#doc01

Hardwire eventually circled back around to Nectar.  He still didn’t care for it, though it was growing on him.  Though he couldn’t bring himself to return to his lodgings, as they still reminded him a little too much of Kamino.  He’d taken to milling about on a beach, trying not to dwell on his encounter in Tranquility.  Seeing other clones drug up too many feelings he’d long-since buried after the war.  The whole train ride back, he kept getting flashbacks of Shell.  When they’d first been assigned into a squad together, or their first mission.  The end, too.  He saw the end a lot. 

Hardwire couldn’t - no, wouldn’t - dwell on it though.  It threatened to consume him if he let himself think about it for more than a minute.  However, nothing he tried distracted him long enough.  Fishing, browsing the market, or even more people watching.  He finally got an idea, though, and offered some local credits to buy their watch.  Then he went to the market and got a kit of basic tools: a screwdriver, pliers, so on.  Nothing he could use as a weapon, mind, but useful for disassembly.

He returned to the beach and sat himself down, pulling out the tools and the watch.  And he began to take it apart piece by piece.  He placed every part by itself on a small napkin, mentally cataloguing where each piece was for later.  The precision and care he took with each one was laser-precise, coming from years of practice.  Really, while it looked hard, it was child’s play compared to building himself an arm.  It helped that said arm made his finer movements that much more exact.  Finally, he had the whole thing disassembled.  It was all in order, and his mind was quieted.

After a minute or two of enjoying the feeling, he reassembled it and fastened it to his wrist, standing up.  That would keep him calm for awhile, and it beat his other idea of tearing apart his holophone to see what made it tick.  Hardwire began to depart the beach when he spotted a face that made him freeze for the second time that day.  Standing a little bit down the beach was yet another clone.  Because of course.  Not the same one, because this one sported a beard and a partially bleached ponytail.  Hair dye had never been his first choice (or even his sixth), but to each clone their own.