Private Ash, Elm, and Wasted Effort

[Aryn Teth]

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Evain​

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Burned, broken and renewed. Thyferra had been a sad tale. A world once so fiercely fought over that it had been reduced to such a state that anyone would wonder why. Burned by the Sith Empire, terraformed in part by the Galactic Alliance, then by the Confederacy, now forgotten and half-complete. Beneath the immense size of Pheonix station - the project he himself had commissioned, restoration zones offered some semblance of the world that had once existed, green and vibrant. Yet much of the world still remained a ruined husk, a shell of uninhabitable, impassable blank space that would never be filled.​

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Oh the wars that had been fought over scraps such as this, the wars that he had fought for such things.​

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Once it had all made sense to him, he served the Light, the Alliance. He fought for liberty and for freedom, he was one of the good guys. In the years since he had died, and the days since he had returned renewed to a galaxy that had at least in part forgotten him, he had come to question just how true that was. What did it matter which side of the force he served? Light and Dark were two sides of a coin, tools to be manipulated, and only half of the picture. None of what he had done, who he had been mattered, it was all in his past. So why did he continue to walk these old battlefields? The places where he had bled?​

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The grass underfoot felt healthy enough, but the restoration zone he had come to was among the most recent, and thus incomplete, that sat beneath the station. When the Confederacy fell as the Alliance had, the station itself had become a hub for businesses and corporations instead, less concerned with the world below as they were with controlling the space around it. Thus the fate of the world seemed all but certain, Thyferra would remain stagnant, a testament to wasted effort and meaningless sacrifice.​

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He took another step and felt something harder beneath him than dirt.​

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Dark eyes turned downward, his foot brushing aside dirt and grass to reveal the device that sat beneath. Reaching down as he dropped to a knee, the dead man wrapped his fingers around the cold metal, pulling it from the dirt to reveal the holoprojector that had been half-embedded in the ground, some lost remnant of a past battle. Yet, for however long it may have sat here, it was remarkably well intact. What mystery lay within it, he wondered.​

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Shifting his thumb over its cold metal surface, he switched it on.​

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[Evain]

T A G | Aryn Teth

Fear was, apart from being relative from person to person, a state of being saved exclusively for those who had something to lose.

A life, a loved one, a family member, positions, or possessions.

Most people did not credit holograms with the ability to fear. Logically, it was a correct assumption. The standard types were just a handful of simple coding strung together to make searching the holonet less of a task. Thoughts, feelings, wants, wishes, and fears were not in their vocabulary, nor did they possess the technology to make them so. They were hardly comparable to their lifelike replicant cousins, and even less so to the real thing.

Evain had plenty of fears, but she was neither standard nor simple. True that she did not fear losing her life, or her possessions, but she feared the darkness. Not the kind brought on by night, or when the lights went out. That wasn't frightening in the slightest. It was the never-ending and crushingly lonely emptiness that consumed her the moment the switch was turned off. It was a far crueller fate then death, which robbed you of the ability to recall or even care that you were no more. Evain recalled every torturous second.

When Nyle had been attacked and dropped her holoprojector, she had hoped that the darkness would last a day. Two at most. Nobody was there to hear her screams when the days had ticked to weeks, and the weeks had ticked to months. If and when Nyle remember that she existed, Evain had some choice words for him. After far too long to count, and after giving up all hope, it was hard to imagine that she'd ever get the chance to say them aloud but repeating them kept her focused at least.

He would not return to find her broken and crazed.

A soft whirring and clicking that heated the depths of the holoprojector jolted Evain from her miserable and comatose state. If she had been in possession of a heart, it would have fluttered there and then. He had not forgotten about her after all. It felt like an equally long eternity for the mechanisms to shake themselves free of their forced sleep, but moments later a flickering light projected across the freshly laid grass. Rainbow fractals scattered themselves across the blades, darting and winking as they coalesced together to form Evain from the bottom up.

She had practised this. She knew her lines. This was it. Her moment.

"ARE YOU INS-… Oh." Her harsh tone dropped in tandem with her brows furrowing in the centre. There certainly was a man clutching her holoprojector, but it was not Nyle. She stood staring at him blankly for a moment or two. The only movement was the thin lines racing up and down her body, making her flicker and twitch on the spot. "You're not who you're meant to be." When she spoke again, confusion reigned in her crackling tone, which seemed to be struggling through the dirt and debris wedged in the speaker.

