The Force-Computer Wore Perfume

[Jessica Med-Beq]

Because she knew that NFU doctors would have no idea about what to do about the problem she is describing, especially if space magic was somehow involved, a Jedi Healer would have been the best choice because the Force is at the core of her problem, one way or another. She knew it would be too dangerous to self-diagnose. She knew she was smart, mentally active and she had a superb memory. But since she went on Tatooine, where she designed an AI out of thin air almost entirely by herself, over a few days, Jessica was wracked by the same question over and over, putting a limiter on her happiness as a person. Of course, she wore the Utinni #1 perfume, one of the things she considered her brainchildren, alongside the Jessica variable-geometry landing gear, the Summer heavy mass driver, and, of course, Hammurabi, that very AI she pulled out of thin air in a few days. She had 10% of the profits from Dead Fantasy 2 but that had actually not that much to do with herself. She always had the impression that the Force was constantly picking her brain for some reason. She entered the premises of the Jedi Temple on Voss:

"My name is Jessica Med-Beq. Because I suspect my problems are Force-related, I took an appointment with [member="Teynara Jeralyr"] to sort the whole mess out" she told the Temple's receptionist.

"Jedi Healer all right. Just stand by while the Jedi healer comes to call you by name"

 

[Teynara Jeralyr]

Though her office wasn't the most spacious of places, for some reason, it often felt huge, at least until she did something silly like run her hoverchair into a wall or piece of furniture while trying to navigate it. Knew there was a reason I asked them to take out most of the furnishings, Teynara thought with a slight grimace, as her hoverchair once again clipped the edge of her desk and gave her the sort of jolt that comes with a moving object impacting against a solidly immovable one. I have really got to stop doing that.

To be fair, the maintenance staff had done exactly as she'd asked: aside from the desk she worked at, an examination table against the far end of the room, and a soft couch backed up against the wall opposite where her desk rested, there were no furnishings in the room. She wouldn't have minded having to navigate a stimcaf table, or perhaps a chair or two, but that was when her legs had worked properly. Stuck in a hoverchair, I've little or no chance of doing that unless I hover over them, she thought. A few spilled cups of stimcaf had disabused her of the notion that this was a good idea, so everything had been removed.

A chime from the direction of her desk caught her attention wandering, and she turned back towards it with a soft touch against the control stick of her chair, reaching out with a gentle brush of the Force to activate the room's internal comm system.

"There's a patient waiting for you in the reception area, Jedi Jeralyr," a voice said helpfully, floating across the comm system as though that was their sole purpose in the world.

Ah, damn, Teynara thought, her earlier musings banished in a sudden panic. Although it was true that she was in her office and technically therefore open for business, it was a rare enough thing to have a patient come through on this sort of visit - more often than not, she found herself making housecalls to the residents of the Temple or those civilians who lived within the local area. The Voss did occasionally make an appearance, but they tended to be satisfied more with the Mystic Healers of their own people, and thus rarely deferred to the Jedi in such matters. Fact was, she'd forgotten she even had an appointment this morning.

She commed a brief acknowledgement and turned herself to the task of getting her hoverchair to the door of her office - a less simple task than it probably would have been if she could walk - and made her way down to the reception area. The two were located quite close together: those visiting the Council could walk a distance to reach them, but those in need of medical treatment probably didn't need the walk, so the Temple's medical facilities were kept close to the entrance. Good thing, too, otherwise I'd probably bump into more things.

Floating over to the reception desk, she consulted with the on-duty Padawan that manned the desk (though they tended to rotate duties, so it often wasn't the same person as yesterday), checking through names and agreeing that this was a scheduled appointment (even if it had slipped her mind).

"Miss Med-Beq?", she inquired, turning towards the waiting area, where several different beings had taken a seat, waiting for someone or other to come and fetch them. "I believe we have an appointment?", the blonde concluded, her icy-blue eyes scanning all the individuals within the room, trying to pick out her patient.

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Ah yes, the appointment"

Jessica realized her doctor was that lady in a hoverchair, hopefully not afflicted by something like cerebral palsy. Hopefuly the door of Teynara's office would be high enough for Wookiees not to bump their heads because she was, for morphology purposes, almost the same as a Wookiee, even though she was nothing like a walking carpet. It was a little awkward to realize that Jessica would be guided to her office by her but who was she to judge? She never set foot in the Voss temple before, and like most patients in SJ-land, they trusted their Jedi healers. She knew that her well-being mattered: she was that person Charzon counted most on. But she knew that many dark-siders would kill to extract her knowledge out of her or to extract her smarts out of her: the closest to ever come to this was Vaulkhar. And even then she knew that, about six weeks ago, she got these Force-roadblocks removed out of her, but even with them, she was still a formidable woman intellectually, just not one to design AI out of thin air in a few days. Plus she knew she was mentally active, and her space witch of a lover found that cognition-enhancing Force-powers were ineffectual on her, that, even though she wasn't Force-dead, and definitely not Force-immune.

