Private On the Cold Edge

[Tilon Quill]

One message had bootstrapped off the old Longjumper's Mark comms relay line. Transmission quality was poor. In mixed Basic and Agrarian, or rather Basic droid translation overlaid with Agrarian interjection, it said something like: "Blue metal spores demand injection. Inedible incompatible. New synthesis angle. Catalyst required urgently."

The other message arrived in Jedi circles from a whole separate method: a contact report from an unaffiliated Jedi scout named Tilon Quill. He'd logged a dubiously successful trade contact with an Iskalloni armed freighter very far from Iskallon. He was trailing them to ensure they didn't plan to cybernetically enslave anyone, but he didn't think they had that as their goal, no matter how the Iskalloni had operated in past centuries. Their goal was something philosophical. He hadn't yet learned more.

Both messages came from the edge of the galaxy, a system called Vesskyzi.

Auteme

 

[Auteme]

She started as she always did: a gift. A hundred lightyears off Vesskyzi, she'd helped a Gran farm colony with an infestation problem; they'd gifted her with eight hundred pounds of fertilizer -- specially made for silvergrass, but rich in every nutrient any plant could want. She'd intended to bring it to Concord Dawn for the Treicolts, but that was a long way, and her ride off-planet instead took her further into the Unknown Regions.

It was a gift to them, too; the Cheeky Kowakian, an old bulk freighter, was on its usual run through the small ports in this edge of the Unknown Regions. The captain, Edwa, a surly near-human (half-Chiss, she guessed, though he was not forthcoming, and she did not pry) with a mean cybernetic hand, had been considering passing Vesskyzi entirely. His prior visit had required a particular diplomatic tact that he frankly did not have; despite coming away with a considerable haul of valuable comet isotopes, the loss of some other materials and especially their pet monkey lizard had soured the rest of their expedition. It was only Auteme's insistence that brought them here, and her assurance that their gift would be well-received.

That assurance was dampened slightly upon their actual encounter with the Agarians at the Narrow Pocket. For every language she spoke, there were a million more she did not understand; the huffs and puffs of their fungal hosts were foreign to her, and the translations the droids gave were not especially useful. Catalyst, they said; catalyst required urgently. But they accepted the gift, shoving the fertilizer onto a small repulsor skiff and carting it away.

"Tilon?" she asked tentatively. "An off-worlder. Blueish skin, purple hair." The Agarian before her was not forthcoming, but one huffed wetly and pointed down the Pocket, across the few other ships landed here.

"Don't go far," Edwa called, as they unloaded their own cargo. "Don't like this place, and it don't like us."

"We'll be fine. I'm sure." And she set off inside, half-followed by the Agarians who'd greeted them.

Tilon Quill ​

 

[Tilon Quill]

Vesskyzi didn't improve on a second visit. Glaciers and giant bones. Crevasses drank the star's sullen red light; down here in the Narrow Pocket was among the gloomiest places he'd visited. Fractional gravity and deep fissures meant moving carefully, an undignified bounce as often as not. Tilon had bought his safety with biomass, helped Agrarian scavengers tow the tentacle of a dead Purrgil down from orbit to a place up on the surface. This sector had few options in that vein.

Just now, space-suited against spore risks, he was sheltering under his father's old ship, the little expeditionary shuttle North Ridge, which filled a landing pad in what had been a cargo module, now wedged into ice. He was fiddling with an Iskalloni arm: blue skin and metal borg parts.

His suit twigged to approaching life. He looked up to see Auteme coming through the tunnels that connected Narrow Pocket's modules.

"Master Auteme! It's been ages." She's been his father's research assistant when he was younger. He couldn't actually remember, come to think of it, if she'd made Jedi Master. Oops. "Welcome to Narrow Pocket! You're who they sent about my report?"

 

[Auteme]

She hadn't, but she took his meaning. "I'm who came," she said, bouncing over, per usual, for a hug. It wasn't as intimate across a couple layers of atmospheric protection, but it was enough. "I wasn't far -- well, not far for places around here."

Another reason the captain had agreed to take her -- the condition of the galaxy was one in flux, and having a Jedi aboard seemed a safe way to not get lost on frayed hyperlanes. Not that she had done a whole lot of navigating; Edwa underestimated his and his crew's ability.

