The Kitchen of the Force

[Jessica Med-Beq]

No, Jera, your brain is not slow, at least not in absolute terms: it's just that I'm so used to the speed of my own brain that it can be difficult sometimes to put myself in the position of someone whose mental speed may not be on the level of someone who can actually use Instinctive Astrogation Control in navigational practice, she thought, while realizing that [member="Jairdain"] took a little while to understand how temperature related to molecular motion and, as a result, got a few things wrong the first time using cryokinesis. With that realization in mind, she prepares another bowl of powdered cream, while leaving the first one to mellow down to a safer eating range of temperature. The worst in all that is that Jera likely had one last shot at making it work until her Force-batteries run dry. She stashed the first bowl using telekinesis to avoid being frostbitten, away from the sawdust-powered bonfire, and places the second bowl right in front of the young padawan.

"You were perhaps a little too aggressive the first time around. In time the bowl of powdered cream will get in the range of temperature that makes it edible, with the room getting a little colder for it. Control is often key for using the Force for utilitarian purposes, so if you can be less aggressive this time around, then you may eat the resulting ice cream"

 

[Jairdain]

Jera was standing, stretched slightly and rubbed her head. It was starting to ache again from the extencive use of the Force. She willed the headache to go away with her eyes closed and after a few moments the pain faded away. Opening her eyes, she ran through her mind again what [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] wanted and took the second bowl from her.

Taking a deep breath, Jera looked at the small grains in this bowl with the Force, seeing and feeling the little life within each one. Picking up on the beating "hearts" inside, she slowed each one down, but didn't kill them this time. She caressed each grain, gently and slowly. Almost with love for them, willing them to sleep. Once she completed that, she opened her eyes, almost able to see it in front of her, but not quite.

She held the second bowl out for Jessica to look at and picks up a spoon to eat the ice cream, smiling as the chill felt good going down her once again parched throat.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

With the room getting colder by about four degrees, and the temperature of the ice cream in the first bowl being up from "liquid-helium" range to the temperature of the second bowl of ice cream, Jessica considers that the time is ripe for her to eat the first bowl of ice cream, especially since the early stages of reviving the molecules are where the reheating process of the ice cream happens the fastest. This time around, [member="Jairdain"] eats the second bowl and feels pretty good about it; Jessica, on the other hand, feels the need to eat the ice cream not because of a sore throat, but because her brain needs a pretty constant supply of sugar for her to be able to use the full extent of her computational power for any length of time. She might not have to use it that much at this point, just that it paid to be prepared. Oh and the pizza was quite different in that respect: the sugars of its crust would take a little longer for her body to digest, plus the pizza was quite salty.

"I want you to succeed, so I don't think it would do much good for you to learn too many things in one day. Therefore, I'll just tell you briefly about Detoxify Poison before you can leave: in most cases you use the Force to break down the molecular bonds of the poison, otherwise you may as well just pull out the poison from the target's body with the Force"

 

[Jairdain]

Having a much better comprehension of molecular bonds, Jairdain feels she could easily perform any task before her requiring attention to minute detail.

"How will I know if a person is poisoned?"

She raises her eyebrows at she asks this to show her genuine curiosity. Taking her last few bites of the ice cream, she looks for a place to put the bowl.

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Usually poisons leave a specific trail in the Force while people are being poisoned, which is a characteristic property of the poison: that is, a property that can be used to identify a substance. Of course, the concentration is determined by the clarity of the Force-trail: the clearer the Force-trail, the greater the concentration"

Of course, she knew that poisons left such Force-trails when the poisons were interacting with living beings, even non-sentient, but often those without any knowledge of chemistry whatsoever would have to rely on the Force-trails left behind by poisons in their hosts to determine which molecular bonds to break. Again [member="Jairdain"] may not have the most chemical knowledge, but Jessica was much more familiar with thermodynamics, condensed matter and molecular bonds than she was with the chemical properties or chemical reactions proper. Often people called Force-users similar to Jera or Jessica (because the two appeared to be pretty Force-intensive, more so than they were lightsaber jockeys) space wizards, even though the label was sometimes applied to all Force-users, more than the FUs that seemed to be more reliant on the Force than on a lightsaber. To be frank, Jera was more than just a padawan... she seemed to have more intellect than knowledge.

"Do you have any other questions?"

 

[Jairdain]

Jairdain found a place to set her now empty bowl of ice cream and listens to [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] about identifying poisons. In other words, she was just going to have to look at the poisons through the Force and figure out how to either break them down and make them impotent or suck them out of the victim's body.

All the chemical talk is above what Jairdain learned about before, so something she will have to research on her own or maybe talk to Jessica about.

"So the stronger the poison, the more I will see it?"

