Jokes and Blasters

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20+ chapter ahead. -----------------------------------------------

A week after that incident, I met Yoda. Strictly speaking, it wasn't just me, but the whole group, but I didn't think about such matters at the time. That day, as usual, we gathered in one of the small lecture halls, where Lairi was teaching us about the Force, except that the Twi'lek herself was not there. Now that was unusual. The woman came five minutes later, but not alone, but with a little green man who did look a bit like Goblin. A much older goblin.

- Well, younglings, are you ready to learn? - said Lairi, looking at us with a smile. - But first I want you to meet Master Yoda. He is the one who will be studying with you today. Please welcome him.

- Good afternoon, Master Yoda," we said, indistinctly.

- Greetings, younglings, and you, me," And the voice is just like in the movies. - You're all so big," he grunted. - They must be strong.

- You take care of them, Master Yoda, and I must be going. - Then Lairi departed, leaving us with this... ahem, Master.

- I want to talk about balance... - Yoda began his lecture.

I thought at that moment that they were going to start talking about balance in the Force. But no, they weren't. As it turned out, Yoda was talking about physical balance. That is, roughly speaking, how to stand and not to fall. He could not help remarking at the end that the balance of his body is the first step to a balance in himself, which leads to a balance with the Universe. Well, that's how it was supposed to end in the end. It's not like he was teaching us physical exercises.

After the lecture itself, he began to teach us to feel the "center of balance. According to him, it is a certain straight line that runs through the whole body and rests on the ground. When we feel it, we will fall very seldom, and when we merge with this line, it will be very difficult to drop us.

So, actually, after these words I had a question.

- Master Goblin, may I ask you a question? - Oh, shit, that's not what I said.

- Yoda is my name. I'm listening," he nodded, not even wincing.

- Uh... - What's the big deal? - Yogurt ?

- Yoda," he corrected me.

- Johannesburg?

- I was born Yoda," he scratched his temple with his wand.

- Joachim?

- Yoda is my name," the dwarf closed his eyes.

- Yemen?

- Yoda was also my name today.

- Yodel?

- In your dreams, perhaps.

- Yohan?

- Hmm, hmm," he chewed his lips. - I think I prefer Yoda.

- Yorkshire terrier?

- I don't know of such a beast.

- Mmm...

- You can call me Goblin.

Hmm, it just... feels like I've been beaten. Whatever.

- So, Master Yoda...

- Ahem, ahem... - he coughed.

- Excuse me, Master Goblin. Well, here goes. Why do you teach us the sense of balance and not the swordsmanship instructor? Well, or in gym class?

He didn't answer right away. He stood and looked at me strictly, then sighed and said:

- I do not teach you how to fight physically, but to see the world. This is only the first lesson, only the beginning. To feel your center, - he knocked his stick on the floor, - to feel yourself, - he pointed it at me, - to feel the world, - he looked around, - to feel its balance. - And then he hit the floor again, softly. - Flexibility is important in fencing, they show you. Physical flexibility, the kind you need to fight. If you don't know it, your instructor will make a mistake by shifting you to the physical balance.

- So now," I scratched my nose, "we are ready... to learn balance," I hummed at the end.

- Ready at any moment reasonable to do so. Now," he hesitated, picking his words, "it wouldn't hurt your mentors, in their training of the younglings.

- I see," I muttered, understanding little. - Master, may I call you Yorkshire Terrier?

- They call me Yoda," the Master muttered blankly.

***

- Listen, Dzik, - I distracted the technician from his work, - what do you think is better - PP-7 or PP-14?

- What?" he asked again, getting out of the casing of the huge speeder, and looking at the parts I was holding, he specified. Hmm. A little wrong question," he rubbed the back of his forehead. - Though they have the same name, they're designed for slightly different purposes. The Seven is more for performing a lot of acrobatic tricks, while the FP-14 is more for endurance. For example, if you want your droid to do lots of somersaults and be pretty agile, you'd better put PP-7, and if you want your droid to be able to drop it, you'd put PP-14.

- I see," I said. - But can a droid run with PP?

