Private Publication Bias

[Neriamel Loraya]

Nexus Biotech Laboratory, Daro, Ojoster Sector

It was not every day that one could see a pair of Jedi walk down the ramp of a shuttle in yellow hazmat gear. But when they were sent to answer a distress signal that originated from a laboratory that was supposedly studying pathogens, that was how anyone in their right mind would have showed up. What was most curious was that there was no evidence that anybody at this laboratory actually did any research. Neriamel had taken care to investigate and had not been able to find a single publication in which anybody affiliated with this laboratory had participated, nor mention of a single study having taken place here. That meant that either the people here were sitting around all day drinking stimcaf, or they were studying something they didn't want the galaxy to know about. And the first one was not distressing.

No other ship was to be seen anywhere near, which meant that if anyone else had answered the distress call, they were long gone. That was a possibility, but how many people would actually dare to approach a supposed biohazard like this? Most likely they were the first and only help to come.

But nobody had answered any communications, and nobody was there to meet them as they approached the gate that led into the research complex. The door was sealed, as probably it should have been, presumably in consequence of the facility's safety protocol. Not, in principle, an obstacle to a Jedi.

Neriamel looked at her Master.

Razh Sho​

 

[Razh Sho]

The filtered breath inside the hazmat helmet was steady—steady like the practiced rhythm of meditation or the moment between saber strikes. Razh Sho stood motionless at the gate, its metallic face streaked with dust and time, as silence pressed in from all sides. The Nexus Biotech facility was too quiet—not the sterile quiet of laboratories, but the hollow kind—the kind born of absence.

His gloved hands remained at his sides, one resting lightly on the emitter of his curved hilted saber through the thick yellow gloves, the other clenched with quiet restraint. The wind on Daro stirred no leaves. No animals moved in the distance. He turned slightly, his visor catching a faint reflection of Neriamel, standing alert beside him. The girl was sharp, inquisitive, and grounded—good traits. Better instincts. Her silence wasn't hesitation—it was discipline.

He nodded once.

"The front gate is locked. That's a gesture." His voice crackled through the helmet's vox system, calm and even, as though narrating a lecture hall demonstration. "Whoever was here either wants to keep something out… or something in."

He stepped forward, gloved fingers running lightly across the edge of the security console beside the door—just enough pressure to gauge wear. The panel was cold, untouched, and recently powered down.

"No publications. No public work. No staff records. Yet they called for help."He looked again at the gate. The locks were solid, but nothing extraordinary. The kind that could be bypassed with the right tools—or the right will. "This isn't science. This is secrecy."

He turned his helmet slightly toward her.

"I'll open it. Stay close. And when we step inside..." a pause, soft but deliberate "Breathe with your thoughts, not your lungs."

Then he knelt, began to unhook the side panel, and reached into the Force—not to break the door but to slip through its doubts, like a duelist slipping through an opponent's guard. The force helped him manipulate the mechanical locks to release.

Neriamel Loraya

 

[Neriamel Loraya]

Neriamel received the confirmation she had waited for. She felt no apprehension at the prospect of opening the door, and her master evidently shared that assessment. Even if something dangerous was contained within the laboratory, Daro did not have a significant population, which had made it a natural choice for such an installation - or should one say, a plausible choice, given that this research facility was very possibly not doing what the public records indicated it should be?

She had been prepared to tackle this obstacle in a straightforward manner: to simply melt down the door. But Master Sho took an entirely different approach as his Padawan looked on in wonder.

The door opened upwards and revealed an entrance hall reminiscent of a hospital in character, with a beige floor and white walls and ceiling. The overhead lighting was completely functional. There weren't any signs. The place was not set up to receive visitors, and the permanent wouldn't have needed them to find the living quarters, mess area, offices, and the actual laboratory, which, if it even existed, was doubt contained inside with further isolation measures.

"How did you do that, Master?" asked Neriamel as the two Jedi stepped into the building.

You couldn't use the Force to manipulate electronics or computer systems. Those things did not live and did not have intent, it was why you could not implant a thought in the 'mind', such as it was, of a droid. You could interact with such things only in a purely mechanical way. So what was it that Master Sho had done here, exactly? If he had somehow moved something within the door, how had he known that it was there and what it was?

