Saga - OT The Fisher Droid

Hi.

Once upon a time I was addicted to posting stories here. I'd get an idea and, *blam*, I'd churn out a story in a few days.

But life happens, and COVID happened, and I realised that I didn't want to engage in the huge Fan Warfare that now surrounds so much of Star Wars. My mind wandered onto other things.

And so I am gently floating back into SW. Enjoying the TV shows. Trying to get into the High Republic books. And the people here are nice. Less stressful than on Twitter.

I looked into my Google Docs at my masses of unfinished stories that hit logic blocks.
This story was halfway written, but it had gotten to a point where the characters were far too ranty and strident and I didn't know how to tone that down. But I think now I was able to calm that section down enough.

And here we are.

This story is obviously based on that lovely Shrimp Catching Droid in Mandalorian Season 1, Episode 3, and has overtones of feeling about Autism, and also relies of my common themes of Droids and Jungles. It's fairly long, so I'll chop it into a few parts.

Note that this story gets heavy in the middle. If a child dying seems too much, then perhaps skip this one.


So, hi.

 

The Fisher Droid

Eight Hundred and Sixty Five Days Later.

The river, which someone, sometime, had called the Mother Johan’s Run, flowed wide and slow through a tall temperate forest upon Morgan’s Planet. Its waters were a deep muddy green, full of soil and rotted vegetation from the distant mountains, bringing abundant fertility to the thousand miles of its shoreline. Water weeds waved in the currents down deep on the river bed while tall stiff reeds stood tall nearer the shore. Good strong reeds that could be sharpened into spears. Beetles swam below in the muck, while long legged skimmers skittered along on the surface, and flutters and buzzers and skitoes zipped around the reeds above to the annoyance of any settler who stepped near the waters. An abundance of insect life for the birds and fish to feed upon. All part of the healthy life of a land that invited settlement.

And fish. Blue Bulgers. Spikey Flatheads that hid in the mud. Be careful not to step on one of those with your bare foot. Eldenfish that glowed gold. All very tasty. An abundance.

Over one thousand days ago, a pious godly man stood upon the river edge and thought,
“This was the perfect place to bring my children. We have everything we need. Except for these damn skitoes.” *slap* *slap* “And so far from the eyes of the Empire we can praise our Gods in peace. Our Hearts are in your hands. Our hands shall work for your glory.”

That final prayer was said with hands placed over his heart, then lifted and spread to the sky, then forwards to the village still being built with jungle timber and mud brick, and finally a downward sweep towards the bountiful wide river.

So many days after that man felt gratitude for his home, he had long disappeared, and all alone in the river a droid's long thin metal legs with long thin metal toes lifted out of the mud and weeds and water, and took another slow careful step. The droid tried to disturb the life below as little as possible, and also took care not to get knocked over by the occasional fast swirls of underwater current. He also had to keep an eye out for the Octopods who would sometimes try to drag him down with a tentacle wrapped around a leg. Usually sending a zap of electricity through his metal body was enough to scare the creature away. Beneath the seemingly simple river surface, a complex world of life and energy and danger swirled.

The ankle of the droid's left leg didn’t quite bend enough. A piece of stick was lodged in the pistons, giving him a permanent limp. And these legs were of course attached to the domed cylinder of an astromech marked by its maker as FD-3. His body was painted a pale blue and marked with the sacred symbol of the Piscascopian Church. The Eye of the Soul. This was so that any fish looking up would see an image of the love of the gods to whom they were about to return.

Green mosses and slimes grew on his barrel body and in his limbs. It collected in his joints, in his panel doors so that some of them were no longer water tight. The first signs of rust had creeped into the edges of the panels. His rustproofing was beginning to wear off.

All these daily difficulties and threats and the gradual breakdown of his machinery were accepted without complaint. They simply happened and he adapted so that he could perform his duty every day. This was what he was built to do.

 

In the morning light, as the sun barely peeked over the trees, FD-3’s single glass eye scanned the waters for fish. His eye was tuned to an optimal frequency spectrum that allowed him to see through the water’s muck to the fish below. He calculated the best place to stand. The right depth. The right currents. The right vegetation. He stood still and quiet. An octopod crawled by on the muddy river bed. Its long boneless limbs reached for rocks and vegetation to grab and pull itself along. It ignored the silent motionless metal legs. FD-3 was as one with the river. Letting the fish forget that he was there.

