The Kitchen of the Force

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"It's possible that, if there are some NFU survivors, they may be scattered across the galaxy. Much like some Gungans that ended up on other planets"

Dagobah, Ringo Vinda (although Gungans eyed Dagobah long before the Netherworld occurred) being two of the locations that ultimately hosted the most displaced Gungans in the wake of the Netherworld. The closest thing to a Netherworld-scale disaster that I could think about would be some sort of Force-induced, false-vacuum decay in hyperspace - any realspace stuff would not propagate faster than the speed of light, but both have pretty nasty consequences. However, it does take an energy source similar to a supernova or equivalent to destroy multiple planets: one Death Star-grade superlaser each for each planet destroyed, she thought, and estimated to take up the entire energy output of one month or two to a natural G2V star to achieve such an effect, and that's one planet. [member="Jairdain"] would be spared the technical details of just how much Force-energy is required to make a Netherworld event possible.

"The Force works in mysterious ways: I have my theories for why and how the Netherworld occurred, but if those theories are correct, the likelihood of such a thing happening again in any given year would be much like the likelihood of a lottery victory"

On the count of lottery victories, the odds of winning a particular lottery (as a lottery victory is usually understood by the people, that is, winning the jackpot) is one related to the format of the lottery itself. The odds depend on the number of possible combinations, but still pretty abysmal in virtually every case nonetheless. She heard it somewhere that the average lifespan of lottery jackpots was somewhere around five to seven years (probably the average was 7 and the median, 5).

 

[Jairdain]

"I highly doubt there are any of my people that don't use the Force around anymore. There's always a chance, but I find it unlikely."

Jairdain tilted her head to the side and would have been looking at [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] if she could see with her eyes. She could use telepathy a little and accidently picked up on some her thoughts. Narrowing her eyes slightly before speaking.

"You think the destruction of both Corellia and Eraton within a short amount of time to be very slim? Yet we both know these events happened."

She blushed slightly at the accidental intrusion of Jessica's thoughts.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"To say that the probability of something is very slim is not the same as saying that thing would not happen. The Netherworld was just one massive case of bad luck"

[member="Jairdain"] could only decipher part of Jessica's thoughts in the Force: most of what she was unable to decipher were, in fact, stuff that few would understand their significance. Even though Jera would have no clue what the authenticity of a vacuum means, nor what would the implications of vacuum authenticity would be, probability is perhaps easier to grasp. Jera was having a lot of catchup to do in terms of knowledge, including but not limited to statistics. Perhaps those lightsaber jockeys they call Jedi these days were little more than glorified bounty hunters that would be otherwise of limited functionality in society and, like Sith, some of the best Jedi are often those who were discovered as Force-sensitives later in life, in the Jedi case because they have more knowledge enabling them to be more flexible on the field, in the Sith case because some chip on their shoulders often arise as teenagers. Often Jedi who preferred using their brains in the field would benefit from learning what background knowledge they could, even that knowledge that is not Force-related. Like she sensed Jera would be.

"Many people, perhaps too many even, seem to confuse the probability with the expectation value. The expectation value is the long-run average value of repetitions of an experiment a random variable represents"

 

[Jairdain]

"Aren't there billions of worlds? If there are say three billion and the likelyhood of a Netherworld event is two in three billions chance, then two worlds are destroyed. Mine being one of them."

Her limited knowledge of every day math or chemistry is lacking and Jairdain realises this now. What the woman with her possess is so much more than she ever will, but perhaps [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] can pass on more to her in time.

"Jessica, is there any way you can teach me some of what you know outside of using the Force? Like of just general educational knowledge I missed out on."