Razh Sho​

 

[Razh Sho]

Razh Sho stepped through the threshold without haste, his boots gliding silently over the pristine beige tile. The sudden sterility of the place, the untouched orderliness, only deepened the unease. No signage. No personal effects. Not even the usual mess of a disorganized mind at work. The entrance hall felt less like the gateway to a research facility and more like the waiting breath before a lie reveals itself.

His saber remained at his hip, untouched. His hands were behind his back now, fingers interlaced in calm. When Neriamel spoke, he didn't answer immediately. He allowed the silence to stretch, not as evasion, but as an extension of the lesson.

"How did you do that, Master?"

He turned to her, face angled slightly under the cowl of his hazmat hood. The glow from the overhead panels gave his lekku a muted sheen and caught faint reflections in his silver-grey eyes.

"By asking the door what it feared," he said at last.

Her brow furrowed. It was not mockery—it was curiosity. Good. He stepped forward again, moving deeper into the sterile atrium.

"You're correct that we cannot bend electronics with thought. But even machines," he gestured gently to the control panel beside the door, "are constructed by hands. And those hands leave patterns. Intent. Logic."

He knelt beside a second panel recessed in the wall, examining a faint scuff where a cover had been removed recently. His gloved fingers brushed the edge, feeling for magnetic pull.

"I felt for pressure points. For fatigue in the metal. For minute inconsistencies in the panel's frame—where it had been opened, reprogrammed, or tampered with. The Force didn't unlock the door for me, Neriamel." He stood, brushing dust from his knee. "But it told me where to press. And how hard."

He began walking again, this time slower, more alert. His voice grew quieter, though no less certain.

"The Force does not make tools of machines. But it can make tools of us. If we listen." Then he glanced at her, eyes sharp but not unkind."Most students reach for fire first. I prefer to see whether the door was asking to be opened."

The corridor ahead yawned in sterile silence. Razh's pace did not quicken. But his hand, slowly, drifted to rest near his saber's hilt.

"Come. Let's see what kind of silence this place is built to keep."

Neriamel Loraya

 

[Neriamel Loraya]

Neriamel considered the explanation. She nodded slightly in conclusion, but the protective suit probably prevented the gesture from being perceived.

"I see, Master."

And indeed she did. That didn't mean that she could have replicated the feat, she had no illusions about that. But the Force did have a way of telling you to do what it was that you needed to do, and so Master Sho had given her a mechanism she could comprehend: it was ultimately about him more than the door, his rhetorical flourish notwithstanding. The key element was that he had had an intuition about where to manipulate the door.

Thus satisfied, she turned her attention to the situation at hand. Her gaze drifted from one door to the next as she tried to feel, not think, waiting for one of them to simply strike her fancy without reason. None did. She found herself simply staring at them without seeing a distinction. She grew frustrated, and after a moment stormed off to approach a random one of them.

The door was off to the side from the entrance. It was unlocked and opened without issue. It revealed a sort of lounge with glass tables, benches and chairs, from which a corridor led further into the building. The corridor itself had doors on both sides. The floor was not the same beige tiles as before, but a sort of carpet of a dark, greyish-turquoise colour. Structurally, this was likely to be some kind of residential tract.

Except one of the glass tables was smashed, its remnants smeared with blood, and the lifeless body of a duros lay amidst the shards. Neriamel's gaze swept over it and to a spot on a nearby wall that showed a red sheen. She approached the body. This was most certainly not the victim of some sort of biohazard accident. This person had been killed with blunt force, there were no traces even of weapons. Presumably his head had been bashed against the wall first.

"He was killed without the force of weapons. An internal conflict, perhaps", remarked Neriamel. It was clear that she was merely speculating, floating a hypothesis, not yet coming to a conclusion.

Suddenly, a man emerged from the corridor, human. His face was battered, and he was limping, clearly couldn't run, but tried to nonetheless. "Thank the stars! Help! They're behind me!" He was still hurrying towards the two Jedi.

Neriamel peered past him. She noticed that she felt puzzled, not threatened. The corridor behind the man was completely empty. "They're not. You're safe", she stated, with more conviction than was perhaps warranted, but not least to reassure the man, who was clearly in distress.

"Oh? Oh." The man turned around, stumbled over his own feet - and fell prostrate before the Jedi. "Oh, good." He looked up at them, and for a moment his eyes seemed to light up. "Bel Arven, technician. This -" he waved at them clumsily with a limp wrist without picking him up from the floor, wincing in pain as he did so - "the suits, you don't need. No pathogen hazard."

Razh Sho​