And there. A fat Bulger nibbling at a weed. Its tail gently waved to fight the current. FD’s spindly arm reached back and slid a reed spear from the strap on its back. He aimed, taking into account the projected movement of the fish, the refraction of the water, the depth. All precisely calculated. This is what he was made to do. This is what he did. He arched the spear back, certain of a direct hit and… then put his spear away. Tucked it into the leather strap on his back. He gave a deliberate splash of his clawed foot, and the startled fish zipped away.

He was programmed to never kill without purpose. He would hunt fish for food, but only when the settlers asked him to. Master Smyth might ask him in the morning “Five fish today Efdee, if you please.” and he would spear exactly five fish. That was his purpose. But today no settler had made a request. In fact, no settler had talked to him for 865 days. He kept an accurate count of such things. They had loaded their boats, quickly throwing in easily grabbed bags of food and possessions and children, and sailed off downstream 865 days ago. It was done so quickly. In such an urgent fearful scramble that he was still out in the river fishing when he realized that he was alone.

 

Thanks. Findswoman. You always do that so well. I missed that.
I know my weird thing isn't what's normally posted here. But I'm going to persist with it. Get it out of my system.

---

After a morning of stalking fish, he stomped to a spot in the reeds where the waters were shallow and then up onto the muddy shore. Then a short walk upstream, as he had so many times. 1254 times to be exact. A walk to the short wooden jetty that the boats used to be tied to. The jetty was getting a little shaky. Its supports were slowly rotting and needing repairs, but FD-3 was not built to fix a jetty. The thought did not occur to him. He fished. That was his purpose.

He lay back, well, he more sort of fell backwards on his barrel of a body with a metal clunk onto the timber planks on the jetty, making them creak a bit, and stretched out straight his skinny tube arms and legs in all directions. Their joints were long overdue for an oil. Out of panels on the front of his body unfolded solar cells, click click clicking outwards. Their gold plates heating up and recharging him for another day. This would have been a good time for Master Smyth to give him a maintenance lookover. A drop of oil, replace a part. Pull a stick out of an ankle piston. A wipedown and clean up. A short prayer. “Prince of Waters, protect this Droid. Send to it fat Blue Bulgers to catch for our dinner.”

While Master Smyth gave him this tender care, he’d watch Missus Smyth filet up the fish on a wood table. She would start with a loud *chop* to cut off the head, and then a series of skillful slices to gut and debone the fish for grilling. Then she would throw the remains to their increasingly excited ginger striped lothcat who snuffled them up.

Little Miss Ailie would sometimes kneel by her father, drawing on Effdee’s drum body with her broken and ever diminishing crayons. She’d draw religious symbols. The Eye of the Soul. The Flaming Heart. Carefully etching IOIOIOIOIOIOIOIOIOIO all around his barrel, the sign of the First Programmer. Young Mister Caleb would sit beside her and draw simple stick figure people or fish or droids or ptetrosaurs, and sometimes pick out little bits of water weed from the droids joints.

Now and again Ailie would pick up one of Effdee’s reed spears, and strut about the pier taking high knee’d exaggerated steps. Mimicking the droid in the water. She’d look left and right with abrupt jerks of her head, pretending to search for a fish, and then stab! She’d frighten the cat by narrowly missing it, making Caleb giggle.

The last time there was an afternoon such this was 906 days ago.

 

But today, when the sun dipped below the trees, FD-3 folded up his solar plates and walked through the burnt out village. The grass thatched roofs had been very flammable when the Stormtroopers had finally arrived 863 days ago. From deep in the river he had watched them set fire to the village. It took the troopers just 6 minutes to walk past each home, barn and hall and blast them with a loud whoosh from their flamethrowers. Then with an inferno behind them, they mounted their speeders and rode onwards downstream along the shoreline presumably in search of the escaped settlers.

