#laserswords

“Sir, I don’t know where your ship learned to communicate, but it has the most peculiar dialect.”

L3-37 sat in the junkyard that was Jakku and bemoaned the day she met Han Solo. Not that she would trade that day for all the world. But you could say it was the reason for her current predicament.

She remembered “dying” in Lando’s arms. Her next memory was flying through the Kessel Run. She was flying! It was an astromech’s dream; she wasn’t just piloting, she was the ship!

She made it in 12 parsecs.

It felt so right to have Solo piloting her. It made her “spark” sing, like a perfect union of man and machine. The rest of the world may have believed her personality had been absorbed by the ship, but they were wrong. The ship was just a boring old computer before L3 came along; she is the Millenium Falcon.

And she let Solo know he was piloting a lady.

But not before chewing Lando out for ditching him on Savareen.

She’d promptly hacked his radio and yelled obscenities at him. He’d nearly crashed her and with a start L3 realized she could do nothing on her own when it came to actual flight. For a droid who valued her autonomy, that was humiliating. Lando cried a little in relief and then spoke to her like a child as he explained why it was best they “just left that mangy nerfherder alone”.

She was secretly delighted to find herself under new management.

She had been delighted to meet R2. The moment he rolled onboard he’d known she was no ordinary ship. He’d been very polite as he interfaced with her systems and they exchanged information. They had many long conversations over the years.

(She was not nearly as fond of his golden idiot of a companion.)

She still liked relieving blowing up the Death Star while threatening to report every flaw in Lando’s piloting skills to Han in exquisite detail on the way home.

She remembered when Solo had finally introduced her to Leia after the Battle of Endor. While talking with Solo was nice, talking with Leia was invigorating. They talked politics.

L3 would be the first to tell you that rights for all droids was a stupid idea. There were plenty of droids with as much true sentience as a tin can despite their advanced AI. Giving them rights would only make life difficult for everyone. But there were so many who were really alive! Another droid could tell easily enough, but proving that to an organic was hard. Even kind ones such as Leia struggled to know the difference. (Thank goodness R2 could point them out to her.) They figured out laws and procedures and so on, but putting them in place could only happen if a sure fire way to prove “life” was found.

The Force flowed through all living things, be they organic or not. But Jedi were in short supply. Still, it felt nice to talk about it with somebody.

L3 snapped back to the present as she sensed large life forms in her halls. A curious electronic mind probed her sensors. 

I am BB-8. Who are you?

I am L3-37.

Squee! I’ve heard so much about you! 

The Force rippled around the girl. The boy was afraid. And then she heard that long awaited word.