Don't a-void the jazz.

[Dissero]

it's not the pale moon that excites me
That thrills and delights me, oh no
It's just the nearness of you,

Spinning slowly somewhere in the galaxy, in a sea of fog, a home of stone, the Archivist bent over an ancient rock in the twilight hours.

A soft tamp-tamping echoed in the background. A sultry horn bleeted, piano framing the notes.

It isn't your sweet conversation
That brings this sensation, oh no
It's just the nearness of you.

The voice was breathy and slow. Rich like honey. The man bent in over his quarry, right toe tapping in time to the beat. Carefully, expertly, he placed a chisel to the edge. Alchemized concentration, sorcerers fleshy mechanical frippery cleaved a corner away with a strong and true strike of a hammer. This wasn't rocket science, this was deviled eggs and it was delicious.

When you're in my arms
And I feel you so close to me
All my wildest dreams come true
I need no soft lights to enchant me
If you'll only grant me the right
To hold you ever so tight
And to feel in the night the nearness of you.

A measured breath with a meticulous eye brought the stone to hand and then to eye. He tested it for weight, calculated the size, imparted upon it an ounce of will. Insert broad grin here. Nothing. A flinch, a twitch, just like the original.


But now what? What to do with this discovery? Who to tell? Who not to tell? Was there more? What exactly was it? Who could tell him more? Who had access to equipment and the knowledge to find out? He could think of one... no, two. The first would thumb her nose at it, the second would likely revel in it like he. They had a great deal in common, or so he liked to believe.


He reached for the nearest object he could find with enough flat surface to scrawl a note on; a leather gauntlet, and did just that. A torn length of his shirt came next to wrap the trinket in, stuffed into the gauntlet, then wrapped in parchment. Why hadn't he just used the parchment? It didn't matter now. No regrets.

A week later it arrived in the depository of the Fringe Councilor and fellow Alchemist [member="Rave Merrill"].

Rave -
Found this. It is what you think it is.

I think there's more. A lot more. You in or you out?

Dissero

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Brom Burnside"]

The response was effectively immediate: a simple Venn diagram, two partially overlapping circles. The leftmost segment was labelled 'Otherspace'. The rightmost segment was labelled 'items of power'. The middle segment, the overlap, was left blank, as a subset too obvious to name.

***

She was, arguably, busier now in the private sector than she'd been as a High Councilor. It took another week for her to arrive in the modified frigate Lethewalker, an ugly machine gun two hundred metres long, current home of her limited trove.

She'd avoided Dissero, insofar as the reclusive archivist required effort to avoid. Part of that had to do with the unmitigated disaster she'd experienced lately -- the loss of probably the second-largest holocron collection in the galaxy, courtesy of a rampant SCINET manifestation and a few Mandalorian design flaws. Janus didn't even let her near his holocrons now. She felt that disgrace keenly.

But the other part of it probably had to do with the differences in their outlooks. Dissero was responsible, his discretion absolute, his methods careful. Rave was Rave.

The Lethewalker touched down, and she disembarked.

 

[Dissero]

They met on Kayri III at the arranged LZ designated by the Archivist. It was there the Lethewalker settled down next to the Klepto - Dissero's vintage Charon prize from Varanin for his efforts and research on the Otherdrive. The man didn't make much effort to keep track of the Fringe's budding list of growing tech, nor did he pay much attention to the trivialities of the Council's business. Rave's big blunder was unknown to him so wrapped up in his own projects as he was, but he'd heard rumors they'd taken his intel on the strange, organic tech and made it very useful.

Otherspace - the word hung over his head like a black cloud, and he muddled over what it meant to have this technology available to more than just a few.

Watching the space witch step from her ship, he pushed off from the side of the Klepto to meet her halfway, "Good to see you," he began over a grin, lifting a hand to the woman's upper arm and squeezing it in greeting, eyes narrowing in mirth, "let me show you something, I think you'll like it."

He lead her along the same path taken weeks previously by himself and Jared Ovmar, to a hidden cavern entrance buried deep within a ravine of a long-slumbering volcano. Given time since the initial discovery, the man had poured through these tunnels, made his notations, and now traversed them with the same familiarity of his own homestead. As they walked they passed by a sizeable collection of bodies - Charon creatures of varying sizes - and Dissero made mention that he owed someone a set of armor, should Rave have the time, he would gladly pay for her services rendered with the hides of the Charon beasts.