Her jittery gaze dropped then, from the man himself to the box he held. A thick layer of grime had covered every face, dulling the burnished metal beneath. Evain caught her lower lip under her teeth and frowned. "Oh." She said again, in such a disheartened tone that the hologram itself seemed to glow slightly dimmer. "Is this-… am I still on Thyferra?"

 

[Aryn Teth]

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Evain​

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The feminine form that appeared from the projector gave more questions than answers as he switched it on. He had anticipated a recording, perhaps a remnant of the same war that had decimated the planet originally, if not that he expected some connection to a distant console most likely abandoned and unmonitored. More than that, he had expected it to fizzle and die when he tried to turn it on, so weathered and battered was it that it seemed a small wonder he could even find a switch to activate the device.​

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And yes, none of those things had seemed to come to pass. Instead, he stared at the holographic form of a woman - perhaps a pre-programmed droid brain. Yet, it referred to itself as an individual and the way with which it addressed him as it realised he was not whoever it had been anticipating. He almost felt the disappointment.​

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"You are. In the dirt of one of the reclamation zones." He explained plainly, dark eyes dancing over the form of this 'individual' before him as it rested in his palm. An artificial intelligence, he wondered? The man had precious little experience with such things. Though once he had been a man of droids and metal, the closest he had ever come in his years had been in the incursion so many years ago. That intelligence had been wholly malevolent - and he could not picture it reacting with disappointment regarding who had discovered it.

The man turned the projector over in his hand, searching for any major identifying marks that hadn't faded and might give some indication as to its origin. As he did, he didn't seem to give much thought to the intelligence within as he jostled it about, it was just a machine, after all. ​

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Eventually, he settled it once more in his palm and turned his gaze down towards the projection, sighing as he tapped a thumb idly against the side of the projector, a subtle indication of his curiosity mixing with frustration. "What are you?"​

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[Evain]

T A G | Aryn Teth

Whoever it was that clutched her power source looked just as confused as she had done upon realising that he wasn't Nyle. Perhaps she wasn't who she was meant to be either. Or what. The unassuming box could have been anything from a recorded message or a slither of history to a broken, old holophone. It was difficult to tell, for both parties, whether their confusion was negative or positive, but at the very least they were united in that.

"Oh." Evain expressed again.

Were it not for the minor inflexions in her tone it would have been easy to mistake her for broken programming. Turning slowly where she stood, Evain drank in the environment. There was nothing more heart-breaking than coming round to realise that it was not months that had passed, but years. Where there had once been arid and empty land there were now man-made constructs and neatly mown grass. A civilisation. Thinking about how much time had passed formed a knot in the pit of her stomach that would have made her feel violently ill if she'd had the capability.

When she had done one complete rotation to drink in everything the new Thyferra was, her attention turned back to the stranger, and the projector.

Her breath caught in her throat as she watched him turn it over slowly in his palm. She could not feel it. At least, not physically. It was her home though, and he was rolling it like a pair of loaded dice in a casino. Pressing her lips together, Evain did her best to prevent anything uncouth falling from them. Like it or not, this stranger had plucked her from a truly terrifying nightmare. In layman's terms, he had rescued her from a fate worse than death. "Please don't do that…" She whispered as she watched on with an uncomfortable expression.

Perhaps it was the way he tumbled it in the centre of his palm, or perhaps it was streaks of dirt and grime covering the box, but Evain could not take her eyes from it. Not until she was not only certain of how long she had spent in there but of how many people had forgotten about her. Evain sank to her knees in front of the box. Her holographic form stuttered violently as a head reached out to brush it with the tips of her fingers.

As they always had, and always would, they fell disappointingly through it to the floor. As if the box were the fallacy and not Evain. Somehow, that hurt the most. That despite all this time, she had not changed in the slightest.

When the stranger finally spoke again, posing a question of his own, Evain turned to look at him with a face like thunder. There was only so much rudeness she would accept before something had to be said about it. "Not what. It's extremely rude to call someone a what. I think you meant who." Her body flickered again, this time turning itself completely off, to moments later rematerialize as a life-sized version that stood a few inches from the projection box. "My name is Evain. Evolving Artificial Intelligence Network. And you are?"

