Saga Long Memory (OCs) - (Repost from old boards)

Title: Long Memory (Repost)
Author: Divapilot
Genre: Drama (AU)
Summary: In an alternate universe, Darth Maul has become Emperor Maul. Anyone with ties to the Jedi is hunted down and destroyed. But despite the Emperor’s attempt to rewrite the past, the people have a long memory.

(Notes: repost from 2007.)



“Not so special now, are you?” taunted the Imperial officer. He assessed the prisoner who knelt before him, and decided he was unimpressed. One would think that Maul would have better things to do than chase after children.

Imperial Army Major Hakkan smiled thinly to himself. If this capture went well, he may be able to get off of this horrible, provincial Outer Rim excuse for a planet and return home to Coruscant. He looked down his aquiline nose at the thin boy shivering in the stuncuffs in front of him. The Sith would pay a huge reward for such a prize, if the stories about this boy’s abilities were true. The Jedi were supposed to be extinct, thanks to Emperor Maul’s devastatingly successful extermination programs, but occasionally someone like this pathetic boy would surface. Hakkan bent down, reached out, and lifted the boy’s bloodied chin. To his credit, the youth did not flinch.

Hakkan scowled and shoved the boy away. He stood up and wiped his hands. “You have made a grave mistake, boy,” Hakkan said. He chortled at his pun. “You should have known better than to try such a stupid trick to escape.”

The officer turned to the attending guard. “Take him away,” he muttered. The guard reached under the boy’s arm to jerk him onto his feet. “Wait,” Hakkan said suddenly. The guard stopped and looked up. “Keep the stuncuffs on him at all times and post an extra guard. I do not want this one to escape.” Hakkan raised an eyebrow. “He’s a Jedi.”

~*~*~

In a nondescript office building in the government sector of Coruscant, Chaler Ris settled himself into his cubicle at the Ministry of Re-Education (Interplanetary Security Division) and entered his access code. While the computer ran through his security clearances and entered his workday logon information into the central payroll processor, Chaler sipped his caf and smiled to himself.

Chaler placed the steaming cup on his worktable as the computer finished the usual start up routine. He selected “messages” and quickly perused the new information. One message in particular caught his eye. Chaler instinctively leaned closer to the screen as he slid his finger across the datapad, scooping the message into a private file and then deleting any evidence that it ever existed from the desktop.

He glanced around him. Satisfied that no one was paying attention to him and that he had effectively blocked the surveillance monitors, he opened up the panel beneath his datapad, removed the blinking module that carried the evidence of the incoming message, and slid in a clean module with prerecorded, innocuous messages loaded upon it. Chaler palmed the original module, then reached for his caf. Quietly, unobtrusively, Chaler slipped the module into his caf. The module sank immediately to the bottom of the cup, hidden inside the beverage. Chaler placed the cup back on his worktable.

He smiled to himself. Then, satisfied, he went to work on the day’s tasks, redirecting messages and shuffling documents throughout the various offices of the Ministry.

*~*~*

Hakkan looked at the youth curiously. He couldn’t have been more than 15, maybe 16 years old. But that was old enough. The kid was scared, and he had reason to be.

There had been bruises and cuts on the boy. It was possible that he got roughed up coming through processing. It didn’t matter to Hakkan what happened to prisoners, as long as it didn’t happen on his watch. Out of curiosity, Hakkan had pulled the file on this one and actually read about the boy who was a “guest” in his cell.

The boy’s name was Lamarrus. He had lived in Hrath Town all his life, but it wasn’t until just recently that his activities had caught anyone’s eye. Turned out that the boy could move things with his mind. It seemed he had an annoying hero streak, too, and he had stopped a speeder accident by shoving the oncoming vehicle out of a pedestrian’s way by simply waving his hand at it. Unfortunately for him, it was all caught on a security monitor, and there were witnesses. Add to that some well-paid testimony from classmates who were quick to sell out their friend, and now Lamarrus was headed to a probable execution.

The Galactic Empire didn’t tolerate Jedi. Noble do-gooders, always coming in to disrupt the efficient way that things were done. That’s why Darth Maul’s first action after becoming Emperor had been to arrest and summarily execute them all. Hakkan remembered the tiresome way things were before Darth Maul had taken over the Senate. Now his army brought quick resolutions to problems, and order and discipline to the planets in the Empire. Everything went so much more smoothly now. No more silly trials for someone like Lamarrus, whom everyone knew was guilty anyway. Just a word from Coruscant was all it took to do away with these types of troublemakers.

