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Zeven Ekkel
Aug 17th, 2010, 02:05:29 AM
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Blinding bright lights, dimming, blurring, focusing, sharpening. Objects began to take shape. The fluid air smelled fresh. One breath, rejuvenated. Green. Green from the leaves of the trees that grew strong and healthy; green from the lush grass that softened every step. And in the middle of it all was a lake. A lake that glistened from the rays of the setting sun which painted the skies with an orange hue. A quiet peace blanketed the air The sound of fingers running through water. A beautiful woman bathed in in the cool, refreshing water. Delicately, her hand dipped into the water, rippling away into nothing. Pouring the water onto herself, it split into beads, rolling down her golden skin, trickling down to the bottom, caressing the curves of her body. She was as gentle to the water as it was to her. The sun warmed her heart and soul that glowed through her. She was hypnotizing, entrancing.

Slowly, leaves began to flutter, branches began to creek, trees began to rustle. The wind picked up, breezing its way through and violently pushing and then shoving the merciful trees. The earth began to quiver, shake, rumble, tremble. It cracked. It split open as if hell was opening up. And from the cracks appeared a giant, fat and disgusting monstrous creature, crawling its way out with its flailing legs with its bug-like body. The portrait of a peace was destroyed. The sun was gone and clouds had set above the cold dark skies. There was no moon, there were no stars. It was the apocalypse. The lake had disappeared. The woman vanished. The enormous creature screeched, thumped, and destroyed everything in sight..

Zeven suddenly saw himself in the middle of chaos, in front of the monster. He stared at the creature and slowly took a step back, trying to escape unnoticed. As he took a step back, he tripped and fell on his back. The creature stepped closer, shaking the ground. Zeven tried to push himself up. Nothing. He could not move a limb. His body was paralyzed. Sweat drenched his body and clothes. His heart beating faster than he thought it could beat. AHHHHHHHHHH!!! Suddenly, in one quick sweep, the monster threw its large, heavy body, crushing him.

He could not breathe.

Black out.

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Wake up.

Zeven's eyes opened widely. He saw nothing. He could not breathe. A pillow lay on his face, suffocating him. He coughed and struggled to breathe again, throwing the pillow away from him. Face covered in sweat, heart beating like drum, he shouted: “GEEZ!” There was no way he would get back to sleep.

Zeven was no stranger to nightmares, however, the older he got, the more intense and realistic they felt. In the bathroom, he splashed water on his face, thinking that would cause him to forget his nightmare completely but it never did. He brushed his teeth, rinsed, and spit.

In the kitchen, Zeven poured himself a glass of ice cold water and practically bathed himself drinking it as if he'd been in the deserts of Tatooine for days. Setting the glass down, he began to stare away blankly, still caught up in the details of his dream. He shook his head, realizing his head was in the clouds. Pans hung in an organized fashion above the kitchen counter. Grabbing one, Zeven flipped the burner switch and began heating the pan. He grabbed two eggs from the refrigerator, cracked them into a bowl, scrambled them with a whisk and switched on the HoloNet. The pan sizzled when the slimy eggs poured down on it. After a couple of minutes, the eggs were scooped up, set on a plate, and devoured. Plate washed and set to dry, Zeven switched off the HoloNet to which he had not paid attention but instead used as background noise to ease the tense silence of his apartment.

“Uniforms are for people who are uniform,” Zeven mumbled to himself as he dressed himself in his CorSec uniform. He adjusted his collar in front of the mirror, combed hair, and put on glasses that practically covered his face. Grabbing a suitcase he had set on is desk, he looked at himself in the mirror one last time and made minor adjustments and bolted right out the door of his apartment.

Zeven stepped onto the public hovertrain that would lead him to his destination. Hovertrains in Coronet were always crowded at this time. Hovertrains were a good example of the diversity of Coronet: Businesspeople reading their newspapers on their way to the Corellian Stock Exchange, students going to Corellia University, homeless people making their way around town to find shelter, families on vacation visiting the tourist sites. For Zeven, it was just another day.

“One CorSec Plaza. Exit here for Corellian Security Force Headquarters.”

Zeven exited the hovertrain with a large crowd that dispersed itself in all directions like cockroaches toward multiple exits of the station. Arriving in front of a personnel lift, he flashed his identification card to the security droid that scanned its authenticity.

“Please state your name,” said the droid in a monotonous low tone.

