Pax Velloran
Character
There were shops on Coruscant where old technology went to die. Coreline Electronics was where it went afterward.
CORELINE ELECTRONICS still occupied the faded panel above the entrance, though Pax suspected the name belonged to a business that hadn't existed in any meaningful sense for years. The bones of it remained: broad display windows, standardized shelving, faded corporate striping around the counters and illuminated product bays built during an era when everything sold there had probably arrived in matching boxes. Whatever had once filled them was long gone. Droid motivators now sat beside speeder control modules; mismatched cable hung from pegs beneath old navicomputer components; processor housings, power couplings, memory wafers and half-dismantled electronics occupied whatever space could be made for them. One display case contained the remains of at least three machines Pax couldn't identify without asking. There might have been two examples of the same object somewhere in the building, but he hadn't found them yet.
Outside, the lower levels crowded close against the windows. Walkways passed one another beneath towers whose upper reaches disappeared into darkness, their undersides dense with pipes, conduits and old service lines. Whatever natural light Coruscant possessed had surrendered several hundred levels above. Down here, illumination came from shopfronts, transit markers and aging fixtures that seemed better at moving shadows around than getting rid of them.
The sign had aged better than the business model.
Pax stepped around a crate of dismantled droid parts near the entrance and approached the counter. The proprietor looked up before he reached it: somewhere past sixty, narrow through the shoulders, with sparse gray hair and thick black-framed glasses sitting low enough that he tended to look over them rather than through them. A magnifying attachment had been clipped beside one lens. His sleeves were rolled beyond the forearms, and a small electronic assembly lay open beneath his hands among a scattering of tools.
"I'm looking for an archive core," Pax said.
The man set down the driver in his hand but otherwise didn't move. "Which one?"
Pax drew a slim datapad from inside his coat and laid it on the counter. The transaction record was already open. The proprietor's gaze moved over the serial number and date before settling on the company beneath them.
HARROWGATE MUNICIPAL RECOVERY.
"Don't have it."
"I know. You sold it eleven months ago."
The proprietor looked at Pax now rather than the screen.
Harrowgate Municipal Recovery had all the reassuring signs of legitimacy—offices, filings, taxes, employees. Nothing worth remembering until Pax started looking at what it bought. Licensing records, civil registries, property files, judicial databases. Nineteen purchases scattered across Coruscant, harmless enough on their own.
He slid a credit chip across the counter. "I'm not buying anything. I'm compensating you for developing a better memory."
The proprietor's eyes dipped to it. A moment later, the chip was gone.
"Harrowgate bought six in the same order," the proprietor said. He dragged the datapad closer and scrolled through the entry. "Licensing records, property, some corrections stuff. Civil records. Old municipal stock, mostly. Nothing special."
Pax glanced up. "They just asked what you had lying around?"
"No." The man gave him a look over the rims of his glasses. "They didn't ask much of anything. Sent over six serial numbers and paid for what matched."
That was better.
Pax glanced past him at the shelves. A repulsor regulator sat beside a battered sensor package that looked decades younger than the navicomputer beneath it. "Most of your customers know the serial number of a forty-year-old archive core before they walk through the door?"
The proprietor picked up his driver again and returned to the open component. "They paid. I had what they wanted."
"And that was enough for you?"
The old man looked over the rims of his glasses. "Usually is."
Pax glanced around the shop. "Thirty years?"
"Thirty-two."
"Then I suppose you've earned the policy."
Pax tapped the datapad and changed the display.
KEIR KORR.
The proprietor's attention lingered on the name.
Pax caught it. "That one means something to you."
The old man adjusted his glasses and looked back down at the component on his bench. "I've seen the name."
"Here?"
A moment passed before he nodded. That was enough for Pax to leave the question alone for the moment. Korr's records were already peculiar without whatever history Coreline had with him. The identifying information agreed well enough across the surviving databases, but almost nothing afterward did. One set of records showed him detained, another showed a transfer, a later registry listed him as dead, and somewhere along the way another system simply stopped carrying him at all. Coruscant had changed hands often enough that contradictions like that weren't particularly rare. What was harder to dismiss was the access record beneath Korr's name. Less than a week earlier, a credential belonging to a man who might have been dead for years had been accepted by one of the archives Harrowgate purchased.
Pax turned the datapad slightly across the counter. “This is what brought me here. Korr’s credentials were used six days ago. First sign of activity I can find in years.”