Hakkan wondered if Lamarrus had any family members who were trying to free him. Tricky business, that; it could well land them all in danger since this talent for telekinesis often ran in families. Hakkan shrugged. The kid’s death sentence confirmation order was expected soon. Hakkan had sent the request into the Ministry personally, making sure it was coded appropriately and clearly so that it would be expedited as a priority. In a day or so, it wouldn’t matter who came calling for him. There wouldn’t be so much as a body to claim.

He smiled. Yes, this boy would be a wonderful advancement to his career. Hakkan watched, mildly entertained, as the boy floated in the repulsor beam that suspended him, still stun-cuffed, just above the floor. Hakkan had insisted that the prisoner be hooded and subjected to constant white noise, to disrupt his ability to concentrate. As a final measure, the sedation ought to keep this young man out of any trouble. Idly, Hakkan wondered what he should say when he received his promotion and a commendation for capturing such a terrorist. The media had a long memory for inspiring speeches, and his actions should be remembered for posterity.

~*~*~

Chaler strolled across the busy communications floor, passing one nondescript cubicle after another. Everyone was busy directing messages and prioritizing information, and no one paid attention to him. He was just another gray-clad drone among the hundreds of nondescript, low-level workers who put in their assigned hours and then went home.

Soon he came to a section with higher security. Swiping his badge, he entered and searched the cubicles. He slowed as he approached one cubicle in particular. A blonde woman looked up briefly as he leaned over her cubicle’s half wall. “Good morning, Marissa,” Chaler said cheerfully.

Marissa smiled sweetly. “Are you taking a break already? I’m just getting started.” The woman in the adjoining cubicle leaned back, took in the scene, and rolled her eyes.

“I don’t need a break to come and visit with my friend, do I?” Chaler asked. He put his half-full cup of caf on her desk.

Marissa turned back to her computer. “I really have a lot to do, Chaler. Maybe you could visit another time,” she said firmly.

Chaler sighed. “All right. But don’t forget, you promised last week that you would eat lunch with me in the cafeteria today.” He smiled charmingly and waved, then walked away.

After he had gone, the other woman switched off her headset and turned to Marissa. “He’s something. I think he has a crush on you, honey,” she said.

Marissa waved her hand disparagingly. “Aw, he’s harmless. I think he’s just lonely, Jannie,” she said.

The older woman snorted in reply. “He’s harmless, but he’s also a slob. He left his cup on your desk.”

Marissa looked around her screen and frowned. She picked up the cup, then locked out her computer and stood up. “Where are you going?” Jannie asked.

“To throw this away. Be right back,” Marissa said.

She carried the cup into the ‘fresher. Once there, she poured the caf into a sink, then tipped the cup slightly so that the module at the bottom slid into her hand. Marissa tucked the module into a pocket and threw away the cup.

She walked back to her cubicle and went back to work. About an hour later, Marissa retrieved the module from her pocket, dried any remaining liquid, slipped it into a datapad, then copied address information onto a blank Ministry of Re-Education document. She entered the doctored document into the existing queue of M.O.R. outgoing confirmation orders.

Later that morning, the packets were sent to a dozen various Re-Education Centers across the Empire, where they would be received and processed immediately.


~*~*~

Hakkan smiled as he received the datapad from his lieutenant. A quick check confirmed that it had been sent from the Department of Re-Education earlier that day. He was impressed with this promptness: surely this meant that the prisoner was very valuable, and Hakkan was sure to receive a substantial reward. Maybe even a medal. Hakkan smiled broadly and stood up. This was one sentence that he wanted to deliver himself.

He waved aside the guards who protected the young prisoner. Hakkan stood tall, feet spread apart, and waited for the boy to move. At last the teenager, still suspended in the repulsor beam, rotated in Hakkan’s direction.

“Your sentence arrived already,” Hakkan said smugly. “The Empire does not waste time in condemning threats to public safety.” He smiled. “Let me read it to you. ‘Subject is to be transferred immediately to Ben Adar Maximum Security Center. Transport is provided. Take all necessary precautions to ensure that subject does not escape while being transferred to the transport vehicle.’”

The officer looked at the boy, who was pale and shaking. Hakkan smiled. “I saw the transport they sent. It’s waiting outside. They aren’t taking any chances with you, boy. It’s a modified armored vehicle, complete with two highly armed guards. No one will be able to get you out.”

