Mentor and Holonet

U can support me on Pa tre on. com/JediCO

16+ chapter ahead. -------------------------------------------------

Today our group, like every other group our age, began their first official lessons in the Force. Our group of five, and the other two, were led by Lairi, which wasn't surprising, but it still made me happy. After kicking us out of our rooms into the hallway in the morning, she took us to the gym for exercise, and on the way, she warned us not to run off in search of our old group of minors, but to wait for her. Now we were in a new group, and she was our supervisor. There was no need to get acquainted, because we had already known each other for a week. Besides the five of us, there were five other boys and five girls in our new group. A green-skinned Nautolan with some kind of hose instead of hair, and obviously an aquatic race, a blue-skinned Rhodian with an elongated, toothless mouth, two Twi'leks, and a human girl. The boys were Iktochi, Salastian, Chagrean, Kel-dor, and human. Not a lot of people, really.

After breakfast, the lesson began. And if the guys in my room still had something to do, and they hadn't even lifted a coin in the air, I was bored, which annoyed me a little. Sitting in the circular room with the windows in which the ships flashed, I remembered very clearly the scene from the movie when Skywalker found the hidden children. And I just couldn't sit around and do nothing, and Lairi seemed to have decided not to touch me yet, pulling me up to my level with the kids to begin with. It was annoying.

I settled back into the lotus position and went into meditation. I would combine feelings and sensations.

- Raine," the curator touched me on the shoulder, "why don't you help your new friends? You're pretty good at it.

Man, she didn't let me sit down for ten minutes. What should I say?

- I'm just a youngling and I don't understand anything myself.

- You understand enough to help your friends.

Wow. Already friends.

- That's great. What do I understand?

- I'm sorry? - The woman didn't understand my question. - Ahem. That's it. Raine.... So you don't want to wait two weeks? Or help your comrades?

- I don't know how to help them. And yes, I don't want to wait.

- Babe... okay. Maybe it's for the best. Wait a little while, I'll be right back.

After these words, the Twi'leck got up from her knees and left the hall. She came back about ten minutes later, carrying a faintly glowing orb. She sat down beside me and put it in my lap.

- The ball, she began, is a very strong source of electrical, thermal and light energy, despite its small size. Your task is to feel any of it. When you can, call me.

- Is that all? - I asked the woman who stood up, surprised. - How do you do that?

- Through the Force, youngling, through the Force.

- To feel it?

- Exactly.

- You've got to be kidding me.

- Not at all," she smiled slyly.

Breathe in, breathe out. Calm down, Lex, and act. Chuu-tal also did not think that you could learn to meditate. But you did. And now you can.

The first thing I did was to "look" at the balloon and see nothing. "Fog" was everywhere as before, even in the balloon, but I did not see anything extra that could be defined as "energy". I tried to feel it, but I failed, too. I could feel the force, but not the energy, which is, in principle, understandable. Well, like Lairi said, we'll try to feel it.

It was only in the gym that I realized that the situation with the Force was getting better. It was only after we were divided into new groups. Before that, the instructor, who taught us hand-to-hand combat, would never put me in a sparring session with anyone. Ever since that conversation. I don't know what was going through his head, but a fact is a fact. After splitting us into fives, his studies turned into constant repetition and memorization. As he explained, soon we will begin to be trained with a lightsaber, and attend his lessons, or rather not only him, but the melee section as a whole, will depend only on our wishes. If we want to learn the art of unarmed combat in more depth, we're welcome, but if we don't want to, the swordsmanship instructors will teach us the basics.

But until they took us seriously, we went to the gym every day and practiced the techniques we had learned, sparring during breaks. It was during sparring that I got a real feel for combat anticipation. At first it was unusual - I sort of knew where my opponent would strike, but I couldn't integrate this knowledge into my fighting pattern. How would I put it... in short, I was confused forever. As I was about to make one move or another, I suddenly realized where my sparring partner would hit, and that I should have done something different from what I wanted to do at first. I began to think about what to do and got punched in the face. If you just parry blows, it was easy, but learning how to use it in a fight was not easy. But here, strangely enough, the banal practice helped. I didn't have to invent something to help me better use anticipation, I just got used to it, starting to take it as something ordinary. No one even wanted to go into a circle with me after that. And whoever did... I got the impression he'd given up before the fight started. My mentor even started lecturing me about defeatism. The Jedi is not supposed to think about defeat, because then he's likely to achieve nothing, and even worse if he doesn't give it his all, making a minimum effort only to be told later that he "tried, but alas". In general, he was a real pain in the ass for the kids. Although I'm probably not right here - he was saying the right things, because if you give up in advance, you've lost. Even if there was a good chance to win. Maybe that's why I never became a good racer in my world. There was no way to know for sure.