"Hello, doctor. Let's say that my problems began when I designed that AI, Hammurabi, out of thin air, almost entirely all by myself, over the course of a few days. Since then I have the impression that the Force keeps picking my brain over and over when someone uses cognition-enhancing Force-powers, as if the Force relies on some sort of cloud computing alongside other people with similar intellectual characteristics to me"

[member="Teynara Jeralyr"]

 

[Teynara Jeralyr]

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

Momentarily taken aback by the deluge of information directed at her all at once, Teynara sat silently in her chair for a moment, carefully watching the woman that had approached, noting the sheer size of her, which was considerably taller than Tey herself had ever reached, even when she had been able to stand or walk unassisted. It was a little surprising to have someone offer such sensitive personal information while standing in the middle of the reception area. I may have my work cut out for me here, she thought with a touch of wry amusement.

"Would you care to accompany me to my office, Miss?", she asked in her usual soft tones, keeping her pale-blue eyes fixed upon her would-be-patient. "I usually prefer not to discuss someone's concerns and prospective treatment out in the hall." Teynara offered the tall woman an amiable smile. "It's also far more comfortable."

Not waiting for a response, the blonde turned her hand in a slow circle against the control yoke of her chair, causing it to turn around and allow her to head towards the direction of her office, the repulsorlifts of the hoverchair humming softly as it propelled her forwards. It wasn't particularly far to reach her office - though, sadly, the door was not of sufficient height to allow her visitor to pass through without ducking. She'd had to have it widened slightly to allow for her chair to move inside without smacking against the door frame, but it also hadn't been necessary to have it raised in height, given that Teynara herself no longer stood at her previous stature. The prospect of having someone so tall enter her office hadn't really been a consideration at the time.

"Please do take a seat," she said, gesturing towards the couch that rested opposite her desk. "Perhaps I can offer you a cup of stimcaf or tea before we begin?", the Healer continued, knowing it was always a good idea to put a patient at their ease before they started in on diagnosis and treatment. "I'm afraid we only offer alcohol to those patients who are being given a terminal diagnosis. They usually need a stiff drink to help absorb the shock," she added with a faintly-amused look.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"No thanks, stimcaf or tea make me uncomfortable: it would uselessly add to my mental activity"

6 ft 6 was, by Wookiee standards, a little petite, even for Wookiee women, but she towered over virtually everyone at the temple, and certainly Teynara. She was once mistaken for Wookiee even if she had only the morphology and haircut. But these were the things that made her attractive back in the Mando-land of yesteryear to the point of even being offered a modeling contract from some Mandalorian modeling agency. Wookiees would need to duck under the door as Jessica did. Luckily her secondary home on Dulvoyinn was built with Wookiees in mind because she was one of the main occupants. Once she took up position on the couch opposite Teynara's desk, which was perhaps a little too small for her - then again Jedi often expected patients with more typical human/Near-Human morphologies, and hers made her a truly massive sight to behold. Her space witch of a lover may have been able to relieve shoulder and back pain, but she was too close, too biased to be of any help to her. That space witch of a lover knew the ins and outs of her cognitive abilities.

"Sorry for having talked about my concerns too quickly. But I took an appointment with you because I suspect the Force has something to do with my issue. Let's say that my problems began when I designed that AI, Hammurabi, out of thin air, almost entirely all by myself, over the course of a few days. Since then I have the impression that the Force keeps picking my brain over and over when someone uses cognition-enhancing Force-powers, as if the Force relies on some sort of cloud computing to do such things alongside other people with similar intellectual characteristics to me, and also that the Force subconsciously feeds knowledge into me even though I cannot use the Force"

[member="Teynara Jeralyr"]

 

[Teynara Jeralyr]

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

Adds to your mental activity? That's the point!, Teynara thought with amusement, noticing once again that her patient did seem to have a fair abundance of energy: from where the Healer was sitting, it frankly felt like the other woman would get up out of her seat and start pacing around at any moment. It was a level of restless energy often not seen around the Temple, except perhaps among some of the younger students who had yet to master the basic practices of stillness in a tranquil environment.

