Primary Numbers

[Falun Shah]

Light shone in bright rays through the tall windows. The men, dressed lavishly, strode down the hallway and talked amongst themselves.

"How did you find the evening?" asked one to the other.

"Dreadful. Conferences like these bore me to tears," said Falun. His cane preceded each deliberate step.

"To lecture mathematics before the imperial court is a privilege." he replied.

"And they were just as bored as I."

A junction in the hallway, marked with a bronze bust of some long-dead conqueror, met their path. The group of scholars turned one direction, but the Pau'an marched the opposite.

"Won't you be joining us for dinner?" asked one of them in his sniveling voice that drove Falun mad.

"No, thank you. I have another meeting to attend, and I shan't be late for this one."

~

The imperial guardsman approached where Falun sat on a velvet couch. The guard watched him scrawl illegible equations onto his outstretched arm with a fountain pen, tracing over symbols and numbers that had been written there for years on end. Falun replaced his arm into its sleeve upon his escort's approach.

"Apologies for the wait, Professor Shah. The Empress will be ready for you in just a moment. Is there anything I can get for you in the meantime?"

"How long, exactly, is 'a moment'?" asked Falun through his razor teeth.

"Not long, sir. The Empress is attending another meeting at the moment."

"Again with the 'moment'. So imprecise, so fleeting. Do you refer to a moment in our terms, which can mean anything, truthfully? Or perhaps a moment as it would pass to a moth and I should expect her any second? Or, and I do hope not, a moment in the scale of our galaxy's lifetime, in which I should expect to be aged into a cloud of cosmic dust before we even meet?"

The guard gave him a queer look. His charge waved him off, dismissively.

"Never mind, then. I'll take one hundred twenty-two millimeters of water."

Falun returned to his note-taking, but the guard remained standing there, apparently unsure of how to proceed.

"Should I be more specific, then?"

"One hundred twenty-two millimeters, sir?"

"Yes," said Falun, his voice frustrated. "I need approximately eight-tenths a liter of water per standard day to properly function. I've traveled seven hundred forty-six meters since arriving at the complex this afternoon, given two lectures, and will imminently be meeting one of the most powerful figures in the Empire. I'd appreciate some water."

The young escort walked off and returned with a glass of water. Falun inspected it. Both men knew that is wasn't measured to his specifications, neither man actually cared. He sipped his water and looked back.

"Tell me, do I make you nervous? Or perhaps upset?" asked Falun.

"Uhm, no, sir," lied the guard. "Why?"

"Well, it's just that the average human man at your age takes sixteen breathes per minute. As we spoke just now, I noted that you had taken thirty-one breathes. Why is that?"

The guard took a step back. "I, uh, really don't know." Just then, the door unlocked and another guardsman stepped out, nodded at the escort, and stepped back inside.

"The Empress is ready to see you now, sir," said the guard with relief washing his face.

"Ninety-eight seconds. It would seem our moment has passed."

~

"Presenting, your highness, Professor Shah of the Imperial University of Coruscant."

The steward introduced him with such gusto that Falun felt compelled to hire him as a morning bell. He noted that the room was not likely the traditional throne room, rather an ornate conference room filled with guards, stewards, secretaries, and of course, the Empress- small in stature but obviously in total control of everything around her.

Falun bowed low and waited to be addressed.


[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

"Presenting, your highness, Professor Shah of the Imperial University of Coruscant."​

Her title still had a foreign ring, half-expecting someone else to answer when Matsu’s sudden nobility was mentioned. She’d come from affluence growing up in the Deep Core on Corvani, an unremarkable planet altogether that she’d outgrown with haste. But she’d never been groomed to rule a planet, to hold the jewel of the stars in the palm of her hand and control the access of multiple of the galaxy’s most important trade routes. But she handled herself with the grace of a woman who’d always known she’d be queen from birth. She supposed it was a good thing she was one of the less reckless counted among the Sith’s numbers, an adrenaline junkie that still managed to talk herself down from the edge of wanton destruction. She’d left Coruscant as it was when she assumed control, favoring its bustling nature. She found the draconian stereotype of her brethren amusing but distasteful.

Her mind was wandering, perhaps from the influence of a sudden fluttering of nervousness from outside her offices. She employed both force-sensitive and those without the ability to touch the current she used so readily but all spent enough time around her to be easily read, snippets of their thoughts dusting across her mind.

One hundred twenty-two millimeters?! I don’t have anything to measure…
The way he’s staring at me…
If she finds out I’ve annoyed this guy I’m dead…
Why does he care about how long a ‘moment’ is! It’s a turn of phrase…oh feth I’m dead…

“Send him in,” she said softly, an efficient hush of movement signaling her two guards moving to inform attendants without that the Lady was ready. Her guard staff – more for her property than her person, truth be told – was all female, tall and graceful and trained exactingly by the Sith Lady herself. They flanked either side of the doorway when the Pau’an entered the room.

