The Kitchen of the Force

[Jessica Med-Beq]

Trian, one of the two worlds chosen by the Dominion to house refugees from Atrisia. Temporary housing is in place while the permanent housing is being built somewhere else. Given the planet's timber industry, the permanent housing is being built using wooden frames, and also some glazed ceramic tiles, as per the Atrisian architectural traditions. But while the refugee colony was being built, Jessica had the opportunity to supply some training to a newcomer to the Jedi, [member="Jairdain"]. There were four things she wanted to teach her, and she knew four powers were a little much for a padawan to learn in one go. She couldn't ignore the plight of the Atrisian refugees who, for years, were perhaps a little neglected because their home was devastated in combat, but at the same time she knew that she couldn't do everything by herself, so it was perhaps for the best if her contribution was a little limited. Just make it quick, Jairdain... she thought, while standing in front of a Jairdain that she easily dwarfed.

"I'm Jessica, today you will learn a few Force-powers: Force-healing, Detoxify Poison, pyrokinesis and cryokinesis. Does that make sense?"

 

[Jairdain]

One of Jera's goals was to learn as much as she could about these Jedi and from them. She stood in front of an extreemely tall female, one that was at least a foot taller than her small frame. Though Jera was blind, she could sense the room around them and hear the sounds of people keeping busy nearby.

The blond Jedi spoke to Jera and drew her out of her reverie and she focused her attention fully on Jessica.

Jessica was all business which Jera understood totally and respected. She listened to her and realised just how much she had to learn.

"I understand your words, but am at a loss. You can heal with the Force?"

All her previous lessons had been more about using the Force as a weapon or defense, nothing was mentioned ever about healing.

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Yes, I know you can heal with the Force. Pyrokinesis, cryokinesis can also be used for something other than offense or defense; I'll get to that later. But yes, with the Force, one can heal combat injuries and also cure other common ailments so that you can be more than Before we begin, Jera, there are a few preliminary cautions as far as Force-healing is concerned: it does not excuse the patient from having to take the precautions it would otherwise require, for example a patient will still need anaesthesia if the equivalent NFU procedure requires anaesthesia, a patient will still need some rest time or splints, and so on, so forth. And the main precaution of all: you may be more likely to heed it because you're early in your learning curve of the Force, but I know a few who don't: do not expect near-instant healing every single time"

She knew a patient who required over seven hours of Force-healing to get the work done; then again, it was all about metastases and other stuff requiring Force-chemotherapy, and also requiring a whole night of rest (possibly "and then some") before being able to do anything with the Force again other than Force-sense. But that's not in range of what [member="Jairdain"] is about to learn about today. The patient that was brought in front of Jairdain was a patient that suffered a cut from working on the planks of wood that will become part of the permanent housing for the Atrisian refugees. True, there were times where Jessica still had quite a bit to learn, but she had to make choices as to what: she knows that she cannot learn everything, and neither can Jera. But before Jera can begin to treat the patient, Jessica has to give the actual instructions of how to use the Force for healing other people. Diagnosis is the crucial step, but by no means the only one.

"First step: locate in the Force where the patient is injured, or what other signs of illness the patient seems to have. Often illnesses will be caused by broken stuff inside the bodies, and for the painful things, might be best to administer anaesthesia first, either local or general, depending on what the patient's problems are"

 

[Jairdain]

Jera listened to the words and advice of Jessica and nodded at each point. Just before a patient was brought in, she emphasized the fact that there would be almost no instant heal displayed. Again she nodded and looked at the man.

Locate the injury, Jera couldn't see and already used the Force for was easily able to see the cut on the arm of the man in front of her. She points this out as well as the fact he suffered a sprained ankle in the same accident.

Before speaking, Jera continued to examine the man. Her hands floated over his body from head to toe and back up. When she was again at the top of his body, she opened her eyes and looked at Jessica.

"This man suffers a sprained ankle and cut on his arm. His ankle I would suggest be wrapped tightly and be given a day or two to recover. His arm needs a little more attention and might require stiches to keep the cut closed and bandages wrapped around his arm."

Nothing out of the ordinary for a construction worker and there isn't anything Jera can see HOW to heal.

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

Sprained ankles, a cut on his arm; it was par for the course for someone that got cuts from working on planks of wood on a construction site. True, [member="Jairdain"] did consider her own limitations as a Force-healer, and the limitations of Force-healing in general, and Jessica was pleased to see that Jera understood that, while the Force could work wonders in the absence of medical equipment, or even do stuff that was beyond the realm of what conventional medical techniques could do, someone around Jessica decides to array the sawdust into a bonfire, while Jera is still left wanting as to how to use the Force to heal. But healing is one of those things where the warnings are best delivered before the lesson proper begins, which was to start just now. True, Jessica may have been trained in Force-healing by a medical doctor, and the biggest detractor of these two aforementionned ladies (Jessica and Catria) has since faded to obscurity among the Silver Jedi; that person did not train Force-healing beyond "put the Force in a patient's body", but did warn about the non-instant nature of Force-healing, but Jessica was by no means a healthcare professional.