Settling down to the task at hand, though...listening to a repeat of the woman's earlier description of her problems was somewhat dismaying. True, Teynara had absolutely no clue what she was referring to when she spoke of 'Hammurabi', but perhaps it was simply in one of the daily briefings that she had missed during her own convalescence. It doesn't necessarily sound vital to my diagnosis, however. It was something she could push aside, for the moment.

As far as she was aware, there were few phenomenon similar to what Jessica was describing: it was odd indeed for the Force to simply push thoughts into a person's mind. True, it happened with Jedi when they opened themselves up to the Force, but to happen to someone who wasn't Force Sensitive... frankly, she'd never heard of that happening before. Unless she's Force Sensitive and simply doesn't know it. It would be odd for that to have escaped detection when surrounded by Jedi, but it certainly wouldn't have been the first time.

"Could you give me an example of when this has happened to you?", she asked in a curious tone, turning her chair to face her patient completely, folding her hands in her lap and removing them from the hoverchair controls, so as not to be caught fidgeting. "And how are you certain that others are using the Force to enhance their own cognition? Have they told you this, or have you been able to detect it without them saying something?"

The way she figured it, if the large woman was a latent Force Sensitive, chances are the latter would be true: such a thing often appeared through odd coincidences and strange sensory disturbances within a person's mind. Perhaps such was the case here.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"I have no way of actually confirming that for myself. That's why I am here. Can someone even use the Force to make another person perform high-level cognitive functions in their stead?"

But even in her old Force-roadblock-ridden self, she was still a formidable woman when it came to smarts. Just not one capable of designing artificial intelligence on her own over a few days, out of thin air. And back in her days as a teenager she lost track of how many times she was told "You're too smart to be unable to use space magic", but far from suggesting that she was a space witch, a space witch as smart as she was would be dangerous to behold and control, whether Jedi, Sith or just a plain old Dathomirian witch. She disliked fashion industries because she found them way too shallow, even if the Mandos preferred ladies her size over the more petite women of Alderaanian or Coruscanti tastes. And yet Jessica knew that the Techno Empire valued technical expertise in their mascots and she did not become one simply by virtue of working directly under a Senator of the Techno Empire.

"Perhaps I'm a madwoman. But what I do know is that I am mentally active, with a pretty good memory. And my own high-level cognitive functions are pretty well-developed"

[member="Teynara Jeralyr"]

 

[Teynara Jeralyr]

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

It was a fair question to ask, but Teynara honestly didn't think that was the case. It was certainly possible to manipulate the mind of another: the Jedi were all trained in basic projective Telepathy, the skill that allowed them to make contact with another's mind and thus show them images or hear sounds, and a fair handful had mastered the 'Mind Trick', the ability to manipulate a person into believing something they otherwise would not. But to compel another to do your thinking for you? That would be an odd skill indeed.

That the Sith might possess such capabilities did cross her mind, but in her experience, their application of mentalist powers tended to not be nearly as benign as Jessica was making it out to be: their incursions into the consciousness tended to leave considerable mental scarring, presuming they didn't drive the victim insane or even kill them outright. Aside from a touch of energetic hyperactivity, Teynara could see no evidence of that, and there was no sense of darkness within the other woman's mind that she could detect with cursory analysis.

"You are a scientist yourself, as I recall," the Healer observed quietly after giving it a moment's thought. "Have you done any scans of your own brain? If someone is influencing your cognitive processing in some fashion, there would be evidence of increased or unusual neural activity on a Doppraymagno Scanner," she continued, thinking furiously.

Although it was true that many who came to Jedi Healers had issues above and beyond the realms of standard medical science, they still had to be considerably well-versed in the techniques and methodology of non-Force User physicians, and had an array of equipment available to assist with diagnostics. To her mind, any indication of abnormal brain activity would have demanded a scan to show up any problems: it was easy to offer a quick diagnosis on symptoms like those and yet go in completely the wrong direction. It paid to cover all the bases.

"If not, I'd suggest we start there, along with a few tests for latent Force Sensitivity, in case you are simply unaware of that status," Teynara suggested calmly. "To my knowledge, there is no Force ability that can do as you describe, but there are plenty capable of altering mental status. Best to rule those out while we're at it, so we can figure out what is going on. Does that sound good to you?"

