Collection

“Let me show you something.”

Before Maize could either agree or protest, Karr pushed aside a curtain in his own bedroom to reveal a closet full of seemingly random objects from all walks of life: belts, staffs, blasters, comlinks, helmets, and more—all of it meticulously cataloged. Scribbled on the walls and shelves beneath the objects were erasable flimsiplast notes with dates, like he’d been trying to map out a whole galaxy using just this oddball collection of stuff.

“Whoa!” she exclaimed. “Did you do all of this?”

He couldn’t tell if she was impressed or horrified. “Yeah.” He cocked his head toward the shelves that held his treasures. “And some of these things have shown me their past.”

Maize took a closer look. She gently picked up a kloo horn and turned it over in her hands. “How does it work?”

“Well, you’ve seen it in action. Sometimes I touch something and everything gets loud and…and both bright and dark at the same time. It’s hard to explain. It’s sort of like being on fire, but then other things come through: voices, pictures, colors—and then…then I black out.”

“Sounds horrible.”

“It is, sometimes,” he said. “I’m still not sure what causes the flashes, but they’re always something big. It’s almost like some objects are witnesses and they want to tell me what they saw. Does that make sense?”

Maize looked at him blankly, so he decided to keep talking.

“Like this, for example,” he said, picking up a mouthpiece that looked so old it definitely shouldn’t go in anyone’s mouth. “This is an A99 aquata breather that belonged to a fishing merchant. The guy who sold it to me said that the merchant got it from a Jedi that used it for marine reconnaissance. I’d hoped it would show me something about the Jedi, but no matter how hard I concentrate, I can’t get it to zap me with a vision. So either it didn’t experience anything big—”

“Or the guy was pulling your leg,” she interjected.

“Pretty much.”

“There’s a lot of people out there who will take advantage of you, Karr.”

He ignored her and moved on. “But this, on the other hand…” He held up a wooden staff, or at least part of one. The top was a silver handle that looked like it had been smoothed in a furnace. The bottom was shattered and fragmented, indicating that it had been longer in its heyday. It was completely blackened and charred, but something kept it from crumbling.

“The first time I touched it, I passed out, fell down, and chipped a tooth.” He flashed her an oversized, slightly jagged smile. “I thought for sure it must’ve belonged to a Jedi, because it affected me so strongly, but in the vision, at least from what I could tell, the owner didn’t wear traditional Jedi garb and I didn’t see a lightsaber anywhere. What’s weird, though, is that he clutched the staff as if it was one…and I swear I could hear him mumbling about the Force. And he was in the middle of what I think was a big battle.”

Maize gave him a sideways glance. “You hear what you wanna hear, I guess.”


- Force Collector, Chapter 4