In the Tank

By R.J. Miller


Kaliandra floated or assumed she floated since there was no physical 
sensation of anything. She couldn't see. She couldn't hear. She couldn't 
feel. Even the Force that had always been with her was untouchable. As was 
a sense of time. 

She had always had an uncanny sense of where and when she was, but 
this...nothing, was endless. It was getting harder and harder to remember a 
time when it had now always been so. She slept and she woke and at times she 
wasn't even sure where on started and the other let off. What time she was 
awake and knew she was awake she tried to keep her mind occupied. She 
recited the code, old lessons her Master had taught her, legends she had 
heard from her Master and from the few holocrons they had found that had 
survived the destruction of the Jedi Academy on Almas. 

The tale of seven labors of Master Herycul was the tale she was currently 
reciting in her mind. She had gotten to the part where he had stolen the 
sacred brassiere of the Queen of the Amazias people of the Planet Janis when 
she swore she heard a voice. Soft, indistinct but there. 

//Master?// she reached out with her mind, but it Force was just as 
untouchable as before. She was dreaming. She had to have been. 

Master Herycul had gotten the brassiere and then....what? Surely, the 
Amazias Queen wouldn’t have liked that, but what happened next. 

There! There it was again. It was a voice. Closer this time. She could 
almost hear words. 
She tried to focus her mind but thoughts were as nebulous as the rest of her. 
The lack of physical sensations was playing on her mind. She knew it was, 
but knowing it was and being able to do something with that knowledge were 
two entirely different things. 

Kaliandra turned her mind back to the tale and then gave up. That took too 
much thought and right now just putting one thought in front of the other was 
becoming impossible. They could be drugging her. That would make thinking 
harder. She didn’t like drugs and had rarely had to take any. Just mild 
pain relievers after a fall during training had resulted in an injury or that 
time she got sick after her breather malfunctioned outside the dome but not 
much more than that. 

Master Herycul and the brassiere…wonder what he did with it? Use it as a 
hat? Double-barreled slingshot? What in the name of the Force would a man 
want with a brassiere? 

“Kaliandra….” 

There! She did hear something! 

//Master!// 

“Little Jedi. Run to your Master, Little Jedi. Run to your Master while you 
can. I’ll find you, Little Jedi. I’ll find you and then…” 

Nonononono! 

//Master!// 


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