"The trick here is to use the Force to actually make the stitches in the case of cuts: Force-stitches tend to grow the lost tissue around them. Here the Force is to be used much as you otherwise would a medication: if you feel at some point that a patient needs anaesthesia, you may then use the Force to administer local or general anaesthesia, whichever is appropriate, or here you may use the Force as a means to do stitches"

 

[Jairdain]

Jairdain again listened to the lesson Jessica provided. Applying anaesthesia would be needed to stich together the cut on the man's arm. Not exactly positive of how to do that, but going to try her best.

She walked over to the injured arm, closed her eyes and placed her hands about an inch over the cut. Jairdain allowed the Force to start flowing between her and her patient. More than anything, she pictured in her mind his arm around the cut going numb and stopped once she felt this feat was accomplished. Her violet eyes opened and she looked up at Jessica.

There was stress in her eyes and concern she had failed to make the arm numb. Waiting to see if she succeeded, Jairdain wanted to know if her trial worked and remained silent.

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Ah, yes, I sense that the patient's arm is under local anaesthesia: the Force-induced anaesthesia will last for about one hour"

Jera was under the stress of the beginner and Jessica knew it. She knew that going overboard was a problem with many Force-healers who learn the skill too late in the learning curve: they may unwittingly cause cancers in addition to expecting near-instant healing (and probably as a result of such expectations, too). [member="Jairdain"] was having all the questions in the galaxy with respect to how to do Force-healing: Force-stitches, even to bones or other flesh types, would take care of many injuries, while other Force-medications like Force-chemotherapy (the very stuff for which the patient requiring seven hours of Force-healing in a row went to her favorite Force-healer for), Force-antibiotics/antivirals and whatnot. Meanwhile, Jessica went out and got the bandages in the amount she feels is necessary to immobilize the patient as Jera prescribed earlier, for a day or two. Once the rolls of bandage-grade gauze have arrived...

"Now, use the Force to do stitches on the cuts"

 

[Jairdain]

Making something from the Force? Jairdain pondered this for a moment, her hand cupping her chin as she rubbed her cheek slightly. Her brows tucked in together as she thought about how to about doing it.

Jairdain took a deep breath, calming her mind and clearing all her thoughts out except stitching the cut together. Again, closing her eyes, Jairdain's hands hovered over the man's wounded arm. Slowly the wound closed, but that was all, nothing appeared to hold it together and when Jairdain lowered her hands, it came apart. She opened her eyes, looked down at her failure and up at Jessica.

"How can I make stitches if I have no thread?"

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

That was... troublesome: the Force-stitching was not going to work, she thought, while being forced to rely on what she knew about biology to pursue the lesson in Force-healing with [member="Jairdain"]. She knew that Force-induced anaesthesia is one of the main starting points of learning Force-healing but simply using the Force as a painkiller or as a soporific is not going to cut it. Nevertheless, she would not be deterred. True, medical knowledge was often key for proper usage of Force-healing, but one must not be afraid of blood to be an effective Force-healer. Even so, using the Force to attract the patient's platelets to stimulate the growth of skin tissue may not even need stitches at all, provided that the injury can be compressed later. Even though the Force-stitching fell apart, the bleeding did not resume either, so that was one less thing to worry about. And yet, the Force-thread was a little... loose, so it wasn't a complete failure.

"When it comes to cuts, the key is to use the Force to attract the patient's platelets to the cut's location. However, the cut did not bleed. Also, think of the Force as some universal medication, which can be, depending on the context, a painkiller, a balm, a splint or even an antiviral or an antibiotic, to name common stuff that Force-healers do. Perhaps using the Force as a balm would be a better idea here"

 

[Jairdain]

"Ms. Jessica, how can the Force be something physical?"

In her old life, she had seen the Force use to hold people down by the willpower of the Force user, but as soon as that person's attention went away so too did the Foce bindings. Jairdain explained this Jessica.

"If I had actual thread, then I could use the Force to stich this cut. Now you say to call the blood up and use that close the wound?"

Being at a loss of how to go about healing the cut, Jairdain tried something different. Instead of using the blood to close the wound, she attempted to force the skin itself to heal. Her hands above the patient's arm once again and her eyes closed, she saw the wound slowly closing until a small fraction seperated the cut skin. About fourty-five minutes after starting, Jairdain opened her eyes to see fresh skin across the cut, leaving only about a six inch scar on his arm.

Worn out and spent, Jairdain sat down on a nearby stool and put her head in her hands, trying to relieve the stress headache she had.