"It's been too long. How are you?" And then the rest of the questions came: "Is this your father's ship- ah. I'm... hoping you didn't take that arm from someone."

 

[Tilon Quill]

"I'm well, I'm well - and yes it is, and yes I did, but—" He held up the arm, which he'd avoided bumping against either of them incident to the hug. "—strictly consensually. This isn't an arm, it's a message in a bottle. I'm trying to figure out how to crack it without actually getting implanted with its implants, which is how it's designed to go. I met some Iskalloni yesterday in orbit, the same ones I'd been following, and they gave me this. They said it was an explanation for what they were after out here."

As a Sith acolyte he'd encountered an art called mechu-deru which could have been useful here, to will the electronics into compliance, but mechu-deru as he'd seen it was emphatically not a Jedi skill.

"What are you flying? Do you have quarters? I don't have a lot of room, but I could take the garden." Had she been around when he turned the whole back end of his dad's shuttle into a garden niche and slept back there?

Auteme

 

[Auteme]

"I, ah, travelled in with a trader- the captain wasn't too keen on this place. I suspect he'll want to leave soon, so -- no quarters." She gave a second look at the arm, briefly with more intent -- between her studies of anatomy and the Force, she found it incomprehensible yet operating with its own logic -- but decided to save further curiousity for later. One thing at a time.

"There's a garden?" She looked around a moment, as though there were greenery to jump at her from the steel and ice, before she looked at the- "Oh! He mentioned it to me, planning to do something like that. Never got to see it- I don't mean to displace you from your bed, if the garden's better for me I'll take it."

At the time she'd thought it a bit ridiculous to put a garden in so small a ship -- and she didn't know too much about starships, but she knew that space might have other, more functional purposes. And yet, she was excited to see it; it'd been a while since she'd seen Jend-Ro's work.

Tilon Quill ​

 

[Tilon Quill]

He took in her minimal baggage — "alright, let's put the arm on ice and get you settled" — and clunked in through the airlock.

Inside, the long-range shuttle was big enough to be a home for one or two or a mission-specific transport for four or five. The rear stowage was overrun by aquaponics and potted plants, natural-light generators and redundant jury-rigged inertial dampeners. Tilon shifted a couple of pots containing rosé amanecer flowers growing lightsaber crystals so he could fold down a standard shipboard cot from the wall. Any Jedi had slept in far worse.

"I've got the arm in a stasis locker back by the 'fresher. Feel free to poke at it. I think it's beyond my skillset other than the translation part — my Iskalloni's not bad today and I've got it hooked to an old iBorg Clarion translation module, so its interface is at least legible. It just doesn't want to talk about anything except breaking limits. I'm not sure what limits."

Auteme

 

[Auteme]

If anything, the plants made it more appealing a stay. Her sleeping quarters aboard the Kowakian were essentially the same, but cramped by a garden had a different feel than cramped by steel. She made herself at home -- not much more than grabbing her book and journal, in which she took a moment to write a note about her arrival at Narrow Pocket.

"Good to hear the Iskalloni are more than what's said of them." She did as he suggested, taking her time to look at the arm. Some things said about them were true -- their technology was alien, and this arm was quite the specimen. Skin like ice, pockmarked with insertion ports and nodes she didn't recognize. The socket was raw, nerve-ending wires grasping in every direction for connection, yet still the chrome fingers flexed and relaxed on their own, squeezing a ball she couldn't see.

The more she looked, the less clear it became. She could see the threads that made it up, lines of steel in place of fibers, yet holding their same resonance in the Force. Energy flowed up and down it, dormant yet coiled; it pulsated, speaking, as lines upon lines of text scrolled across the translator: Break limit. Find limit. Break limit. Locate. Crash. Limiting. Pierce. Break limit. Let's break it.

"Iskalloni... hm. I'll be honest, the only thing I remember reading about them is a footnote in ancient Mandalorian culture related to a Zeltron scientist. Their technology -- well, to my eyes, seems fine. Or would it be limits on that? I recall something about their tech producing particularly toxic waste. But that seems- well, not something to give someone your arm over." She sat back, rubbing her chin. "Any clues from their language? How it's constructed?" Once more, she wasn't familiar with Iskalloni -- but between the two of them, she guessed they spoke enough languages to engage with half the Senate in their native tongues. Maybe there was a clue there.