- Sure. And run, and jump. The point is, it would do better.

- I see. Thank you," I thanked, looking at the two balls in my hands, black and gray.

- You're welcome," said the bald technician. - Hey, have you seen a peg-peg anywhere? - He asked, looking around.

- ? - I've got my mind off it. - Pims, I think he's got it.

- What a brute," the mustachioed man said, a little confused. - Don't we have any more plasma torches? Why the hell do they keep taking it away from me?

- I don't know. But Pims had one about three weeks ago.

- How come I don't know about that?

- Because you've been messing with that bus for three weeks. And I thought I told you about it.

- Uh... have you? Mm-hmm. All right, I'll go figure it out.

And while he was figuring out the number of plasma torches, I wondered what would be best for my droid. On the one hand dexterity rules, but on the other no droid can match the Jedi in that regard. Flexibility or balance? Whatever. Let him be a bouncing droid. A bouncing droid is easier to catch.

By the way, lately I've been using Force Forging to assemble the droid. More precisely, the basics that I managed to master. Not for the sake of making the droid better, of course, since I don't have enough knowledge for that. But I could do it for training.

As it turned out, melting metals really wasn't as easy as shaping them. You had to feel... the essence of the object... I guess so. The instructor called it integrity, but I don't think that's quite the right definition. Though perhaps everyone sees it differently. And if one assembles the molten metal into some form without this understanding or not fully conforming to it, the object breaks very easily. Even I could break a metal cube like some graphite. So I had to be very careful when working with the droid. I didn't really melt anything, but I tweaked it, so to speak, but even that small impact could ruin the whole job if I didn't notice a mistake in time. And yes, it wasn't just metals that I was getting good at, but other materials as well. Plastic, for example.

In general, the assembly went pretty fast, and if I didn't try to figure out what I was doing, which part was better and why, how it worked, what could be replaced with it, and whether it was possible, it would have gone even faster. But I was in no hurry, expecting to finish the shell by the end of the conditional school year. After that, I would start working on the droid's "brains". Which, in my opinion, would be no less difficult, and even more so. After all, I have no one to help me here.

Continuing to stare at the gyroscopes, I suddenly thought: why don't I try "probing" the balls in my hands? Of course, it's not a piece of metal, but it's a complex structure, but I'm not going to change anything there. I just want to take a peek.

Anyway, I couldn't help myself. Holding the gyroscopes still in my palms, I sat a small amount of the Force on them, just enough to form a connection, through which I would "scan". And the first thing I did was try to make sense of the stuffing in the balls. Alas, there was so much mixed in there that it was beyond my knowledge to try to comprehend it. I was about to give up, but then I thought, why should I realize anything? No, really. When you think about it, all metal is not that simple. I, for example, don't know what its structure is and why it exists at all, but nevertheless I can feel its harmony. So why not do the same here? In short, after thinking for a few minutes, I decided to take the risk, after all, they are not so expensive, these gyroscopes.... Well, okay, I lie - expensive, but I can pay for a couple of them. Besides, the PP-14 was bought at my expense. I just didn't know at the time that Dzik had a part as good as this one.

I exhaled sharply and tuned in again to the objects in my hands, but this time I didn't try to look inside, but imagined the balls as a whole. First I "felt" the part itself, then I "felt" it through the Force, then I combined feelings and sensations and finally I was able to... probably still feel some irregularity inside the gyroscopes. I tried to understand in more detail and lost my way, because, as already mentioned, I could not make out what was going on inside there. I repeated the procedure and when I again felt something that should have been wrong, purely out of habit I sent a pulse inside one of the gyroscopes, which was supposed to fix everything. To make it clearer, it's like a tablecloth on a table - everything seems normal, but little creases catch the eye. Now I've just made those "creases" smooth out in one fell swoop.

- Oh," I froze when I heard a rather loud click.

- Oh," Jik came up from behind me, "that's the last working peg. What are you standing there for?

- Um... Listen, Zik, I have a favor to ask of you. I need you to test this part.

- RR-7? What's wrong with it?

- Well... I... I don't... I don't really like it. Am I a Jedi, after all, or am I not?

