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By Root 386 0

ego to the Force and became one with it. It might be the death of identity, of the individual, but it was also a transformation, a transmigration, a transfiguration. An ascension to a higher plane in which one’s essence merged with uncountable others, building a gestalt that slipped the shackles of space–time, simultaneously creating, nourishing, and maintaining itself. Jax had never quite understood the benefit of this. Even if one was able, through meditation and strict adherence to the Jedi Code, to accomplish such a metempsychosis on one’s deathbed, why was this elevation to unity different from the mere cessation of consciousness? Yes, he would be part of a greater whole, but he would not be aware of it. He could not conceive of how a change so profound could be any more desirable than simply stopping, surrendering to the eternal dark. He had been willing to take it on faith that it was so, but he had never fully comprehended it.

But, after all, was eternal life really to be all that greatly desired? Eternity was a long time. Was even the Force eternal? Some scientists, Jax knew, believed that in the most extreme extension of the future, entropy would triumph utterly. That black holes would swallow all heat and light and, ultimately, themselves as well, and that the universe would become an infinitely cold, dead, and sterile expanse in which no star shone, no flower bloomed, no child laughed. Could the Force somehow maintain itself against such a fate? Could it transcend the death of time itself?

Jax had been wrestling with metaphysical conundrums like this far more than he cared to lately. He remembered the insistent, persuasive voice that had spoken to him when he’d been waiting for the attack at the Coruscant Arms, the voice that had urged him to simply let them shoot, to let them drill ionized fragments of atoms through him, to let them kill him.

It was a voice he had almost heeded.

He still wasn’t quite sure why he hadn’t. Was this current life so precious, so full of promise, as to provide any hope at all? Even if he fled Coruscant, even if he managed to build a new life on some outlying world—would it be worth it? Would it be a life at all, or just the simulacrum of one? Jax feared it would be the latter—at least for as long as Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader were alive. The Force transcended time and space; as with two subatomic particles mysteriously entangled despite the cosmic distances between them, someone adept enough and powerful enough in it might possibly sense the whereabouts of another, even if separated by thousands of parsecs. And in that case, fleeing didn’t matter; he might as well be here on the Queen of the Core Worlds as suffering in silence on the farthest planet in the frozen reaches of Wild Space.

There was, of course, an easy enough way to find out. All he had to do was reach out through the Force and try to sense Vader’s presence. The problem was that it was a two-way connection—if he could sense Vader, Vader could also sense him. And then he would know, or at least have a pretty good idea, of where Jax was hiding. While it was well known that the Emperor and Vader considered the Order so thoroughly broken as to not be worth worrying about, still, there was no point in taking chances. If a Jedi were to appear on their radar, so to speak, most likely stormtroopers would be breathing down that Jedi’s neck in short order.

But there was another reason to be cautious. As Rostu had told him before they parted, Master Piell seemed to think that, in addition to searching for the droid, Vader might be looking for Jax, too—not simply as a part of the extermination of the Jedi, but for some other reason. The Lannik had died before he could say why—if he had known the reason at all.

If such were the case, it didn’t seem wise to send Jax on this mission to find the lost droid. But Jax had been the only one the diminutive Jedi Master trusted enough to continue the search.

Jax frowned. He knew that he was under an automatic death mark just by being a Jedi. But why would Darth Vader have any