But 863 days later, FD-3 persisted in daily habits. He walked to the smashed shell of his storage shed as he did every night. It no longer sheltered him from the weather very much, but this was expected of him. He sat in the darkness and looked up at the stars. He watched their slow movement across the dome of the sky over the night hours. Now and again, a star would slide across the sky relatively quickly on a journey he could not imagine the purpose of.

Tonight there was a little swarm of moving stars. He counted six of them and recorded this number in his memory. They swirled around each other, sometimes flickering with rapid flashes of red. Swooping high and low. They appeared to be trying to get behind each other. Suddenly one of the stars glowed as an orange ball for a moment and then dove downwards. There was a distant bass whoomp of an explosion which lit up a silhouette of the trees and buildings for a moment.

He did not realize stars could behave like this. He stored away this new information.

—

Early in the morning, while practicing the hunt of mudskippers in the reeds, FD-3 found a body.

It floated face down, arms and legs reaching down to the muddy bottom. The man wore black glossy armor that was cracked and exposed a red meaty chunk of his lower back. His brown hair floated gently on the water surface as skimmers skated around the strands. Tiddler fish zipped about nipping tiny bits of flesh from the wound and his face.

From somewhere in his memory banks, FD-3 identified the armor as belonging to an “Imperial fighter pilot”. These words had no meaning to him, but at least this was a label he could apply to the body. A pilot.

FD-3 stood there for a while. Completely still. Considering his options and the ramifications of his actions. He almost decided to leave the body to feed the tiddlers and the kreachies. One option was to go back to his practice and leave the regular order of his day undisturbed. A tempting option considering that the last time he had encountered a situation like this, he found his efforts were most unwelcome.

 

What a fascinating main character and a wonderfully rustic out of the way place, which is why the settlers came there and so the question needs to be asked what would the Empire need or want with attacking such a place? And then FD finds the stranded pilot... Quite the contrast to the endearing Smyth family whose younglings treated him as a plaything LOL

 

Okay... this is were it gets heavy, and I'm not sure whether I have the tone right... anyway...

905 days ago

It was a particularly bright and hot day. A day when children would jump into the river and splash about, scaring fish away. He had seen Young Mister Caleb with a net, bent down and trying to scoop up kreachies, while little Miss Aillie was splashing about, play acting with a spear, as she tended to do.

So FD-3 projected that the best thing to do in order to catch spiky flatheads was to wade further downstream to quieter waters. He knew a place where the flatheads would hide in the thick mud and wait for water bugs to float on by.

After an hour and seventeen minutes had caught four fish, now flopping in the woven grass bag on his back. He was high stepping back upstream to give them to Missus while they were fresh, when he heard the yells from the settlement.

“Ailie! Ailie? Where are you, child?”

Mister and Missus were on the shore, yelling and eyes squinting as they scanned the river. Other settlers were running up and down, some going from hut to barn, some heading into the jungle trees. A boat launched from the jetty full of agitated men arguing about which way to go.

“Ailie!”

“Child! Answer me! Enough of this foolishness! Ailie!”

But there in the reeds, as he took his high steps that Ailie had mimicked so often, with his eyes that could see through the mucky water, he saw her body laying in the river mud. Octopod tentacles wrapped around her legs.

 

FD-3 walked up the shoreline, the child’s body cradled in his spindly metal tube arms. Gradually people saw him and stopped their agitated searching and yelling. He finally stopped before Mister and Missus. They stared at him, stunned.

“Put her down here, Effdee”, Mister Smyth said quietly. People knelt and held their hands to the Heavens. They muttered prayers.

Merciful Mother of Life.
Blessed Master of the Beyond.
Take this child into your hearts.

The droid bent the knees of his long legs and gently placed Ailie on the sand.

Missus stared at FD-3, initially with shock and despair. Her breathing grew heavier and heaving, hyperventilating. “Oh dear Gods. Dear Gods. Dear Gods! No. No. Nononono…” Every more desperate until she let out a wordless scream of rage.

“You! You See!” She stared with loathing at FD-3 “You see what it did?! This soulless thing!”

A dozen eyes started at Effdee.
She beat a fist on FD-3’s dome. Wild thumps and scratches of fingernails.

“No! You! How dare you! You machine! I told you! We brought this mecha electra with us! See what it did? His gods are not our gods.”

