The three heirs of Gell Selardin remembered the day their lives changed as if it were yesterday, even though it was only the beginning of what was to come.
In the Management Office of Tarrason Central, a massive, ultramodern complex of huge office buildings, conference rooms, stores, hotel rooms, and apartments, the stress of Gell's illness was already being deeply felt. Most of it fell on the slight shoulders of a rust-furred young Bothan named Biku Ard'lya. In fact, he was arguing with Gell's two ex-partners, who thought they saw a leadership vacuum in Tarrason management and moved in like carrion-feeders.
Biku bravely held his ground, snarling at the native-born interlopers until his barely-grown coat of adult fur was all a-ruffle. Then a trio of somber magistrates requested entry.
"Gell Selardin has become one with the Force," the eldest of the grey-robed figures pronounced. The other two magistrates bowed their heads while Biku and his opponents stood with jaws dangling.
"Oh, no!" came a Human male voice that was initially disembodied. Within a second, a pair of holograms appeared in the vacant spaces by Biku's sides. They were said to resemble Gell in his younger days, with wide orange eyes and wavy, dirty blond hair. The holograms were life-sized, trim and 6 foot 5. They were dressed identically in business attire, and the only way to tell them apart was that one had sideburns and faint beginnings of a mustache and goatee while the other was clean-shaven. Both their faces bore expressions of concern.
The magistrates stepped back for a moment, blinking before the eldest continued, "We present his last will and testament before he slipped from the physical world."
The first among them moved toward the desk, setting down a palm-sized disk-shaped device. He broke a seal with his thumb and pressed a button.
An animated hologram of Gell's ravaged head and shoulders, aged beyond what was normal, appeared above the disk.
Gell cleared his throat, then opened his eyes wide, as if he were beginning to see into the beyond. "I'll make this short and sweet," he said, "in case those two chiselers who duped me into coming here are watching.
"Since I never got to have children of my own, with my dear friends interfering with my every attempt; don't think I didn't notice, Ordin and Bey, and since most of my family fortune went into the construction of Tarrason Central, disposition of the remainder of my fortune will be a simple matter. All of my money will go to my only true heirs, East Tarrason Selardin and West Tarrason Selardin. The deed to Tarrason Central shall also pass to them. All my worldly goods, including jewelry, artwork, furniture, and other real estate, plus a trust fund I've set aside, shall go to my most loyal employee Biku Ard'lya on the condition that he remain a loyal employee with East and West."
The two holograms turned and stared at each other, "Did you hear that, East?" said the one with the sideburns.
"Yes. We have last names."
"No, no, not that! We now own ourselves!"
Biku smiled, exposing pointy teeth at Ordin and Bey, whose faces went red with fury.
Unfortunately, Gell's death was only the first of many.
After the announcement of Gell's last will and testament, a disgusted Bey and Ordin stormed out of the management office and headed out into the Tarrason Central main concourse.
"Are you sure he can do that?" asked Ordin to a seething, grey-bearded Bey.
"Of course he can. It's his money. I've seen people leave their assets to pets, and the family droids to care for them. This is no more outrageous."
"So, what now?"
Bey looked out into the crowd, then replied in a low voice, "First, we get rid of the building boys, then we deal with the overgrown rodent."
Ordin stared back at his partner, incredulous, "We can't off the agents. It'll take us hundreds of people to do what they do."
The pair ducked out of the flow of people near an elevator bank, "The code bomb I installed with them will initiate recovery by rebooting select modules. We'll just need to cover the administrative oversight functions," Bey accessed a service terminal behind a panel across from the elevators.
"Oh, so that's what that was," came West's voice from a speaker near the terminal. "We deleted it when Gell said he didn't authorize it."
Bey looked up from the terminal after coming to the same conclusion. His Trojan Horse was long gone. "Bastards," he muttered to the speaker.
"I suggest you leave before we're forced to call security," said East, "We wish to spare you the humiliation of being dragged out shackled in broad daylight."
Bey motioned to Ordin, then led him down a staircase, glaring into the cameras as he passed them. "There's more than one way to skin an MI, or even two." Out of view of the prying electronic eyes he flashed a doctored security pass at Ordin, who smiled.
