by Renee Ahdieh
She couldn’t think about that now. Her front tentacle twitched. Something was coming. She felt it arriving before she saw it, the vibration buzzing across the floor. And so she pressed herself against the wall, turning herself black and shiny, blending in perfectly.
The creature rolled up the hall like a large black mouse or, more accurately to Omi, an insect. Black and podlike in body, swift in motion; something about it was not right. Omi pressed herself flatter against and up the wall. Like the giant beast they were all traveling in, this large insect was not alive, Omi was sure of it. It zipped by without even noticing how the wall bulged, despite being the same color and sheen. Omi stayed this way for several minutes as other similar dead creatures zipped and walked up and down the hall, some tiny as swamp turtles, others tall as Vodrans, and one as large as a Hutt. Then Omi did see one of the Hutts pass by with what could have been a Vodran in white hard casing.
When the hallway finally grew quiet again, Omi knew this had to be her chance for escape. She smelled moisture nearby. It was beyond the hard walls, and she had to find it before she completely dried out. She rolled into the middle of the hallway, her flesh aching from the lack of moisture. Dropping her black coloring to her usual mature deep purple, she slithered toward the smell of water. She’d reached the end of the hall when two Vodran-like individuals encased in white nearly stepped on her.
One exclaimed in a language that was not Vodran. The other pointed something black and long at her. Somehow she knew to move before it blasted fire. A smoking crater appeared beside her. She only had seconds. Back. Toward the one closest to her, instead of away. She was in a hurricane of terror again, just as she had been during the fight with the male member of her tribe. When she’d been fighting for her life.
With her terror came that sweet clarity. She shot her two front tentacles toward him, moving like a zip fish. She had to be impossible. She could not miss the parts of its body she needed to grasp. Milliseconds. She could not miss. Or she was going to die. She was not meant to die here in this cold, dead place. She was entitled to so much more. She couldn’t miss.
There was that voice again. Reverberating through the space between the milliseconds. Through the space in her flesh. Telling her to trust. Submit.
She grasped his legs and was on him in seconds with the spur in her left tentacle. And in this way, she stung. She could not see the other; this was the weakness of having only one eyestalk. Her blind spots were many. But she could see in other ways sometimes. Yes. The one was stumbling back, turning toward the other, raising its weapon. She could smell the smoke from the burned ground.
She leapt. And as she spun in the air toward the second one, all her tentacles flew out and, for a moment, she was a huge seven-point star in space. Her back tentacle slapped him first, then her other three. The fifth and sixth grasped him, and the seventh dug her poison spur right through its white helmet into the meaty soft flesh beneath. It felt similar to smashing through the shell of a large crab.
Omi slapped wetly on the floor, her body now screaming with pain. She stared at what she’d done. She swiveled her eyestalk to look up the hallway in one direction and then the other. Her suckers could taste the ground. There was water nearby. But could she make it there without being discovered again? And was the water just another container? For the first time she wondered where she could even go in here. Within this beast that would eventually burn.
Omi decided to return the way she’d come. Quickly. Moving and hiding. Slowly. Gradually. Even as chaos erupted behind her when the bodies were discovered, she stayed her course and eventually made it back to the transparent bowl, lifting the large lid and pulling it over her. She’d twisted it firmly back in place and settled on the bottom of the bowl in a scrunched ball just as the guards burst in. She shut her eyes, feeling their scrutiny as they approached her. From underwater, she heard their garbled voices as they stepped up to the glass and tapped on it. She lazily opened her eye and closed it.
After a few seconds, she cracked her eye open a bit and watched one of them test the bowl lid’s tightness. After walking around her bowl and searching the storage room, the two of them left and Omi found herself alone again. She stared out into space. Her painful skin recovered to its hydrated self in the swamp water. At least there was that.
—
After a while, Omi stopped caring about how much time had passed. They came and fed her smelly fish, sometimes chopped up, sometimes whole. Disgusting fish that didn’t taste like anything from her home, and when she ate, she missed home that much more. They placed two solid metal bars over the top of her bowl, but only she knew that doing this was a waste of time. She had no intention of escaping. There was nowhere to escape to on this doomed vessel—living or dead animal, it didn’t matter to her.
All she could do was wait. Eventually, who knew, maybe there would be another chance to escape somewhere, on some planet.
And then she saw it, first from a distance in space and then closer and closer and closer. It looked like a fruit of the dead. Suspended there in space. The size of a moon. Soon it filled the view in the window and Omi could not see above, around, or below it. It became the world. And into it they flew.
For a second time, Omi felt the disorientation of adjusting to another type of gravity, that of this huge dead moon. She was nowhere; then she knew the bottom of her bowl and she settled down in it. When they came, again, she was asleep. The bowl shook as it was hauled away on what looked like a large flat insect.
She was taken down the sterile corridors, this time far past the place where she’d killed the two individuals in her aborted quest for freedom. The spot where it had all happened was clear, unoccupied. And then they were moving through the biggest inside place Omi had ever seen. The ceiling looked high as the sky, but it was a ceiling. She could see that. At the top were more bars, and a network of metal tubes. In this place, she saw more metal birds and insects and Vodran-like people in white casing. Hundreds of them. The ground was smooth, like the tops of ancient dead swamp trees that had been blasted by the winds. She’d climbed one of those trees once, out of curiosity. Its surface was so dry, the winds near the top so biting. She’d probably never do that again.