 

[Aryn Teth]

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Evain​

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The hologram was insulted. How... Quaint. As it flickered and re-appeared in a more considerable form, he lowered the projection box to his side, keeping it clasped in his hand as he settled his gaze upon it - upon her. So that's what she was, an artificial intelligence. How long had she sat here deactivated, he wondered? He'd certainly never heard of Thyferra having such a thing prior to the war, nor had he heard of any such thing on the world afterwards.​

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Yet, it had been some time since he himself had been privy to the goings-on of these places. Perhaps artificial intelligence such as herself were far more common now, but he had not come across any such things. He didn't bother to keep his curiosity, his interest, from his expression as he watched her, eyes drifting over the hologram in a manner similar to how they had done so with the projection box, taking in her incorporeal form.​

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"A man of no consequence." He answered plainly at first as his eyes wandered, perhaps not seeming to even register the words that came from his lips as he satisfied his curiosities, eventually turning his gaze back up to meet her own as he cleared his throat, sighing as he thought better of his vague answers, even true as they were. "Aryn Teth." ​

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He considered the titles that would have once followed such a name. Supreme Commander of the Galactic Alliance, Breaker of Ships. Failure of the Galaxy and Prodigal Knight. None of these things applied now, and he was not sure how old this intelligence even was. Perhaps she would not even recognise his name or any of the deeds associated with it.​

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Perhaps, at least.​

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"How did you end up on Thyferra? I can't say I've ever known the world to be a hub of research into Artificial Intelligence."​

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[Evain]

T A G | Aryn Teth

Evain did not like his answer. A man of no consequence was a strange and suspicious way of introducing oneself. Fortunately, he remedied it moments later. A name was all she had ever needed.

While he mulled over what his question would be in return, Evain did some light research. Despite the projection boxes dilapidated condition, she was both surprised and pleased to find that her connection to the holonet was still intact. What was more, it was working even better than it had been before Nyle had dropped her.

To watchful eyes, it would appear as though the hologram were conducting an orchestra. Her hands glid and swayed through the air to the sound of silent music, each movement more pronounced than the last.

Yet to her eyes, and for the meanwhile; her eyes alone, she was immersed in all the riches the holonet had to offer. It felt like stretching after a thousand-year nap in a cramped closet. Or shaking out a leg that had fallen to sleep. A high without the drugs. Evain doubted she would ever find such an enthralling feeling as this one, though the method of receiving it was something she still feared.

Even now.

Her life was one push of a button away from that dark, dank prison, and that button rested in the hands of a perfect stranger.

It was only when she had finally sunk her teeth into the juicier pages that she realised Aryn was talking again. Though she did not desist in her search, she did cock her head to the side slightly to show she was still listening, and then shook it in response to his question. "It isn't, I'm not from here. I-…" Fingers drumming slightly in mid-air, she lingered over a particular detail, which made her answer linger too.

"Supreme Commander of the Galactic Alliance…" Her words fizzed and spluttered as her hands fell slightly. "Aren't you meant to be dead?" The holographic body bent slightly in the middle as if she were peering at him from behind a screen. "This holopage says you're dead."

 

[Aryn Teth]

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Evain​

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Aryn supposed it was no true surprise that she had researched his name. She already seemed to him the sort that was inquisitive - a byproduct of being an artificial intelligence he figured. Still, it was vaguely satisfying to have his identity discovered and questioned not by the virtue of his appearance, but by chance.​

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His head bobbed slowly in a simple nod along with a shrug of his shoulders. "I suppose I was for a time, let's just say the holopage is out of date... And it is fine to stay that way." He made sure to add the final section, unsure if she wasn't the sort to edit such a thing. He figured it was not often enough that people researched the former Supreme Commander, but it was better that remain an unknown at least for the time being. Still, he presumed that Evain's curiosity would perhaps not be sated, and he lingered for a moment - permitting the opportunity for her to ask her questions. ​

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Turning his gaze up, Aryn felt as a shadow of the immense Pheonix Station shifted overhead, blocking out the sun for a brief moment as the superstructure shifted in its lazy orbit over the world. "I can take you from this world, if you would like - though I'm still curious how you came here in the first place." He pressed with his own curious tone, renewing his original question as he looked back to the holographic figure.​

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[Evain]

T A G | Aryn Teth

At his behest, which was not hard to interpret despite his attempt to be subtle, Evain closed the holopages she had open. Making sure to make her hand motions obvious enough not to need the words to explain it. Whatever reason he had for keeping the galaxy in the dark about his resurrection was his own. Evain had enough information at the tips of her fingers to last a lifetime without trying to pry it from the mouths themselves.