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"I never got the chance to actually get such scans made - my area of scientific expertise concerns applied physics more. I just assumed Jedi healers could have access to such diagnosis tools. But since I use my brain a lot for high-level cognitive functions, I know my neural activity can get pretty high. Nevertheless, a Doppraymagno scan would be called for"

Jessica was definitely uncomfortable around such scans. But if there was no Force-power that could make its caster use someone else to do their thinking in her stead, there has to be something wrong that didn't require the Force. She was beyond irritated at the mention of latent Force-sensitivity tests. Jessica had the impression of being accused of being a space witch once again and to relive her pre-teen years - she took one as a preadolescent, turning up negative at the time. But the only way she could be diagnosed as Force-sensitive now would be if the administration of the test she took as a pre-teen girl was flawed, with three possible sources of false negatives: the test itself was flawed, the examiner was negligent, knowing that the examiner clearly stated back then that the location was chosen for it not to be administered at a Force-nexus, or midichlorians were too specialized. She was perceived as being unnaturally bright at the time and, on Loronar, such people targeted for gifted education were usually administered a battery of tests, one of which was an intelligence test and another one being latent Force-sensitivity: these two tests were the first in a sequence, after which further testing may or may not be administered. That's probably why so many of her childhood friends claimed at the time that she was too smart not to be a space witch.

"Also, can someone turn up with a positive latent Force-sensitivity test later in life when one took such a test as a child with a negative result? I mean, other than by examiner negligence or taking the test at a Force-nexus - I remember very clearly the examiner at the time warning against administering such a test at a Force-nexus due to the risk of false positives Force-nexuses could pose"

[member="Teynara Jeralyr"]

 

[Teynara Jeralyr]

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

Ah, so she'd been tested as a child? Not surprising, really - so many in the Galaxy were, nowadays, given that Force Users had returned to more abundant levels and played an increasingly active role in day-to-day affairs. For parents to imagine their children among them would have been with the hope of seeing them play a significant role, something perhaps far beyond any other aspirations they might have. Of course she'd been tested.

"What we call 'Force Sensitive' is really a lie, if you stop to think about it," she remarked, fixing the other woman with a stern stare. "All beings are sensitive to the Force - they must be, in order to live - but only a small minority within a given population is sensitive enough to be able to manipulate it. These are the ones we call Force Users."

It had taken her a while to realise that much: Teynara had always been led to understand that Force Users were a step apart from everyone else, gifted and thus burdened with responsibilities beyond common men and women. The reality was different: the Force touched everyone, to some extent, but only very few could touch it in return. It was an idea that had taken some getting used to, even after she had come to understand the science behind it. Regardless of that, it had still often seemed...random.

"Tests for sensitivity vary, though," the young woman continued, having administered a fair few of them herself. "Some analyse the blood for certain trace elements, others look at insight and potential precognitive skills, and others still test reflexes, speed and strength. There are more than a few indicators of Sensitivity, and not every test will check them all," she concluded. Which invariably means I'll have to check them all, see if any of them pan out. If they do...well, perhaps we have a new candidate for initiation in the Order. Pending treatment, of course, she noted inwardly, recalling that she was dealing with a patient, not simply a candidate.

All Healers were required to be proficient in testing techniques of this nature: many of the methods used had a scientific basis, but more than that, Healers were taught to examine psychological characteristics of an individual, and therefore often performed the baseline psych tests that were a prelude to a candidate's Initiation. Those combined with the physical tests tended to provide a more complete picture to put before the Council, and thus would weed out those who lacked the capability to go further.

"I can schedule a Doppraymagno scan, of course, but I think it might be worth putting you through a few of our candidacy tests as well, to determine Sensitivity," the Healer continued. "I won't give you them all unless our tests find something, and you decide you want to join the Order, but at least a few of the physiological exams should prove useful. You needn't worry about the influence of a Nexus: they only affect the results of Sensitives anyway!"

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Which one of these tests aimed at detecting Force-users will be administered first?"

She really didn't know much about the Force. The examiner was negligent, she thought, upon hearing Teynara's explanation about the risk of false-positives. So there might still be a possibility that she might be a Force-user. She has always been a woman for whom intellect was a source of pride, and always saw it in a positive light. If the Force was really picking my brain over and over for other Force-users to boost their cognitive functions, that means my own cognitive functions are really powerful and I should never doubt my intelliectual capabilities ever again, she thought. But she knew that said cognitive functions require one to be mentally active to maintain. Physical tests would probably more appropriate for her to determine whether or not she is a Force-user. Combine to that the fact that she is persona non grata among Sith Lords, and especially on Kuat, the lifestyle of a Jedi would probably be more for her.