Hakkan gestured for the four guards to remove the double restraint field and secure the prisoner. Two guards held blasters against Lamarrus’s head as a third made sure the magnetic stuncuffs were firmly in place, while a fourth guard watched the entrance to the cell. The boy fell roughly to the floor as the repulsor was switched off, then staggered to his feet. As the prisoner was being hustled through the cell door, Hakkan stopped them. He yanked the hood off Lamarrus, who blinked against the sudden light.

“Your life is over, son,” Hakkan taunted. “But I must thank you for getting my life started. I’ll be back at Coruscant before the week is out, and no one will ever see you again.”

Hakkan shoved the prisoner away, and watched contentedly as the guards half-walked, half–dragged the terrified youth down the gray walled corridor of the detention area.

~*~*~

Marissa Tol’s job was to facilitate the direction of all incoming and outgoing messages that emanated from the Ministry of Re-Education’s justice department. In other words, she liked to say, she was the traffic cop of the M.O.R.’s incoming and outgoing mail. It was her responsibility to make sure that messages coming from all over the galaxy got to the correct bureaucrats and with the correct priority. To do her job required her to hold a rather high security clearance, as she would have access to all kinds of legal documents. But Marissa had been in the M.O.R. for many years, working her way up from the electronic mailroom, and now was a respected member of the Message Direction Department.

Marissa was smart and hardworking, having earned Employee of the Month more than once. Often, panicked coworkers came to her when they were having trouble with their own system assignments. Computers did have an annoying way of breaking down unexpectedly, sometimes deleting files that were critically important or unexpectedly moving files to locations in the computer that no one even knew existed. Marissa had a talent for finding any lost file and recovering any deleted file with such accuracy that the supervisors never even suspected that the coworker had slagged the file in the first place.

There were thousands of places that a file could slip into and never be recovered. There were secret files within secret files. In fact, there was an entire invisible network of files, like a virtual underground filing system, where a file could be deposited and never retrieved, or where a file could be stored invisibly until she wanted to call it back. None of this was written down; it existed in Marissa’s uniquely organized mind. She alone knew how to access and retrieve the data that, officially, did not exist. She vaguely referred to this underground network of officially nonexistent files as the system’s “long memory,” and would not elaborate any further if pressed.

That was how she had first met Chaler. He had slagged a document that had been directed as a priority red to the Justice Department, and, panicked, he had begged her to retrieve it. When she did, and was able to cover up his mistake for him in the process, he had thanked her by taking her out to dinner. Office gossip linked them romantically, an assumption that neither had taken much bother to counter. After a few social engagements, they had become close friends. Then they had become allies.

~*~*~

Lamarrus was thrown roughly into the back of a holding van, and, due to the sedative, could only see blurrily what was happening. There was a guard in the van with him and another outside the van, talking with the detention center guards. The speeder van guard signed a datapad and waited for the detention center guard to do likewise, then snapped a salute as he dismissed the guards. The van dipped slightly as the heavily armed guard entered the van and sat across from Lamarrus, who was now restrained to the hard bench.

The first guard, a burly, bald-headed human, pounded against the divider and the van sped up. Lamarrus watched in despair as the second guard retrieved a box from beneath the bench and opened it. Inside were medical devices: syringes, hypos, bottles of unlabeled liquids, and a medical recorder. Lamarrus closed his eyes and waited for the worst. He would probably arrive at the detention center dead or dying. He resigned himself to desperation as the second guard extracted a hypo and drew the clear chemical into it.

“Hold still, kid. This is gonna sting,” the dark haired guard said. The hypo plunged into the boy’s thigh, and he gasped in pain. A moment later, when it became obvious that he wasn’t dying, Lamarrus looked around. His vision was clearer, and the ringing in his ears had diminished. Confused, he watched as the bald guard unhooked his wrists from the stun cuffs.

“What’s going on?” Lamarrus asked, afraid to presume.

“What’s it look like, kid? You’re being rescued,” the dark haired guard said, carefully placing the medical supplies back in the box. He leaned into the comm that connected the back of the prisoner transport van to the driver. “How much longer until the break point?”

“Almost there,” a female voice replied.

The bald man turned to Lamarrus. “Here’s what you do. We are going to split up, and you stay with Brianna. She will take you to a safe house. She’ll explain the rules as you go. Don’t argue. Just follow directions. Got it?”

