Now That's a Force-using Droid!

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Other enhanced interrogation methods also raise self-incrimination legal issues, some of them very similar to those raised by mind tricks. While I am not a criminal-law attorney by any stretch, testimony from Force-users or droids seem to be treated the same as any other testimony, witness or expert, and held to the same standards to determine admissibility in the court system. Which is also another issue raised by psychometry practitioners, who often use psychometry to read an object's Force-history. Usually the party calling such a witness to testify would first state why they chose a particular witness in either case, prior to testimony being given"

In fact [member="Ultimatum"] would probably meet few Jedi even using mind tricks, much less for interrogation purposes, because most Jedi these days tend to prefer flashier methods to deal with criminals, Sith and other evil entities, and mentalism in any shape or form seemed to take a backseat at best. But the one time she did use the mind trick in a forensics context, she decided to call it off after a handful of questions because she thought back then that new information from forensic evidence would perhaps be a good idea to wait on. For the time being, the criminal in question was hearing it all and was getting familiar with how evidence was treated by the courts. Wow. That's as far from the lesson plan outlined earlier as I could get. I expected to be teaching him pyro/cryo by that point, while I expected the mind trick to be rather straightforward to teach once telepathy was taught, the hard part was about the ethics of using those powers, she thought, while she was once offered to be part of an extraordinary 3-judge criminal panel on Exocron but turned it down, claiming issues of impartiality due to the defense counsel retained by the defendant.

"That being said, now that you have an idea of how to extend telepathy to the mind trick and what to watch out for when doing so, do you want to learn pyro/cryo or to learn psychometry?"

 

[Ultimatum]

Ultimatum took the suggestion in stride. The ethicality of the Force was something that he had, unintentionally, found quite interesting. He was almost certain that most Force sensitives did not ask the questions of whether what they did was right, for that would most certainly betray their cause at some point. But discerning the ethics of the Force was not why he was here. This was a learning experience, and his focus was on the attainment of a functional knowledge of abilities. "I would be most interested in cryokinesis and the related pyrokinesis."

Upari tried to turn his powers to try and parellel his thoughts onto Ultimatum's circuits. It was a very different calculation, he had to know how each thought could be translated best into the droid's mind. If he could figure it out, then he would be well on his way to a greater understanding of the Force communication.

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

The prisoner was then brought back to his cell, now that he knew what his rights were, and then she realized that they were going wildly off-tangent here. Now that [member="Ultimatum"] and, along with him, Upari, signaled their intent to proceed with the next items on the original agenda, pyrokinesis, she then called on her knowledge of thermodynamics as it was relevant here. With most students, I have to teach it when assuming no thermodynamics knowledge whatsoever. With Ultimatum supplying the knowledge, Upari has no excuses of not knowing thermodynamics, so I'm much more confident that Upari will understand, she thought, while preparing a grill with a raw steak on it, and charcoal at the bottom of the grill for the first lesson in pyrokinesis, and she was planning on eating the steak once it's ready, once the student has actually learned pyrokinesis, and same went for the powdered ice cream in reserve. And then he will realize that pyrokinesis and cryokinesis can be used for cooking, and a variety of other uses, unlike many people for whom these powers were mostly used as weapons.

"Pyrokinesis and cryokinesis are both about playing with objects' temperatures and, with them, molecular motions, hence why I'm usually teaching both in the same session. You will realize that the molecular speeds involved are different depending on whether the target object is a solid, a liquid or a gas, vibrational, rotational and translational respectively, with plasmas and supercritical fluids being very similar to gases in this respect. What worked for me in a gas context was to solve PV = NRT in my head for both the initial and final states, but sometimes you may feel that you put in energy into an object, or take it away, and its temperature plateaus for a bit, and usually, when that occurs, you reached the phase transition point of the object"

 

[Ultimatum]

The information followed the logical assumptions of physical laws. The differences in density and heat transferal rates would change how much energy, and time, was required for a change in temperature. It was a relatively simple equation, though varying environmental situations would have to be taken into account. A minor breeze might change how much heat would be expelled in order to reach a specific temperature.