“Zeven Ekkel,” Zeven replied. The droid verified Zeven's voice frequency and took a snapshot for face recognition.

ACCESS GRANTED

Zeven stepped onto the lift that took him straight up the building. Arriving to his destination, the lift stopped. Upon the doors opening he saw CorSec officers walking across the corridors, each assigned different tasks, different missions, and different positions. He sifting through the other officers to his station where he pressed the button on his desk that triggered multiple hologram screens that surrounded him. “Nothing new, as usual,” Zeven mumbled to himself. Streams of lines filled the screens. Zeven was assigned to monitor any security breaches, fix holes, update programs, and reprogram droids or ships. Everything was routine. He did not find the challenge to the job. There were "slicers" (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Slicer) that would try to breach through the security system but their attempts were always amateur and petty. Zeven believed that they had some guts to call themselves slicers. Since most programs had already been written for each of his tasks, he would just sit behind the holograms all day and make sure each line was loading itself correctly. Data enters, data exits. Data enters... data exits

“Data enters... data exits...,” he sighed, as his eyelids slowly shut.

Zeven Ekkel
Aug 19th, 2010, 03:03:38 PM
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“You work for CorSec? That's so great! Do you catch bad guys undercover and all that?”

People asked Zeven these types of questions all the time. The problem: he was not an action-packed, criminal-catching superhero CorSec agent. He was a computer programmer amongst many other computer programmers at CorSec Headquarters.

“Yeah,” Zeven lied, “I took on five crooks by myself once.” More lies. He continued: “Each had their blaster pointed at me and there was nowhere to run. I thought I was dead meat. They were terrorists. They had smuggled a lot of dangerous explosives. But I looked at the leader of the group, a Rodian, and I told him ‘Tell your men to put their weapons down. The place is already surrounded and you don’t want a CorSec agent murder charge on your plate.’ See the thing was, I had no backup. I had to make them believe that they’d been caught. They believed me and put down their weapons. But as soon as that happened the boss started running out the door. I took my blaster and shot him on the leg and I said ‘Anybody else wanna try?’ I cuffed them and called for backup. I was a hero back at headquarters”

Lies. Lies. Lies. Zeven was embarrassed of his job as a computer programmer. He had already come up with several stories. From saving kidnapped children to stopping a building from blowing up, he’d created his own fantasy world.

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“Ekkel... Ekkel. EKKEL!!” a voice resonated in Zeven’s head as it got louder and louder, waking him up in the process. Startled, he shook his head, and pretended to be typing information up. He looked up only to find his superior, Lieutenant Garik Leqarna, glaring down at him.

“My office. NOW!,” shouted the lieutenant.

CorSec took pride in running an efficient law enforcement agency. It had a record of being able to keep its operations running smoothly and keeping criminal activity from operating for extended periods of time. However, Lieutenant Leqarna believed Zeven Ekkel was part of the inefficiency that needed to be removed.

“Close the door behind you,” commanded Lieutenant Leqarna, “Have a seat.” Zeven sat down and crossed his arms awkwardly, not knowing what to do with them. “Listen, Ekkel. You know what kind of agency this is. You are not here to spend your time dreaming. You are not the only programmer on Corellia. You’re replaceable. If you don’t perform to our standards, I will have reason to terminate you. You’re a smart kid. But do you know why you haven’t moved up to CorSec Intelligence yet? Because your work ethic is sloppy. This is your FINAL warning. You pull another stunt like this and you’re outta here.”

“Yes, sir,” Zeven answered obediently, pushing his glasses up. It had not been the first time Zeven had fallen asleep. His nightmares were not helping him get a any rest either.

“All right, now get back to work,” the lieutenant concluded. Zeven returned to his station. Lines of code scrolled across his screens and could be seen on the reflection of his glasses. He sighed and stared off into the complexities of the programs as time ticked away.

After work, Zeven normally picked up groceries at the markets. Since he lived alone, he bought enough for a few days. Walking along the markets, he stumbled upon a pawn shop. In the pawn shop, there were used droid parts, old instruments, gold rings and other assorted jewellery and other collateral. He looked attentively at the instruments. Among the instruments were an electroharp, a melodium and even a nalargon that sat in the corner occupying a large space. Glancing at the droid parts, he saw something that caught his eye. From far away it looked like a cylinder for a droid part but it wasn’t. He picked up the short cylindrical piece that fit nicely in his hand. He knew what it was. It was no droid part.