They entered a narrow, dim black tunnel where the ground became porous, red light shining through perfect tiny square holes. Not land, a sort of rigid grate that could hold all of their weight. The sound of the feet of those escorting her tapped on the hard surface as they walked. They stopped at a large hole in the wall with the squiggles 3263827 etched above the entrance, and that was when she was sure she was going to die. The symbols looked like images of what her body would look like if they tore her apart.
Was this where they were going to eat her? She could smell organic matter, strong and pungent in a way that reminded her of home. The insect beneath her rose, somehow lifting the large water-filled bowl. It dumped her and her swamp water into the hole and then Omi was tumbling down a black tunnel, throwing out her tentacles but unable to gain purchase. Her head bumped the side, her mouth of sharp teeth clattering together. She pulled her tentacles and eyestalk in and tucked her head as close to herself as possible.
Plash! She plunged into a soup of water, metal parts, pieces that were not metal but were just as dead, excrement from the Vodran-like people who ran the ship, and other organic matter. As bits and pieces bumped and pressed against her body, she let herself sink, still in a protective ball, until she softly bounced onto the bottom.
She waited. Some of the floating things around her were hard, some of them soft, none of them alive. She smelled things she could eat that were better than the smelly alien fish. Slowly, she reached out a tentacle and suckered the ground beneath her. Metal, and not all smooth. She knotted herself up again and stayed like this for hours. What she learned in that time was that this place was dimly lit by dirty lights on the ceiling, the water was tepid, and every so often garbage would fall into it, giving Omi something new to eat. It wasn’t home, bu
t it was as close to it as she could come in the middle of space.
—
Over time, Omi grew to understand that she was on a dead planet that had never been alive. A planet that was small and made of materials that would never know life. But things she could consume were dumped into the false swamp, and she supposed this was why she was captured and dumped there. She grew strong and large. She missed home and wished she could find a clear tank with no lid beside a window where she could see the vastness of space. But she also never forgot that she had a purpose, though she didn’t know what it was.
Omi survived the false swamp by memorizing the routine of the walls. Twice a “day” the thick metal walls would rumble once, quietly, and then rumble again and slowly march toward each other. The first time this had happened, Omi had not panicked. She’d spent hours exploring the false swamp, learning its shallows and depth, its perimeter, searching for an escape.
There was a large pipe near the bottom whose opening was protected by an invisible barrier until that moment when it flushed out much of the old water during these wall marches. However, there was also a large indenture near the bottom where something too impossibly hard had made a deep dent in the left wall. When the walls marched, she pressed herself here, protected even when the walls had pressed all the debris that she did not consume into a thick sheet. The sheet was ejected through a long slot below.
On that fateful day, an hour before it happened, Omi saw outer space again. When she was inside with no window. It was impossible. She was in her spot just as the sheet of compressed metals and dead materials was ejected. In that moment, everything seemed to burst from her mind. Suddenly, after so much time being by herself here, she was not alone. And what was with her was vast and beautiful. Again, she involuntarily shifted her flesh to the black of space with speckles of distant stars. And whatever was with her told her again through her skin that she had a mission and it would be in this false swamp. It told Omi that she was in the right place at the right time.
By the time the walls marched themselves apart, she was alone again. The walls were moving away, but they simultaneously seemed to close in on her because again she had the vision of everything going up in flames and again she wanted to escape her prison. But she had her mission first. More garbage was dumped into the false swamp, and soon she found a large hunk of rotting meat, consumed it, and settled in the corner as the fresh garbage soaked up the water.
Five minutes later, the four fell into her prison.
Omi’s tentacles twitched as she immediately recognized something in the smaller male. Yes, that one was male, not just by choice but by physical design. However, there was something about him that was like her; she could smell it on him. He had just left home, too, as she had so long ago. There was that, but there was something else, as well, if she relaxed and focused completely on him. There was something sparkly and electric that she felt in every part of her flesh. She did not understand their languages and she wished she could. The first thing she’d have demanded of this one was to know why he could submit to It, too. Because if he had not already, she knew he would eventually. Just as she had back when she had faced and killed those two white-shelled individuals when she was trying to escape.
She climbed out of the water, changing to its dirty-gray color beneath the dingy pink lighting, suctioning her tentacles to the wall so that she could get a better look. There she stayed, her tentacles spread, like a giant spider on the wall. One was a hairless female and three were larger males, one of them protected by fur. Omi would beware of the female, despite her lack of hair. The female would be most savage and cunning. If any of them could kill Omi, it would be that one. Omi dropped into the water with a soft splash.
She flattened herself and moved stealthily around their feet. When she brushed the small male’s leg, she heard It speak to her again, her tentacles tingling with Its demand. She didn’t want to; she had plenty of food down here, meat, bones, thick green stalks she’d come to especially enjoy. And all she sensed from these four who could not see her was fear. Omi had no reason to harm any of them.
