"A Day in Luke Skywalker's Life" by Telly and Maddog

Man, I was trying to get Tellesto to help me write this, but he's unavailable this evening so it looks like I have to write the first part myself.

*attempts to use the Force to get Telly to come online* Anyway, here's what's going on so far:



BACKGROUND: This story takes place one year before ANH, and Luke Skywalker is still on the Lars' moisture farm.




Tatooine's twin suns were slowly setting in the far west horizon, although the heat was still considerable. Luke Skywalker had great difficulty coping with the day's labors, and he kept thinking to himself that he'd pass out from exhaustion every second he breathed that hot, dry, dirty air.

Luke was relieved that his chores were almost over, but he was still rather upset that Uncle Owen didn't let him stay inside where it was cool, so the two of them could fix a defective astromech droid. But nooooooo, Luke had to go outside and ensure the moisture evaporators were functioning correctly, as they can cease to function at a moment's notice, especially on extremely hot days. He was dreading the day when he'd have to go to Anchorhead to get replacement parts and fix the evaporating mechanisms himself.

He knew how much his uncle disliked the R7 droid series, and how their motivators were even faultier than those of the notorious R5s. Owen had been searching for an R2 unit for the past four years, but his luck had run dry, much like most of the farm's water wells this season alone.

 

Well, this looks more optimistic than Carolyn Golledge's Day in the Life of Han Solo. Interesting.

 

Lemme she what I can do...

The R7 unit who had been purchased just the other night rolled about on the three pillar legs it had attached to it?s domed body, looking around with its swiveling head for the boy in the white clothing.
He turned around sharply and suddenly had the teenaged mechanic in his sight, fiddling with one of the large antennas protruding from the ground in the distance.
It took him a moment to recognize the equipment he was currently working on, as his visual processor had been damaged in his stay with the Jawa merchants.
However he soon realized that he wasn?t playing with regular electronic equipment but in fact working on a Moisture Vaporator.
Incorrectly working on it he noted. The boy had been gruffly turning a hydrospanner against the side of the vaporator, angrily ignoring the scuttling droids walking about him and not even taking the time to pay attention to his work.
Blankly the astromech droid whistled after the boy warning him against that particular course of action with the moisture vaporator, telling him that twisting the compressor valve that way would break off its hinge.
What was the name of this boy? He wondered
Then as his databank flashed up in a brief second of having his inner memory work he recalled that he was one Luke Skywalker, nephew of Owen and Beru Lars.
He gathered that he was the charge who had been assigned to work on him, the one who had always whined on for hours about going to the ?Toshi Station?.
The droid knew of no such places out here in the middle of nowhere on a planet that hadn?t even been considered for galactic representation, a place that few would even be able to pronounce let alone remember.
His greatest worry at the moment was the ever-growing pressure on the moisture vaporator, which was beginning to creak with the strain being pressed upon it.
He whistled quick and loud to catch the attention of this Luke Skywalker, but the boy simply waved his hand towards the droid and continued on, not even looking up to acknowledge him at all.
If he was going to be so rude then why would he even be working with droids? Why would he even be out there playing with a piece of equipment to which he had to idea about?
Yet he continued on with the mechanical work, cranking the compressor further and further to the breaking point.
Fine then, if he going to be ignorant of his situation then he might as well forget about the help from droids and continue on his course to personal hell.
Several minutes later the vaporator exploded in a rush of steam and water that covered Skywalker prompting him to scream out in an assortment of curse words that very few would understand.
But his Uncle seemed to understand the words and promptly ran out of his covering in the garage to notice the boy soaking wet and the shattered equipment littering the desert floor.
Droids had begun screaming out running inside to the shelter of the hut and already the water had been rising up to the morning sky to be taken into Tatooine?s harsh atmosphere.

Quickly, without haste the little droid wheeled itself away to spare itself from hearing the coming lecture to come from this Owen, as he had heard plenty of those in his short time there already.
Coming around the white shed that Owen had appeared from he wheeled down the flat astromech ramp leading into the garage and brought himself to a resting point next to one of the hissing oil baths.
Heat escaped the oil bath and bathed the shiny dome of the droid in a barrage of thickly layered steam causing his dome to fog up.
He tooted sharply at his annoyance of having his sight further impaired and wheeled himself to the far side of the room next to a table of models and tools.
With a swivel of his head he took in an entire assortment of tools and hydrospanners into the girth of his fogged view, his databank processing and taking in the information to retrieve for later use.
Then a piece of equipment caught his interest as he looked about the room, a pleasant object awaiting him in the far corner of the hut.
On the wall was a po

 

The R7 droid started slowing down, then realised that it had better shut itself down since its power was so low.

