Saga - PT Saga - OT [Mod Challenge] Checkpoint - OCs

Title: Checkpoint
Era: Post RotS – Pre RotJ
Genre: -
World: Canon
Characters: OCs
Synopsis: A regular civilian comes to an Imperial Checkpoint
Warnings: None
Series: None
A/N: - Mod Challenge

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha
@AzureAngel2

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My heart pounds in my chest and my breathing increases as I approach the Imperial Checkpoint. I have no reason to fear the masked Stormtroopers, I haven’t done anything illegal in my life, well that’s a lie: I didn’t update my identification for nearly nine months but I was waiting to move before I updated it so I wouldn’t have to do it twice.

“Where are you going?” the Squad Leader asks me.

“I’m going to visit my family in Denmac, my sister’s leaving for an off-world school in two weeks and since I don’t when I’ll see her again I want to spend time with her.” I answered.

“Let me see your identification.” The Squad Leader states.

My hands thankfully aren’t shaking as reach for my ID and stay firm as I hand it to be authenticated.

The wait seems to drag for hours and unrealistic scenarios race through my mind: it’s been done incorrectly, someone stole my identity and is using it to commit crimes or worse a Rebel is using my name for a cover identity.

“Thank you for your patience Mrs. Kilton, you may be on your way.” The Squad Leader says, ending my unrealistic musings, as he hands me back my ID.

“Thank you, Sir,” I mumble as I slip it back into my bag.

“Move along, move along,” he says, gesturing me onward.

I obey and breathe a sigh of relief as the checkpoint disappears from my rearview mirror.

“You see, there was nothing to worry about, you worry to much.” I mutter to myself as I continue towards my parents’ house.

It hits me five minutes further down the road that I will have to pass through the checkpoint again to return home.


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Very realistic anxieties and now it's to do all over again on the way back out

 

Actually, my poor husband @DarthUncle has a lot of trouble with getting a new passport. First it costs 130 Euro and then the Dutch Embassy does not accept the original wedding documents we have from the Netherlands. They want verified copies. Copies?

Anyway, your story starts innocent, dear @Lady_Misty, but I fear it will not stay this way, will it?

 

What? No we don't want originals, but COPIES?! Government bureaucracies are PERPLEXING.

 

A copy? As far as I understand here in the USA they want the original and not a copy.

Mrs. Kilton is good, she's just anxious about checkpoint stops.

 

I struggle with anxiety, so I recognize that heart-pounding sensation. You've done a good job capturing the feeling and in particular how irrational anxiety can be--Mrs. Kilton has never done anything worse than failing to renew her identification, but her anxiety is still strong enough to send her almost into a panic attack-- and the catastrophizing, worst-case scenario spinning it can cause.

. And then she realizes she get to do it all over on the way home...Yes, I've been there, done that, and it's hard to explain the paralyzing feeling that can happen over something small to someone who's never experienced it.
Nice job of portraying this condition realistically within this brief story.

 

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha thank you.

@AzureAngel2 I hope you and DarthUncle were able to sort out the less with the Dutch Embassy.

@Findswoman Well at the time I imagined this happened the Rebels don't have a good reputation *cough cough* Saw Gerrera *cough cough*, sometimes the Empire is really good at covering their butts and where she lives is a quiet place so no, Mrs Kilton isn't a Rebel Sympathizer and even if she was inclined to believe that the Empire is evil and sympathize with those that are hurt under the Empire she wouldn't be able to deal with the emotional stress every time she had to deal with the Empire in any way because she would be afraid that they knew that she was a Rebel Sympathizer and here to take her away.

@Raissa Baiard I have anxiety too, though I control mine through medication there are somethings that still make me anxious and get me flustered and I imagine going through a checkpoint would make me nervous no matter how correct the information on my passport/Identity Card is and then there's the talk about having to have a passport even if you're traveling by plane within the USA and how my State's State IDs aren't or weren't up to Federal Code so would I be stranded in another State because my State ID isn't up to Code?

 

This very good, and makes me empathise with anyone who has to go through checkpoints, especially every day during a commute to work, or to visit relatives, such as Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, or Northern Ireland.

The way that mental scenarios spin out of control, is just like me at work, whenever I'm due to have a 1:1 catch-up meeting with my manager. In fact, my last two have accepted that I do this, to the extent that they now give me 15 minutes warning of a meeting, rather than let me know in advance, and have me go out of my mind over several days.

I liked her mental processes, including how she gently chastised herself as she drove away safely.

Well done.

I was not expecting this kind of subject matter as a response to the challenge.

 

We were able to figure everything out and succeed.

But I fear your main character might not be so lucky.

Your text brought back my impressions of the German Star Wars audio play for "Return of the Jedi". There was the following description of Vader´s hanger arrival scene at the 2nd Death Star: "Aufgereihte Menschen in Uniform bilden hier wie überall einen Machtpool". Meaning: that people in uniform always mean bad news for civilians.

And what @Sith-I-5 wrote about checkpoints is all too true.