"You would like me to cook the meat? Well-done or more on the raw side?"

Upari was thinking over the equation, attempting to decide where to start the process. The Shard wondered if the idea was to cause molecules to suddenly heat up, creating a steady increase in overall temperature, or by pulling the heat from the surrounding area and focusing it into a given spot, which did not change the total energy in the environment.

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Causing molecules to suddenly heat up is appropriate when one doesn't want to simultaneously use pyrokinesis on one object and cryokinesis on another, while pulling heat from one object to another is probably more appropriate when you want to do both at once but on different objects. In that case, I'd rather want you to pull the heat from the powdered ice cream and focus it onto the steak"

So there were two methods to go around using pyrokinesis and cryokinesis. Usually it was taken to mean causing molecules to suddenly heat up, while pulling heat from an object to another was another method she did hear about but rarely saw used: Asaraa Vaashe was the one person she knew that did it that way. It has been a while since Jessica ate rare steak; she instead ate a myriad of other stuff, such as Skor cakes, pho, pizzas and fried rice. She had to make sure that the downtime to let Upari's batteries recharge was enough to proceed to the next course of the meal. Sure she knew that Togrutas, like Karahak or Asaraa's older body, would usually claim that steaks were best eaten rare or medium-rare, just that [member="Ultimatum"] would see that, unlike most other people using pyro/cryo, for whom they were mostly used as weapons, for Jessica it was a tool to help out on the field, including but not limited to, cooking. The Force is more than just a weapon. Although it was, at first, difficult for some to understand that, once they do, some of the flashy powers they have come to know and love are usually used more or differently, she thought, while realizing that it wasn't much of a stretch to go from cooking a steak to causing a sentient to endure burns because of a red-hot weapon for a pyrokinesis user. In her mind, it was easier to get the message across if the lesson was delivered using a non-combat use of the power.

"Yes; I would like the steak to be rare for the time being"

 

[Ultimatum]

Ultimatum felt more comfortable with the concept of the latter method, rather than the former. In the first method, Ultimatum felt there were unseen consequences. The conservation of energy required that energy and mass could neither be created or destroyed, only change one form to another. The change in heat required that energy be moved into the atoms and molecules. With both of these necessities, it was logical that in order to accomplish 'spontaneous' pyrokinesis there would need to be energy pulled from some other place. Where did this energy come from? Theoretically, the heat would come from him and his connection to the Force, however, that would mean that he was pulling more energy from the Force than was required. There was a plethora of free form energy in the universe, why put more in when the surrounding area had enough excess heat to be redirected?

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"] wanted a rare steak. Ultimatum, of course, did not partake in food, however, from his database, there was an alarming number of cases in which bacteria infections had taken place due to undercooked meat. It was her decision, and he had a theory that it was to make his learning process more manageable. The first order was to decide on the required temperature for safely cooking a steak of the particular type and size. The droid decided that fifty degrees, in Celsius of course, would be sufficient. If he maintained a constant temperature, as would be preferable when cooking, it would likely take five to eight minutes. At this point, the calculation became one of how much energy was required to accomplish this feat. He estimated that eleven Watts of energy would be used to reach the appropriate temperature. Then it would require about eight minutes of constant heat to cook the steak. Eight minutes at approximately eleven watts a second led to five thousand two hundred eighty joules. As Jessica suggested, he could take much of the needed heat from the ice cream. The droid was sure though that he would need to rob heat from the environment as well.

"Do you have a recommendation as to other sources of heat to borrow from?"