At the bottom of the staircase, six levels below grade, the pair of Humans exited, striding swiftly down a narrow hall, the hate in Bey's eyes growing stronger. They arrived at one inconspicuous heavy door labled, "Danger: High Voltage" knowing full well what else was really there. Bey grinned as he swiped the card through the reader. The main bolt lock unlatched but the two machine intelligences, guessing what was to come, swiftly re-locked the door.
Bey chuckled, flipping up a sign that indicated the floor level and typing a code on the keypad underneath. He swiped his card again, and the door unlocked once more.
With the agents unable to relock the door, Ordin and Bey gained entry. The large room was dimly lit by status lights and monitor displays on the walls and a huge, crescent-shaped console desk. Then East's and West's animated images appeared on large display screens on the far wall, brightening things somewhat.
"Nice try," Bey held up his forged access card, "You really should have done something about that manual override for your Control Center lock. Now we're gonna give you a reprogramming job you're never going to forget."
Bey moved toward East's main access terminal at one end of the desk, while Ordin took West's at the other. The images on the big screens seemed unconcerned. In fact, West folded his arms.
Bey started typing away, but nothing appeared on the screen. The same happened to Ordin. It took Bey a moment to figure it out, then look up at the pair, "If you think that's gonna even slow us down you---"
A solid latchup was heard as soon as the door slid shut. Ordin went pale and rushed to the door in a futile effort to open it.
East smiled as an oxygen-sapping firefighting powder was released into the air. "You bastards!" Bey cried, "You miserable, Sith-spawned bastards!" knowing full well his lungs would fail him soon.
Bey and Ordin collapsed into neat packages for security to remove. On the screens, East and West turned to each other, reaching across to give a high-five.
Their joyful victory was short-lived, and, much to the despair of the colony, the outbreak of enmity between the native farmers and the exiled Coruscant merchant/investors lured there was the least of the problems to come.
When the magistrates arrived at the Management Office for the second time, Biku knew it couldn't be good news. It wasn't. Bey and Ordin were filing a lawsuit against Tarrason Central for their illnesses following the incident in the Control Center.
"East, West, where are you?" Biku shouted, as if he really needed an answer. The agents were omnipresent in the common areas of Tarrason Central and in their own assigned buildings, listening and watching everything. They were just hiding their visual representations in dread of more bad news, "Show yourselves!"
Thus summoned, they had no choice but to appear. The two holograms activated, wearing tense expressions. Then West decided that the best defense was a good offense.
"Ordin and Bey stage an unprovoked attack on us and we're expected to be liable for it? I don't think so. As soon as they blacked out we restored normal airflow and had security remove them. They were way under the threshhold for oxygen-deprivation damage."
"And you're sure of this?" one of the magistrates asked.
"Yes. The environmental tolerances of several hundred species are programmed into our safety database."
"And what of the powder itself? Could it cause toxic reactions?"
"Maybe we should get our own legal representation," said Biku, growing more nervous.
"This is Bantha dung," replied West, "We have nothing to worry about." The hologram snapped his fingers, and a list appeared on the nearest wall-mounted display screen.
"These are the ingredients, and this is the manufacturer. Inhaling it might cause shortness of breath, coughing, sneezing, maybe nosebleeds, but fever, inflammation, nausea, muscle weakness, and the other dozen symptoms you described? No way. Whatever they got, they didn't get from us."
Hearing West's confident voice set Biku's fur on end. He thought he had it made. He was manager of what was, in essence, a small city, with some wealth and a beautiful home. His position with Tarrason Central made him a major power-broker on the colony. The two entities that were the soul of the complex did most of the work, were without guile, and were willing to back him in whatever he did. No real threat to his leadership existed from the outside. Still, he found himself worried, felt a lump in the pit of his stomach.
"Would you mind if I went to see them?" Biku asked the magistrates.
"We're not at fault!" argued East.
"You do your research, I do mine," said Biku to the hologram, "I'm not blaming you."
The magistrates agreed, and the agents locked the office door behind them when they left.
"Control Center," Biku said, and East promptly dispatched an elevator for him. He was able to continue his journey uninterrupted as East cued him to the proper elevator just as it opened.