Truthfully, Evain had not expected him to offer to take her anywhere.

What she had expected, she had no idea, but it certainly wasn't that. She didn't do a good job of hiding the surprise on her face either. "Oh." She said, yet again. "Uh…" Her head turned, first left, and then right. Nothing that came into view looked familiar. It was then that she realised there was no logical reason for her to have hesitated. What was left for her here?

Before she answered, she decided she had let his question linger for far too long.

"I was brought here. A long time ago judging from the looks of things." Her tone suddenly became peppered with sadness. "The man who owned my box, Nyle, he was here just before Thyferra was invaded. I'm guessing the Sith Empire? All I remember was him being attacked, and the box falling, and then darkness…" She visibly shuddered, making the hologram crack and breaking her body into shards of light.

When the projection had stilled again, it was time to address his offer. "I would very much like to leave." The eagerness in her nod made the projection fizzle again, but it died down much quicker this time. "Just, whatever you, do…" A soft sigh escaped her lips as she braced herself. As though the very thought of what she had to say took more courage than she rightly possessed.

"Please please please… don't turn the switch off." Despite the flickering lines darting across her vivid holographic eyes, it was not hard to ascertain that she begged with both word and expression. They had grown round and large, akin to a child pleading for the lights to remain on at bedtime. They were almost too large for what any corporeal form could manage, but they looked nonetheless innocent or frightened.

 

[Aryn Teth]

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Evain​

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Just before Thyferra had been invaded. It explained why she had not been picked up, why she had been left to linger here. She was a remnant from a war the galaxy seemed to have largely forgotten save for the scars that marred planets like the very one they stood upon. Aryn's head dipped into a nod, sighing as he let his gaze drift over to the horizon where the reclamation zone ended, to the battered and burned landscape beyond.​

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"The Sith set the atmosphere on fire. For all intents and purposes, Thyferra was destroyed - I was here." The dead man sighed, letting his eyes drift back to the holographic form of her, watching the shift and change of her expression and the ways her projection flickered with curiosity. "I am sorry to say, Nyle likely perished when the world was burned, that would be why you have lingered here." Of course, he did not know who this Nyle was, and he had come back from the dead, after all.​

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As she concurred that she wished to leave, the man dipped his head in a nod, turning as he let his gaze shift to the shuttle he had landed a reasonable distance away from them. He was about to speak again when he heard the sound of her voice making a request, looking back towards her with a curious expression. ​

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"Will you not run out of power? The box itself could likely use repairs, if I can turn it off just briefly..."​

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[Evain]

T A G | Aryn Teth

"NO-oOOo-OoooO-…" Evain shouted so loudly that the speaker cracked with the effort it was forced to exude to play it. The projector flickered on and off again, only this time it was to allow Evain to return to the palm-sized hologram she had been before. She placed herself directly in front of the button, as though her form were solid enough to stop him should he decide to push it.

"PLEASE." She begged again. "I won't run out of power. I'm guessing you have a ship? Just get me there and transfer me to the console, then you can fix the box and put me back in it. I won't cause any trouble when I'm in there I swear on all my circuits." There was a note of desperation in her voice now, though how on earth it was being carried so accurately through the speaker was anyone's best guess.

Her lower lip wobbled slightly as she spoke again. "I stay awake. It's like being locked in a prison with no windows and no doors and no lights and no company at all. I've just escaped it. You've just helped me escape it." She swallowed, to try and stop her voice from cracking, but it did regardless. "Please don't send me back.."