The proprietor leaned closer.
“When I started tracing where the identity records came from,” Pax continued, “I ended up with one of the cores Harrowgate bought from you.”
The proprietor peered through the lower half of his glasses, studying the entry for a few seconds before sitting back again. "Those systems are old. Half of them have been copied, transferred, rebuilt. Credentials get carried over when they shouldn't."
"That's what I thought." Pax drew the datapad back toward himself. "Then I started looking at the person attached to it."
The old man gave a small shrug, but his attention wandered toward the terminal behind the counter.
Pax followed the glance. "You kept something."
The proprietor looked back at him. "I keep records."
"Of the hardware?"
"Of everything I take in that's worth arguing about later." He shifted a tray of loose connectors away from the terminal with the back of one hand. "Data equipment gets an intake image. Directory structure, tables, identifiers, checksums. Enough that if somebody comes back six months later claiming the unit wasn't what I said it was, I can show them what crossed this counter."
Pax glanced toward the machine. "So when the core left, the information didn't entirely leave with it."
"It's not a working copy."
"I didn't say it was."
The proprietor regarded him over the rims of his glasses for a moment, perhaps deciding whether Pax was being agreeable or merely difficult. "It's an index."
"And Korr would be in it."
"If he was on the core, yes."
That was enough to explain why the name had caught the man's attention, though not why he had been so reluctant to admit it. Pax was considering how much another credit chip might improve the situation when the proprietor glanced at Korr's name again.
"You're not the first one asking about that."
Pax's hand stopped beside the datapad. "How long ago?"
"Two days. Maybe three." The proprietor settled his forearms against the counter now, the half-finished component apparently forgotten. "Didn't buy anything. Came in asking whether I still had the core. I told him it was sold. Then he wanted to know whether I kept the intake records after a sale."
"Did he ask to see them?"
"No. That's what was odd about it." The old man frowned, thinking back. "He knew the archive number. Knew the name too. Korr. But he didn't ask what was in the file."
Pax looked down at the datapad between them. "What did he ask?"
"Whether anyone else had come looking for it."
That drew Pax's eyes back up.
"Anyone specifically?"
"No. Just whether somebody had asked about Korr, or the archive he was on. Wanted to know if I'd opened the intake image for anybody since Harrowgate bought the core."
"Had you?"
"No."
Pax let his thumb rest against the edge of the datapad. The stranger had known where the physical archive ended up. He'd known Coreline still had enough of the archive indexed to search it. Yet he'd shown no interest in Korr himself.
"So he wasn't looking for the record," Pax said.
The proprietor gave him a guarded look. "Didn't seem like it."
No. He'd been looking for interest in the record.
"He give you a name?"
"Didn't ask for one."
One corner of Pax's mouth lifted. "You've made a remarkable commitment to customer privacy."
"Thirty-two years."
"Touché."
His attention returned to the terminal. The actual archive might have disappeared into Harrowgate's possession eleven months ago, but Coreline still held enough of its shadow to be useful.
"You can still pull up the intake image?"
The proprietor glanced over his shoulder. "Should be able to."
"And the Korr entry?"
"If it's there, it'll be there."
Pax nodded, but didn't ask him to retrieve it. The sequence bothered him enough that curiosity could wait. Something else tugged at the edge of his awareness. He didn't turn toward the storefront immediately. There was no warning exactly, just the familiar sense that something nearby was about to change. A shadow crossed the front window. Footsteps followed, softened by the noise of the lower-level walkway, and the door opened behind him.
The proprietor glanced past Pax and lifted a hand toward whoever had entered. "I'll be right with you."
Pax remained at the counter for another moment. "Nothing else from your visitor? Vehicle, account number, anything he would've needed to leave behind?"
"Nothing useful." The proprietor reached for the component he'd abandoned earlier and pulled it closer. "That's everything I remember."
A small pressure regulator caught Pax's eye among a tray of mismatched components. He picked it up and turned it over in his hand, checking the fittings along one side. It looked irritatingly similar to the part his caf machine had been demanding for weeks. Apparently the morning wasn't going to be entirely wasted.
"How much?"
The proprietor named a price, then shifted his attention toward the front of the shop.
A woman stood just inside now, dark against the lower-level light beyond the windows. Pax noticed her because he noticed most people who entered a room he was in, but gave her no more attention than that. He remained beside the shelf with the regulator still in hand while the proprietor adjusted his glasses and turned toward her.