But this isn't what I want to show you, he remarked and they moved on. Deeper, guided by handheld lamps, they traveled down a massive spiral walkway carved into the earth. At the bottom a long tunnel brought them to an underground temple where at the center sat a massive stone exuding a nullifying energy upon the Force.

[member="Rave Merrill"]

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Brom Burnside"]

The number of people who would willingly touch her was, she realized, vanishingly slim, but Dissero made the contact seem easy and natural; she almost didn't notice, and who knew how that happened. They left behind his Klepto and her light frigate, making their way into a hidden ravine, a path so obscure she couldn't imagine it had been trodden more than a handful of times.

The instant the Charon bodies entered her field of view, she was riveted, and she knew she was riveted. To Dissero's offer, she returned a polite but noncommittal response, centered on her current ownership of two fairly excellent and very different suits of armour. Her focus remained on the Charon long after she'd left them behind via the spiral stair and the long tunnel.

Then the stone made very sure that nothing and no-one else had her attention.

"I knew this existed," she said. "The sample you sent -- I could extrapolate from that, intellectually. I just had no idea it would feel so...big?"

The obvious joke didn't even occur to her. Instead, she took a few steps back, then a few more, examining distance and waiting for the Force to return to her. "A hundred metres, give or take. Is that a spherical radius, or directional? Does it vary, oscillate?

 

[Dissero]

A fair amount of amusement grew from watching the woman's apparent excitement. Truly, there were so few who could revel, intelligently, in things like this with him. Were he not such a hermit, he certainly would have made a far larger effort where time spent with [member="Rave Merrill"] was concerned.

Dissero grinned, hands hooked on his pant pockets as he admired his find he gave a nod, "Spherical, as I've found, varying only by placement of mass. I discovered a smaller slab of it in another upper-level chamber, which I have come to assume was provided for public worship. That one was carved with Charon runes. This one I believe is the original - when I bring the smaller piece in, it's mass extends the field. Closer you get, the stronger the void within the Force becomes. It doesn't exude an absolute, not like the Ysalamir. It is a diminishing effect."

The man reached into a bag at his side and withdrew a handful of small, normal rocks that he tossed across the floor from the edge of the sphere of influence and inwards.

"Control of the Force diminishes the closer you get, from the simplest of tasks to the most complex of powers. Try manipulating the stones."

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Brom Burnside"]

A gesture attempted to levitate them all; telekinesis was not her forté, but Mastery was Mastery, and lifting a handful of rocks fell firmly within the realm of 'if you can't do this, you're either incompetent or the kind of specialist I do not want to cross without serious research.' Exerting the same amount of focus towards each rock,and viewing them from the side, she noted a clear exponential curve, which made sense; just about any volumetric effect decreased proportional to the cube of its distance from the center. She commented on this, briefly and clinically, while moving on to other things; it wasn't as if Dissero needed basic math explained.

"By how much did the effect increase when you added the second piece, and how much do they each weigh?"

 

[Dissero]

"It wasn't by much," he explained, "the second piece is but a fraction of the main stone. Roughly 32kg," but he hadn't the chance to weigh the larger. By educated guess in comparison of size, it would be around 270kg.

"What's interesting," the man went on, moving forward to circle the centerpiece, "is how the fields interact with one another. Not like what happens with large groups of Ysalamir - their bubble simply gets bigger. The influence spheres seem drawn to one another and weave together in a chain. I haven't had time to experiment, but I can only imagine the results if one were to place the stones in particular patterns or arrangements. But the most exciting find," Dissero placed his hands on the massive thing, the sensation of having his sensitivity to the Force filtered away both alarming and scintillating, "it's a meteorite. And where there's one meterorite..."

[member="Rave Merrill"]

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Brom Burnside"]

"Transcendent opportunity noted. I'm ready at your convenience. But let's get back to the chaining effect. You're telling me that it would be possible to make Force-null shielding? Make a room, or a starship, just as impenetrable as a ysalamir bubble -- but inside the room or the starship, you could feel and use the Force to some extent, maybe even a full extent? Make...apertures, like arrow slits, too small for external senses to find or Force manifestations to pass through without hemispherical diffr-"

She cut off, eyes going wide.

"We could do a double-slit experiment."

 

[Dissero]

"Oh good, I was hoping you'd say that-" this was good news. For a woman as busy as Rave Merrill, seemed it only took a scrap of history to open up her schedule. Dissero propped a brow, hand at his chin as she backpedaled.