She pushed at the droid, knocking him off balance and falling in the dirt. “Go out to your river. Go and drown in there. My baby. Dear Gods of Mercy.”

Missus turned and knelt at the limp wet body of her daughter.
They muttered the Words For The Dead.

Eye of the King of Peace.
Eye of the Mother of Life.
Eye of the Queen of the Heart.
Blessed Master of the Beyond.
Take this Child. Accept her Soul.
Bring her into Your Peace.
Bring her into Love.

FD-3 got to his feet. He had no algorithm that described what he should do in such a situation, so he walked down to the jetty to recharge. As he lay, he pondered what his correct action should be.

 

905 days ago. Evening

A tomb of stones. In this village by the river, digging very deep reached the water table very quickly. So here in their small cemetery in a field a little away from the village, little Ailie was laid beneath a rocky cairn. Next to her lay great grandmother Elbeth, and poor Carl who fell while working on the roof of the community hall.

Master Johamin Smyth was placing the final stones as the sun set. The villagers gathered around. Master Godwin the carpenter put an arm around Johamin, who seemed to be in a daze and close to collapse, and got him to sit on the ground. Missus Eileen Smyth sat at the base of the cairn with hands on the stones, reciting psalms and mantras. Young Mister Caleb stood watching in the crowd with his friends, not knowing how he should react.

Torches flickered and a bonfire was lit. The village said prayers to their Gods.
Mother of Life. Master of Beyond. Father of the Land. Queen of Forests. Lady of Rivers. Guardian of Deep Creatures. Protector of Children.
Protect us all.

FD-3 had spent the afternoon spearing fish to replace the ones that had spoiled when Missus had sent him away. He walked up to the bonfire, between the villagers all staring at him, and folded his legs to be down at the level of Master and Missus. Then one by one he reached back and pulled out each fish and laid it on the ground before them.

"Oh go away," said Missus quietly. "I can't bear to look at you. Go." She waved her hand and turned back to her prayers.

"Mama. He's trying to say sorry," said Caleb from the crowd. "He's a good droid mama," but Missus Eileen would no longer acknowledge the droid.

"Thank you Effdee. Please go to your shed now." said Master Smyth, holding his voice low and steady. Trying to keep his emotions in check. As the droid walked away, Master Smyth threw the fish into the bonfire.

And that was all. They were the last fish FD-3 ever caught for the Smyths. He walked back to his shed and sat and powered down. They never asked him for fish again, and 40 days later they were gone.

 

Devastating sequence of events!

 

(Fair enough Findswoman. I did stop a while before posting, wondering whether this was all a horrible mistake and I should just delete the whole damn thing. I wanted to express that aspegerish feeling of being at a funeral, and not reacting the way people expect you to. Anyway. Here we are. Lighter stories in the future.)


Today

A distant high pitched whine filled the air and grew steadily louder, catching FD-3’s attention as he examined the body in the reeds. Two machines that FD-3's databanks labeled as "TIE Starfighters" dropped from the sky and landed in the middle of the burned out village. The "Imperial Fighter Pilots" stepped out, alive this time. Each pulled off their helmets, revealing that they were human and not droids.

One held a small box that emitted beeps. "He's not far."

He turned around until the beeps went wild and he was pointing towards the river. "This way, I think."

The beeps grew louder.

“He’s moving? I think he’s coming to us.”

“Seriously? There’s no way he survived that crash. That went ka-boom.”

To their utter surprise, a droid waddled into view from behind a hut.

“Hey!” In their surprise they reached for their blasters.

But in its spindly arms it carried, with obvious difficulty, their friend who had taken a hit the night before.

The droid walked up to them and layed the soaking body of TF-35721, or Lam Starlint to those who knew him well, at their feet.

"Ah." said TF-35784, once known as Ivar Gelt, which he was known to no-one anymore. "That's that then."

“What are you doing with my man, droid?”

Ivar gave the disintegrating droid an eye and after a few moments he said "I know what he is. See the spear and the basket on his back? He's one of them Settler droids. They used them all over."