- Hmm, okay. I'll check it out.

- Just hurry up, okay? Just so I can finally make a choice.

- All right, all right, you're in a hurry. I'll test it tomorrow morning.

- Thanks, Zik. You're the best man in the world.

- Yeah, well... - ...he was a little embarrassed, the best.

- For this particular youngling, no doubt.

Phew, I think I got that off my chest. After that snap, something must have broken there. I kind of had nothing to do with it, I just smelled something.... Man, that's childish. You have to be able to take responsibility for your actions. And I certainly will, but some other time. Yeah, definitely. Damn, what was I supposed to "click" in my gyro?

- Oh-ho-ho. You embarrassed the bald one out of me," Jik rubbed that part of his head. - What are you going to do now?

- Yes, I think I will," I glanced at my watch. - I even have time to meditate. Not long, really, but as long as I have. All right, Dzik, see you tomorrow.

- See you tomorrow, kid.

- Derosh," I said to the droid standing in front of R3T1 Dzik, "don't shit on the boss, and cuss with all your heart. - In response I heard two droids squeaking at once. I didn't know binary very well yet, but I understood that a couple of tin cans were terribly indignant. - Yeah, yeah, Arthritis," I hummed, "and you, too.

"Arthritis," in case anyone didn't get it, is my free reinterpretation of the name R3T1. ar, three, te. The last digit, I decided to ignore. Not entirely accurate, well, so it is free. How nice that the local folklore, too, mate zigzag, otherwise such a joke would have to forget.

The next day our group had a new lesson - shooting training. For fifty minutes we were given a lecture on the various shooting things, their use, their dangers to us, to the enemy, when we could use them, when not, and, of course, safety procedures. Finally, we were each handed a training blaster and allowed to shoot at the target. And let me tell you, it was cool. Almost as cool as a lightsaber. In my world, I'd only fired it twice. Both times in winter, and both times five rounds each. And a shooting range in the winter and in the army is no way cool. And a M-16. It's not that the M-16 is bad, it's just... well... it's just a M-16. And here, albeit a training blaster! It shoots glowy shit. No recoil. All around me was sci-fi, the sci-fi I had known since childhood, but it was moments like this that I could feel it even by the tips of my hair. Not the holograms, not the spaceships I'd never even seen, not the sight of Coruscant outside my window, but the lightsaber, the blaster, and the telekinesis.

Shot after shot, I watched the blaster's charge go off into the target, and listened to that funny "pow" sound. Shot after shot. And another, and another. Na, bitch, na, na, na!

- Dakari! - Uh-oh, I think I've been playing around. - Who have I been talking to for the last hour? - My mentor came up to me. - How many times do I have to tell you that a blaster is not a shooting toy? Or do you think you're in the entertainment center? Or maybe the whole Order is just a playground to you? - Then he glanced at my shooting screen. - Dakari! Nineteen shots and only six points? Even a blind man can shoot better than that. My grandmother shoots better with her left foot! What kind of a result is that, Dacari!? Why don't you say something, youngling? Answer me!

What a screamer, huh? What does he want to hear?

- Well... I'm only six years old, so I thought six points...

- Ah six years.... There are three hundred and sixty-eight days in a year, youngling," he said benevolently, and then suddenly he abruptly went back to shouting. - So why do I see six points and not two thousand two hundred and eight!

- Because it's against the laws of physics?

- Telekinesis is also against the laws of physics, but you use it, don't you? Or don't you know how to use it either?! - Oh, man, he's gonna come up with something for every answer I give him. I'd better keep my mouth shut. I'll pretend to be sorry.

And why, indeed, he shouted? I'm really only six years old, can't he cut me some slack? In short, he talked for about five minutes, stealing my time to shoot, but then, at last, he finished and went away, and I went back to my previous occupation.

A shot, another one. A glance at the screen, thirty-eight points. That's a little low. Aim, shoot, look at the screen. Aim again. Shoot again, again, again. Damn, but how I love this activity. Shot, shot, shot... Here, bitch, here. What'd you eat? More...

- Dakari!

Fucking hell.