Upari meanwhile prepared himself for the exertion.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"In the future, if you'd rather siphon energy from another object, it should be done preferably somewhere some good distance away from the object being heated"

There was a reason why I wanted the steak rare, even though I usually prefer higher donenesses in a steak: there was just enough energy in the bowl of powdered ice cream to cook a steak to that level of doneness and just that, she thought, while watching said bowl of ice cream turn into a frozen slime of the soft ice cream variety by [member="Ultimatum"] siphoning energy from it with the Force. Yes, they both knew that some species were hardier when it came to eating undercooked meat, such as Togrutas, but this was not an excuse. Not to her. But, if Upari didn't eat, then Shard metabolism had something to do with it, and she was a little intrigued by the process. By how crystalline living beings' metabolisms worked, and how they differed from organics like her in that respect. Just that using energy siphons as a means to perform pyrokinesis and cryokinesis made it clear to those who learned using pyro/cryo that way that these two powers were related between each other. As she watched carefully the temperatures of both objects in the Force...

"By doing pyrokinesis as a siphoning of energy, you can also perform cryokinesis that way, too: you have realized as much"

 

[Ultimatum]

If [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] believed there was enough energy for the transfer, then Ultimatum would follow that. Her suggestion about distance was obvious, it would also be preferable to use a source with greater heat than the intended recipient. It was important to Ultimatum to maintain a definite connection with the Force in relation to physics. Taking energy from one place and putting it into another felt more natural than simply making or taking away heat.

"That is logical. Is this power often used as a weapon?"

Upari continued the transfer of heat, the steak was beginning to cook. It would be a few minutes yet.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"In fact, most people use pyro/cryo as a weapon. When I first used pyro in battle, I was using it to heat up weapons. Now, I do realize that more advanced users can probably cause an area to go ablaze, or freeze objects in an area in place, and ever-increasing areas with the corresponding increase in skill"

Now that [member="Ultimatum"] was, in fact, cooking the steak using pyrokinesis, the ice cream in the bowl was steadily decreasing in temperature, so that it would no longer look like a bowl of powder as the cooking continued. She then fetched utensils, like a fork and a knife, much like those used in the Silver Rest's cafeteria, so that she could eat the steak once Upari was finished. Yes, she knew that pyro/cryo was invaluable in the kitchen. Just that there was a number of uses to pyro/cryo she could readily think of that did not involve weaponizing it. Such as welding, HVAC (the latter was how the last Shard used it when she taught it to Sallikar). But she made a mental note about touting the combat utility of pyro/cryo with some of the future students that are more combat-oriented, even though she knew it was a form of bait-and-switch, which she doesn't usually condone. With that said, she could probably want to dispense with teachin him Force-barrier and tutaminis if he could get a personal shield generator: teaching droids just wasn't the same as teaching organic padawans.

 

[Ultimatum]

"This is used as a weapon? It makes sense; it is a method of warfare quite unconventional in most sentient's minds. Yet, this power has a lot of use in non-combative environments, is it normal for Force users to focus their abilities on combative skills?"

As a person of a non-competitive nature, and a droid who wished to preserve life as much as possible, Ultimatum hoped to make use of what powers they learned more constructively. The galaxy was filled with enough soldiers and warriors to fight millennia of war. What was needed in a time of chaos were builders and saviors. The robot did not know if he could accomplish much to change the galactic situation, but what he could do he would. He would mend what he could, save what he could, and hold back those that tried to destroy everything. He believed that it was a Jedi philosophy, but perhaps he was wrong. He wondered if [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] believed in such ideals.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"As I mentioned earlier, many Jedi seemed to be drawn to Jedi-hood because of the opportunity to use their self-righteousness to fight Sith, and usually these people will focus on the more combative aspects of the Force. To say nothing of the Sith proper: most of them seemed driven by anger and other primal emotions, which seem to tunnel-vision them all the same as Jedi, but for a different reason. Those few Sith that aren't may, for what I know, be using Force-lightning for non-combative uses or some other such thing"