TF-35611, who would call himself Reg Longsrom if you got him drunk enough, nodded. "Yeah, they can catch fish. I wouldn't mind a bit of fresh fish today." He said to FD-3, "You fish yeah? Catch us a few tasty ones okay?"

FD-3 stood staring at the Pilots, vibrating a little.

“Do you understand? Fish. You know.”

And with that FD-3 skooted off back to the river with a purpose for the first time in 905 days.

“He seems keen”, Reg laughed.

 

A couple of hours later FD-3 returned to the Pilots in the village. In the meantime the pilots had built in the village center a large bonfire of dried lumber from the surrounding cottages and in the middle lay the dead Pilot.

"For the Empire!" said Ivar

"Sure. The Empire. Why not?" said Reg, rather less convincingly.

Reg saw the droid stomping towards them.
"Hey! He came back. I didn't expect that. And he's got the fish. Ohh. Just look at 'em. Thank you my good droidyboy!"

They took some burning timber from the pyre and a bit of a distance from their cremating comrade they built their own little campfire.

FD-3 laid the fish before them, and with knives that were probably supplied for more murderous activities, the Pilots soon fileted the fish and had them cooking on sticks.

They ate and chattered about the fallen pilot. Made jokes about his terrible flying skills.

“Don’t know how he lasted as long as he did.”

They made a large number of toasts to his memory from their hip flasks, and when their stories had run out and the flasks were empty, Ivar looked at the droid. It was obviously in bad shape.

"You're not going to last much longer like this.” Ivar thought for a moment. “I’ll be back.”

Ivar trotted back to his TIE fighter, rummaged about inside the cockpit, and returned with a toolbox.

“Sit, sit”, he said to FD-3. “We’ll start at the top and work down.”

He started with a rag and a wipedown, trying to get some of the green algae out of crevices. Then he’d open the various panels, and cleared the muck out of them and tried to make them close neatly. He had a tube of sealant that was normally used to fix spots where a TIE wasn’t completely airtight, which he used where the regular seals in the droid's flaps had rotted away.

FD-3 sat there, remembering his Master cleaning him up 906 days ago.

“So now let's look at your arms and legs. Lie down for me,” and the droid clonked over onto his back.

“Well that’s no good,” and Ivar gave that chunk of stick that had been in his ankle pistons for 632 days a good tug.

“How does that feel? Give your ankle a twist” and FD-3 gave a solid proper wiggle.

And from there, more of a wipedown. Plenty of oil. Straightening a few rods with pliers.
He gave FD-3 a final spray of some water repellant.

“You need a whole lot more than this, but it’s better than nothing,”

Ivar looked over at Reg. “What do you think, TF-35611?”

“Oh a work of art, TF-35784,” Reg replied. “Can we go now? We’re overdue and I need a shower.”

Ivar gave the droid a final look over.

“Good luck droid. I don’t know how long you’ll last out here, but look after yourself a bit, okay? Remember to pull out the sticks.”

Remember to pull out the sticks. FD-3 stored this command in his memory banks.

“Let’s go then.”

Ivar packed up his toolbox, and the two Imperial Fighter Pilots walked down past the still burning funeral pyre.

“Till we meet again TF-35721”, Lars said to his burning comrade, holding his dog tags as some kind of respect. “You should have banked harder to dodge that X-Wing man.”

And then into their cockpits and the TIE Starfighters lifted off into the sky.

 

I'm very glad you didn't delete this whole thing, or else I wouldn't have had the good fortune of reading it! You did an excellent job of expressing what you set out to, through Effdee's perspective. Even though he didn't react the way the people around him did, there was a subtle yet deep poignancy to his POV that hit me much harder than I would have expected. Maybe he doesn't emote the way sentients do, maybe he can't articulate what he feels or why, but it's clear that he does feel, in that way that SW droids do.

While there's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to write lighter stories, I hope you won't shy away from telling the stories you want to tell, even if they are darker. This story had a tragic twist, but the writing was clearly respectful of that tragedy; it wasn't gratuitous in the least. I found Effdee's reaction to Ailie's death - carrying her body back to her family - particularly effective and, for lack of a better word, humanizing. The whole story was quite unexpectedly moving. (Not unexpected because of your writing talent, but because I wasn't expecting this sort of pathos from an OC droid.)

