New life

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16+ chapter ahead. --------------------------------------------------

We parted from Chuu-tal and his padawan almost immediately upon our arrival at the temple. I was handed over to an elderly, stately woman, who escorted me to my new place of residence. It turned out to be just a bunk and a locker in a large room that housed twenty other children besides me. At least, that was how many beds there were in the bedroom. But I only counted fifteen children. I was the sixteenth. I could only hope that it was only temporary. When I grow up, they'll give me my own room. If not... I don't know. With the size of the Temple, to be so stingy? No way, that's crazy.

I opened the closet and inspected the contents. I sighed. I sighed. Two sets of clothes, a pair of boots, a pair of trainers, and nothing. Taking out a container of crystals, I threw an empty backpack on the top shelf. I have nothing to do, so I meditate. I meditate as I know how. I had learned to sense the Force when I was still on the ship, but I had never been able to meditate. I don't know how it was done in my home world, but meditation for the Jedi was... uh... calming the Force. How can I explain it?

To begin with, I felt the Force in the form of a mist. Transparent. A kind of whitish haze that was everywhere. This haze not only enveloped everything and everyone, it was also felt inside everything and everyone. And this haze was in constant motion. Not that the Force was moving back and forth like a hurricane, but that it was moving. And the stronger your emotions, the faster that haze moved. Of course, I mean the part of the Force that is inside the Jedi and the part he controls.

Meditation, on the other hand, helped the Jedi to slow down the movement of the Force within himself, which also affects the "fog" you control. I strongly suspect that the speed... let it be the movement of the Force, affects not the control itself, but what you can do with it. That is, if you take the game analogue of my world, then the ForcePush is a neutral force, and the speed of the "fog" doesn't matter at all for its creation. But for Cure, it is important that the Force be at as much rest as possible.

But that's just a layman's musing. By the way, "my" Force, the one that is in me, is slightly, but different in color from the surrounding one. A little bit lighter. Maybe it's a beginner's delusion, but if not, then Light and Darkness is not an allegory at all. Which means... a lot of things, but for me personally it means that it's not just the speed of the Force that matters for techniques, but also its coloring. And, by the way, yes, thinking about all that, it gets a little scary.

My another pathetic attempt to slow down the flow of the Force within me was interrupted in a rather rude manner. I was patted on the shoulder.

So, as my meditation was interrupted, and it looked like it would not be allowed to continue, I decided to open my eyes.

Fucking hell. What I saw really made me shit my pants. Judging by the upwardly extending triangular head and sand-colored skin, this was the individual I had seen when I entered the room. But it was from the back, for fuck's sake. Now I was watching him up close to me. A lipless, fangless mouth where all normal people like me have a nose. And in place of the cheeks, below the mouth, were moving eyes growing on two stalks. At the end of this theater of horror were little... tentacles, perhaps... growing from the chin.

- Hello," the thing held up a three-fingered palm. - My name is Jiro Giss. I'm from the planet Ongri," he said in a thin voice. - And what is your name?

- Rein Dakari. From the planet Pzob.

- And what do you do? - I didn't answer right away. Or rather, I didn't answer the way I wanted to at first.

- Meditating.

- Wow, you know how to meditate? I've been here for two weeks and no one taught me.

- It took us three weeks to get here. So I asked them to teach me something. It was boring.

- Oh... I see. They don't teach you anything here," he said sadly. - They just make you run, jump, do push-ups...

- Push-ups? - I interrupted him.

- Yeah. They say we're weak," nodded Jiro. - And they're always telling us stories about the Republic.

- The Republic?

- Yes," said another nod. - What have you got there? - He nodded at the container of crystals.

- It was a present from my dad before we left.

- Wow! What is it?

Funny kid. Despite appearances.

- Crystals. - I did not say what they were for. Let him think they were beautiful trinkets. And, in this connection, I added at once. - Beautiful, aren't they?

- Yes, - the child confirmed fascinated.

- And what are they for? - A boy with greenish skin came up to us. If it weren't for that, I would have thought he was human.

- What?" I asked him again, trying to sidestep his question.

- Well... - he hesitated, "What are they for?

I mean, it was a perfectly legitimate question. All right.

- What do you mean?

- Uh... well... oh, okay.

- It was a gift from my dad.

- Oh, I see. - To which I grinned to myself.

So, word for word, I got to know all the inhabitants of the room. No one was embarrassed to come up and look at the beautiful stones.

Of the sixteen children in the room, ten, including me, were of the human race. The rest were a hodgepodge of kids. The guy who came up to me first was Ongrian... or something like that. The one with the greenish skin, the Zabrak, the two Twi'leks, and something... well, something. A face completely covered in white hair, green palms with claws, and a snake body instead of legs. As I later found out, the green-skinned one was Mirialan, the lupo-eyed Jiro was an Ongri, and the Naga parody was a Tisspian. The names of these races didn't tell me anything, though.