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"You seem to be calculating the probability that the Netherworld event will destroy a given planet, provided the Netherworld occurs, not the probability of the Netherworld itself. The distinction might not be obvious at first glance, but these are not the same"

Jera seems to have chosen the probability so that the expectation value be the destruction of two planets. The real probability for the Netherworld itself, at best, estimated to be in a certain range: there are limits to the scientific reliability of what data is available regarding the Netherworld event. But I'll have to grant Jera that much: Eraton residents seem to be able to get to a reasonable level as far as language arts are concerned, she thought. She drafts up a reading list; although she is certainly not up to date on which textbooks are in use, and the topic is continually subject to debate when it comes to history textbooks, she knows that common high school-level textbooks are usually just fine for the learning itself. Admittedly chemistry, algebra and geometry are often weak spots of Jedi, so IAC is off the table for her, and she knew it would be off the table for a lot of people, due to it requiring topology. But perhaps Force-comprehension or Short-term memory enhancement would be more within [member="Jairdain"]'s range.

"It's certainly possible to make up for this, but it's a pretty protracted process. If you wish to improve on Force-healing, what I'd recommend you to do is to start with a biology holocron and then to move on to a medical holocron that is accessible to the layman. Some of those things, however, are best kept for until the occasion to learn the Force-power that relies on it comes. Perhaps you would like to be as mentally fast as I am?"

 

[Jairdain]

Nodding in understanding the words of [member="Jessica Med-Beq"], the odds of the Netherworld even happening are much less than the numbers she had given. Meaning while she understands the probability concept, she doesn't know the reality.

She watches as Jessica compiles a list of books to read and holocrons to look into when she needed to. Jairdain took the list of books and smiled at the other woman in thanks. When Jessica asks if she would want to be as mentally fast as her, Jairdain lets out a small snort of a laugh and smiled a little more.

"I hardly think that's possible. No, I just don't want to be slow and lacking in knowledge."

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"True, you seem to accept that your brain is not slow per se, but that it may well be just because of me that you may be made to feel that your brain is slower than it actually is. There are two Force-powers that will make your learning process faster: Force-comprehension, which is more useful to understand stuff faster and at a deeper level by increasing your mind's processing power and Short-term memory enhancement, which makes access to your memory, both subconscious and conscious, better. The better you are at using STME, the deeper in your memory you will be able to access, and at some point you may reach deep enough to enter the territory of long-term memory enhancement, or LTME"

Oh boy, she thinks that no Force-power would allow her to be as mentally fast/agile as I am. Then again, she does realize that my brain is really fast and agile, and that there are limits to how smart one can get by using the Force. It's easier to be mentally agile without necessarily having to be the fastest, but there definitely were people who seemed to have fast minds, yet seem to be pretty unmaneuverable, she thought. Often mental agility comes from breadth of knowledge, although sometimes knowing too much can be a liability, even when one's memory isn't good enough to cause prolems in its own right. Jessica seemed to be in one of those weird categories where her memory was good enough for S/LTME to be of limited use, but not good enough to be a liability. She heard rumors that some of those whose memory was so strong that they could replay every scene in their lives fell to the dark side because of replaying the more painful scenes of their lives. Sometimes she feels compelled to fill in the gaps Jedi come with. [member="Jairdain"] might find that reading from holobooks, or holocrons, in an attempt to bridge those gaps, however significant these are, will make her wish for Force-comprehension or S/LTME if one did not learn those things at some point, if only because she acknowledged that she didn't have Jessica's intellectual composition.

"That being said, sometimes people who may not have the best control of themselves while using S/LTME may find themselves accessing darker memories and thus become more vulnerable to the call of the dark side"

 

[Jairdain]

Kicking her legs slightly and not keeping them still, Jairdain listens to [member="Jessica Med-Beq"]. She agrees with much of what the woman says, but not all of it.

"Everybody has strengths and weaknesses, nobody is perfect and we all have emotions. I don't feel slower than you in everything, just quite a lot. You present everything logically and by the numbers, if you will. If I ever get to teach or guild, then I'll be more emotionally empathic with my pupils."

Shutting up, Jairdain realizes that her words might come across as insulting to Jessica, but she didn't mean them that way and hopes the Jedi understands.

"I can look upon my past and learn from my mistakes. I can't say remember all of them, but the ones I do, I don't feel vulnerable to the Dark Side. Besides those students and people that turned destructive in my class and after graduation were executed before any more harm could be done by them. The threat of death kept most people well behaved."