Luke was exhausted for the day, he unwittingly broke one of the evaporators and was just getting heat from his uncle for it. Now he knew for sure that he was going to have to go all the way to Anchorhead, get the replacement parts, and fix it tomorrow.

Owen had just finished with his spiel with Luke, and he knew he had his work cut out for him. If he didn't hurry and fix the evaporator by the end of the week, harvest will be too far behind schedule and therfore Owen wouldn't be able to afford as many hired hands as he planned on getting for the next season.

Luke went to his small bedroom and slept on a small mattress-like device. He tossed and turned all night, he just couldn't get over what happened that evening.

When he finally got up, he saw the R7 unit in front of him. Luke thought that the R7 unit needed charging, but it was beeping and chirping in a hundred different tones. Luke rubbed his eyes and got out of his bed, and prepared himself for the day. He went down to the kitchen, where his Aunt Beru was preparing breakfast.

He sat down at the table, and was just about to sip on blue milk when Owen shook a fork at him. He reminded Luke to go to go to Anchorhead and get the parts, and that he recharged and cleaned up the R7 droid last night. Owen stood up, and told Luke that he should never forget to recharge a droid with low power.

Luke finished his breakfast, took some credits, and hopped on his speeder and was going to take the two-hour journey to Anchorhead.

 

If Luke could say anything about his uncle he could say that he was a staunch old wamp rat of a man who ran his life around the harvest, who ran his family around the harvest and who ran his remaining dreams around the harvest.
It never was a bad thing when Luke considered the kind of discipline and mastery his uncle had over his own life, his ability to rise when the first of the twin suns rose and set when the last of their rays were across the Tatooine horizon. However, he considered it to be a bad thing when his lack of ambition got in the way of others.
Although he had never openly said that the harvest was a waste of time he knew his uncle had a good mind about Luke?s desire to go to the academy. Luke knew that if the harvest was set down that a better life could be found within the Empire or on an Imperial controlled world such as Duros or even the Empire?s homeworld Coruscant. Even now as he coasted along the wide open sand dunes of Tatooine he didn?t truly feel alive, free or as if he were taking control of his life. He was doing what he had always been doing, living out the life his uncle wanted him to live, and collecting moisture on a planet that didn?t even have any natural lakes that he knew of.
Letting these feelings go and grabbing on to the throttle of the land speeder he opened up the hovercraft a bit and let the cool wind sail through his hair and light clothing. His mind was already drifting away from the impatience of his own desires and the inaction of his uncle?s work. Life was, as he knew it to be outside of Tatooine, different, deadly, exciting. He longed for adventure, to see the universe he had read about in holograms and heard about from drunken spacers. He could take up a ship and travel to the spice mines of Kessel and see the penal colonies of the very same asteroid field that surrounded the grimy planet. He could walk the boggy swamps of Nal Hutta and watch the different Gamorian clans, which serviced the Hutts. And perhaps, even one day he would be on a Lambadda shuttle and visit the very center of the galaxy itself, the Imperial homeworld of Coruscant. See the grand senate chambers, view the majestic Imperial Palace and see a Star Destroyer clear the planetary orbit. Maybe even view the ancient wreckage of the Jedi Temple where the Jedi Knights resided so long ago.
All of these wants, wishes and ambitious goals set themselves out before Luke?s mind, and even though he doubted to himself that he would ever really accomplish any of them, somewhere in the back of his mind a voice told him he would do all of this and more.

Anchorhead was without a doubt a small complex that tried to pass itself for a large city town such as Mos Eisley, a common man?s village which the moisture farmers and would-be pilots called home. As he coasted into the small grouping of stone buildings and huts and communication arrays Luke could already see piles upon piles of junk. Useless components and pieces that once hung off starships or fueled the Sandcrawlers of the Jawa traders, it was all stuff that the simple folks of the Dune Sea loved to brood upon. It was a glimpse of a larger galaxy outside of what they knew, a hobby, which they casually indulged in. He remembered the day when he and Biggs had found and dug up an old Nubian power core from the sands. The groups that huddled around it for weeks as it was put up on display in the Toshi station, the long glances at what was not only a finely crafted hyperdrive core but also a piece of galactic art. Windy, one of Luke?s better friends had spent hours on end sitting before the white and silver box, looking upon the complex indentations and angles of perspective that ran through the core. The wires and circuits were nothing short of brilliant, genius in design and execution.
Now ridding up to the Toshi station itself Luke could view a small group that he guessed would be his friends, Cammie and Windy and maybe even Biggs. All of them sitting around the Toshi station talking about various galactic events they had seen that morning on Cammie?s holoscreen.