Tilon Quill ​

 

[Tilon Quill]

Break limit. Find limit. Break limit. Locate. Crash. Limiting. Pierce. Break limit. Let's break it.

Tilon pulled out a datapad, already connected to the translator, and began piping both the Basic translation and the Iskalloni version side by side on a holoprojector.

"Modern Iskalloni has enough structural similarity to Cheunh to make me think there's common origins millennia back, but it also has some Huttese influence, some cognates and obvious loan-words. What the module's rendering as 'crash' there is, let's see...real close, very very close, to a Huttese word for 'slippery slope' with a flavor of inevitability. Maybe this is about...averting doom through evolution. Maybe they're looking at...no, not evolution. Transcendence. Limits of the flesh. Posthumanism, transhumanism, other than not being human — Basic has no suitable word but the Gank Killers call it slekgruhl. I'm just speculating, but it would explain the mood the Iskalloni had when I met them. Earnest. Eager to be understood but mostly eager to...share."

Auteme

 

[Auteme]

Something else came back to her. "The reason why they've become so ingrained with cybernetics -- it's because their physiology is especially permitting to that kind of technology. So they're already operating on a different playing field than, say, humans..."

Another thought, at which she almost recoiled: "Technological transference? Of consciousness? That seems like the next step, and- well, a limit to break. But- no. Why here? Why share?"

She looked at the arm again, expecting answers, but more limit-talk scrolled across the translator.

Tilon Quill ​

 

[Tilon Quill]

"Maybe it's ideological. It's not like Iskalloni are ontologically evil, they've just been controlled as a whole by an evil ideology. Maybe a new one's emerging that sees other species as...co-inheritors of transcendence, people to share with, not just raw materials for disposable cyborg servants." He prodded the arm. "Could be whatever's in these chips is scripture and we're the converts. Physical and medical limitations aside."

There was a knocking at the airlock. Tilon flinched away from the arm and called up the airlock exterior feed on the nearest wall terminal.

"You gotta see this."

It was a local Agrarian fungoid. And one-third Iskalloni electronics.

A mushborg.

"Do you feel anything? I'm not getting much."

 

[Auteme]

She stared at the mushborg for a long moment, trying to process what she was looking at. "Feels like a droid," she said, but maybe it was residual from forcing herself to look at the arm so long. The strands on the Agarian's body that popped out to her were more mechanical than biological.

So the Iskalloni were sharing with the Agarians -- the first converts, or the first subjects? Perhaps the Iskalloni didn't intend to ascend themselves at all, only spread to others what they had learned and how to reach it. The question still lingered in her mind: why here? Was it chance, that the Agarians of the Narrow Pocket were amenable to their ideology, and compatible with their cybernetics? Or was there something here that had prompted the transformation in both groups?

Seemed only one way to find out. "Well. Let's not keep our guest waiting."

She was wrong on that front: they were the guests. Upon answering the door, the mushborg huffed, puffed, spat binary, and beckoned them to follow.

Tilon Quill ​

 

[Tilon Quill]

Vac masked again, in case of spores or leaks or outdoor excursions or what-have-you, Tilon followed the mushborg. He called on the Force in the ways that normally allowed him to comprehend speech at quite a high level, and was rewarded with a unique little experience: what it felt like to Force-translate binary. Not many living beings spoke binary, and whatever its augmentation, the Agarian was certainly alive.

"This really is why I do what I do, I think," he said quietly to Auteme as they followed. "Experiencing things I never have, that maybe nobody ever has. That's the good life, for me. Also, he asked if we want to go up, and I don't think the elevator was the ascension in mind."

The mushborg brought them to an elevator.

"Then again, maybe he was just asking for some kind of half-informed consent for whatever's at the top," said Tilon, and got onto the elevator. For greater surety, Tilon offered an affirmation in halting but comprehensible binary.

Auteme

 

[Auteme]

Auteme let her thoughts wander up the elevator, but their journey couldn't sway her thoughts from what Tilon said.

"Most Jedi travel a lot, but- I often think few of us truly see the galaxy," she said -- quietly, but they were in an elevator, so the mushborg likely heard. For whatever reason she didn't feel any worry about it; either the Agarian didn't understand, or it held no ill will. Or both.