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"More like the more poison there is, but stronger poisons also tend to have stronger Force-signatures than weaker poisons when controlled for the concentration"

[member="Jairdain"] was subjected to some crash course in analytical chemistry; Jessica could clearly tell that she is taking Jera to a new level in chemical knowledge, even though the chemical knowledge she would then gain is still mostly accessible to someone in the late stages of high school. Ah, the advantages of having lots and lots of background knowledge for Force-users: it makes the practice of Force-powers much more streamlined, especially for those who prefer precise applications of the Force. She reminds me of those guys training Detoxify Poison on Voss shortly before Korriban happened: many of those gained chemical knowledge through it. And, even though I learned how to use Detoxify Poison at the time, I ended up having to teach chemistry as was possible to do without a lab component, which unfortunately meant that their understanding of chemistry was going to be perfected only to the extent they will use it in actually using Detoxify Poison, she thought, while her memories of tutoring people in chemistry for the purposes of learning Force-powers resurfaced.

 

[Jairdain]

Jairdain nods in understanding but keeping quiet. She can tell [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] is thinking about something. Maybe remembering her past or what it was like for when she first learned this. She tilts her head to the side slightly, looking at Jessica. In their interaction so far, it's been Jairdain doing the learning and Jessica the teaching. No personal relationship between the two of them. Perhaps Jessica so lost in teaching doesn't know how to reach out and be friends.

"What are you thinking about?"

Innocently asking this, Jairdain sits down again next to Jessica.​

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"It's about how Jedi tended to train certain Force-powers without the background knowledge recommended for optimal use. So while I was learning Detoxify Poison, I was the one who knew about chemistry much better than everyone else, but that's mostly because most of the Jedi were trapped into an educational system that emphasized Force-training as an end in itself. I'll tell you this much: sometimes people don't realize they can use the Force until pretty late in their lives, such as me, while others know much earlier in life that they can use the Force. Even though the Force-sensitivity detection grid is much tighter today than it ever was in galactic history, sometimes people can slip through the cracks and go on to earn degrees until the false-negative is rectified, while others are given Force-sensitivity later in life by either going to a powerful Force-nexus or being targeted by a specific, powerful spell"

Jera is perhaps a beginner in telepathy: while useful for communication between FUs, one must be careful about not abusing it: it's a trap many who become Jedi for policing may fall into. Then again, she seemed interested in using the Force for precision, she thought, while also being reminded of false-negatives. She was herself a victim of one such false-negative, even going on to graduate school on two occasions before being detected for what Force-sensitivity she does have. But for each Jessica, there were people like [member="Jairdain"] whose knowledge base may not be the most advanced, and she had to keep that in mind every single time she wishes to teach Force-powers.

"Jera, I care about you, as I would about anybody I teach Force-powers to, but we spent so little time together: I'd rather not expect too much of an interpersonal relationship at this stage. Perhaps you have other things to tell us about what you learned beyond Force-related things: was your past education concerned about mastering the use of the Force over other types of knowledge, or was knowledge treated as a tool for using the Force? Or, alternatively, other non-Force-related things you would like to learn?"

 

[Jairdain]

Jairdain smiled as [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] seemed to open up more about her thoughts and her past. Getting to know people was one thing she liked and enjoyed. To find a common ground to relate on. In this instance both of them can use the force. She listened to Jessica and remained silent. Even after the question was asked, she had to think a few moments to come up with her answer.

"Early in my life, I was in general education until age ten when it was found I could use the Force. Even though I'm blind, the Academy took me in and started training me. There we focused only on the Force, none of this chemistry you're teaching me. This is all new."

She motioned to the room, the occupants, patients and items in there.

"My parents were local merchants, importing and exporting goods for our town. They were not gifted like me."

Oh dear that makes it sound like I'm more entitled than them.​

"I want to learn all I can, but my non force knowledge is so limited. I don't know what to ask about."

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"You may not be familiar with what they call false-positives and false-negatives in the medical world. As it turns out, I was kept in the main educational stream much longer than you were because I was a victim of a false negative. It might be a little different for me because sometimes people eligible for gifted/talented or accelerated education are systematically tested for Force-sensitivity when I was a pre-teen girl. It took me until I was in my mid-thirties for the latent Force-sensitivity to resurface, and realize that I was in a yellow area that made false-positives and false-negatives a reality"

Oh boy. While I am one of the success stories of those who waited until much later in life to learn and train in the Force, I knew that school systems across the galaxy were often quite different one another, and Jera was in the regular schooling system until age ten, which is precisely when I took the Force-sensitivity test that ended up being the very false-negative that changed my whole life, she thought. Realizing that, for some locations, what one learns by age 10 can end up being quite limited, and in others functionality in society ensues, but Core Worlds like Loronar and Nubia usually insist on a rather broad education until high school ends, while Omwati preferred to specialize early. She could tell that [member="Jairdain"] had a lot of catch-up work to do, knowledge-wise, to get to the level of even a high school graduate. Sure, it started with chemistry, but that's only the qualitative aspect of it and, on top of that, the beginning of the process. The quantitative part will probably have to wait.

