Categories > Movies > Star Wars > You Became to Me (this is the working title, please note!)
A mix of descendants from an earlier penal colony and farmers and traders who came to the world for one reason or another (generally involving too few credits to relocate to a properly designated agricultural world or a need to disappear somewhere off their creditor’s radars) before the wave of desperate immigrants fleeing from either the conflicts leading up to the galactic-wide civil war or else the devastation of the Clone Wars themselves came to the planet, the so-called Oldtimers of Nam Chorios are a tenaciously sturdy lot, as much out of simple necessity as due to any inborn sense of independence or stubborn determination. Their world – a desolate planet in the Outer Rim Territories constantly buffeted by high winds, plagued by eerie violent electrical storms, shockingly bare of vegetation (being covered instead almost entirely by a lunatic jumble of heaped ridges, columns, pinnacles, buttresses, and mountainous crags of flashing iridescent crystalline rock, the solid stone interspersed with seemingly endless dessert vistas of brilliantly shimmering gravel and finely ground dust, as if some planet-wide sea had long ago sunk away and left its foam behind in a multi-hued opaline scrim of solidified salt and glass), and constantly in a state of light-shot dusk, due to the combination of its dim sun and the light-catching crystals in the planet’s rock – is not a gentle or kind place to live. Between an insufficient supply of easily accessible groundwater, an anemic sun, the poor quality of what little real soil there is, among the crystalline grit scoured away into dust by the ceaseless winds, and the ever-present danger of the drochs – which cannot be allowed off-planet for fear of another galactic-wide plague that would eventually be traced to Nam Chorios and, one way or the other, result in that world’s destruction, resulting in a perpetual state of self-quarantine for both the planet and its inhabitants – the lives of the Oldtimers are filled with hardship and toil, with little time left over for such frivolities as gazing up at the sky.
So when a group of ten Oldtimers on their rounds of a communal farmstead hear a faint whistle growing quickly to a sudden howl (in a din of noise which sounds, to the superstitious farmers, rather like the sound a woman who has just learned of her husband’s death might make), their first thought is to take shelter rather than to look up. Being out in the open barrens, though, they soon find their eyes turning up towards the morning skies – just in time to see what appears to be a silvery bullet tear its way down through the atmosphere, accompanied by the unfamiliar hum and whine of thrusters. The craft rapidly resolves to a bubble-shaped object plummeting through the sky, spinning about and see-sawing in the open air as if trying to choose a place to land. Quad engines slow its descent with a thunderous noise. Then, less than a kilometer from where the farmers are frozen in shock, the object slams into the shimmering gravel dunes like an angry fist thumping violently into the stomach of a dishonest merchant. A high-flying, fountain-like spray of nacreous dust and crystalline sand instantly shoots upwards, the pale cloud of grit embracing a plume of dark soot at its heart.
When the shock gripping the group has worn off sufficiently to allow speech, there is some argument about the proper response – the ship or lifepod or whatever it is that’s apparently crashed so near to them seems very near to being too big to have been let purposefully past the planet’s defensive guns, though the guns are old enough that it is possible that they might have simply failed to find their target – but the farmers are all poor, and the opportunity for scavenging among and perhaps even salvaging enough of the downed craft to create another vessel out of its parts is simply too good a prospect to ignore. So the men end up rushing across the sandy ground, turning their riding animals towards the intertwined plume of smoke and pillar of dust that marks the impact of the crashed ship and hurrying towards it. By the time they reach the impact crater, the thoroughly taxed cu-pas are all winded and their riders are not in much better condition, panting with excitement after air that comes only after a struggle, their hot breath smothered by the protective cloths they all wear over their mouths. After cresting the edge of the crater, though, they pause, high on the lip of excavated sandy dirt, alert for any danger, not quite so foolish as to simply rush straight in, no matter how great the sense of urgency currently gripping them.