While she was getting started eating the rare steak, Jessica would probably say that she had different methods to achieve those ideals in question compared to those others that actually acted to make the galaxy a better place. Upari and, of course, [member="Ultimatum"] were intrigued by how different she appeared to be compared to the typical Jedi they likely have encountered thus far; sure some Jedi lacked the knowledge to actually resolve conflicts with tact and diplomacy, while others saw diplomacy mostly as an inter-faction thing. To Jessica, however, policy and, with it, diplomacy, goes beyond what Jedi typically think of it, that is, more than simply or mostly public security. Understandably diplomacy was often an area where the Force was perceived to be of limited use, so most Jedi felt useless to pursue diplomacy as a specialty and hence today's Jedi feeling as if diplomats were born rather than made. And, of course, all non-combat specialties being uncommon - probably the Old Republic-era Jedi suffered for putting Jedi in roles they couldn't handle, and that's not just the Republican C2 in the Clone Wars.

 

[Ultimatum]

That was interesting. What [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] suggested was that Jedi were no longer a calling to create peace in the galaxy, which was what both Ultimatum and Upari understood the Jedi's purpose to be. Rather, it sounded as if they were now a career soldier, which was all the more frightening. Ultimatum knew the power of individual soldiers, especially warriors, yet to give any of them the Force and allow them to have little restraint in their purpose...

"It sounds as if the Jedi have begun to succumb to the society surrounding them. Are there many left who try to mend the galaxy, rather than add to its plight?"

The droid was concerned at this. Perhaps the Jedi were no better than Sith. Maybe they were merely opposites yet mirrored. The galaxy had barely maintained a balance when the Jedi and Sith had been true opposites, the greatest conflicts do ravage the galaxy had almost always occurred when both sides of the Force tended to act in similar manners. This time though, there were no large galactic powers to absorb the beatings and repair the damages left in the wake of such a conflict. How could the galaxy survive?

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"In a sense you were very lucky to meet one of those Jedi left trying to mend the galaxy" she answered Upari while she was finished eating the steak.

Unlike the Sith Wars and One Sith (ca. 120-137 ABY) eras, today's factional game of thrones has many more participating factions involved, with each faction being more limited in geopolitical scope. Yes, she could feel [member="Ultimatum"] was aware of just how Jedi and Sith were, in practice, more similar in how they fought for their respective religions. It was a frightening prospect to be sure, the past 20-25 years or so being marked by more or less constant warfare between the two groups, and it gets worse with Jedi and Sith running factions to themselves. The real differences lie in how they run their factions, and also their military doctrines. Jedi tended to prioritize volunteers for smaller-scale missions, and also finesse when said ops are underway, while Sith were more about brute-force and emphasizing blind obedience over enterprising commanders, she thought, while realizing that there was one arena where light-sided factions held any real advantage: dogfighting. It was generally acknowledged in dogfighting circles that dark-side factions' elite pilots were only marginally better than light-side factions' regular pilots, and that standard-issue attack craft in LS-land would qualify for elite status in Sith-land.

"I'm aware Jedi and Sith each run a faction to themselves: while the Jedi/Sith proper approach their purpose rather similarly. Just that whereas Sith tend to be more heavy-handed in their faction's administration, and also tend to be much more authoritarian, Jedi, on the other hand, tended to intervene only in escalated or security issues, believing that policy is best left to those who can actually handle it, while realizing most of the Jedi cannot"

 

[Ultimatum]

"I feel quite fortunate then." The droid hoped that [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] understood his appreciation of her teaching him. He doubted that he was the ideal student, but then again the droid did not know what would be classified as the ideal student in this case. Every teacher probably had different definitions and preferences as to what kind of person they preferred to teach. Then there was also the prerequisites that Orders put on the types of people that were allowed to become students. That brought up a question for Jessica and Ultimatum asked, "By the standards of your Order, would I be an acceptable student? Are you allowed to train whomever you wish?"

