hundreds of credits from various sources, one of which being my close friend Naga. I have laid out the entire operation, step by step. Hopefully, what will happen is that I will be placed in a diagnostic chair, then my team of highly-specialized Wan assistants will first put me into a self-induced coma, and then perform various chemical tests at precise times, to hopefully alter my genetic code into an unorganized-yet-functional formation. My assistants will carefully re-synchronize my original set of base chromosomes so that they match normal humans. They will one-by-one alter the other sets. Others will merely remove the old chromosome material and attempt to copy already-changed chromosomes. Eventually, I will have a new complete set of normal human chromosomes for every set of hybrid chromosomes removed. I will be kept on life support while doctors use surgical operations to fix any strange alterations in my face and outer features. When I wake from my coma, I should be a normal human being. There is almost a zero percent chance that this will work, especially since nothing like it has ever been attempted. Even if it does work, I will still be a sixteen year old with a thirty-two year-old’s body. Nevertheless, I am determined to follow through with it. And that is why I work part time at the skydock information booth, to augment my funds and afford all this technology."
"Now that's a backstory worth donating to!" exclaimed Eric, handing the man all his money. "I don't even care that information is free, and technically you should have to answer my question regardless of any tip. But as a show of good faith, can you answer my question about the location of the Spire of Winter?"
"The Spire of Winter is not here at the moment," the man replied, pocketing his funds. "There are no current plans for it to return." Closing the window of his booth, he turned the sign so it read 'CLOSED'.
Eric glanced at his allies. "Well, it appears we are at an impasse," he sighed dejectedly.