Glassy smears of superheated silica have splattered like droplets of blood from a messily spurting wound all along the ground, and inside the pit there is a mechanical object about the size of two large men resting against the ground, with mysterious protrusions and components that hum and move about with increasing noise and energy, awakening now that the craft has touched down (though whether it has actually landed or simply crashed in a somewhat controlled manner is difficult to tell). The strange metallic body, encased by what appears to be braided fibers of slick carbonite, is still smoking slightly from the heat of reentry. The farmers rapidly agree that it is, after all, much too small to have been carrying passengers, and therefore also too small to have attracted the attention of the planet’s defenses. So whatever the crashed spacecraft is, it likely isn’t an actual ship of some kind. They are discussing what the pod might actually be (given that its relatively diminutive size would seem to preclude the presence of biological passengers) when the lights flashing erratically from among the tangled welter of strange cord-like coverings and mechanical components suddenly begin to blink brighter, and the probe’s sides open up like dragon wings, unfolding to expose the mass of mechanical limbs, articulated claws, and all manner of complex machinery tucked away inside. Ten pairs of stunned eyes stare dumbly, uncomprehendingly, down on a complex array of scanners, processors, and engines of investigation and destruction, dazzled by mirrorlike power converters as they spread themselves out in the weak sun, focusing and bouncing that faint light back in a harshly powerful glare.
Eventually, after several long minutes of stunned silence and inaction, one of the farmers – a brash young man named Maharim, still in his teens and reckless as only an energetic youth with enough of his dreams intact to still be restless and unhappy with his apparent lot in life can be – dismounts from his cu-pa and unceremoniously starts to slide his way purposefully down the churned sand at the edge of the scorched pit. His voice filled with a potent combination of simple wonder and basic greed, the stripling exclaims, “Imagine what this thing will be worth in trade, in town! If I get to it first, I should receive the largest salvage share!”
The others laugh a little nervously, casting uncertain and gauging glances at once another. When the teen pauses to look back up at them, one of the older men hastens to reassuringly offer, “If you are successful, you’ll get an extra share.”
The brash young man grins up at them happily and continues on towards the device. He stops again halfway down the loose slope, looking suspiciously at the device, which continues to vibrate and thump noisily. Strangely nonrigid swaying components extrude arms and legs, while weird lenses and mirrors rotate at the ends of flexible carbon-fiber tentacles. The probe seems to be assessing its surroundings, as if it doesn’t quite comprehend where it’s landed. In any case, the machine pays no attention to the surreptitious humans . . . at least not until Maharim digs a stone out of the slumping side of the crater and, calling out wordlessly, hurls the rock. It strikes the composite material of the probe’s side with an echoing /clunk/.
The mechanical lander freezes, then turns its lenses and scanners towards the human who is sharing its pit, standing all alone mere meters from it. Maharim hunches down on bent knees in the yielding sand and goes utterly still, understanding the danger, but too late. Blinding hot light erupts from one of the lenses. A gout of coherent light and fire engulfs Maharim and blows him backwards in a crackling cloud of incinerated flesh and bones. A wad of smouldering garments strikes the top of the crater, along with charred pieces of his hands and feet, hard fragments of cracked bones raining down on the iridescent sand and gravel. One of the other farmers – a youth by the name of Zenfere less than two years older than Maharim and a great admirer and friend of the older teen – instantly screams for his friend. Another immediately yells for the farmers to all retreat. But by then it’s already too late to withdraw. Even as they’re turning their cu-pas about to stumble back down the outside of the crater and flee, flashing lenses and scanners, attracted by the noise and motion, turn and lock in on them. More eruptions of frozen laser-fire explode forth from the machine. More bodies are blown backwards in crackling clouds of half-cremated flesh and bones and burning clothes and hair.