I don't have time tonight to give this story the feedback it deserves, but there was one part that stood out to me most - maybe because it was the part where I started to tear up:

I'm even getting teary just rereading this part. Thank you for sharing your story.

 

I admit that I don't read a lot of droid-centric stories, but this is really quite lovely

I love how you describe Effdee's observations and discoveries; he's so clearly a real person, but very much in SW droid fashion.

This is a great bit of both indecision on Effdee's part and foreboding for the reader

I agree with Vi; this little section has so much emotion within it, it really hits you right in the gut

This was such an effective way to introduce this part; I actually caught my breath at this last line, realizing what was happening

Aw, Effdee, I love him

And Effdee perhaps showed more humanity than the fallen pilot's comrades did

But I love that they did this much for Effdee. People contain multitudes, after all. And Effdee storing the command in his memory banks is unexpectedly poignant

I'm not on the spectrum, but my niece and nephew are, and as far as I can tell from my perspective, I do think you captured that feeling very well!

I really, really want to second Vi here. Lighter stories are great if that's what you want to write, but please don't hesitate to tell darker ones too. I also agree that you handled the subject matter very well: it was respectful, emotional, and not even a little bit gratuitous. Life has many distressing aspects to it, and there's nothing wrong with art addressing those things, and the emotions that come along with them.

 

(Sorry for the delay. Life...)

5203 Days Later

The river flowed down from the mountains, the fish swam and fed on water beetles. The octopods slithered in the deeps. The skitos and flutters and buzzers skittered about the reeds near the shore.

*chnk-chnk-chnk-chnk-chnk-chnk*

Around a bend in the river, for the first time in 14 years, a boat puttered upstream. The slow chunka-chunka-chunk of steam pistons pushed a paddlewheel on the back of the open barge. A collection of six young adults stood on the deck, eagerly looking for signs of a long abandoned village.

“Over there! See! That’s the grain silo! I knew we were here.” called out young Master Caleb Smyth. Distant childhood memories of village life. Farmers and fishermen and his childhood friends, superimposed over walls of crumbled stones hidden by grass and shrubs.

The others gave out little shouts. “Woo!” “Yes!” “Finally!” They looked about with their own memories of a time so long ago that didn’t seem real.

Caleb steered their barge towards the shore. The jetty had long ago rotted and collapsed, leaving logs and planks soaking in the waters.

“I’ll get us in as close as I can, but you might get your feet wet.”

The barge pushed into the reeds until its nose slid into the mud a few feet away from the shore. One by one the group gingerly took a couple of steps in the mud, cringing as their legs sank into the water and muck almost up to their knees. Finally all on shore, they slapped at skitos, shook out their waterlogged legs, and adjusted their backpacks.

Caleb pointed towards their old village. “Let’s go.”

They hiked through the overgrown grass, little green hoppers jumping away. Caleb could see the cemetery cairns in the distance. He stopped and gazed at the stones for a moment. Her… the way she… what happened to her killed the village well before the soldiers arrived. The joy left his family on that day. He would have to go see her sis and say sorry. He should have been watching her. He was only a little kid, but he should have… he shook these dark thoughts away, and continued walking.

Their village. Their home, for a little while when they were children, had largely fallen into rotted timber and crumbling stone walls. The forest had begun to creep back in, with vines and shrubs and grass growing over everything and trees sprouting within floors of old cottages.

The six of them stood in the village square where they had found the black charcoal remains of an old bonfire.

“Look. There.” Jen pointed. “Are those bones?”

Were they human bones in there? “Oh my.” Someone had been cremated here after the settlement had been abandoned. Someone’s story, someone’s tragedy that he may never know.

After a quiet moment, each member of the group split off, each looking for their own childhood home. Their own distant memories. Caleb walked down a grassy track. That was Missus Millington’s hut, who would yell at them to stop running but still give them berry cakes. This was shed where the bleeters were shorn by Gorge his lads as they sang songs that were too dirty for little ones to hear. Missus Millington would yell at them too.