Lamarrus nodded dumbly. His stunned expression showed that mind still couldn’t quite register the abrupt turn of events. Suddenly, the prisoner transport van slowed and stopped. The guards kicked the door open and pulled Lamarrus from the van. They were hidden behind a power coupling station, and the noise and electrical interference was considerable.

A middle-aged woman with long black hair, pulled back into a low ponytail, came around the corner. “Good work,” she said. Looking at Lamarrus, she said, “Come with me. Quickly.”

A second prisoner van, identical to the one that Lamarrus had arrived in, waited behind a power coupling. The bald headed guard jumped into the driver’s compartment and started it up, and the dark haired guard got into the original van and began to pull away. The two vans split into two different directions.

Brianna grabbed Lamarrus’s hand and steered him toward a small wooded area down the hill from the power coupling station. As they approached a lower road, Lamarrus could just make out a vehicle hidden in the brush. Brianna swept her hand, and the camouflage tarp that concealed the speeder flew off of it. “Get in,” she said.

Lamarrus stared at her for a moment, then got in and sat beside her in the speeder. She started it up and began to merge into the traffic of the lower road. “There are new identification cards in the storage bin,” she said. “You have a new name and a new history. If you want to live, you’ll have to be a new person. They’ll hunt you forever otherwise. The Empire has an awfully long memory when it comes to escaped Jedi.” She snorted. “I should know.”

Lamarrus looked at the materials in his hands, then looked at Brianna. “Where am I going?” he asked.

She smiled. “You are strong in the Force, but your powers are raw, untrained. You have no idea how to protect yourself or how to control your power. Are you ready to learn?”

Lamarrus leaned back in the padded headrest. “Tell me what I have to do,” he said determinedly.

~*~*~


Chaler smiled to himself later that day as another message, with identical coding as the one that he had intercepted that morning, appeared in his incoming files. If anyone were to look at that message closely, they might notice a slight discrepancy in the timecode that the message address contained. A discrepancy that indicated that this message went missing for approximately three hours today, long enough for a second message to be sent along a secret outgoing queue. He dutifully clicked on the message from Major Hakkan to the Director of Anti-Terrorist Activities (Jedi Eradication Division), and sent it to the Director’s assistant’s inbox. It ought to sit there for at least another hour or so before the assistant noticed it.

That would give the extraction team on planet at least three hours’ head start before the Coruscant officials even knew there was an anti-terrorist order. Chaler hoped there would be enough time to get the prisoner out and to the safe house.

Marissa had done her part, sending the incoming message through a tortuous pathway within the underground system, while prioritizing the false prisoner transfer orders immediately. As soon as she sterilized the module with the original message on it, there would be no trace that the message had ever spent nearly a whole day wandering lost in the network that did not exist.

Marissa was dependable and accurate. Most of all, she was invisible. No one ever noticed the low-paid clerks who labored day in and day out in the nondescript message offices, the faceless, nameless drones in a communications system that, if running efficiently, was seamless and invisible to the important bureaucrats and officers who worked in the tower above them. Few of the executives even thought twice about the people who ran the connections for them, and not one had ever visited their facility. Marissa and Chaler were cogs in a system too insignificant to be even acknowledged.

Chaler watched as the message blinked off his grid, indicating that it was embedded in a host of other messages now sitting in the inbox on the Director’s assistant’s computer. He thought of his brother, who was shot to death eight years ago by Emperor Maul’s secret police as he participated in a peaceful demonstration when the anti-terrorism campaign against the Jedi first started. Chaler recalled Marissa’s tear-streaked face as she whispered how, when Marissa had been ten years old, her cousin had been taken from school and coldly and brutally murdered on the charge that she had begun to display possible precognition. Survivors had a long memory.

~*~*~

Hakkan sat at his desk, signing orders and looking over documents. The entire act seemed rather perfunctory now, as he would soon be contacted by the Department of Re-Education at Coruscant for his commendations and reward. A rap on his doorway drew his attention, and he looked up to see his lieutenant standing there, a datapad in his hand.

At last. Here was the thanks for his effort in capturing the Jedi. They would finally give him the credit that he was due, the honors that he had owed to him. He would finally get what he deserved.

“Well?” he said sharply. The lieutenant handed the datapad to him and saluted. “Dismissed,” Hakken said, without a glance to the younger officer. Hakkan smiled. The message was indeed coded from Coruscant. He opened the file, and his face paled.