You're telling me that it would be possible to make Force-null shielding?

"...yes," eyes narrowing, the man pawed at his beard pensively.

Make a room, or a starship, just as impenetrable as a ysalamir bubble -- but inside the room or the starship, you could feel and use the Force to some extent, maybe even a full extent?

With some thought, he nodded, "Yes." Certainly seemed possible, pending the acquisition of more stone. A lot more. His gaze trailed off as ideas began percolating, hand slowly stroking through his beard. A stealth ship lined with it would prove a very interesting infiltrator for Force Users. ... he could line his vaults. Make transport cases for artifacts. Meditation chambers. Armor plating. Talismans.

Make...apertures, like arrow slits, too small for external senses to find or Force manifestations to pass through without hemispherical diffr-

The man's hand halted its progress through his facial hair, wide eyes turning in their sockets to look at the woman.

We could do a double-slit experiment.

Short circuit. Dissero turned and walked out of the chamber, paced a dozen yards up the tunnel, turned and paced back.

"What?" he began, stopping by Rave and lifting a hand to indicate the stone, "...what? No."

Dissero considered the stone, shook his head, did the math, shook his head again. Well, maybe.

"Okay."

"Yes."

"You," where had this woman been all his life? "I want to kiss you, but there is no time. There's so much to do!"

Suddenly he was leaving the chamber again, gesticulating and muttering to himself.

[member="Rave Merrill"]

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Brom Burnside"]

She thought of mentioning that Triko had proven her a jawasexual, but considering today's events ranked among the most interesting, engaging, enjoyable and pleasurable in both her sets of memory, she was starting to think she was just plain turned on by audacity. Which implied very awkward things about her old job as Velok's lab assistant.

In due course they would attempt to replicate this with more comprehensive void stone samples, but their first prototype was small enough to require only the sample Dissero had sent her. It was ground down to dust, then applied to thin plast sheets at various distributions until thaissen-crystal testing revealed they'd found the correct distribution for Force-opacity against at least low-level disturbances. Then it was a matter of making two slits just barely large enough for thaissen-crystal testing and high-gain lightmeters to register passage under controlled circumstances. Controlled circumstances involved perfect darkness and a small box made of the void-stone-impregnated plast. The box was shaped like two cubes put together, and a sheet of the same material, which Rave dubbed Velokite, could be dropped down the middle to bisect the box. They used a three-dimensional printer loaded with clear, easily soluble, solid-form plast and powdered thaissen crystals to create a cube exactly large enough to fit inside half the box.

For a basic prototype, it was very basic indeed, and very small, about a foot in length. It was totally unimpressive and totally absent the Force, at least to basic Force senses; she was fairly sure she could still incinerate or crush it if she tried. She tested that, too, using telekinesis to separate the halves of the Velokite box as the design intended; it took quite a lot of effort but worked fine.

From there, they tested that the box actually allowed the Force inside it when sealed. Cube in one side, cradled in three dimensions of thinform lightmeter strips. Sith amulet, something basic but malevolent-feeling, in the other side. Seal the box, cube lit up undifferentiated red. Simple simple. One foundational hypothesis down. (For fun, they took the ends off the box, put it on a turntable, and projected the Force at it with the cube behind it. Talk about an expensive way to make a low-wattage strobe light.)

Then they slipped a sheet of void-stone-dust-coated plast in between the cube and the amulet. Cube went dark. Rave whistled. "This kind of insulation would take a much greater volume of high-grade nullification resin. Of course, this stuff is literally invaluable, so...all right, moment of truth."

They alchemized a flat plane of metal, just enough to give it a strong and even Force aura, and placed it at one end of the box, opposide the thaissen cube. Computers hooked to lightmeters, thaissen-impregnated cube in place, in perfect dark and with the ambient Force as still as they could make it, they dropped another Velokite sheet down the middle, this one with two tiny slits in it, the width of those slits having been established by earlier experimentation.

And saw this.

"Congratulations," said Rave, mouth dry. "We've just established that the Force has both a wave and a particle nature." On the readout, she traced the interference patterns with her finger. "Each set of spherical waves proves that the Force behaves as a wave -- the Fallanassi will be pleased. And when they interfere with each other, that proves that the Force also behaves as a particle. We've just scientifically demonstrated the existence of what Darth Plagueis called aperion.

"The Force's equivalent of a subatomic particle that controls mass, intermolecular forces, electromagnetism, gravity, and time."