Upari wondered in thought, "Was the steak good? Was it cooked sufficiently?" The Shard wondered if Jessica had seasoned it at all, knowing that those sentients who partook in food usually enjoyed putting spices and herbs on food to alter the flavor to personal taste. Food was something that neither Ultimatum nor Upari was experienced in and thus their knowledge of such things was based on what media was readily available on the HoloNet.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Under today's Jedi standards, Upari would be an acceptable student. The only real controls we apply on who can be trained as Jedi would be the risks of falling to the dark side: if the risks are high then we may have reservations, until such a point is reached that the risks become too high. Thank the Force that there are no age restrictions or else I may not even have been one - today's Jedi understand that people can and do fall through the cracks of the Force-sensitivity detection grid, because false-negatives are a thing in the process, and hence allow people to join at any age. For the record, I discovered my own Force-sensitivity later in life because I fell prey to a false-negative"

Today's standards determining who can and cannot be trained to become Jedi are quite different from and she was thankful for those. It seemed that the only real standards are those related to the likelihood of remaining in the light, and those people for whom Jedi had the most reservations about were those people who used to be dark-siders, such as Arax. And, to be fair, it's perhaps because Arax's redemption process is taking longer than expected that she didn't even start working with her, even though she would have liked Jessica as a Jedi Master. But the topic of the steak, as approached by [member="Ultimatum"] would then come through in telepathic comms: The steak was cooked sufficiently, and I usually don't put condiments. And I liked the ice cream, too: of course I chose the serving sizes of both courses so that you could get familiar with pyro/cryo while the cooking would be properly made to order, she thought, while realizing why false-negatives occurred in midi-chlorian counters: they tended to fall prey to shot noise, that is, the uncertainty on any given midichlorian count was proportional to the square root of said count. Plus the "yellow area" she was in at the time, leading to said false-negative, is usually understood as being 5500 + 2.575 (that is, the Z-score for 99%-level two-tailed hypothesis testing) standard deviations. More accurately [5309, 5691] since midichlorian counts are integer-valued.

 

[Ultimatum]

Ultimatum was surprised that there was such a high possibility of these false readings that the Jedi Order had changed their system. It was certainly a good thing in the sense that if the old standards had been held then many of the people in the Order would not be trained by Jedi. However, it also seemed to lead to a relaxing of other rules and systems. Ultimatum wondered if there were more Jedi falling to the Dark Side now compared to the days of the old Jedi Order. That could easily be attributed to the tumultuous times, with the wars and chaos it was simple to imagine a lone Jedi stressed to the breaking point and slipping into the darker thoughts.

"Has the risk of this change been overcome by the reward?"

Upari believed he understood the concepts. It would undoubtedly help in cooking, but Upari could also guess that it may be helpful in sterilizing if he could push to those temperatures as well as smelting. Then there were the possibilities for lowering temperatures which could help in preserving food, or freezing a wound to stop it bleeding, or even cool machines in a heated environment. The possibilities for this power were quite far-reaching, and Upari looked forward to taking advantage of it in the galaxy at large.

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"The main rewards are increased maturity and increased outside knowledge, although the latter is more subtle than the former. The result being that today's Jedi are more aware of what they can and cannot do and do not attempt to impose responsibilities that people cannot assume. Now, I do realize that I'm comparing to pre-Order 66 incarnations, but post-Order 66 incarnations allowed people to join later in life not so much because of false-negatives but because of scarcity"

Back in the ancient Sith Wars, it was all too clear that forcing people to take on responsibilities they could not assume was a recipe for disaster, for both Jedi and Sith. Yes, on either side of the Force-alignment scale, most were drawn to the more adventurous aspects of life in a Force-order, and flash was often part of their operational mantras. Just because they can fight well as individuals, doesn't mean they can actually assume leadership - the Republic paid the price for that many times over in the Clone Wars, so one would think today's Jedi in the regular chain of command would actually understand the responsibilities attached to it and possess actual command-level skill: such skill is uncommon among FUs, she thought. Also, one would expect the Sith going to the light to be either disgruntled with their faction-of-the-day's procedures, or horrified by the atrocities said faction commits. Even today, there were still arrogant apprentices that took on more than they could chew on either side, [member="Ultimatum"] would probably realize as much. She could talk for hours about the differences between historical incarnations of Jedi orders and today's, as well as the evolution of military doctrine between each, just that she had to honor the pedagogical promise and teach Upari Force-light.