"What can I do for you?"
CORELINE ELECTRONICS still occupied the faded panel above the entrance, though Pax suspected the name belonged to a business that hadn't existed in any meaningful sense for years. The bones of it remained: broad display windows, standardized shelving, faded corporate striping around the counters and illuminated product bays built during an era when everything sold there had probably arrived in matching boxes. Whatever had once filled them was long gone. Droid motivators now sat beside speeder control modules; mismatched cable hung from pegs beneath old navicomputer components; processor housings, power couplings, memory wafers and half-dismantled electronics occupied whatever space could be made for them. One display case contained the remains of at least three machines Pax couldn't identify without asking. There might have been two examples of the same object somewhere in the building, but he hadn't found them yet.
Outside, the lower levels crowded close against the windows. Walkways passed one another beneath towers whose upper reaches disappeared into darkness, their undersides dense with pipes, conduits and old service lines. Whatever natural light Coruscant possessed had surrendered several hundred levels above. Down here, illumination came from shopfronts, transit markers and aging fixtures that seemed better at moving shadows around than getting rid of them.
The sign had aged better than the business model.
Pax stepped around a crate of dismantled droid parts near the entrance and approached the counter. The proprietor looked up before he reached it: somewhere past sixty, narrow through the shoulders, with sparse gray hair and thick black-framed glasses sitting low enough that he tended to look over them rather than through them. A magnifying attachment had been clipped beside one lens. His sleeves were rolled beyond the forearms, and a small electronic assembly lay open beneath his hands among a scattering of tools.
"I'm looking for an archive core," Pax said.
The man set down the driver in his hand but otherwise didn't move. "Which one?"
Pax drew a slim datapad from inside his coat and laid it on the counter. The transaction record was already open. The proprietor's gaze moved over the serial number and date before settling on the company beneath them.
HARROWGATE MUNICIPAL RECOVERY.
"Don't have it."
"I know. You sold it eleven months ago."
The proprietor looked at Pax now rather than the screen.
Harrowgate Municipal Recovery had all the reassuring signs of legitimacy—offices, filings, taxes, employees. Nothing worth remembering until Pax started looking at what it bought. Licensing records, civil registries, property files, judicial databases. Nineteen purchases scattered across Coruscant, harmless enough on their own.
He slid a credit chip across the counter. "I'm not buying anything. I'm compensating you for developing a better memory."
The proprietor's eyes dipped to it. A moment later, the chip was gone.
"Harrowgate bought six in the same order," the proprietor said. He dragged the datapad closer and scrolled through the entry. "Licensing records, property, some corrections stuff. Civil records. Old municipal stock, mostly. Nothing special."
Pax glanced up. "They just asked what you had lying around?"
"No." The man gave him a look over the rims of his glasses. "They didn't ask much of anything. Sent over six serial numbers and paid for what matched."
That was better.
Pax glanced past him at the shelves. A repulsor regulator sat beside a battered sensor package that looked decades younger than the navicomputer beneath it. "Most of your customers know the serial number of a forty-year-old archive core before they walk through the door?"
The proprietor picked up his driver again and returned to the open component. "They paid. I had what they wanted."
"And that was enough for you?"
The old man looked over the rims of his glasses. "Usually is."
Pax glanced around the shop. "Thirty years?"
"Thirty-two."
"Then I suppose you've earned the policy."
Pax tapped the datapad and changed the display.
KEIR KORR.
The proprietor's attention lingered on the name.
Pax caught it. "That one means something to you."
The old man adjusted his glasses and looked back down at the component on his bench. "I've seen the name."
"Here?"
A moment passed before he nodded. That was enough for Pax to leave the question alone for the moment. Korr's records were already peculiar without whatever history Coreline had with him. The identifying information agreed well enough across the surviving databases, but almost nothing afterward did. One set of records showed him detained, another showed a transfer, a later registry listed him as dead, and somewhere along the way another system simply stopped carrying him at all. Coruscant had changed hands often enough that contradictions like that weren't particularly rare. What was harder to dismiss was the access record beneath Korr's name. Less than a week earlier, a credential belonging to a man who might have been dead for years had been accepted by one of the archives Harrowgate purchased.
Pax turned the datapad slightly across the counter. “This is what brought me here. Korr’s credentials were used six days ago. First sign of activity I can find in years.”
The proprietor leaned closer.