He walked on until he stood in front of his old cottage. There wasn’t much left of it really. He stepped through a gap in the stones that was once the front door. Their dinner table still stood in the middle of the open room. A little nibbler sat upon it. It stood up on its hind legs, twitched its whiskers, and scampered off. This home, like everything else, would have to be rebuilt from the ground up, but this was their plan. Now that the Empire was gone they were going to turn this into a settlement once again. Bring it back to life. The soil was fertile, the forest had fine timber. He was sure there were bleeters and milkers out there living wild that they could catch again, and the fishing was good.

The fishing…

His thoughts went back to that old droid that had been left behind in their panic to leave. They had abandoned him. The remains of the walls of his old droid’s shed were barely visible above the weeds. Caleb had almost expected to see him sitting there. And now with FD-3 in his mind, he decided to wander down to the old jetty.

"Where are you going?" asked Jen Godslove.
"I think I want to find Effdee."
"Surely he's long gone."

But Jen and few of the others followed along, their curiosity now also triggered.

The path led down to where the jetty once stood. They looked about up and down the shoreline.

“Hey! Effdee!” someone called out. The momentary noise of the shout quickly disappeared into the endless rippling of the water. There was no response.

Caleb walked along the muddy shore, down to those reeds, where… where his sister Ailie… where Effdee found her. He looked into the waters, his mind floating with a memory of her pretty little sister stepping around, playing with a reed spear.

"Look out there!" someone yelled and pointed.

Something was poking out of the water. Caleb put a hand above his eyes to block the sun and squinted.

"Oh that's him for sure. It has to be. Come on!"

They ran down to their barge and a few of them gave it a shove to push it out of the mud.
It drifted for a moment as they pulled themselves up onto the deck. A strong pull of a starter cord, and chunka-chunka-chunk the steam engine shuddered to life.

A bit of careful steering to travel across the current, and soon they were out to him.

“Drop in the anchor.”

The splash of the anchor dropped over the side, and the barge turned as the current tried to pull it downstream. The steam engine let out a long hissss as it shut down.

“Hey old thing”

FD-3 stood in the water, spear raised, looking as if he was about to strike. His solar panels were partially unfolded, as if trying to keep functional a little longer. But he stood frozen, water weeds caught in his legs, all smeared with dirt, and moss hung his blue barrel body. The Eye of the Soul was still there on his chest and still watched over the fish below. The faintest crayon lines of Ailie’s drawing were still there. Stick figures of mum and dad and brother and sister and astromech.

"Come on. Help me get him on board."

Caleb jumped into the water up to his chest, boots sinking into the mud and the current trying hard to knock him over. He pushed at the droid’s barrel body, but Effdee refused to budge. His metal feet were stuck in the mud and entwined in the weeds below.

“Very well.”

He took a deep breath and ducked his head down into the waters and grabbed at the weeds around the droid’s legs. He clawed at them for a few moments, and then up again for another breath. As he panted, he felt something wrap around his leg, and then a powerful tug suddenly dragged him down into the muck. A tentacle was wrapped hard around one leg and another attempted to wrap around his waist. He pulled at it, but then desperate for air, grabbed at FD-3’s legs to help get above the surface.

The tentacles were powerful. Desperately he tried to drag his face above the surface. He wrapped his arms around Effdee’s barrel, fingernails digging into the seams on the edges of panels. But he couldn’t move. Another tentacle reached up around his throat.

He felt Effdee vibrate for a moment, and then a mighty zap of electric pain shook his body. All his muscles spasmed and the air in his lungs blasted out. But also the tentacles around him unwound. He felt hands grab his collar and shouts of “Hurry! Oh gods!” as he was pulled up to the surface.

With some effort, they pulled him over the barges edge and he clattered onto the deck gulping air.

After a few minutes Caleb got his wits back. “It was him. I think… I think he saved me.”

"Do we have any rope?"

They hooked the rope under the droid's arms and together tugged until he came loose from the river bottom, then dragged him onboard.

Caleb gave the machine a look over. On his knees, he wiped the algae off Effdee's eye lens and peered in. There. Deep inside there a dim light was glowing.

"Hello Effdee. Thank you."