"Next on the agenda is Force-light. If there is any flashlight mounted on you, it would then be about channeling the energy of the light through the flashlight"

 

[Ultimatum]

Unfortunately, Ultimatum did not have a built light source, as except for a few occasions, the droid had found switching his receptors to different light ranges was more efficient. Further, it would be less likely to give an opponent something to aim at. However, based on how she stated before, Ultimatum felt that he might understand what followed in the concept.

"And if I do not, then it is a matter of channeling light from other sources? And if none are available, I would have to make light and channel it?"

The droid was curious as to how this sort of power could be altered. If they were manipulating light, then it struck Ultimatum as entirely probable to enhance it in several factors. Using the Force, Ultimatum deducted it would be possible to increase a light's intensity, or to turn the light into a faint laser. Perhaps even shift light into or out of different spectrums. Perhaps bend light, refract light, absorb light, reflect light. These were all impressive abilities, though Ultimatum guessed they were more difficult to accomplish than changing temperatures. The calculations alone for those tricks would be far more complex than the simple energy adjustments for temperature changes. He wondered what [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] planned to show him in regards to this ability.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Force-light is, in fact, projecting your light-side energy outward under the form of light. Now, as to how the light expresses itself: it can either be a focused laser or an omnidirectional bulb, depending on the focus of the light-side energy. Light sources are very useful since the light source will then radiate the energy of the light side along with its light, which can also be manipulated"

Bending and refracting light goes by another name: Force-cloak, in which case what you have to do is to change the target object's refraction index, be it yourself or another object, to -1 in a certain band comprising what you want to render the object invisible to. Now I realize the benefits Upari is getting from Ultimatum when it comes to the more cognitive aspects of Jedi-hood, she thought, while picking up the surface thoughts within [member="Ultimatum"] as she realized the implications of bending and refracting light. But as intrigued as he might be as to how sentient light-siders would go around using Force-light, she would rather make sure that he actually needs a demonstration as to how to use Force-light before she could actually take off the lights and lower the curtains. And also make sure she has enough computational power available for her to use the power in question, since her method required a certain threshold of computational power usage to perform. Because Upari has an idea of the intensty of the Force-lights in her brain, he'd probably think Jess would use them as a basis for Force-light - but is he able to do the same? Or would he need to use another method to outwardly project light-sided energy?

"Would you like a demonstration as to how I would be using Force-light in the absence of light sources?"

 

[Ultimatum]

So it was a form of imbuing physical light with a Force effect. Ultimatum wondered if were possible to shape and alter the Force aspect of the light, to create images with the light. Could the light be enhanced in different ways, perhaps exuding courage or bolstering resolve of those around them? Maybe that would fall underneath combining Force abilities. That made logical sense to Ultimatum, which brought questions of creating 'hybrid' powers by merely using different skills in quick succession.

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"] then asked if they wanted a demonstration, Ultimatum quickly replied, "Absolutely. It would give us an idea of what it would look like."

Upari was attempting to decide what form of light he should harness. He had noticed Jessica's internal mind light, and he wondered if she would use that. He questioned what he could utilize. There was the surrounding light, but the Shard believed it would be a more specific method to use some form of light they produced on their own. That way, there would be no reliance on a light that might not be there. As he contemplated it, the Shard questioned the effect this ability would have on the Ichor in a given person. He supposed that the power flooded the light, and therefore the person the light hit, with the Light side of the Force. Would this negate the abilities of the Dark Ichor? Strengthen the Light Ichor? What of the Neutral Ichor?