Shakily, he called up the warden at Ben Adar Maximum Security Center. “Where is the prisoner I sent you three days ago?” Hakkan demanded, as soon as the other man’s face appeared on the holo.

The warden cocked an eyebrow. “What prisoner? You didn’t send a prisoner here. We never received such orders.”

Hakkan began to take deep breaths as his face started to turn a blotchy shade of pink. He fingered his collar, as if to make more room for his neck. “What happened to him? The Jedi I sent three days ago for your transfer to the execution block?”

The warden frowned. “I never received such an order, Major Hakkan. There have been no new prisoners to our execution block in five weeks. Check your records. It looks like you have misplaced something.” He snorted and switched off his com.

Hakkan stared at the empty projection faceplate. Then he grabbed at the datapads neatly lined at the edge of his desk, until he found the one from three days ago. There was his signature, releasing the Jedi prisoner to the transport van. The prisoner who never arrived.

Hakkan considered sending out a search party for the missing boy, but stayed his hand as it dawned on him what such a search would entail. A missing Jedi, who escaped under his own watch. On a transport order that he signed personally.

His meticulously created daydreams of honor and reward came crashing around him. He was to blame for the boy’s escape. His career was over. Hakkan stood up, placed his hands behind his back, and stared out the window. The next command that would arrive in this office would be to remove him from duty and place him under arrest for incompetence.

He idly wondered where he had gone wrong, how his orders had been so usurped and turned against him. He had signed everything personally in order to make sure none of his officers could have taken credit for the capture of the boy. Now he was solely responsible for his loss.

He looked again at the newly arrived message that had triggered this awful realization. The message was clearly marked as an incoming communication from the M.O.R., dated that very day.

“Major Hakkan: Your work in capturing and detaining the Jedi criminal terrorist has been noted. You are to release the prisoner to the stormtrooper detail that has been dispatched to retrieve him. Have the prisoner prepared for a rapid and efficient transport.

“Your discretion in this matter is paramount. Such prisoners, as you know, are often looked upon as victims in certain segments of society. We at the M.O.R. wish to avoid any witnesses to this prisoner’s fate.

“Expect the detachment from Garrison 45 no later than 1500 hours. Upon receipt of the prisoner, you will receive what you deserve from a grateful Empire.”


As abruptly as that, it was over. Stoically, Hakkan turned back to the window to await his fate.

 

Superb! I love the intricacy and layering of plots and secret schemes and sabotages of Imperial "justice." There is an efficiency to the underground network of allies tied together by technical brilliance, sound strategy, and long memories for agregious losses.

 

I enjoyed reading this also! For some reason I have a total weakness for secret-resistance-organization stories in dystopias -- whether in fanfic or original stuff. And I especially like that the ones saving the day are the "normals" who are neither Force users nor seen to be extraordinary by those around them (useful for saving lost files perhaps, but that's about it. )

 

Oh I knew I shouldn't have opened this thread! It's Monday midday and I'm supposed to be working in the office, not reading fanfic, but then I thought it wouldn't hurt if I just took a peek... and here I am, commenting on the first chapter of this story. I have a feeling that the computer system's long memory is going to keep me hooked for a while. *ponders whether to look up the fic on the old boards, decides against it and gets back to work*

 

Finally getting around to this. Sure, the title is a bit deceiving as Maul is not in it, but it's just...WOW. The only other "problem" with this story is that it's too short. The delicious, frightening dystopian AU you offered us here is promising. I like the idea of there not being hope as much as I like there being hope and the fact that it's impossible to kill it completely - even in this weird society, that would make Big Brother and everybody else from 1984 hang their heads in shame.

Did I say 1984? Well, there is more of that here. There are subtle, subtle hints of Julia/Julia Dixon in Marissa, but I believe Marissa would have never gotten to the stage where it's either her or Chaler. Now, her or Jannie or Chaler or Jannie...that's quite a different matter.

Hakkan ultimately ended up being tricked by his own system, which is hilarious in hindsight. The whole system used by Marissa, Chaler and Brianna is incredible. In the world where everybody is under constant surveillance, they still managed to smash the system through some incredibly simple means. And having seen that they're otherwise playing the part of the kind of apparatchiks that nobody would even begin to doubt, what will inevitably come is the Emperor Maul being framed in a way that is far worse than anything his people were ever capable of!

And even with all that revisionism, through the story of Marissa's cousin, one can see that it's impossible to brainwash others completely, people just DON'T forget.

Would definitely be interesting in what happens to Lamarrus next!