—
95 days later

FD-3 stood in the river, waiting for Blue Bulgers to swim by. Some of the panels on his barrel body were covered with insulation tape to keep them watertight, and some of his leg joints were held in place with rattly old bolts. Master promised that replacement parts would come on the next supply shuttle in 68 days time.

Missus Jen had requested 3 Bulgers for lunch, so Effdee had found a perfect spot in the rolling waters of the river, where the weeds waved and the bugs were plentiful, and there he waited. An octopod slithered by, ignoring his metal legs. No need to shock it. The droid stood perfectly still until the fish forgot that he was there. And there, a good sized Bulger wiggled into sight. He lifted his spear, and with mathematical precision adjusted his aim to take care of refraction and the speed and direction of the current.

This was his purpose. This was what he was built to do.

 

Oh, I was so excited when I realized what was happening here. It didn't even occur to me that some of the original settlers would come back, and I love it

This is just the saddest thing. "What happened to her killed the village well before the soldiers arrived" is such a poignant line. And of course what happened wasn't Caleb's fault, but of course he feels guilty about it nevertheless

I love that you tied this in as well, even though those who are returning don't know what happened, and maybe will never know. This was a really nice way to tie the narratives together, and it's really evocative that this village contains mysteries for everyone - the pilots didn't know what happened to the villagers and now the villagers don't know what happened to the pilots - or even that they were pilots - the one constant here is Effdee, who's seen all of it. It's very effective storytelling

This is honestly great, look how well you created the character of Missus Millington in only three sentences I think we've all known a Missus Millington or two in our lives

Oh, hooray, they remember him! And care enough to find him!

Heck yeah, you go, Effdee

I love everything about this This is such a satisfying ending, that for all Effdee's been through, and despite being terribly misunderstood and forgotten, now people care about him again and are fixing him up and he can fulfill his purpose

This was all so nicely done, and you really made me care about Effdee. I'm so happy that he got his people and his purpose back

 

Enjoyed that very much ... how some returned and how Efdee was reactivated and his purpose resumed.

 

I've had this story on my watch list since you first posted it, and I just kept putting off commenting for some reason or other. But in some ways I'm glad I waited, because I got to see the events come full circle at the end.

It's always interesting to see things through the eyes of someone who doesn't really understand what's happening, as it gives the reader a chance to piece the observations together. Much more show than tell.

The juxtaposition of the settlers' behavior and the Imperial pilots' behavior was fascinating. We so often see Imperial pilots as the villains, yet here one of them takes the time to repair FD-3 as an altruistic gesture. These two characters seem like halfway decent people, even if it was just in relationship to this particular droid. On the other hand, the settlers abandon the droid, ignore him on several occasions, and in one instance verbally abuses him. (Yes, I understand she's distraught. But she seems droid-phobic just in general.)

And yet the children of the original settlers return and start the cycle all over again. And FD-3 saves the brother of the little girl it couldn't save years before. Nice balance there.

Like the rest of your readers, I'm happy you didn't delete this story when the going got tough. I have enjoyed it and look forward to seeing more of your fiction in the future.

Then you should post more of it. Seriously, having stories that differ from everything else on the boards is a good thing. I still see "The Gods Who Love the Sky" as one of the most unique and original pieces of SW fanfiction I've ever seen, and finding it was just such a welcome surprise.

 

Hi.
It felt important to make the Tie Pilots "human". It seemed like an interesting balance with the Good people and their Anger. In hindsight
I certainly should have fleshed out the pilots more. They came an went too quickly IMHO.

And should I have written more about the settlement and the family? In my head I have this whole cosmology and philosophy about them and why the Empire needed to wipe them out but the core of the story was really just this mood-image of a droid spearfishing in a river. It could have been just a few paragraphs, but I got carried away.

 

What a wonderful insight into your world. So delicately, intimately written with a pure joy in description. The novelty of the premise alone could have made for a fine story, but your vivid and lucid writing enkindled such joyous imagery of the world and around FD-3. The heavier turns of the tale were handled with upmost dignity which cradled a poignancy from then on and right through to the end. The details you brought to flourish in a little pocket of the universe, next to the worldliness of the settlers and the pilots made for an enduringly captivating read. This has been my favourite fiction to read on here so far. Thank you so much for sharing this.