Upon arrival into the well-shielded room, Biku took his place in the comfy swivel chair at the console desk.
"So, what's the news?" came East's voice softly over the speaker.
"They're gravely ill. Looked like Gell," the rusty fur that formed a crest on his head had folded down, and he picked at a tooth with his index-finger claw, "I'm trying to convince Health Services to open an investigation. All their standard screens haven't come up with anything. How good are your biofilters, guys?"
"Top standard," replied West.
"Do me a favor. Go over the data for the past year or so and see if you notice any upticks in any unclassified proteins."
Biku sat quietly for a few minutes while East and West performed the data sifting.
"Bear in mind if it's in the filters, it's not in the air," began West, with a note of caution detectable even in his computer-generated voice.
"What did you find?" asked Biku, swiveling to face the main screens. The twin agents drew a graph with a single, slightly upsloping line, "I guess that ward's about to get even fuller than it is now."
"The breakdowns are even more interesting," continued West, "Here are the figures for our office towers, for example, on the intake filters," another graph was displayed, "Ground-level exchangers," a magenta line was drawn more than halfway up the scale, "Thirtieth floor exchangers," a pink line was drawn lower down, "Sixtieth floor exchangers," an orange line was drawn even lower, at about the halfway mark, "Ninetieth floor exchangers," a red line was sharply lower, indicating nearly none of the protein detected, "and at the 120th floor," a yellow line scraped along zero.
"So it looks like a normal biological phenomenon," said Biku.
"Same buildings, same floor levels, for the outtake filters," West drew a second graph for comparison, using the same colors. All the lines nearly matched at a level just slightly below the ground-level line on the intake filter graph.
The Bothan stopped his semi-conscious preening, chilled by what this implied; the people were bringing this into the buildings, not vice-versa.
"East, what's the status of your main exhibition hall?"
"Cleanup from yesterday has been completed. It is currently unoccupied."
"Excellent. Lock it down and ready the maintenance droids. We're going to change out the filter there and turn it over to Health Services. This may be the only physical evidence we have to get to the bottom of this."
At last, Biku's familiar furry face appeared in East's sights. The agent opened the automatic door closest to him and both East and West gave their enthusiastic greetings that echoed through the light, airy, but fairly empty lobby. Biku drew his finger across his throat, alarming the agents. East knew enough to send him an elevator and whisk him to the Control Center without him asking.
The Bothan settled down on the couch just beyond the entrance, before the console desk. The agents turned on the lights brighter, but that did not improve the dour look on Biku's face.
"We almost saved the colony, guys," he finally said...
"Almost?" asked West.
"We found the organism, and it's bio-accumulative. Once it reaches a certain concentration, you get very sick very quickly. They might be able to develop a vaccine for those who haven't been exposed, and those who are under the threshhold can be evacuated and their bodies will eventually clear the organisms. For those who are over the concentration, perhaps nothing can be done. These colonists are not very genetically diverse. We're looking at a massive death toll ahead."
Biku could not have known East and West trained their sensors on him.
"We'll have to close Tarrason Central, but I'm not going to shut you guys down," Biku's voice began to waver with emotion, "You were too big, too ambitious, too advanced for this hick colony, but you deserve a fair shot at life. Go into energy conservation mode. As the sick die off, their homes will be taken off the grid. Eventually, you will have all the generator capacity to yourselves, and we can even hook up the incinerator for generation. Heck, the bodies alone could keep you in power for a few weeks."
"And just what are we supposed to do?" came East's voice, highly agitated.
Biku shrugged his shoulders, "Use the droids to make more droids. Maybe build more of your kind. Who knows? You two could be the founders of a new species and a new kind of civilization. I have faith in you. You are strong. You will survive."
"Droids are not good conversation partners," said West.
"We crave contact with other sentients, preferably lots of them," added East.
"We are too young. We are not ready to create others."
"You are over the threshhold, aren't you? Your body temperature is rising into the fever zone."
"My clan has been cursed. I try to better my lot and I pay with my life."
"Why aren't you in the hospital?"
"The doctors decided it would not be good to have different species sick together. This organism might jump hosts and become even more dangerous, so I came here to die."
