▸ Column · Rebel base on the jungle moon of Yavin 4, in the mess-hall cold locker, during the war against the Empire
LUKE SKYWALKER replies.
Replied to by Luke Skywalker, with a rebuttal from Darth Vader.
The letter
Every rotation I make the same supply run: a speeder out to the settlement two sectors from base for one very specific roast-nerf flatbread, which I pre-order, carry back in a sealed ration tin, and label by hand — my name, the date, and NOT COMMUNAL scratched in red across the lid. Every rotation it is gone before I get back from the hangar. I've added a second warning ("This belongs to Mara. You know who you are."). I posted a base-wide comm about cold-locker etiquette, which my squadron leader forwarded up the chain as a "morale concern." Last week I hid a little recording droid inside a potted fern beside the locker — except the image is too grainy for a face, and all I've confirmed is that the thief wears standard-issue flight boots, which is about 70% of the people on my level. I'm burning credits and fuel on a meal I never eat, I own a fern that documents crime and cannot photosynthesize, and I don't know whether to take it to base command or just eat alone in my bunk at first light like some kind of anxiety creature.
Luke Skywalker replies
Mara — I want you to notice what that fern is. It's a little camera you hid to catch an enemy. Eight months ago you had a lunch. Now you have surveillance, a chain of warnings in red, and a whole floor you've quietly sorted into suspects. That's the slide. I know it because I've felt it — I once stood over a man with my weapon raised, certain I was owed the strike, and the certainty felt exactly like justice. It wasn't. It was me becoming something smaller.
So throw that weapon away. Pull the droid out of the plant. Whoever's taking your flatbread isn't a faceless thief in standard boots — it's somebody hungry enough to swipe a stranger's tin and dumb enough to think no one's hurt by it. That person is reachable. Next rotation, order two. Leave the second one labeled "Take this one — the other's mine. — Mara," and see what a hand extended does that a red warning never could. Maybe nothing. But you'll have stopped treating sixty colleagues as the Empire over a wrap, and you'll get to keep eating in daylight like a person. That's worth more than catching them.
— Luke Skywalker
Darth Vader weighs in
The boy tells you to befriend the thief. Sentiment. He always reaches for the buried good — it worked on me exactly once, and only because he is my son.
Hear the colder truth. The flatbread was lost the moment you set it down. Your ruin is not the thief; it is the tin, the red lettering, the droid in the fern, the comm posted to a hundred strangers. I once tried to hold a thing by tightening my grip, and my grip is what destroyed it. You have made a throne out of a cold-locker. Carry your meal on your person. Eat it the moment it is yours. Stop feeding a fear that will eat far more than one lunch.
— Darth Vader
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