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"You're right, however, to say some people would respond better to emotional empathy than logic, and others for whom the reverse is true. The master-padawan relationship is a two-way street, even though each end does not get the same learning from it. You understand that no single master will fit everyone"

Eraton was much like the Republic under the infamous Lasedri administration in how they dealt with destructive dark-siders, where Sith were to be shot on sight. The only Sith that was spared under that regime was actually a One Sith turncoat, for whom the destruction wrought by the OS was just too much, she thought. Clearly [member="Jairdain"] isn't completely clueless about the other side of the training. But sometimes it seems that specific mistakes can lead people to the dark side, yet Jera's did not seem to be mistakes of those varieties.

 

[Jairdain]

Blinking her eyes a few times and trying to hear what [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] and understand said took a few moments. In her time with the Silver's, Jairdain did notice that there were a few different teachers and all were called master. Yet, she had a master training her.

Her voice while clear was slow to come out as she thought of her words.

"Right, but then why have a master and apprentice or padawan match to begin with?"

There hadn't been any sort of thing like that on Eraton so it was rather new to her.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"I do realize that this model has its limitations. That model has one big advantage: it allows masters to relish attention on a limited number of apprentices at once. However, I feel that you are implying that the limitations outweigh the advantages"

Yes, she is aware that masters are highly uneven, and that each come with their specialties. Some of those micro-manage people's learning, while others give autonomy after a while. Werah gave her a lot of autonomy in her learning, that much is true. Jessica, for example, even called some people who used lightsabers sparingly, well, lightsaber jockeys, so long as they actually used said lightsabers. Even her wife, who is more of a pilot than a lightsaber jockey, seemed to be one in her mind, that even though she trained her wife in the use of a lightsaber. [member="Jairdain"] might have realized that the model was prevalent when FUs were scarce, but with today's abundance of Force-users, there is no shortage of possible instructors, even though more exotic powers are usually more advanced and harder to find instructors for. That, even though padawans suffer higher mortality rates these days as well.

"Today's model is more like what's common for the Silver Jedi, where one has the freedom to choose from whom to learn something, where the notion of private or semi-private instruction is applied to individual skills, rather than to the whole process of Jedi-hood. Yes, it is tempting to say yes to everything on offer in such a model, but pay attention as to where a given Force-power fits in your skillset and what you intend to use it for"

 

[Jairdain]

"By being able to pay more singular attention to one or just a few...does that not lead to those students feeling more entitled?"

While she had noticed something similar in her school, the tutors there rarely paid more attention to one student over another. Of course, the more advanced ones got into the special classes. They were still a class though.

"I like the idea of a more one on one training, like this as well as having other tutors to go to for instructions in other topics."

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"It's more of a personality thing than anything else. There are some, especially the more perfectionistic, that will be tempted to hog their instructors' time under such a model. Understandably, the more advanced stuff is more of a timesink to train in, compared to the basics"

This whole conversation reminded her of the one she had on Ossus with one Sorel Crieff: for the years to follow, she acknowledged in full that she was way more intellectual as a Jedi than the majority. She could feel that Jera's brain is being stimulated quite a bit even without using the Force at all, and also that Jera found the topic engaging, especially at the speed at which her brain operated. But now that [member="Jairdain"] has sufficiently recovered her Force-energy, and just used some computational power, and likewise with Jessica, she feels that Jera is ready to learn something new. Electricity. Oh boy, Ohm's law, the relationship between voltage, current and resistance, I'm not sure whether Jera has actually learned that stuff beforehand, but I think that's important to know if one wanted to control how to use it in a variety of ends. So many associated Electric Judgment with anger and aggression because it was so closely associated with Force-lightning, she thought.

"Now that your Force-energy seems to have sufficiently recharged for the next lesson, you may wish to learn Electric Judgment. Even though Electric Judgment is often associated with anger or aggression, it may be used, without aggression, to recharge batteries or when you need an emergency power source. Some people would use EJ as they would a taser, but that is reserved to more advanced practitioners of EJ. Before I continue, do you feel that your brain hasn't been overloaded yet?"