Matsu had many apartments on Coruscant both for living, researching, and recreation. But strangers met her within her offices, a brilliant top-level ring of suites with floor-to-ceiling glasteel windows overlooking the hum of the city-planet. The room the two met in was something like a conference area with the sort of post-modern décor Matsu favored – whites abounded, marbles and woods side-by-side in upscale comfort. Pushing paperwork away, she lifted herself from her seat at the head of the table when her ‘guest’ entered. She did not give respect until it was earned, but neither was she without manners.

She’d been to Utapau only once, something like fifteen years prior. Back then both of her arms had been real and she’d barely been able to control her use of the Force with anything resembling finesse. She’d been very, very different. But her memory of the Pau’ans was accurate. Tall and gaunt, the visiting professor towered a foot above her, a figure made even more imposing by the way he dressed. She was petite and feminine, high features exaggerated in to a demonic sharpness from her use of ancient Sith magic, the only evidence at all besides her surroundings she was more than she appeared to be.

"Leave us," she said with characteristic sea-glass smoothness to the two guards at the door, both women silently sweeping to the outer hallway and closing the doors behind them. "Please Professor Shah...have a seat."

She settled when he did, crossing one leg over another and settling black, metallic plexisteel hands in her lap. They off-set her impeccably tailored white pantsuit nicely.

An attendant came in, controlling the shaking of his hand as he quickly but carefully placed not only a glass of filtered water, but another glass filled with ice cubes in front of the Pau’an. The attendant was very sure he’d gotten exactly the amount of water the professor had asked for but had been far too anxious that adding ice cubes would be either be unwanted or worse – a major offense. But what if he didn’t bring them at all and then the water wasn’t cold enough? He’d settled for bringing them in something separate, a glass to pour the water in to if it wasn't cold enough. Better safe than sorry. As safe as you could be around Sith.

She raised an eyebrow slightly, waiting for the attendant to retreat before turning her dark gaze back to the man that’d requested a meeting. “So, what brings you from the sanctuary of your university?” In truth she was most often found buried in a book or ancient scrolls and holocrons when not out exploring or conquering – she had an insatiable appetite for information of all kinds, and if Shah wasn’t careful she’d end up picking his brain for more than one reason.

[member="Falun Shah"]​

 

[Falun Shah]

Even sitting across the table from her, there was a darkness detectable. She had an unmistakable aura that, he assumed, anyone could pick up on. It wasn't the authority of her post, though he recognized that as well. It was something else. An encroachment in his brain. Disconcerting. The numbers written on his body seemed to tingle.

"I'm very grateful for your time, Your Highness. I'll keep it short and direct, if it's all the same."

Falun plucked two ice cubes and placed them in the glass of water. The excess liquid was drained into the cup of ice, keeping things nice and even.

"My work at the university has brought me and my colleagues into contact with certain..." he paused and wrung his fingers. "Certain spiritual concepts. It's my belief that anything, even the all-hallowed 'Force' can be quantified into numbers, that the basic laws of the universe must apply. Else, these laws would be rather useless."

He sipped his water, careful not to drip any, and set it down precisely where it had been placed before.

"Likewise, we've encountered artifacts in our studies that seem to be vessels of the Force. I'm sure, Your Highness, that you're well aware of the type of object I speak of. I've studied the Force and the artifacts with what resources I have available, but the uninitiated, like myself, can only learn so much without tutelage under a master of such things."

At this, he gripped another ice cube with his fingernails and set it on the table. Five lights in the room, one shining less brightly.

"At the same time, I'm aware that not all beings are so in tune with the powers of the Force. Some, it seems, are dead to it."

Slowly, and very gingerly, he raised his scrawled-on hand. His eyes never left the ice cube as it creeped unevenly across the table, leaving a trail of water. It sluggishly moved towards the Empress in a weak demonstration of his sensitivity to the Force.

"It would seem that I, however, have some connection to it," he said. "Now, to my point. I have so bothered you here today for a request. I wish to join your Sith and learn the secrets of the Force, I wish for you to train me in those secrets, and I wish to begin immediately."

The ice cube slowly melted away.


[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

A holocron. That he’d managed to open it and read its contents was a feat itself – they were meant to open only to those worthy enough to unlock their secrets. The Sith, for all the changes they’d seen over the centuries, had not faltered from their elitism. Only someone with potential could ever have gotten to even the first layer.

She was listening.

