C H A P T E R . 1 1 -- Exploring The Ruins

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RED DUST AND SHADOWS cover the insides of the embedded ruins. Luke and Terigo explore several of these sections before coming across a rusted-shut door.

Terigo tries to push it open, but as she walks away, Luke pushes it open with the Force. She thanks him with a quick glance and they both enter a dark room that isn't frosted by dust.

Luke instinctively ignites his lightsaber to light the room. Terigo uses his light to explore rather than tediously move two dangerous blades around the small room. The room appears to be an office with a metal desk and chair.

Their curiosity immediately draws them to different locations: Luke inspects interesting objects & tools on the desk while Terigo sits at it and looks in drawers.

"Wait, put it back a second," Terigo says, motioning to an object he was holding. "I want to see how they laid everything out—which objects were needed in the most convenient spots, what their day required, how they thought.

"Ok," Luke says, intrigued by the idea, but almost smirks to say, "but do you even know what these things are."

She chuckles once, "No. Good point. Do you?"

He takes a long look at the whole assortment, bringing his saber's glow close to examine some. But only a few even resemble modern technology. "This looks like it could be a comlink, but it's huge. It would have to stay here, which wouldn't be very useful..."

"Well, it's ancient Luke—"

"(Yeah I know...)" having realized the moment he said it that his previous comment was a little dumb.

Terigo waits for more, paying close attention to his face. She wishes she could just read his mind because she knew she must look a bit strange.

"And this container," Luke says, toying with a covered ashtray, "I've only seen this shape on Coruscant... In fact..." looking thoughtfully through the walls to the previously explored hillside, "The archways and doors, or something—the look of this place—has a very Coruscant feel to it..." Looking back to the room, "I mean, I haven't been to too many other planets, but Leia's said Coruscant is the oldest human one."

Terigo looks to the desk and continues to ponder.

Luke motions to the desk drawers she searched through and says, "What's in the drawers?"

"Thick dust and pens, and various pieces of metal. I think they were just lots of papers and other organic things."

"Paper?" Luke asks. "What is that again? I've heard the word—"

"You've never seen paper?" she says curiously astonished. "Is Audinic the only planet that still uses paper?—used..."

She explains pens and paper as they take one last look around before leaving the room. This leads into wandering around the ruins chatting about how her home planet lacks much of the technology that the rest of the galaxy has developed.

"Well, slaves were made illegal long ago, for us," Terigo replies, "but I rarely ever saw a droid. We... those hopefully still alive—have always valued interacting with people rather than machines."

"But how did you get anything done? How did you transfer information?" Luke asks.

Terigo chuckles, "Just because our CommNets and DataNets are human, doesn't mean they're not brilliant at what they do. We're usually educated until we're fifty or one-hundred, depending, and most of us live to be around two-hundred. And we breed for excellency, so I don't think I ever met anyone that couldn't use the Force in some way, until we left Audinic."

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