"How could you be sure someone didn't use some mind trick on me to make me believe that some Force-using party was using the Force to make me perform high-level cognitive functions in their stead? If such was the case, there wouldn't actually be a Force-user using me to think in their stead through some power. Or are my mental defenses too strong for someone to do that to me?"

[member="Teynara Jeralyr"]

 

[Teynara Jeralyr]

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

Jessica's first question was the hardest one to answer, in truth: Teynara had always struggled to decide which test to administer first. A simple midichlorian test would be the obvious one, but that doesn't tell us anything other than that the person might be able to manipulate the Force, she thought, having seen several who had a suitable count but yet somehow lacked true connection. A sensory test might be better, but even those can fail with a trained Jedi if their mindset isn't right.

That was always the problem of testing for sensitivity: there was no foolproof test that established sensitivity with one-hundred percent accuracy. It all just narrows it down for us, until we decide we've got enough evidence one way or another. As usual, that meant a little improvisation might be called for.

As for her other questions, those were far simpler to deal with:

"Mind Tricks don't tend to last particularly long - they're designed to fool a person's conscious mind into perceiving something incorrectly. Most people have sufficient awareness of the moment to be nearly immune, but those that aren't will often shake it off after an hour or so," the blonde woman remarked, though she knew that it was no perfect science: truth be told, even the Healers only had a very miniscule understanding of how they actually worked, and more on a psychological level than a biochemical one. "And I'd question the intent behind it: why bother doing something like that? What result does a Force User gain from messing with your head in such a way?"

Quite frankly, Teynara just didn't buy that anyone would do that - few enough among the Jedi or the Sith had sufficient understanding of neurology to know how a Mind Trick of that sort of power would affect the brain of the person they were targeting. The mind is a delicate thing to work with, and not something to be influenced by the Force lightly. You could just as easily induce a seizure or push someone into a coma that way or, worse, push them into a mental state that would resemble something along the lines of psychosis. The chances of attempting a trick like that and getting the result you want would be so infinitesimally small...

"We'll try a simple game first, see what sort of results we get," the Healer announced, opening one of the drawers in her desk and removing a set of cards: Pazaak cards, each labelled 1 to 10, containing two packs: one blue, one red, shuffled so as to be in no particular order. Odd as it was to say so, it was a test she'd used a few times with some interesting results. "I'll draw four cards, face down. I want you to tell me what each card has on it. Simple enough?"

Quickly reshuffling the two decks, she placed the whole stack on her desk, then removed the top four cards, placing them face down on the outer cover of her hoverchair, so that they flat with the faces invisible to view.

"Now, close your eyes and take a deep breath," Teynara instructed, her voice lowering to a slightly slower, more relaxed tone, perhaps even a little sleepy in presentation. "Push aside everything you're worried about, everything that's weighing on your thoughts. Simply be here, listening to my voice, and thinking about my cards," she continued, pressing a finger against the first card on her right. "I'm touching one of them now. Can you tell me what it is? Colour and number, ideally, but at least the number, if you can."

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

At best that was going to be a really, really wild guess. She had about 5% chance to get it right the first time (there was 20 cards), but the odds do not increase that much for each subsequent draw. It seems that her mind was doing probability calculations more than anything else. But it didn't matter to her if it was incorrect or not: there was no stake, no wager, nothing. The odds of a NFU getting all four correct was less than 0.001%, since it was 1 over the number of combinatorial arrangements of 4 cards where the order matters, in that case somewhere in the 5-figure range. Only the blood test was performed on her, and it was the one whose administration had to be made away from Force-nexuses: she has no recollection whatsoever of the administration of having been subjected to other such tests. She did, however, see one such thing as a street act or a circus act. She was more of a rapid-calculation mentalist than one to guess which card another party picked, blindfolded, even being capable of calculating solutions to differential equations in her head, or to do things such as computing metric components in general relativity.

"I know, it's going to be a wild guess because I lost track of everything from the moment I closed my eyes, and such things are going to be challenging even for me, despite what I know about probability... but red 7?"

Another variant of that game she was exposed to on Corulag was that one had five suits, each with a different shape on it, shuffled on it, and five cards of each suit, whereby the participant had to guess, blindfolded, what the card will be. And the participants had to guess the content of all 25. The one she knows she gets without fail in that variant is the last one, but that's a function of her vast memory.

[member="Teynara Jeralyr"]