His view of the Force differed from hers but that was hardly surprising and not something she would strive to correct if she took him on. She rarely saw things in black and white, nothing so certain and unwavering as numbers. But when he lifted his hand and she caught sight of the endless sequence scrawled in spacing precise and perfectly ordered she could understand his predilection. The only way to achieve ascendance was through pain, through causing some total physical change. For her it had been the loss of her arms. For her last apprentice Sage Bane it had been the loss of his at Matsu’s hands. For her current apprentice Maja it had been a brand burned deep in her skin by an illusion crafted by Matsu. Pain and suffering were the only way to find freedom.

She watched the ice cube move closer to her as he finished his explanation, lifting a hand to intercept his display with one of her own. Each tributary left behind by the ice cube lifted, separating in to microdroplets and arranging in to segments forming a three-dimensional icosahedron, a figure she thought might appeal to him in its geometry.

“You are welcome to join the ranks of the Sith. And I will consider you for a position as one of my apprentices but not until you’ve shown me that you might be capable of what I expect from you.” She required talent, loyalty, and a trial of pain. Every apprentice that passed her teachings came out either lacking a body part they began with, or with a mark that would never allow them to forget what they’d endured and conquered. “If you’ve the time, we can move to my laboratories.”

_____________________________________________​

​

As expected, he had the time. She shared his preference for expediency but was not at all opposed to taking one’s time when it came to leisure pursuits. And to her the Force was leisure. Nothing was more comfortable or familiar.

She’d taken them down to Coruscant’s underworld herself, finding the idea of being driven everywhere boring. It a few hundred layers down, deep enough to be completely removed from any light. Down here it was easy to spirit people off.

Her labs were as modern and sleek as her offices. Glass enclosures housed her experiments, studies in rot and decay, odor and cries of pain kept at bay by filtration systems. But one man waited for the two of them, excused from his cage when Matsu had called ahead to have him sequestered in a private cell. The stranger sat on one side of a blank, white table, seeming to wait for his fate with the kind of patience made possible by resignation. But it was only a veneer for fiery determination.

Matsu waved a hand at the chair on the opposite side once she’d let herself and the professor in. “Please, sit.” She began to circle slowly around the table and its two occupants staring at each other across the way. She would give him no instruction. She wanted to see what he could do naturally. “The things I do must be taught, but also require innate skill. One cannot excel at mentalism, at magic, unless they are born to it. I would like you to try and pierce this man’s mind. It will be difficult – he knows your intentions and he will fight you. But all I require is that you read something of his mind. If you are capable…you will be my apprentice.”

[member="Falun Shah"]​

 

[Falun Shah]

Two soulless eyes stared into oblivion. There was was no glimmer of life within those old shells, but Falun was determined to find what vestiges remained and crack them open. "If I may," he asked and rose from his chair.

The room felt like the dungeons of old where cries and crimes were buried under the dirt on his homeworld. As Falun approached, his target's eyes never left the table. His steady breathing was the only indication that he still counted among the living. Falun circled behind him. The brain is just a safe, he reminded himself. One must only discover the combination.

"You musn't be cross with me," he whispered to the man. His ear bent gently beneath Falun's bony fingers. "You are a stone on a path to something much greater than yourself. Most men never get that opportunity, but not you. You are important. You have been blessed."

With that, he gripped the back of the man's head in his numbered palm. Their minds melded in an instant. Immediately, Falun felt as if he were adrift in the stormiest of seas. He was being tossed about by voices. Quantify, quantify, he thought. It seemed that the crashing waters gradually formed into a flight of stairs. At the top, the voices that had battered him became numbers and equations. Falun's brain ached. He calculated and was thunderously expelled from the man's mind.

Falun grabbed at chair at the table and fell into his. It took a moment for him to catch his breath, but the deed was done. "I saw...something. A document or, no, a list. A list of names.He was terrified to know that his was on it. Am I correct?" he asked, looking to what he hoped might be his new teacher.

The prisoner's head laid motionless on the table.



[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She hadn’t expected the professor to kill her captive.

It wasn’t upsetting so much as surprising. Those without training typically inflicted more damage than desirable on their subjects simply because they didn’t know where or how to push. But this had been a test of capability, innate requirement – not skill. That came with time. Death however…that was something special. Death required a certain je ne sais quoi only achieved by those with potential in their first moments of true trial. That he didn’t seem particularly perturbed was another mark in his favor. Such a display would have been considered a fundamental weakness.

She moved to the chair the dead man was occupying, extending an arm and pushing him from his spot with one finger. His corpse landed with a thud, left casually on the floor by her side as she took his seat.

“I’ve seen enough,” she began, tilting her head and blinking at him in unsettlingly reptilian fashion. She was just far enough removed from human in her mannerisms it might leave one guessing despite all evidence that she was indeed one of them. “However, anyone I take on will know pain. And if they don’t they will never see that power they crave.” She left the decision in his hands. If the trial that would one day stand between him and glory frightened him, he wasn’t meant to be here.

[member="Falun Shah"]​