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"There are different ways to achieve the same result, you have realized as much. Also you have realized that each Force-user can be quite different one another: for instance, I need to watch closely how much computational power I have when I do use the Force. You look a little tired"

She didn't seem to have spent that much computational power: I could use that amount of computational power and not feel anywhere close to the limits of what I have. Then again one can have stress headaches without having to use gobs of computational power, and Jedi have highly variable amounts of computational power, she thought, upon looking at the visibly tired Jera. But that was more of a function of [member="Jairdain"] being a little new to the business of the Force than any real expenditure of computational power. While she has realized over time that her power was a liability, and that she didn't have the luxury of not having to monitor what she called "computational power" when she used the Force. Sometimes she used too much computational power to get a very surgical use of the Force done, like recharging a comlink using Electric Judgment, and she needed some cooldown even though she had the power to use another Force-power for something else.

"Once you feel ready, we will move on to the next two lessons in the sequence: after the first of these lessons is over, you can use the Force for cooking"

 

[Jairdain]

Jairdain sat on the stool for just a few more minutes in silence, running her mind through pain relief to get rid of her headache. Healing herself without even thinking about it. Less than five minutes after healing the cut and her headache, Jairdain stood up and nodded to [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] before speaking.

"What is computational power? I understand everything else you said but not that."

Looking around for a drink, Jairdain spots a sink in the corner of the temporary medcenter tent. She turns the water on and cups a small amount in her hands to drink.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Computational power is a more complicated notion when it comes to sentients than it is for electronics. True, in both cases, it has to do with the ability of someone or something to perform calculations on their own, but in sentients, it is also about other aspects of information processing, most commonly associated with those relevant to problem-solving, like logic"

She was pleasantly surprised to see [member="Jairdain"] use the Force as a painkiller; she knew that stress headaches were common and occurred when one made mental effort or Force-effort that carries a minimum of intensity. Yet Jessica most commonly used the phrase computational power as applied to electronics (over other components of fluid intelligence, even though she acknowledged in full that computational power, as she described it, encompasses nearly every aspect of fluid intelligence, except for the working memory, which is a mental cache) in the context of Force-usage. Also Jera knew that her brain would heat up in the leadup to the headache, so while Jera was drinking cold water, Jessica prepared the suspended grill and the sawdust for use in a fireplace so that the next lesson can get underway, with the pizza on the grill. Pyrokinesis, one of the two powers for which a working knowledge of thermodynamics would make one's life much, much easier, and the other would be the last step.

"Pyrokinesis is about making molecules dance: the faster they dance, the hotter they get. Try to make the sawdust molecules dance"

 

[Jairdain]

Once Jairdain finished her drink, she turned again to Jessica for the next lesson. She expected more on how to heal, instead there's a grill for cooking with a pile of sawdust under it. Jessica explained what she wanted Jairdain to accomplish, moving things around with the Force was easy to Jairdain, something she had been really good at school. However, to make the small particles dance took more work than just moving them.

She hitched up pants slightly and sat down on ground. Jairdain mentally closed her eyes and started humming a song she knew from home, holding out her hands, feeling the sawdust and Force as one. The little particles started moving and swaying to the music and the beats of the mystic drums in Jairdain's head. Small amounts of smoke drifted through the air as the sawdust started rubbing together, rising and falling as the tune in Jairdain's mind moved them. When the song was complete, she opened her eyes and looked up at Jessica, then stood up.

"Is that what you are after?"

A look of innocence and ​happiness are on her face, as she looks at the small blaze, cooking the pizza.

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"There is no emotion, there is peace, there is no ignorance, there is knowledge, there is no passion, there is serenity, there is no chaos, there is harmony, there is no death, there is the Force: I'm sure you heard it at some point"

There were dozens of ways to make a given Force-power work: some known methods for enacting pyrokinesis involved visualizing the object in flames, making molecules dance, as with @Jairdain or, in Jessica's case, adjusting their root-mean-square speed (whether vibrational, rotational or translational depending on the case) as required. While the last one was perhaps the more computationally intensive, it allowed one to use cryokinesis with a little practice and is more of a package deal for those Force-users who understood thermodynamics. But now that Jera managed to use the sawdust into a fuel that was usable for cooking pizzas, she was satisfied. True, compared to her, most Jedi were lightsaber jockeys who would be much more eager to use a lightsaber over the Force, and more knowledge-intensive, but there were a few words of wisdom to impart to Jera while the two of them eat the pizza cooked over the sawdust-fueled fire, in the downtime required for the padawan to have the Force-energy to learn cryokinesis.