When the intruders have all been dealt with, the grounded probe, with much thumping and clattering, begins to go about the process of properly assembling itself, building structures up around its core. Scooping mechanical hands draw opaline sand and sparkling multi-hued pebbles into a resource-production hopper in its belly and extrude shining glasslike rods that it uses for structural supports. Not content with this progress alone, the noisy machine quickly creates and adds on new components, building itself up larger, and, after a time, eventually becoming large enough to start digging itself up out of the crater its landing has created. It pounds and hammers, making a great deal of racket, apparently utterly oblivious to its surroundings, intent on its act of self-creation. Finally, the assembled mechanism raises itself up, revealing itself at last as a monstrous composite of crystalline materials and silica struts reinforced by carbonite beams and durasteel plating converted from its own hull and support girders. Clunking and clattering, it then begins to move itself across the landscape, scooping up nearby samples of the terrain as it travels, searching for the perfect spot to settle down and go into full production mode.
No one left alive (aside from a few dumb animals and insects) notices the machine as it makes its way across the desolate landscape, its size growing as it continues along its way, its AI brain filled with a terrible purpose to create, and reproduce, and to seek vengeance for one no longer able to pursue it himself . . .
***
So when a group of ten Oldtimers on their rounds of a communal farmstead hear a faint whistle growing quickly to a sudden howl (in a din of noise which sounds, to the superstitious farmers, rather like the sound a woman who has just learned of her husband’s death might make), their first thought is to take shelter rather than to look up. Being out in the open barrens, though, they soon find their eyes turning up towards the morning skies – just in time to see what appears to be a silvery bullet tear its way down through the atmosphere, accompanied by the unfamiliar hum and whine of thrusters. The craft rapidly resolves to a bubble-shaped object plummeting through the sky, spinning about and see-sawing in the open air as if trying to choose a place to land. Quad engines slow its descent with a thunderous noise. Then, less than a kilometer from where the farmers are frozen in shock, the object slams into the shimmering gravel dunes like an angry fist thumping violently into the stomach of a dishonest merchant. A high-flying, fountain-like spray of nacreous dust and crystalline sand instantly shoots upwards, the pale cloud of grit embracing a plume of dark soot at its heart.
When the shock gripping the group has worn off sufficiently to allow speech, there is some argument about the proper response – the ship or lifepod or whatever it is that’s apparently crashed so near to them seems very near to being too big to have been let purposefully past the planet’s defensive guns, though the guns are old enough that it is possible that they might have simply failed to find their target – but the farmers are all poor, and the opportunity for scavenging among and perhaps even salvaging enough of the downed craft to create another vessel out of its parts is simply too good a prospect to ignore. So the men end up rushing across the sandy ground, turning their riding animals towards the intertwined plume of smoke and pillar of dust that marks the impact of the crashed ship and hurrying towards it. By the time they reach the impact crater, the thoroughly taxed cu-pas are all winded and their riders are not in much better condition, panting with excitement after air that comes only after a struggle, their hot breath smothered by the protective cloths they all wear over their mouths. After cresting the edge of the crater, though, they pause, high on the lip of excavated sandy dirt, alert for any danger, not quite so foolish as to simply rush straight in, no matter how great the sense of urgency currently gripping them.
Glassy smears of superheated silica have splattered like droplets of blood from a messily spurting wound all along the ground, and inside the pit there is a mechanical object about the size of two large men resting against the ground, with mysterious protrusions and components that hum and move about with increasing noise and energy, awakening now that the craft has touched down (though whether it has actually landed or simply crashed in a somewhat controlled manner is difficult to tell). The strange metallic body, encased by what appears to be braided fibers of slick carbonite, is still smoking slightly from the heat of reentry. The farmers rapidly agree that it is, after all, much too small to have been carrying passengers, and therefore also too small to have attracted the attention of the planet’s defenses. So whatever the crashed spacecraft is, it likely isn’t an actual ship of some kind. They are discussing what the pod might actually be (given that its relatively diminutive size would seem to preclude the presence of biological passengers) when the lights flashing erratically from among the tangled welter of strange cord-like coverings and mechanical components suddenly begin to blink brighter, and the probe’s sides open up like dragon wings, unfolding to expose the mass of mechanical limbs, articulated claws, and all manner of complex machinery tucked away inside. Ten pairs of stunned eyes stare dumbly, uncomprehendingly, down on a complex array of scanners, processors, and engines of investigation and destruction, dazzled by mirrorlike power converters as they spread themselves out in the weak sun, focusing and bouncing that faint light back in a harshly powerful glare.