“How much for this part?,” Zeven asked the Patrolian clerk, pretending it was a droid part.

“What is that? A droid part? Eh... 3000 credits,” he replied, unsure of what the piece was. It did not even have a price tag like most of the items in the shop. He didn’t believe it was anything important from its simplistic appearance.

“Looks like a pretty beat up part to me. I’ll give you 1000 for it,” Zeven exaggerated as a bartering tool.

“1500 is my final price,” the clerk concluded, not even knowing where the strange metal cylinder had even come from.

“Deal,” agreed Zeven, paying him the credits he asked for. Zeven thanked him, grabbed his purchased item, and walked out trying not to give anything away. He felt as if the clerk would, at any moment, stop him and realize what the object actually was. Its value was significantly higher than what he'd paid. Prices were in the millions.

It was no droid part. It was a lightsaber hilt.

Zeven Ekkel
Aug 31st, 2010, 09:26:02 PM
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He ran. But he felt as if he was running in place in the longest hallway he’d ever run in. Fear tugged and pulled at his heart almost detaching it from his chest. Suddenly, in his left ear, he heard a loud, threatening explosion as the heat emanated towards him, caressing his face, his skin all the way through his veins. Another explosion on his right side, close behind him, boomed through the hallways. His eyes could barely open as ashes filled the air. Wires hung from the ceiling, holding pipes and debris that had landed on them as the ceiling began to collapse. The floor rumbled. Zeven ran. But he ran in place.

The left wall cracked open into deep space, causing the entire hallway to collapse outward, pulling and sucking Zeven out into its deep belly. Zeven hung on to every piece he could find but inevitably let himself get pulled away into space. His naive belief in hope, in the willingness to hold on and surivive had suddenly withered to desperation, fear, anguish. He let go. Pitch black. Quiet. At peace. He opened his eyes, finding himself floating in space. The stars lit the universe, quietly, beautifully. In the distance he saw an exploding starship, falling gracefully into the void. Another falling star. His eyes closed shut.

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Wake up.

Zeven gasped for air as he pushed himself out of bed. He caught his breath after realizing he was in his bedroom.

“It was only a dream. Only a dream. Only a dream?”

In the bathroom, he splashed his face with water. He looked in the mirror, questioning whether he was alive or not. He shook his head and continued with his routine.

Brush. Rinse. Spit.

He made his way to the kitchen. HoloNet on.

“...So if you’re taking the Corellian run today, watch out for a belt of asteroids that might be making its way through that might cause some problems. In other news, Empress Tarkin has decided...”

Burner on. He grabbed the eggs from the refrigerator and cooked them.

Crack. Sizzle.

After plating his meal, he poured a glass of water which he placed at the edge of the counter. He turned his back away to grab salt and pepper for his eggs. As he turned back around, he knocked the glass off the counter. Quickly, he dropped his salt and pepper and extended both his arms toward the glass, hoping to catch it before it broke into pieces. However, he realized that he wouldn’t catch it and closed his eyes anticipating the sound that it would make. But there it was; the glass floating in mid-air. His arms were still extended. He was puzzled as he’d not heard the shattering of the glass. Curious, he opened his eyes. There he saw the glass, motionless. Even the liquid had spilled out of the glass and stood still.

What the...

Suddenly, the glass continued its fall, shattering into pieces. Zeven flinched.

What just happened...?

The HoloNet continued to play in the background. He shook his head. Did he stop the glass from falling? He thought that he was probably delusional, especially after his dream. He cleaned up his mess.

Eat. Wash. Holonet off. Uniform for uniforms. Hovertrain.

“One CorSec Plaza.” He stepped off the hovertrain and sighed. He flashed his identification and the droid responded:

“Please state your name”

“Zeven Ekkel,” he said

ACCESS GRANTED

Step on the lift. Zeven walked straight into Lt. Leqarna’s office with confidence.

“Sir, I need to talk,” Zeven said as he saw Leqarna busy reviewing data on his computers.

“Can this wait?” Leqarna answered authoritatively.

“No... I quit,” Zeven replied as he threw his identification badge on Leqarna’s desk. He hadn’t planned to resign that day. Something inside him had hit a nerve on his way up the lift that caused him to act. There was no plan. Leqarna looked surprised, unable to speak, as he walked away back to the lift. As the lift doors closed, Zeven mumbled to himself:

“I’m sick of this.”