New lectures came up, particularly astronavigation. I almost stumbled when I heard the name of the lesson. I just could not imagine what can be taught to five-year-olds in a class with such a name. It turned out to be, I mean, it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. Maybe later the complexity will increase, yes for sure it will, but for now astronavigation was like the simple astronomy we were taught at school back on Earth.

The old lectures didn't go anywhere either. Biology, botany, racial science, Republic politics and legislation, history, mathematics, standard galactic language, internal languages-the equivalent of foreign languages. All in all, there was and, I suspect, will be a lot more.

I would also like to mention the holonet. I've already said it's a big bummer, right? Well, I realized the extent of this bummer when I learned that the holonet I was climbing was only the Coruscian domain. Just a small part of the holonet. There are links to other domains, but you have to pay THAT much money to surf there.... I actually only found out about all this when I decided to get in touch with my parents. The problem was that I did not know ... how would it ... mailbox, to put it simply. I didn't know my parents' mailbox. A lot is possible if you really want to, but you have to be able to act, and I didn't even know if there was a holonet on Pzoba.

Well, there's one more thing I can't leave out. One day, while parsing another chapter of Basis, I heard Sam grumbling, who had taken the bed next to me and was fiddling with his datapad at the time. And that would have been all right, but the words "hut restrictions" made me pay attention to him.

- What kind of restrictions? - I asked him.

- Well... - he waved his datapad, - many resources are inaccessible from here. My father showed me one forum for free traders, where they discuss modifications of ships, but I can not go there.

- What does it have to do with restrictions? - I asked a cautious question, to which I didn't want to receive an answer.

- It's not the only one that doesn't open. There are a lot of them. And that's just the stuff I know about.

What a load of crap. There's a holonet cutoff as well. Technically, I can understand the Order, but that doesn't make me feel any better. Why don't we try to work around that? Right now the order is paying for the holonet. Maybe if i'm paying for the holonet. Nah, it's no big deal. Who's gonna let me? Well... it's probably for the best. It saves me money. Man, that's a bummer.

The lectures and training continued. And everything would be fine, but I could not feel the energy of the orb that Lairi had handed me. It was as if I had been pulled away from my studies, given an assignment that I was supposed to be able to do without prompting. I just didn't know where to start. And so it went on until one day, in the empty hall where our group was learning to sense the Force, there was a table. There were fifteen lightsaber handles on it. Well, and funny hats with ball-shaped droids hanging over them.

"Oh yeah," I thought then. - "Finally."

The children around me weren't indifferent, either-the whispers and commotion filled the small hall.

- Well," the curator smiled, "I see you've already figured out what we're going to do today. In that case, go ahead and take apart the swords and helmets. But don't switch anything on without a command and don't press any buttons. Where are you going, youngling? There's your place," she paused me, pointing to the cursed orb.

- But... - I didn't understand. - What about...

- First you must complete your previous task, and only then will I let you have the sword.

-... - I didn't know what to say to that. I must have been a laughing stock at the moment. - You're a bitch," I said in Russian.

- Excuse me? - She didn't recognize the language.

- Whatever you say, Master Lairi.

- Well, then go study," she said suspiciously.

So I went, what else could I do? I took the balloon from the counter, turned it on like the Twi'lek taught me, and flopped down on the floor. I twirled the fucking glowworm in my hands and looked at the children with the lightsabers a couple of times, and sighed heavily. Just enough for my mentor to hear. Should I break it? No, not an option. Lairi would just bring back a new one, and scold him for that one as well. Or rather will not even scold, and will begin to grin - what I suddenly became clumsy. But what to do with this "source of energy" I also did not know.

I sighed again, but much more quietly, got to my feet and approached the woman who was explaining safety to the children.

- Master Lairi," from this day on, I didn't want to call her mentor. - May I ask you a question?

- I hear you, youngling," she raised a corner of her lips.

- Tell me, does this problem have a solution at all? For me. For my age, my experience, and without my mentor's prompting.

Jedi don't lie.

- Nothing is impossible, youngling. - And sometimes, in their arrogance, they don't even think to dodge the answer. Bitch.