Beyond - Legends Could We Be the Ones? (2007 diary challenge) updated 1/14

Title: Could We Be the Ones?
Author: talkingbanana
Timeframe: 11 ABY
Characters: Harvey Slane - the narrator OC from [link=http://boards.theforce.net/Beyond_the_Saga/b10477/17889511/]Nameless By Ice[/link]
Summary: Harvey's journal - not his diary, diaries are for girls - during his third year of freedom from Lusankya.
Notes: This is for the 2007 Diary Challenge. I'm hoping to actually make it through the year on this. Oh, and the title is from Switchfoot's "New Way to be Human," the reasons for which will be revealed at a much later date.

Could We Be the Ones?
Harvey Slane
COMP 1001
SEC 0038

#1

She is perfect.

I've never used that word before - or at least, I never meant it as much as I do right now, because I never knew perfection before I saw her today.

I don't even know her name. I just saw her out the window, standing in the xenogarden outside my galactic history class, and I promptly forgot all about the evil Republic and the evil Jedi my teacher was talking about; I even forgot about how angry the class was making me. I only saw her, out in the garden, smelling the flowers without a care in the galaxy.

I remember running out to the garden as soon as my class let out, completely forgetting about how I had to get to my writing class in five minutes. I've never forgotten about my writing class before; it's my favorite, because it's something I'm actually good at and because it's actually a real class in the university, not one of the protected classes for the AAAL students like the rest of my courses. But by the time I got out there, she had left, and I was alone in the garden.

It was ugly without her there.

She had been standing, by a patch of exotic weeds called trifolia. I remember learning about them in my sciences class. They're little blue-green plants from some distant planet and they're about as tall as my hand, with three leaves on each stem and the occasional purple, yellow, or red flower sticking out above the big clump of plants growing together.

There's some legend about them - that if you find a stem with four leaves on it, you'll have good luck, and if there's a red flower growing in the clump, it'll be good luck in your love life. There was a red flower in the bunch, so on impulse, I looked for one with four leaves.

I found one, so I picked it and ran to my writing class after putting the exotic little weed in the front pocket of my datapad bag.

And in that class, I got the assignment to write this journal, and I figured the perfect way to start a year-long journal would be with perfection.

I hope I see her again.

#2

I've been on campus all day, and I still haven't seen perfection again.

I wonder if the legend of the four-leaf trifolia, the luck in love and all that, still works after you pick it. Because when you pick it, it's dead.

DEAD.

Kind of like I will be if I don't go help Kirney get the ship ready for her Coruscant run.

I'll keep my shriveled, wilted four-leaf trifolia in my bag. Maybe some good will come out of it yet.

 

very interesting

 

that was interesting...I can't wait to read more

 

So excited to see the return of Harvey/Bob/Nameless! I can't wait to see how he's doing in mainstream society.

And school and a love interest and a "sister" to make him work? It sounds like he might finally be getting that "normal" life he so greatly deserves.

Cannot wait to read more.

~Inyri

 

BOB! Cute as ever! I love how he likes the girl and it is "ugly" without her out there. *runs back into hiding*

 

Hehe, poor obsessed guy.

Very amusing.

KT

 

Very nicely done! I like your OC.

 

Thanks for reading, everyone! I greatly appreciate your compliments, and I hope future entries remain interesting.

Look for a new post sometime this weekend.

 

Interesting start. Though I admit, I'm intrigued with the word Lusankya being in the summary...

And it looks like I might have to read up about Harvey.

 

Nemhain - Thanks for reading! Harvey was one of the prisoners on the Lusankya when Corran was there, but to find out more, you'll have to read the prequel to this. Glad you're intrigued!

---

#3

School isn't really what I thought it would be.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy it. I really do - especially when I see Perfection, right before my eyes, just out the window. Haven't seen her in a week, though. I'm starting to get worried. Maybe she saw me running after her and she's avoiding me?

Anyway, school is . . . not what I imagined. I don't even know what I imagined, but this isn't it. It's something like Lusankya, though: all-encompassing, intense, inescapable, and stressful, all with only the vaguest of hopes for the future. Especially now that I'm in my fourth term and my teachers and therapist have decided to move me from the Alternative program to the Accelerated one. They've decided that, other than the gaping hole in my memory from my "traumatic experience" (that's all they know), I'm perfectly normal.

You have no idea what it meant to me when they said that.

My therapist didn't stop there, though. She continued to say that I'm "developing" like I should be and that I'll "catch up" to others my age within a couple of years.

Whatever that means. [I bet it cancels out the "normal" comment, though.]

They encouraged me to keep a journal, now that I write well enough to produce something semi-coherent. My composition professor knows my situation and has already informed me that I could use the finished journal as extra credit on my final exam, should I need it.

I already had a fight with Kirney about it. She says she has to read it before I give it to my teacher, to make sure I don't tell them about things like the Lusankya or our connections to the New Republic. I told her that I knew better than to write about those things, but she didn't agree. She said that I shouldn't be telling my teachers anything I couldn't tell her. So we compromised: I'll take out everything I don't want her to see, and then I'll give it to her to make sure it's okay to turn in for the final.

This composition class is the first step in my transition to a "normal" education, and next term, I'll be taking two more standard university-level classes while I finish up the requirements for my school diploma. And then, after that, I can leave - or I can continue on and get a university degree in anything I want. I'll be free to choose my own destiny, for the first time in my life.

It's hard, though, packing ten years' worth of schooling into less than two years. No, it's not hard, it's insane. I spend eight hours a day at school, arriving before the sun, and afterwards I come back to the shop and help Kirney for a few hours. And then I do homework and go to bed. The only reprieves come when Kirney isn't out on a run and can take care of the shop, which is happening less and less now that the business is getting bigger. She's almost never on Corellia, now that she's confident enough in my abilities to leave me home alone for long periods of time. We're even starting to look into hiring some extra help, an idea Kirney isn't really thrilled about, but even she admits it might be necessary.

On those few days when I have free time, I turn on the Holonet and watch the news to make sure the galaxy hadn't ended while I was too busy doing my mathematics homework to notice.

Kirney got home while I was watching the news once, and when I told her what I was doing, she laughed at me. I tried to explain to her what school was like, about how somebody could blow up the sun and campus would keep running same as always, with only a few complaints about how dark it was outside. Nobody would notice, nobody would care.

A girl in my history class said she had a teacher who didn't know the Emperor was dead. Even I knew that the Emperor was dead, and I was living under a rock - literally - when he was killed by Master Luke Skywalker Himself. I asked her i

 

Oh, how cool! Nameless always has a neat perspective on things, and it'll be interesting to see what happens now that he has a normal life. Nice work, 'nanner; I'll be following this one.

 

I like hearing about school from an ex-prisoner's perspective. It's very neat and unique

 

After reading through Nameless (great story, btw!), I find Harvey posing as Kirney Slane's brother to be highly amusing.

 

Very creative and well written. I really like your OC.

On those few days when I have free time, I turn on the Holonet and watch the news to make sure the galaxy hadn't ended while I was too busy doing my mathematics homework to notice.

Nice line!

Bravo!

 

Yay! More Bob!

I'm sorry I didn't see this story earlier, 'Nanner. It's a great start, and I'm looking forward to reading more. Hopefully Harvey's not buried under too much math homework to write in his dia--um, journal.

I loved the part when he wonders if the four-leaf trifolia still works when it's dead (good point! ), the comparison he makes between Lusankya and the school, and the line about the "developing/catching up" cancelling out the "normal" comment. Little comments like that make him that much more realistic. Good job!

-Thumper