 

[Jairdain]

Jairdain had not thought of one of [member="Jessica Med-Beq"]'s points and blushed slightly.

"I hope I'm not hogging your time."

Her voice was rather soft, she was enjoying the conversation and the learning, Jessica was opening so many new doors, new knowledge and ways to go about doing things, she didn't want the time to end. If the other Jedi had other things she needed to do though, all she needed to do was say the lesson was over.

As Jessica continued on though, she mentioned something called Electric Judgment, though the words used were new to the young woman, the skill was not. Knowing skills of various kinds, this is one Jairdain knew the dangers of. While she understood the difference now in greater detail between light and dark, this skill was almost kept secret on Eraton. If she didn't have friends there that taught her this, she wouldn't know it now.

Looking around the room with the force, she sees a box of what are likely dead batteries. She walked over, picked one up, concentrated VERY intently and ever so carefully placed her fingertips on one of the ends. The little lights on the device started lighting up as the power returned to it. Tossing it in the direction of Jessica and hoping the woman catches it, Jairdain returns to her side.

With the Force still flowing, she touches Jessica on the arm sending her a small shock. The kind like you get when you shuffle your feet along the carpet and then touch something.

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"No, you're not hogging my time. Sometimes students feel that they can learn a lot of things in a short amount of time, perhaps too much for their own good. The learning process of the Force, and the knowledge that I also feel should go alongside it, sometimes it is best not to bite more than one can chew. I feel you don't want this to end just yet, because you seem to be floating on some Force-cloud where your mind is operating at a speed that you didn't know it had"

Jessica had to accept that her mind was pretty open when she taught stuff to other people. One of those dead batteries [member="Jairdain"] recharged using Electric Judgment was, in fact, the battery of Jessica's lightsaber, which went dead on Mygeeto. Then again, she never recharged it in the past two years, from the moment she recovered it in Stalgasin Memorial Stadium on Geonosis. Perhaps she didn't feel the need to actually use it much, just that, even though they were supposed to be heavy-duty batteries, she knew they had a finite capacity. So she was happy and smiled towards her once the recharging process of those dead batteries was over. Also, she feels a little tingle when Jera touched her on the arm, reminiscent from the power level of the very first time Jessica tried using Electric Judgment after her encounter on the sand floor of Stalgasin. Clearly her mental speed is pretty high, she thought, realizing that Jera somehow already learned Electric Judgment on Eraton.

"I see that you have a pretty good control of the current and, with it, voltage. Voltage is the amount of energy required to move around a coulomb of charge from a point to another, with the coulomb being a set amount of charge. Also, electrical resistance is the measure of how hard is it for electrical current to pass through an object and, in the context of Electric Judgment, is the parameter you cannot control and from which the voltage follows from a given current, which is the amount of charge flowing per unit of time"

 

[Jairdain]

"Oh I would never think to learn everything all at once!"

Jairdain looked at [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] with surprise on her face.

"These skills come in time and learning a lifelong process."

Giving the tall Jedi a smile at her words.
​
"You're right, I don't want this to end. I know it will eventually as it almost did a little bit ago with the ice cream. And my mind has been opened by today. What you've given me to look up here will keep me occupied for a while."

She raised the datapad Jessica gave her earlier.

The last bit of what she said though confused Jera, her sightless gaze looked to the ground for a moment while she tried to assimilate the explanation of EJ.

"I'm sorry, what is a coulomb?"