"In medicine, false negatives are often taken to mean that someone is diagnosed as not having something, usually a medical condition, but actually has it, and false positives are the reverse of that: falsely finding that somebody has X but actually doesn't"

 

[Jairdain]

"To be honest, I think Eraton was a little backwater, low technology planet. I mean we had intergalactic relations, but no high technology really on the planet. Farmers worked the land, people served the food. Very little droids and only they were really at our single spaceport. So our medical technology was also on the low end."

Jairdain shrugged her shoulders after speaking and looked at [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] nodding.

"Yes, I know about the false positives and negatives when it comes to certain illnesses, but had no idea it also happened to Force users."

Looking at the ground after speaking, Jairdain knows she can't return home or her family even if she wanted to. Something had destroyed her home leaving her both homeless and an orphan at fifteen.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Eraton? It seems that going out on the greater galaxy forced you to make some adjustments in the past few years. Don't forget: the life of the Force is a lifelong learning process"

From what she hears about Eraton from [member="Jairdain"], Jessica has a much better idea of the schooling Jera had until age 10: mathematics up to decimal-place arithmetic and fractions, some elementary language arts, some basic biology. Usually the more advanced the technology, the more distinct directions one could take their education, and sometimes more advanced topics, too. I'm sure my greatest detractor would be utterly unable to discern what could cause a false-positive and a false-negative - there was a reason why the Geonosian administration of the then-Techno Empire didn't trust her, and they are usually quite trusting when it comes to neuropsychological evaluations - Cathul, while today an admiral in Alliance service, and also much better as an admiral than she was as a therapist, knew better when it came to the limitations of Force-sensitivity tests, she thought. It would seem that this particular memory would resurface each and every time the topic of false-negatives and false-positives is broached.

"Back to the topic of false positives and negatives. In a Force-sensitivity context, false negatives occur because of the limits of midi-chlorian counting, for example, as well as the intrinsic flaws of each Force-sensitivity test. Sometimes they can be random, sometimes they can be systematic, like improper calibrating of an instrument or a test. Or even administering a Force-sensitivity test of opposite alignment to the experimenter, like a dark-sider administering a Force-sensitivity test in a light-sided nexus or vice-versa. But even then, when it comes to false-negatives, one must not neglect that some species have limitations that may not register on conventional Force-sensitivity tests. As for false-positives, midi-chlorian counters tend to double-count some midichlorians when the counter is in a Force-nexus, the test is administered in a Force-nexus of the same alignemnt as the experimenter, or when the subject's species have traits that can render a test inadequate"

 

[Jairdain]

Jairdain continued to look at the ground and folded her hands in her lap.

"Eraton was my home for fifteen years. I'm not surprised you haven't heard of it as it's three years beyond the Outter Rim and gone now. Then the families of my entire class got sick except for the us force users. A few even died from this mysterious illness. The council of the planet decided to ban all the students, including me. We each were given a ship, vibrosword and enough credits to live on for a short time. As I was leaving my solar system, I saw a bright light and when I looked saw my entire planet had been destroyed."

When she said vibrosword, her hand trailed over to it on her hip.

"Is there such a power that could do that? I've always thought the destruction was brought about by others in my class."

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"For the first query: it could be possible, I guess, to have some germ, some virus or something else that could be contagious, native to Eraton even, to which Force-users would be immune or at least for which usage of the Force could be the basis of a cure. Now, is there someone in your class with sufficient knowledge of genetic engineering that could actually engineer such a thing? Or someone that has sufficient knowledge of Force-alchemy to do such a thing? Otherwise I believe it may be entirely natural"

She realizes that some FU supremacist could be willing to exploit such an information and attempt to use it in an attempt to massacre NFUs, so she'd be better off keeping it in some dark vault in her mind. The implications of something of that nature are, simply put, horrifying to say the least, provided that it could be replicated somewhere else because the Eraton supernova would cause the germ responsible for the pandemic to go extinct. The first question [member="Jairdain"] asked was pretty legitimate, and probably something that not many Jedi could answer. Destroying a star using the Force was a feat that required the usage of an extremely powerful dark-sided technique, Force-storm: the last time it was used was on Atrisia. Even so it requires several dozen of Sith lords of great power, and also killing at least one person. A class worth of padawan-level Force-users is, simply put, insufficient to cast such a Force-power. Because life on a planet would go extinct long before a star goes supernova by natural causes, assuming that Eraton's habitable biomes were similar to the biomes on planets that actually supported human life, and that there was not some catastrophic subspace rift causing the star's core to collapse.