“When I started tracing where the identity records came from,” Pax continued, “I ended up with one of the cores Harrowgate bought from you.”
The proprietor peered through the lower half of his glasses, studying the entry for a few seconds before sitting back again. "Those systems are old. Half of them have been copied, transferred, rebuilt. Credentials get carried over when they shouldn't."
"That's what I thought." Pax drew the datapad back toward himself. "Then I started looking at the person attached to it."
The old man gave a small shrug, but his attention wandered toward the terminal behind the counter.
Pax followed the glance. "You kept something."
The proprietor looked back at him. "I keep records."
"Of the hardware?"
"Of everything I take in that's worth arguing about later." He shifted a tray of loose connectors away from the terminal with the back of one hand. "Data equipment gets an intake image. Directory structure, tables, identifiers, checksums. Enough that if somebody comes back six months later claiming the unit wasn't what I said it was, I can show them what crossed this counter."
Pax glanced toward the machine. "So when the core left, the information didn't entirely leave with it."
"It's not a working copy."
"I didn't say it was."
The proprietor regarded him over the rims of his glasses for a moment, perhaps deciding whether Pax was being agreeable or merely difficult. "It's an index."
"And Korr would be in it."
"If he was on the core, yes."
That was enough to explain why the name had caught the man's attention, though not why he had been so reluctant to admit it. Pax was considering how much another credit chip might improve the situation when the proprietor glanced at Korr's name again.
"You're not the first one asking about that."
Pax's hand stopped beside the datapad. "How long ago?"
"Two days. Maybe three." The proprietor settled his forearms against the counter now, the half-finished component apparently forgotten. "Didn't buy anything. Came in asking whether I still had the core. I told him it was sold. Then he wanted to know whether I kept the intake records after a sale."
"Did he ask to see them?"
"No. That's what was odd about it." The old man frowned, thinking back. "He knew the archive number. Knew the name too. Korr. But he didn't ask what was in the file."
Pax looked down at the datapad between them. "What did he ask?"
"Whether anyone else had come looking for it."
That drew Pax's eyes back up.
"Anyone specifically?"
"No. Just whether somebody had asked about Korr, or the archive he was on. Wanted to know if I'd opened the intake image for anybody since Harrowgate bought the core."
"Had you?"
"No."
Pax let his thumb rest against the edge of the datapad. The stranger had known where the physical archive ended up. He'd known Coreline still had enough of the archive indexed to search it. Yet he'd shown no interest in Korr himself.
"So he wasn't looking for the record," Pax said.
The proprietor gave him a guarded look. "Didn't seem like it."
No. He'd been looking for interest in the record.
"He give you a name?"
"Didn't ask for one."
One corner of Pax's mouth lifted. "You've made a remarkable commitment to customer privacy."
"Thirty-two years."
"Touché."
His attention returned to the terminal. The actual archive might have disappeared into Harrowgate's possession eleven months ago, but Coreline still held enough of its shadow to be useful.
"You can still pull up the intake image?"
The proprietor glanced over his shoulder. "Should be able to."
"And the Korr entry?"
"If it's there, it'll be there."
Pax nodded, but didn't ask him to retrieve it. The sequence bothered him enough that curiosity could wait. Something else tugged at the edge of his awareness. He didn't turn toward the storefront immediately. There was no warning exactly, just the familiar sense that something nearby was about to change. A shadow crossed the front window. Footsteps followed, softened by the noise of the lower-level walkway, and the door opened behind him.
The proprietor glanced past Pax and lifted a hand toward whoever had entered. "I'll be right with you."
Pax remained at the counter for another moment. "Nothing else from your visitor? Vehicle, account number, anything he would've needed to leave behind?"
"Nothing useful." The proprietor reached for the component he'd abandoned earlier and pulled it closer. "That's everything I remember."
A small pressure regulator caught Pax's eye among a tray of mismatched components. He picked it up and turned it over in his hand, checking the fittings along one side. It looked irritatingly similar to the part his caf machine had been demanding for weeks. Apparently the morning wasn't going to be entirely wasted.
"How much?"
The proprietor named a price, then shifted his attention toward the front of the shop.
A woman stood just inside now, dark against the lower-level light beyond the windows. Pax noticed her because he noticed most people who entered a room he was in, but gave her no more attention than that. He remained beside the shelf with the regulator still in hand while the proprietor adjusted his glasses and turned toward her.
"What can I do for you?"