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"A coulomb represents a number of electrons, or more precisely 6.24 x 1018. That is, 6.24 billion times one billion electrons. It might seem staggering at first glance, but one gram of electrons contains that number of electrons 176 million times over. Also, you seem to be using Force-comprehension to float on that intellectual cloud. Good, very good: you're starting to get the hang of using Force-comprehension and Electric Judgment"

Ouch: each lesson involves a cascade of things Jera is learning. Thus far she is using Force-comprehension; S/LTME is not concerned so much with the encoding of information, but with their retrieval; then again I do realize that, for me, it's just a question of biorhythm: I can sometimes be on a Force-cloud where I know I can push my brain as hard as I want without fear of stress headaches, she thought, knowing that stress headaches can impair her ability to use the Force. But, since she knew at the onset that [member="Jairdain"] might have some difficulties with algebra, she might be interested in learning more about the rules of algebra before she sets off to read the relevant holocrons or holobooks, of which several copies are housed in any good Jedi temple. She was pleased to see how much learning Jera could get done, in such a short amount of time: it was reminiscent of the speed at which she could do it back in her pre-teen days, perhaps on the low side, but still, she had a few comments to make on Jera's attitude as it pertains to learning.

"I love working with you. You are highly motivated to learn a lot, and it shows. Perhaps you have some questions about exponents..."

 

[Jairdain]

Listening to the answer [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] gave to her question, Jairdain tried to do the math in her head and just couldn't multiply the numbers. She shook her head and blinked her eyes a few times, it was just staggering. Clearing her head, she focused on what else the Jedi was telling her.

"You mean, I'm using the Force without me knowing it? Even if it's just to remember all this?"

If the answer was yes, then that would just be odd to her since she assumed anything Force related was active instead of passive.

At the compliment from Jessica though, Jairdain beamed more than before and almost reached out to give her a hug. However, she felt the woman might not want the touch. A little of her personality had come out through conversation, Jairdain still wasn't positive how open Jessica was to receiving affection.

"Well, what are exponents then?"

Turning her mind back to the lesson at hand, she wants to learn more.​

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"True, Force-comprehension is an active ability but you used your motivation and drive to power it. Force-sense/sight is often used subconsciously, even though it is nevertheless active"

She knew that, in people on whom Force-comprehension can work, people often tended to use their motivation or drive to power it, but such things were often best to be enacted without any Force-noise coming from outside distractions. By now [member="Jairdain"] spent so much time with Jessica that night has fallen around this part of Trian. One day of learning might be pleasant to some, especially when they make big realizations: that was precisely what Jera made. As an ability, however, Force-sense/sight is often likened to a passive sensor, in the sense that the Force-user won't actively use Force-energy other than to internally process the sensor data: there is no Force-signal being sent out by the Force-user. Also, Jessica realizes that Jera has opened a can of algebraic worms that might take forever to get to the bottom of. Algebra, complex numbers, the list of topics that would make up the knowledge gaps to fill would be quite long.

"Exponents are a measure of how many times a number is multiplied by itself. This interpretation works well when the exponent is an integer, and x-n is the same as 1/xn. Just so that the remaining algebra lessons make sense, please note that xaxb = xa+b, (xa)b = xab, and finally (xy)a = xa ya. Here of course, the problem arises for non-integer exponents: if they are fractions, you can say that xk/n = b with k and n being integers, solves xk = bn, But one needs to be careful when b is negative, but still real-valued: multiplying negative numbers by themselves an even number of times make a positive number in the end. You would realize that the whole deal about what we call complex numbers makes the whole concept of exponentiation much more, well, complex. But before we get to the topic of complex numbers, the whole concept of complex numbers arose when one wanted to find the square roots of negative numbers, such as solving for x2 = -1"

 

[Jairdain]

Jessica's answer shocked Jairdain and she took a breath in. She had been using the Force to see and didn't know it when she started, it was as natural as breathing.

"I hadn't even thought before I asked."

She blushed only very slightly now, but looked very embarrassed. However when Jessica answered the second question, Jairdain became totally lost after about the second or third sentence. While her eyes didn't exactly glaze over, she looked more in shock and extremely confused. About the only thing she actually comprehended was just how complex it ALL was to her.

"I think it's going to take a lot long than a brief conversation to understand even half of what you just told me."

While apologetic, ​Jairdain gave [member="Jessica Med-Beq"] a little smile to take any potential hurt out of her words.