She knew when she did it. It was her choice. Despite the fact that it felt as if she’d made the choice while part of something greater. Yes. She rolled smoothly beneath the surface, then tumbled and stretched four tentacles before her. She opened her mouth and could not resist letting out a roar from deep in her body, the rumble of her speech reverberating beneath the false swamp and along the metal walls to the ceiling. The individuals shuddered, spoke among themselves, freezing and looking around. She poked her eyestalk up, needing to see his face.
Then she wrapped a tentacle around him and pulled him under. He was screaming and thrashing, then choking. Back home, sometimes the sky would swirl and fight itself and light would crash down into the water. If this happened close to where Omi was hiding, she’d feel her entire body tense up, becoming hard as stone, and she’d feel the light traveling through her. Touching him was like this: Everything in her body was aware of everything in him. She wondered if everything in him was aware of everything in her. She wondered if this creature could be her mate, not for procreating but for adventure. It was his destiny to leave home, too.
She was sure of her mission, but now she was also unsure. What if he died? Something blasted past her, red and hot. The others were attacking. Pain exploded in one of her tentacles and the water around her turned blue with her blood. She let go and flung him back to the surface.
Her back tentacle hung limply, a gaping hole in its center. She pulled it close to her body and a second, even more powerful explosion of pain vibrated through her so intensely that for a moment she lost consciousness. But the energy in her, around her, through her was stronger. She had a mission and it was right now. She pulled him down again.
He fought her, but she was stronger. She held him still, wrapping her three other thick tentacles around him. She heard a brilliant humming and it vibrated through her body. For the third time, she saw that this place, along with the small beast she’d arrived in, would all go up in flames.
What was happening to him now, though? As he struggled, pulled at her tentacles, kicking his legs, bubbles of air escaping from his mouth, he was shedding. No, not the protective material he wore over his flesh. With her sharp eyes, she saw it: A shade of him sloughed off, the flesh of this shade pale and delicate looking, naked. It shook off him, the face of this dim version of him wide-eyed, the mouth open, shocked. Then the shade dissolved in the water. Omi’s mission was complete. She was so preoccupied with what she’d seen that she nearly forgot to release him. Nearly. When she did, he swam frantically to the surface. The walls rumbled.
As she fled to her space in the wall, she knew he would be okay. And when the walls stopped their usual march forward to press all the remaining metal and waste into a sheet, she was not surprised. Even when one of the larger males spat one more ball of fire into the false swamp after they’d gotten out, she wasn’t afraid.
Soon, the four were gone and Omi never again saw the one who was so much like her. But she trusted that he went on to do great things, for she’d been chosen to baptize him through a sort of death. To her people, water was where life was given. Water was the Great Cleanser When It Was Time to Be Cleansed. And this was also true for those who could not live in it.
Omi’s injured tentacle fell off and grew back. She went on living in the false swamp, swimming about, eating its garbage, hiding in her safe space. Days, months, she did not know. There was no dim sun with which she could mark time. There were no other people of her tribe to tell her the time. However, once in a while that which she could feel in her flesh and beyond spoke to her and told her stories of the universe. It told her of peoples, places, wars, and deep lessons. It taught her how to spin her body in ways she did not think were possible until she did them. In that dim place, she learned how to make a large twisted hunk of metal and two pieces of waterlogged insulation lift into the air like great birds. Or maybe Omi was j
ust talking to and teaching herself, and all her knowledge came from within her very cells.
When the fire came that consumed every part of the great beast she’d been swallowed by, Omi submitted to her destiny. And her last thought was Who will I be the next time around?
My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi, and I am dead.
I know how that sounds. Crazy old Ben with his crazy old stories.
But this isn’t crazy. This is happening.
At least, I think it is.
One minute I am standing in the heart of the Empire’s new battle station, facing the man who, for good or ill, has defined the last thirty years of my life. I close my eyes, and wait; hearing the sweep of his lightsaber and…
And what?
What happens next?
If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can ever imagine.
Did I say those words? Did I believe them?
I have no idea. Not anymore.
It happens over and over again. I close my eyes, waiting for the inevitable. I hear the rasp of Vader’s breath, the creak of his armor, the scream of the lightsaber.
I feel the searing pain in my side.
Eyes. Scream. Saber. Pain.
Eyes. Scream. Saber. Pain.
Eyes. Scream. Saber—
I sit up, crying out in the stillness of the room. I’m not where I was. The battle station, the troopers, even Vader…they’re all gone, as if they never existed.
I am home, perched on the pourstone slab that has served as a bed for nearly twenty years. Where is my mattress? I glance around the cramped room. Everything is as it should be, although some of the more recent additions are missing. The wooden chair that I built from japor wood. The set of clay bowls scavenged from a deserted Jawa caravan. The humidifier purchased from Watto, at a highly inflated price, I should add.
Have I been robbed? No, this is how the hut looked in the early days of my exile, when I still etched a calendar of sorts into the wall above my bed to mark the passage of time. I run my hand across the pitted surface. Three years scored into the stone.