"I'm glad you can. There's so much to see, so much to experience, so many people to meet." She wanted to say more, but wondered whether it would devalue things she held dear. The years she spent in the Core scarcely held groundbreaking experiences; novelty was hidden under miles of paperwork and political battles. She'd visited thousands of worlds now; one of a rare few with the opportunity. Had she squandered it? Or had she done enough?

Different worlds, they lived in. So here she was, visiting. The experience would be enough.

The elevator took them away from the Narrow Pocket, speeding through layers of the comet's ice. After a minute -- long enough for her to wonder how they'd bored through enough of it to go this far, and whether the shaking and screeching meant safety or stoppage -- the elevator finally slowed, and opened into a small, dark crevice. It reminded her of Ilum, though no crystals shone through the dark, only dull florescent lights, and something more natural promised around a bend further down.

The mushborg puffed, stepped off, and led them further. "What did he say?"

She asked again when they encountered another: an Iskalloni, tall and pale, pacing in a natural alcove in the ice at the beginning of the bend, that continued onwards, snaking through what she guessed was the base of the comet's icy tail.

The Iskalloni looked at them, murmured in a new language, and said something like a greeting, but not quite.

Tilon Quill ​

 

[Tilon Quill]

The blatt of mushborg binary was, Tilon told her, mostly about excitement so far as Agarians and electronics had comparable points on their emotional spectra. 'Excitement' was a crude translation but he couldn't narrow it down farther.

Things got simpler, much simpler, when they met the Iskalloni cyborg in the ice cave because compared to the arm and the mushborg, he had more to say. Tilon translated.

"Thank you for joining us, Jedi. The...not quite trust, I think benefit of the doubt?...was not guaranteed."

The story that came out was that a faction of Iskalloni pursued an ideology of trans-species advancement beyond inborn biological limits rather than exploitation. Individuals of various species had joined their traveling community voluntarily, it was said — like the Agarian, who confirmed this in binary. But Iskalloni multispecies anti-rejection medication was not infallible and had been designed for making servant cyborgs with a short life expectancy. Those who joined had a chance of suffering.

They firmly believed that the answer lay in increasing the sophistication of their technology and their unity through a cybernetic link, like an Atanni system or even a nascent hive mind. That was their main long term problem, but an urgent one. The impacts on some of their current converts were also serious and pressing.

 

[Auteme]

"So... what do they want us to do?"

The cyborg's right eye swung to affix her; he spoke again. She'd been listening closely, now picking up on bits and pieces of the story as Tilon translated, but the Iskalloni introduced something new -- something she didn't understand, until Tilon clarified.

"The Force," she murmured. The Iskalloni had little in the way of Force traditions; a byproduct of their historical separation and travelings, rarely a stable place for a learning Force-sensitive. Yet, some persisted. Some wondered.

Technology would be one thing -- a problem, now, and if that was all they could help with, then that was enough. But the next step was unclear; they worried for consequences they otherwise had no grasp of. Whether it would be a help or a hindrance remained to be seen.

"So... we're to meet their Force-sensitive Iskalloni... and see what we can do?" Part of her mind was already working at it; another wondered about the ethics, or the politics of a refusal. But she turned to Tilon. "Something never experienced. I'm... not opposed to seeing this through."

It would take them further, here -- a frozen-cold camp, easing certain kinds of cyber-work and serving as a cool place of reflection, lay ahead.

Tilon Quill ​

 

[Tilon Quill]

"Life is life."

Curiosity welled up unexpectedly and maybe even unwanted. He'd spent his career (so far) building connections and seeing what people could do with those connections, and this slekgruhl* multispecies transhumanist ethos, this New Iskallon faction...he couldn't help but see the possibilities. And why not? What better way to see the real personal needs involved?

This was on his mind as he translated bits and pieces between the Iskalloni, the Agarian, and Auteme , and as the four of them spiralled down a purpose-built ice tunnel into a cave system that splayed out from one side of the Narrow Pocket. It was all still pressurized down here, and they'd passed through decent interlocks, and Tilon removed his mask. The air tasted stale and smelled of sickly-sweet flowers - that Iskalloni anti-rejection ointment that had let their ancestors force so many into cybernetic servitude.

Some of the side caves were medical bays, others tech labs, others mini-gardens under natural light, and one held an old Iskalloni in techno-regalia and an Ommin Harness.

*while a Gank Killer word, the Iskalloni used it too and meant the same thing by it; he assumed a Gank or two had been among their enclave.