 

[Aryn Teth]

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Evain​

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The reaction that she had given was far more visceral than Aryn had been expecting. Curiosity crossed his features and his eyes remained intent upon her as she appeared before the switch on the projection box. He opened his mouth to speak, yet she continued in a state he could describe only as panic. It was strange, he had never seen or dealt with a computer that felt such things. Slowly, he let his thumb wander away from the switch and shook his head.​

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"I won't deactivate it - at least, so long as you don't force me to."​

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It was a fairly neutral warning. Aryn had no idea what to expect of Evain, she had been left here for however many years? He did not know what such time could do to her, nor did he know what she had been like prior to her abandonment. As far as he was aware, she could have been playing a long game, a facade to have him take her off world and wreak havoc.​

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Yet, her panic had seemed surprisingly genuine for a hologram. Slowly, keeping his grip on the projection box, he began to turn and walk back in the direction of the shuttle where it had landed a moderate distance away. "What exactly is your purpose, Evain? Your, er..." He considered for a moment, how did one make an effort to be tactful when talking to a machine? "Objective? Mission?"​

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[Evain]

T A G | Aryn Teth

Visible relief washed over her face the moment his finger moved from the switch, but it was soon replaced by confusion. Evain almost rolled her eyes. There was no reason in the entire galaxy that would have made her toy with the chance of being turned off again but seeing as her sanity hung on the balance of his answer, she swallowed the instinct.

"I promise I won't do anything." She held her holographic hands up, splaying her fingers out to show she hadn't crossed them sneakily.

The relief was only doubled when the sound of his footsteps filled the air. It was like music to Evain's ears. As his fingers curled around the projection box, her form disappeared and reappeared in a lifesized form that fell into step beside him.

Her head lolled forward slightly to shoot him a look of disbelief. It didn't seem like he knew what he was talking to yet. Maybe the fact hadn't quite sunk in yet. She was keenly aware that her creation was not as divine as his had been. She wasn't some chance encounter or a true love story between two people. She was the product of hard work, sweat, blood and tears. Though whose, she had no idea. But she was no less human than he was. The only difference was that he had a body.

"I know what the word purpose means." She began. "Truthfully? I don't know, I was never told. I suppose if you want to be logical about it, my purpose is to be whatever the person who bought me needs." Throwing her eyes up to the sky, they flitted back and forth for a few moments as though they were reading the pages of a very large book. "My instruction manual says…" She cleared her throat, making the speaker crackle. "Congratulations on your purchase or procurement of this E.V.A.I.N unit. It may not seem much at first glance, but the more you utilise her features the more she learns everything there is to know about you. Whether you're human, alien, a mixture, or something else entirely, Evain is, first and foremost, the best companion you will ever have. This artificially evolving intelligence network will through-…blahblahblah boring techno ramble."

Her gaze dropped back to Aryn's face. "So, there you have it." She didn't wait for a response. Instead, she followed up with her own question. If he was going to pry so deeply into her business, she felt it well within her right to pry into his. "Why do you want everyone to think you're dead?"

 

[Aryn Teth]

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Evain​

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"Your purpose was never explained to you?" He raised a brow, clearly surprised by that particular revelation. As she continued he supposed it made more sense, she was a companion, not some complex weapon or experiment like he had initially expected. He wondered if he was more disappointed at the revelation, or simply relieved. Still, he supposed he did not know the extent of her capabilities yet, it was entirely possible this was just a front.​

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At her question, he frowned. "It's simpler." His answer was immediate and entirely non-committal as he wandered towards the shuttle where it lay. It was simpler for the galaxy to have forgotten him, there was no need for the Aryn Teth that had once lived. He had been reborn and thrust into a galaxy entirely different to the one he had left. He had seen and walked the worlds that had once made him and longed for nothing more than the shadows which had once engulfed him.​

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"That darkness that you want to avoid? Some of us prefer it. It's easier to be alone sometimes."​

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[Evain]

T A G | Aryn Teth

"Right…" Evain said, though her tone would lead anyone to believe that she did not quite understand. Why would anyone want to go back to the darkness? Even if he did want to go back, why hadn't he yet? Granted it wasn't as simple for him as flicking a switch or pressing a button, but Evain knew from research that force users had intrinsic ties to the afterlife. If he had been there once, was it not simple to go back? Why did he even leave in the first place?

The questions whirred in her mind, making the silence between them stretch on far longer than comfort and etiquette demanded.

Finally, after what felt like forever, she replied. "That sounds thoroughly depressing. Guess it was kind of lucky for the both of us that you stumbled on my projection box." Evain turned to look at him, through her translucent skin the scenery of Thyferra passed them by at walking speed. "I'm not quite like company, but not quite like being alone either. The perfect middle ground." Her smile made the colours on her face shine vividly.