"Now, before I answer your second question, one needs to understand what causes a supernova. Supernovae usually occur when either white dwarfs explode or stars' cores collapse. A subspace rift or wormhole could cause a star to go nova or supernova. But, without a subspace rift/wormhole, only really big stars would have their cores collapsing in such a way that a star would go supernova the way you describe it: natural deaths of smaller stars are usually not that luminous. That said, Force-storm is something that requires the joint efforts of several dark-side masters and a few murders"

 

[Jairdain]

Jairdain got a pensive look on her face as she considered [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] questions. Anybody looking at her would clearly see she was deep in thought. Her voice not fully confident, but still clear.

"It is possible somebody could have created a plague like that, but why would it affect only the families of my class and not the whole city or planet? I take that back, it did go planet wide as the force users weren't very many and we could all go to one school. Some of the students had been there since they were infants, they grew usually grew up to be our tutors there.
"We also didn't have this light or dark side, all skills were used and taught."

As she spoke, her voice got more confident in her answers, more secure in her memories.

"No, only the planet died, not the star. I felt my people die."

Her eyes grew full of sorrow as she spoke, the loving memory of her parents filling it. They were gone, there was nothing she could do to bring them back. She fisted her hands trying to bury her tears.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"There is no right or wrong way to think about the Force. Just as so many across the galaxy believed that there was a light and dark side of the Force, but to be able to use both, you need to draw on different emotions for each side. The light side draws on the more serene emotional states, like happiness, calm, joy, and the dark side draws on the more primal, like fear, anger, anxiety, hatred, suffering. Dark Jedi tend to lean more on the dark side of the Force but otherwise use it for similar ends to run-of-the-mill Jedi: peacekeeping, knowledge and defense against evil. Light Sith, on the other hand, usually use the light side of the Force for evil, but typically go around their evil in more manipulative ways than regular Sith. They're still pretty power-hungry, however, and they often come about when Sith discard the dark side. They can still be cold-blooded killers, but they usually kill only when necessary to do so. You can easily imagine that Light Sith are less common because effectiveness as a Light Sith requires more thoughtfulness"

Looks like Jera's old school is a school that taught Potentium but how I feel about the Force is somewhat different from what Potentium practitioners think: Potentium practitioners think that there is no such thing as light or dark. To me, however, light and dark are to be considered separately from what it is used for, even though I acknowledge that light and dark are things, she thought. It was often true that the trouble with Sith often arise from factions, however, and she needed no reminder of that painful fact: the One Sith, the Sith Triumvirate, the Primeval, the Sith Order, the Sith Ascendancy, the Resurgent Empire all went around the galaxy causing mindless destruction, with the Sith in those factions treating every combat sortie as an excuse for butchery and explosions. As for [member="Jairdain"]'s second query, Jessica was immediately reminded of what happened to Corellia a few years back, roughly when Eraton was destroyed. On other planets, it was true that other people disappeared, sometimes en masse, sometimes for good, while in other cases, like Gungans on Ringo Vinda, they reappear elsewhere.

"A very similar thing occurred in this galaxy around the time it occurred: Corellia was destroyed as a result of what we call the Netherworld. Probably this would suggest that the epidemic that preceded Eraton's destruction, and the destruction of the planet itself, were manifestations of the Netherworld as it occurred on Eraton"

 

[Jairdain]

Jairdain listened closely and carefully every word [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] spoke, she realized the views of her school and that of most of the galaxy were different. Some of the students had turned destructive to those around them and they were executed very quickly to prevent more harm being done. She relayed this to Jessica after she mentioned the destruction of a place called Corellia. Something similar to what happened on Eraton, happened there.

"What is the Netherworld?"

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"The Netherworld was a massive disturbance in the Force, greater than what any one person can conjure: when it occured, it was as though the Force went out of control"

Not that she could actually feel its effects back then any more than she would a stress headache at the time. Speaking of which, she feels as though her mind could keep going pretty much forever at that level of mental activity. Sure, she currently uses her mind a bit more than she would at rest, but not nearly as intensively as she would when using cognition-intensive Force-powers like IAC, mechu-deru or even Electric Judgment. Some of the effects of the Netherworld were freak lightning storms on Coruscant and levitating rocks on Alderaan, among those recorded, and also strange signs and omens. Those things that were sighted on Eraton were also occurences that happened elsewhere in the galaxy. [member="Jairdain"] could understand that it was likely that these things were not necessarily specific to Eraton. But she couldn't blame Jera for not knowing what happened to Corellia, even though Corellia was a Core World.

 

[Jairdain]

"So it's possible this just ate my people and planet?"

If Jairdain hadn't already been sitting, she would have in shock. For three years she had thought the destruction caused by others in her class, not something external to her world.

"How are these stopped? I know I can't go back and get my family, but if I could prevent something like this from happening again, I would."

She looked over at [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] as she spoke her question.