"One could talk for hours, or even days, about the many implications of the Code, but a Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense; also, most of the Force-powers you are learning here are there to increase your ability to use the Force for self-reliance"

 

[Jairdain]

"Flowing through all, there is balance
There is no peace without a passion to create
There is no passion without peace to guide
Knowledge stagnates without the strength to act
Power blinds without the serenity to see
There is freedom in life
There is purpose in death
The Prana is all things and I am the Prana"

Jairdain recites this to Jessica when she finishes stating the Jedi code. It was actually the first time she had heard it. The teaching of her teachers was more along the basic lines of using the Force. Nothing like what Jairdain has learned from this woman alone. Falling back into silence, she eats her pizza, savoring the flavor. When she finishes, she looks at Jessica.

"This is the code the teachers in my society followed. Similar, yet different. Though we never learned how to heal or cook with it. My people believed in using all the Force, there was light or dark that there is here."

(OOC: Borrowed and changed the Grey Jedi Code)

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Many people among the Jedi warn about falling to the dark side, but you also have to remember that Force-alignment is not the same as the moral compass. Also, to most people in the greater galaxy, many people associate Jedi with good and Sith with evil: hence the notions of Dark Jedi, who use the dark side of the Force for good, and, surprisingly, of Light Sith, who use the light side of the Force for evil, but what few Light Sith I know for myself tend to put more thought into their actions on average"

Ans not only Light Sith tended to put more thought into their actions than everyone else, Light Sith were often characterized as "lawful-evil", with all other Sith being all over the place in the law-to-chaos axis, most of the dark-sided Sith being neutral evil or chaotic evil. Jessica could sense that [member="Jairdain"]'s instructors as a youngling never dared talk about what to use a given power for: was it because they lacked the intellectual ability to even imagine such things? She would love to teach Electric Judgment, but she knew that it would be best to hold off teaching EJ until people get more advanced - she did teach EJ to several people, mostly people who used the Force more than they did a lightsaber, or otherwise wanted an additional Force-tool for self-sufficiency. Of course, other workers used the still-burning grill to place logs of smallwood to keep the fire alive and so that they could bake their own pizzas on it, bought from Pizza Hutt, and thus she stepped aside, returning to Jera with a bowl of powdered cream.

"Pyrokinesis can also be used for climate control, welding, cauterizing: here the temperature is to be treated as the molecular dancing tempo. With that said, fast dencing tempos are associated with pyrokinesis, while cryokinesis is associated with slow dancing tempos. In that case, try slowing down the molecules' motion in the bowl of powdered cream"

 

[Jairdain]

Jairdain listened closely to what Jessica said, nodding that she understood what she meant about the moral compass. The notion of dark Jedi and light Sith intregued her, but kept silent for now. To be able to use the Force is a blessing and in no way would Jairdain consider using it for an evil purpose. When somebody went destructive on her planet, they were killed as once they went that direction, they never came back. She kept this to herself though, not giving voice to her past.

At the last request of [member="Jessica Med-Beq"], Jairdain gave her a confused look and shook her head.

"How can I slow down what is already stopped?"

She took the bowl of powdered cream and looked down at it.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"The powered cream might be still on a macroscopic level, but at the microscopic level, it is not. However, it is too small for it to be directly detectable to the naked eye. Yet, the cream's molecules still dance, just not fast enough to give off any macroscopic impression of heat. I believe that an alternative approach is to visualize the item freezing"

So Jera knew nothing about thermodynamics or chemistry? I can't blame her: the kinetic theory of gases and, with it, interpreting the temperature as a measure of molecular motion, is usually begun by the second half of a standard high school curriculum for most human/Near-Human curricula, but G/T education can sometimes push that up. Jera had to resist the temptation to use Drain Knowledge, but Jessica knew that she could detect people who are new to the business of Drain Knowledge: people tended to get more out of her with Drain Knowledge than they otherwise would and hence she is a popular target for DK. Also, she knew that knowing too much could be a liability so it's a tradeoff of knowledge, and her life as a Force-scholar taught her as much. But she was patient with @Jairdain: it was not a very good idea to rush somebody in their early stages of training. Hopefully she will realize that pyro and cryokinesis are related one another...

 

[Jairdain]

As [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] explained in a slightly different way what she wanted, Jairdain did indeed comprehend what she meant. Though the cream appeared to not be moving, something inside each of the little grains was though they were too small for her actually see them moving.

"So much like making the sawdust dance, you just want me to freeze this. Slow down the parts inside I can't see."

Letting out a sigh and thinking to herself, "that just sounded so stupid. She's going to think my brain is slow or something."

Closing her sightless eyes, Jairdain focused on the task at hand and that of freezing the powered cream. In the end, it ended up being closer to healing the cut than making the fire. She saw through the Force each tiny grain of flake and the little life force inside. It took time, longer than making the fire, but Jairdain slowed each and every flake to the point that they died and no longer had any life in them.

Somehow, Jairdain "knew" she had done something wrong when she handed the lifeless bowl to Jessica to look at.