The next morning, it turned out that the role of alarm clocks for little ones like us was played by mentors.

- Wake up, younglings," the human Jedi clapped his hands. - Wake up. Great things await you.

This blond-haired, 40-year-old-looking Jedi, I found out later, was Rudy Spack, and he was the overseer of the group of younglings I was in.

- Come on. You're the future Jedi. Can't you handle a little thing like drowsiness?

The first thing I did when I was more or less awake was to fight off my irritation. After all, waking up like that is better than "company, get up." And, come to think of it, I'm back in the army. And there's no headquarters to sit in for the entire term of my service. And the fucking term was "slightly" longer.

Like Jiro said, there was a workout ahead of us, and we went for a run. We got up, got dressed, lined up in the corridor and ran. The corridor was big enough to accommodate two groups of running kids. We proved that by outrunning one such group. They were just getting ready to run, and we didn't even have time to warm up. There were, by the way, children of the same, approximately, age as we were.

The exercise itself took place in the gym, which I could call quite ordinary, but this Jedi love of all things stone..... It looked as if they had put a lot of futuristic machines in the reception hall of some palace, and sparring places between the columns. It was the first time I had ever seen lightsabers. Even though they were instructional and in the wrong hands, they still looked cool.

After the exercise we were all sent to the common shower - a large room with a lot of closed booths. Then there was breakfast, which made me sad. The gruel they fed us was... let's just say, I once again remembered the Russian army. No, seriously, I felt like a conscript again, who yesterday was eating grandma's pirozhki, and already today met the harsh reality. And if someone tells me that there is nothing that can scare someone who has been in our army, I'll punch him in the eye.

After breakfast we were taken to a classroom, where, come to think of it, there wasn't a single chair. Just... uh... very thick mats. I love those Jedi. What's next, are we going to be sent out to earn money?

We walked into the classroom with two other groups of kids-girls and boys. And once we were seated, we waited ten minutes for the tutor, because the Jedi who brought us here hurriedly took off. It was all right, but the morsels I had crammed into me for breakfast had time to fit in. In the meantime, two more groups of kids joined us. I counted as many as seventy-eight of them, of both sexes and different races. In one fucking place.

The mentor who came to teach us was a man. A very old man. His name was Eilan Radau, a tall, stately grandfather, not bent by years. Standing opposite us and looking around the hall, he said:

- Today, younglings, we are to speak of the First Chancellor who took office in the year 25018 before the Great Resynchronization. - What? What re-synchronization? - For those from distant planets still counting down from the Ruusan Reform, four years ago the Republic's Bureau of Standards and Measures introduced a new measure of time, so the Republic is now in its fourth year since the Great Resynchronization.

Cool. So I left my planet in the year nine hundred and sixty-nine and landed on Coruscant in the fourth. It was like being in a time machine, yeah.

While I was thinking about the size of the DDG, the old man began his story. And you know what I'll tell you? Propaganda! But it's talented propaganda. Told with a flame and entertaining enough to interest children of four or five years old. But personally, I don't believe that the newly elected senators would put anyone above them without debate. And to listen to this Radau, the First Chancellor was a knight without fear or reproach. But, to repeat, he told a fascinating story, pity it was only about things too far away. But this lecture did give me something I really needed. I mean the dates. I remember that the Republic, the Old Republic, had existed for about twenty-five thousand years, but I do not remember the exact date. It's quite possible, and I'm sure it is, that after the number twenty-five, there's something other than zeros. In any case, I live in the last millennium of the Old Republic, and that is at least some clarification. There's a chance that I'm in a time of peace.

After history class we were directed to what you would think was the gym. Where we did two more hours of physical education. After that there was a lesson in... Um... basic galactic language. That's the general one. Of course, they didn't teach us how to speak it, but how to read and write it. We are still children, in case anyone has forgotten. After that we were sent to lunch, which was better than breakfast, but not by much. In any case, there was already solid food. After lunch... yes, yes, the gym. Then there was a theology class, in which we were told, very conventionally, what the light side of the Force was and how bad the dark side was. At first I even tried to get into it, but alas: four years old is not the right age to be told something serious. There was a banal, albeit interestingly presented, brainwashing. I was not even drawn to sleep.

And then, finally, dinner. That's what I thought at first. But, alas, after that, we were again awaiting that vile, a thousand times cursed, gym. After which even a super active creature, which are children, pecked his nose. It wasn't the easiest day of my life. I barely made it to the shower, almost fell asleep there, somehow made it to my bunk bed, where I passed out, remembering all the Jedi of the Galaxy. And at the beginning of the day I also wanted to meditate. Heh, naive. No big deal. I don't know about the other races, but humans are a creature that gets used to everything. As long as the training wasn't meant to be.