Eventually, after several long minutes of stunned silence and inaction, one of the farmers – a brash young man named Maharim, still in his teens and reckless as only an energetic youth with enough of his dreams intact to still be restless and unhappy with his apparent lot in life can be – dismounts from his cu-pa and unceremoniously starts to slide his way purposefully down the churned sand at the edge of the scorched pit. His voice filled with a potent combination of simple wonder and basic greed, the stripling exclaims, “Imagine what this thing will be worth in trade, in town! If I get to it first, I should receive the largest salvage share!”
The others laugh a little nervously, casting uncertain and gauging glances at once another. When the teen pauses to look back up at them, one of the older men hastens to reassuringly offer, “If you are successful, you’ll get an extra share.”
The brash young man grins up at them happily and continues on towards the device. He stops again halfway down the loose slope, looking suspiciously at the device, which continues to vibrate and thump noisily. Strangely nonrigid swaying components extrude arms and legs, while weird lenses and mirrors rotate at the ends of flexible carbon-fiber tentacles. The probe seems to be assessing its surroundings, as if it doesn’t quite comprehend where it’s landed. In any case, the machine pays no attention to the surreptitious humans . . . at least not until Maharim digs a stone out of the slumping side of the crater and, calling out wordlessly, hurls the rock. It strikes the composite material of the probe’s side with an echoing /clunk/.
The mechanical lander freezes, then turns its lenses and scanners towards the human who is sharing its pit, standing all alone mere meters from it. Maharim hunches down on bent knees in the yielding sand and goes utterly still, understanding the danger, but too late. Blinding hot light erupts from one of the lenses. A gout of coherent light and fire engulfs Maharim and blows him backwards in a crackling cloud of incinerated flesh and bones. A wad of smouldering garments strikes the top of the crater, along with charred pieces of his hands and feet, hard fragments of cracked bones raining down on the iridescent sand and gravel. One of the other farmers – a youth by the name of Zenfere less than two years older than Maharim and a great admirer and friend of the older teen – instantly screams for his friend. Another immediately yells for the farmers to all retreat. But by then it’s already too late to withdraw. Even as they’re turning their cu-pas about to stumble back down the outside of the crater and flee, flashing lenses and scanners, attracted by the noise and motion, turn and lock in on them. More eruptions of frozen laser-fire explode forth from the machine. More bodies are blown backwards in crackling clouds of half-cremated flesh and bones and burning clothes and hair.
When the intruders have all been dealt with, the grounded probe, with much thumping and clattering, begins to go about the process of properly assembling itself, building structures up around its core. Scooping mechanical hands draw opaline sand and sparkling multi-hued pebbles into a resource-production hopper in its belly and extrude shining glasslike rods that it uses for structural supports. Not content with this progress alone, the noisy machine quickly creates and adds on new components, building itself up larger, and, after a time, eventually becoming large enough to start digging itself up out of the crater its landing has created. It pounds and hammers, making a great deal of racket, apparently utterly oblivious to its surroundings, intent on its act of self-creation. Finally, the assembled mechanism raises itself up, revealing itself at last as a monstrous composite of crystalline materials and silica struts reinforced by carbonite beams and durasteel plating converted from its own hull and support girders. Clunking and clattering, it then begins to move itself across the landscape, scooping up nearby samples of the terrain as it travels, searching for the perfect spot to settle down and go into full production mode.
No one left alive (aside from a few dumb animals and insects) notices the machine as it makes its way across the desolate landscape, its size growing as it continues along its way, its AI brain filled with a terrible purpose to create, and reproduce, and to seek vengeance for one no longer able to pursue it himself . . .
***
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