I was a 20 year old and pretty blue eyed Au Pair girl from West Germany when I visited Belfast city, Northern Ireland with a Danish friend of mine. It was a time that I will never forget. The tanks, the soldiers, the roadblocks.

Reading your text brought all those memories back, helped me to understand what was going on in your characters mind. All the complications that the military brings to the everyday citizens of the Galactic Empire and their lives.

 

@Sith-I-5 and @AzureAngel2 I drew on the experiences others recounted of being in controlled areas. One inspiration was from a book I read when I was young 'Habibi' which was about a young girl whose family moved to Jerusalem and her father was Muslim. When they arrived at the airport her father's family was late and when they arrived they explained that they had been held up by an Israeli Checkpoint and how one of her uncles had been accused of having the wrong pass and from there I drew on stories about others living with military checkpoints, I think one of them was from Maria von Trapp's autobiography where she was reprimanded for going to wrong way on a one way street that either hadn't been a one way street or the street was one way the other way the day before and she was so upset and it didn't help that she had been pregnant at the time and she had health concerns.

I like that saying and I think it fits rather snugly; especially during troubling times.

 

Hi, another person with anxiety here!

I really like that you picked a situation that is both ordinary enough to show that there's something more than usual about Mrs. Kilton's fear, but also complicated by the fact that an Imperial checkpoint is not an entirely safe place -- even for the innocent. I think a lot of perceptions of anxiety focus too exclusively on the "irrational" or unlikely aspect. Sure, that can often be a part. But it's just as much the intensity and the endless-loop patterning of thoughts, and I thought you did really well at capturing that feeling here.

There are a lot of genuinely scary things in the GFFA and the Empire's behavior in this era is enough to give a logical root for what then becomes an overwhelming fear. I mean, that checkpoint in Solo is kind of the stuff of nightmares! If she's ever seen or heard of incidents like those, it's no wonder that such places have become a trigger for her. That she's then kind of turning that fear on the Rebellion (as @Findswoman pointed out) is rather troubling, and shows how distorted an average citizen's view of things might be. After all, she wouldn't want to go looking for trouble by seeking out information, would she?

 

The police car driving behind you, and you are just waiting for its lights and sirens to flare up to pull you over for.... something. You're guilty of something.

The wider inside fear that you've done something wrong in some way. That you're a fraud and sooner or later everyone is going to realise it.

Nah. I've never felt that.

 

Short, but to the point.

Kilton's anxiety was depicted realistically and she has a perfect reason to do this. Han and Qui'ra being separated at the Coronet's spaceport immediately come to mind, with a combination of the anxiety that - for example - plagued people defecting the Eastern Bloc countries. And that is precisely why I would want to read more about this character - is she really going to return? Where are these places? Was there a more specific reason for his anxiety? Was there any claustophobia or a fear of a metaphorically enclosed space involved?

 

@Kahara you will find, once I get around to posting it, that Saw Gerrura's actions have colored a majority of people's view of the Rebellion and Mrs. Kilton is one of them. All she sees is what Saw does and it's in the name of the Rebellion and the Rebel Leaders say that they're not like Saw and don't condone his actions of course you're going to wonder 'than why don't you stop him?' or 'if you don't condone what he's done why haven't you taken steps to get rid of him?' So basically Saw has tainted the Rebellion for some. And when you have your news reports controlled you don't always know who to believe: the people reporting what happened or another source that may or may not have an ulterior motive for telling you something different and honestly if you watch Rebels sometimes they didn't seem like the good guys: flying a TIE fighter through the streets of a town and botching the hijacking of an AT-DP(?) so they could slice into the Imperial Database and accidentally started firing into the street and weaving around; afterall: actions speak louder than words.

@GregMcP I don't know many people that don't at least feel nervous when a police car pulls behind them and start going through a mental checklist: is my inspection current? is my registration up to date? is a light out? is my insurance in the glove box? But because I don't drive I haven't gone through that fear. But it can't be easy for those that do and I have experienced a similar fear going through TSA Checkpoints because I remember reading that after some date or other my State ID won't meet the National Requirements to allow me to use it as ID to fly so when I was on my honeymoon and went out of state for my sister Kathy's wedding I was afraid that the TSA agent in Florida and the one in Utah would turn me away.

@Ewok Poet I'm not sure if Mrs. Kilton will reappear or not. I did not have a planet in mind when I created her since i wanted it to be easier to imagine the reader being in her shoes. I have heard several stories of those fleeing the Eastern Bloc; one man shared the stories of how his family fled East Germany for West Germany and that they didn't do it together. I don't remember how his father and older brother(s?) did it but his sister bribed a conductor on a train to open a door, when the train temporarily passed into West Germany so she could jump out and he and his mother took a train and pretended that they were going for a walk in the mountains and instead walked to West Germany; I want to say that they were almost caught because his mother thought that they had made it and they were going to eat lunch when she realized that the border was on the other side of the hill they were on and that they ran until they were a good way passed the border.