The Librarian

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Freyia Whitelight-Carrick"] [member="Kaili Talith"]

It took a while -- seemed like days -- before Jorus and Freyia reached the Red Shift. This little corner of the station had seen innumerable weirdnesses. Masters of the Force had been promoted here more than once. Denizens of this place had built friendships and inventions while imbibing lum and staying one step ahead of superpowers. A girl-shaped lump of spacer clothes had passed out on a table that had once held the greatest holocrons in the 'verse, along with their lunchbox home. Unwilling to wake the kid, but not, you know, caring a whole lot, Jorus slid into the booth opposite Kaili. He plopped a datapad down on the table by the fringes of her flopped-out hair. In case she wasn't awake yet, he cleared his throat, then indicated that Freyia should join him. Two weeks on a ship had left him with a ton of ideas and a powerful curiosity about Kaili's work. Mara thought the world of her, and her specialities lined up just right with what Jorus needed.

 

[Kaili Talith]

Something touched Kaili’s hair and the girl woke in a twitch. You’d figure with a whole day’s rest she wouldn’t have been as exhausted as she was, but cutting your sleep schedule in a single day wasn’t one of those things the body seemed to like all that much. Much less so when the new habit was something that just kept on going after the body begged of it to stop. The palm of Kaili’s hand planted itself firmly on top of the table and she pushed herself into a hunch over the table’s edge and propped herself up with her elbows.

Her hands dragged themselves across her face, forced her eyes open in an ugly grimace staring straight at Mara’s father before she let it go and started to blink instead.

“Sorry.” She chuckled in a rather awkward manner. All things considered this was the first time she met the man. “I’ve spent the last few days hard at work, Mister Merrill. Thought spending all of yesterday asleep would be enough, but… Apparently not.”

With no further delays the girl pushed the box containing the blueprints and models all the way over to Jorus’ corner. Her brows perked, her hand swept against the lid to let the force take care of the lock mechanism. Half of it to show off, and the other half of it was because having a lock without a physical key was ingenious. It was after all locks that fell second in line after the act of manipulating electromagnetic fields when it came to learning and understanding what Kaili knew.

“That’s two different models made in miniature. One is a mainframe, and the others are server towers. Part of me wanted to set you up with a droid, but that’s a whole different project and ultimately one that would cost you far more than if we just, uh,” Kaili looked around. “Hijacked the hardware of another.”

“Not saying it’s the most, uhhh, legal option... But rerouting a standard 3PO-unit, equipping it with remote access and a hologram projector should prove far more convenient.”

“As long as you don’t care about warranty, of course.”

“That’s not to mention the simplicity of just setting up a kind of standalone holographic interface, but those are really a dime a dozen these days.”

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Kaili Talith"]

"Dime a dozen, eh?" Jorus murmured as he looked over the blueprints. "That's disappointing. Guess I'm a little behind the times. This is good work, Master Talith. You've more than delivered. I'll work up whatever you need for compensation, long as it's within reason. But you don't strike me as the kind who gets exorbitant. You want what you deserve."

He finished sorting through the projected files and sent them back across the table. "Make the changes you need to make along the way, within reason. The Kathol Outback will pay for this -- in a good way.

"Since I've got you here, I suppose I should tell you more about what we're building. The Underground's acquired a number of materials that should probably be collected and made accessible to the right people. My holocron, the Kilian Book of Adjuration, the Jem Wyzen holocron, and a ton of obscure history from my sister's archives, just to name the high points."

 

[Kaili Talith]

“Ten billion trillion and Revan’s lightsaber, please.” Kaili snickered. “No. No, I’d say we’d be hard pressed to get this above the seven thousand line. Though that all depends on how many units you get installed, of course.”

Yet in an instant the mention of Rave’s library, Jem Wyzen more specifically, seemed to drain the blood from Kaili’s face. Her eyes opened wide like a deer in a speeder’s headlights. It was hard to forget the time she last heard that name, it had been one of the few times Kaili had been uncertain about something Mara had talked to her about.

“That’s some seriously heavy topics.” It was all she could say on the matter. “Force sever.” Stated in mild uncertainty. As far as back as it went, she still hadn’t made her mind as to whether it was the right thing or not. “It sounds like you have a good thing going here, Mister Merrill.”

“I usually do the Q-and-A before accepting a project, but I trust you and your daughter well enough not to.” Kaili shrugged the bad feels off. “What’s the long-term? Preservation of knowledge, or?”

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Kaili Talith"]

"I see Mara's read you in on the Wyzen holocron. And yeah, that's heavy material. When I was running the Jedi Order's holocron security, we had all different levels of access and security ratings, all different kinds of procedures. The Wyzen stuff, Force Sever -- that's about a notch below Sith material in terms of how tightly we'd lock it down.

"Preservation's part of it, yeah. The other big part is that all the Jedi factions get sort of insular with their treasures and training tools. Ideally I'd want this to be faction-agnostic, sort of like the Jedi Academy Network was supposed to be. If it just turns out to be the Underground's lending library, that's fine with me too.

"And then there's the whole issue we had with Coren Starchaser and a couple other real aggressive types in the Underground, about a year back. I can't help but feel like more consistent access to good material might have forestalled that whole mess. So yeah, lots of reasons to get things in one place, let people use them, give them a wise degree of access, and see what happens."

 

[Kaili Talith]

“Yeah, more than read me in on it.” Kaili left it ambiguously open for the sake of the other dimensional thread and lamplight hanging above. “Coren Starchaser isn’t a name I suspect runs in the best of flavor in certain crowds. Had a good heart, but less so when it came to patience perhaps. I had the chance to meet another Starchaser by the name of Kaia.”

Kaili shrugged. “Lost touch with her, sadly. She too was a good person.”

“So, if the main purpose is to preserve and dish out knowledge then I see no reason to really drag this out with specifics considering, well, you already have my specifications and all that.”

The disadvantage of doing things in reverse was the way it left you dumbstruck when the threads intertwined and tangled in a bad way. This was by all means one of those situations, Kaili had no idea what to actually do or say here. She usually asked for specifications here, assembled the parts and sent it off awaiting a message of delivery.

Only, here she was with all of that other than assembly.

“So uh, do you have the means to build this? I imagine it wouldn’t take too long if you had the right things at hand.”

[member="Jorus Merrill"]