9.113 The Wee, Small Hours of the Morning

[Halajiin Rabeak]

(This thread takes place on the night/morning immediately before "Rage Against the Dying of the Light.")

Night aboard a starship is little more than an idea perpetuated only so that those aboard may retain some form of sanity. The lights don't dim in the proposed evening, nor do they rise when comes the imagined morning. There is no time, no sense of purpose or place among the stars, stars ever-twinkling in their mocking expanse. But man must have his order; he must have his time and his sense of place, so out of the void he pulls his schedule and hangs it up as if the universe should know it and obey.

But would not the universe be a happier place if things could simply happen? If they could just unfurl as they might, with no schedule, no calendar, clocks or speed by which it must happen, wouldn't that be the best way? They could happen, then man could discover it in the proper cycle of day or night on whatever world they chose to transpire upon.

These were things Halajiin Rabeak had never wondered. He had known morning, day, evening and night most all his life, and his days were spent weaving in and out of every aspect, never worrying about their fragile nature. There would always be another day, the sun would rise and he would move ahead into it, bridging from one to the next with the ease of inhaling or exhaling, done even without his own notice. For twenty-three years, he knew that time was linear, and that his life would move along it in a single, unbroken path, until at last he found his end. Even then, his faith in Garfife, the Creator of All Things, gave him peace, as he knew he had been faithful and would be granted paradise when at last he died. He would grow old, perhaps settled down with a wife, and raised children, or perhaps having remained a bachelor and instead devoted his life to the training of others in the Order. Life was unpredictable, but its seamless path toward finality was certain.

Lying on his bed, Hal stared up at his ceiling and he wondered how he could have been so incredibly wrong.

Instead of the multicolored glow of city lights, speeder lights and colorful signs out his window back at the Jedi Order, Hal’s small, windowless stateroom aboard the Whaladon bathed in the cold, joyless celadon glow of his bedside alarm clock’s screen. The low rumble of the transport’s engines and the tinny whine of the life support system replaced the sounds of life which he had grown so accustomed to falling asleep to, and even his bed seemed thin and industrial compared to the mattress he had been sleeping on since he first came to the Order at the age of fifteen. Simpler days, he now knew, even though they had seemed so complex at the time.

At the time. The Nehantite allowed himself a chuckle in the darkness, a paw scratching his bare chest as he lay atop his sheets in just his undershorts. That time had been not so long ago that he didn’t still have some of its dust still left in his fur, but to those around him they had happened long before any of them were even born. Hal’s seamless path through life had stumbled upon a door, and a simple step through it for him had taken one hundred and seven years for the rest of the universe.

His clock read 3:47 AM, and he couldn’t help but wonder how many times people had looked at that same time on their clocks while he had been frozen in carbonite. He wondered how his family had dealt with never knowing what happened to him, how his friends might have searched in vain, and how, in time, he had been forgotten about entirely. He’d imagined he would make his mark on the galaxy, do something so amazing that all would remember him, and that Nehantites everywhere would be proud of one of their rare sons who went on to be a great man. Now, at 3:48, his brief smile faded, the chuckle replaced by a sigh. He hadn’t changed the galaxy; he hadn’t even been there when it needed him most. Like a slipper accidentally kicked under the bed, Halajiin had been forgotten, and by the time he was found, his other half had long ago been thrown away.

That was how he felt. Half of a whole which no longer existed. Oh, sure, there were new left slippers he was told would match him just fine, but it wasn’t the same. No one really knew them, nor could they, not yet, and maybe not even in time. This new Order, this way of life among the stars, on the run and living in fear – this was not the Jedi Order he knew, and though he could swallow it, he wasn’t sure how long he could continue to stomach it before becoming ill if he couldn’t adapt to it before then.