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ashdoesfandomarchieved · 3 years ago

Text

a sound like goodbye

ao3

It begins rather innocently.

Beckett and her three best friends are one of the teams chosen for the initial away mission-which apparently, according to the briefing that she skipped and Boimler had relayed to her later with no small amount of annoyance, entailed scooping out a deserted starship for survivors while the Cerritos solved the mystery behind the situation.

Turns out, there wasn’t much mystery behind it besides some cloning project gone wrong.

“I mean, it makes sense,” Tendi mutters, frowning at her tricorder. “There’s a reason cloning isn’t exactly sanctioned by Starfleet.”

“So, what, the clones turned on everyone and-”

“Started eating them?” Rutherford wrinkles his nose at the weird puddle of suspicious goo his shoe is stuck in. “Seems pretty standard for a Cerritos mission.”

Boimler snorts from where he’s peering over Tendi’s shoulder at her tricorder. “Clones eating people? Isn’t that just... people eating people?”

“Oh it gets worse,” Tendi says cheerfully. “Whatever’s in the air here-”

“Ion cloud-”

“Ion cloud,” Tendi corrects, rolling her eyes, “whatever’s going on here, it seems to be destabilizing the clones' molecular makeup.”

“Which made them go crazy?” Rutherford suggests.

“No, which made them start eating people to absorb the electrons that would otherwise make them...people.”

Beckett and Boimler exchanged a grossed out expression.

“Usually I would think that’s cool-” she begins.

“Wait, how do we know we’re not the clones!” Rutherford interrupts, panicked. “I mean, how would you even know , you would have the same memories, the same-”

“You wouldn’t have your implant,” Beckett cuts in, before he can work himself into too much of a panic. “Or, at least, you would have that exact one that’s programmed to your specific brainwaves.”

“The rest of us could be clones though,” Tendi adds.

Boimler twitches.

Beckett frowns. “Can’t you just run a scan on us and-”

Tendi points her tricorder at Beckett. It makes a little blipping noise. “Yep. One hundred percent Beckett Mariner.”

“Unless you’re also a clone and that’s what your clone brain wants you to think-”

Boimler slaps a hand over his eyes. “That’s not how clones work, Rutherford!”

Tendi turns her tricorder to him, raising an eyebrow when it makes another blipping noise, this time twice in a row.

“Oh, and you’re the clone expert?”

“He did get cloned like three months ago,” Tendi says, distractedly frowning at her tricorder. “Huh.”

Boimler gives her a sharp look .

“Well, good thing the clone isn’t here, or we’d be in trouble,” Beckett mutters, already turning toward the terminal showcasing their location. They’re not too far from the engineering decks of the starship, which is fortunate since that’s where they need to go. It seems to be the starting point of today’s misadventure.

“Actually, no,” Tendi says, ignoring Boimler’s glaring. “While Boimler’s clone would likely destabilize due to the air pressure, he’d be less likely to be inclined toward-”

“Cannibalism?” Rutherford grimances.

Tendi shrugs. “Clone’s been around for three months. He’s had time to adjust.”

“Unlike the fuckheads here,” Beckett sighs, as she steps in a puddle of... god knows what . “I don’t like this mission anymore, I want to go home.”

On cue, something rams against the steel-locked turbolift doors. Loudly.

All four of them exchange uneasy glances.

“Engineering deck, right?” Rutherford offers.

Beckett sighs.

____

Engineering’s a bust.

Whatever chemical compound was making the clones has long since been eradicated, leaving the four with an ominous empathy engineering deck. What’s worse, they get a call about five minutes later from the other away team, who are being picked off, one by one, by the remaining living clones.

“How did anyone think this is a good idea?” Tendi groans.

Rutherford and Boimler exchange grimances.

“I think our best bet is to head back to the shuttlebay,” Boimler offers hesitantly.

Beckett’s not sure how she planned on responding to that, because just as the words are out of his mouth, the red alert system goes off.

“I thought no one was left on the ship?” Tendi shouts, over the noise.

“Unless one of our crewmembers turned it on, in which case-”

“We need to get out of here,” Beckett finishes Boimler’s sentence.

A sound splits through the air. Metal clashing against metal. Like the center of the ship is falling apart.

“You don’t think…” Tendi’s eyes widen.

“Yeeaah, who wants to be the clones are taking a kamikaze approach to their limited lifespan?” Rutherford says.

“They’re attacking the Cerritos ,” Beckett groans, because of fucking course they are. She starts herding her friends toward the turbolift. “We need to get out of here before the Cerritos is forced to fire on us.”

____

They get split up, because of course they do. The place is still, apparently, crawling with dying, mutated clones and there hadn’t been a way to keep their group together without someone falling behind.

Beckett supposes she can count herself lucky that they get paired off in usual formation--Tendi and Rutherford and then Brad and herself. It’s usually a successful team up whenever that happens. Tendi and Rutherford are both geniuses so they’ll most likely find a nonviolent way to get through the ship.

Meanwhile she and Boimler can take their usual approach of Beckett doing dangerous shit while he freaks out in the background.

“Is this really necessary?” he shrieks from somewhere behind her, as she sets off another explosion. “Where did you even get -”

“No time for stupid questions,” she replies airily, grabbing him by the upperarm and dragging him down a couple of halls.

“What’s going on with you anyway?” she asks, when they have a moment to catch their breath. She tries to inject enough casualness into her voice that he can’t detect her worry. “You’ve been-” she gestures vaguely with one hand. “Spacey.”

He shrugs, avoiding her gaze. “I mean...clones, you know?”

“Mutant clones,” she counters. “Which is barely any weirder than anything else we’ve dealt with.”

He sighs. “It’s nothing, Mariner. I just don’t like being trapped on a deathship full of things that want to kill us.”

“That’s literally what happens to us every day .”

Something crashing into a nearby door makes them both jump.

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Boimler grits out, eyes darting wildly around them. “Can we just get out of here?”

____

They do eventually collide with Tendi and Rutherford, both of which have already implemented 80% of a plan to get them safely back to the Cerritos , all limbs intact, and with a counterplan to take out the rest of the mutant clones.

Tendi grabs Boimler by the arm and drags him a few feet away to rapidly explain her technobabble infused idea that Beckett can barely track, while Rutherford and her work on barricading the medbay door.

“This is gonna work, right?” she asks.

“Yeah, I mean, we should be able to make our way to our shuttle after Tendi uploads the code to the network.” Rutherford’s voice is nervous.

The door suddenly splits in two, a clawed grey hand peeking through the destroyed metal.

“ Shit ! Okay, new plan,” Tendi shrieks, “let’s just get the fuck out of here.”

“But what about-”

“No time, we’ll come up with a new plan!”

The trek through the hallways has Beckett somewhere between elated and terrified. The clones are mutating at a frequency that is, frankly, scary and they nearly get Rutherford at least twice. The guy just can’t seem to catch a break between one of the clone’s nabbing him in the shoulder and another one getting a good few swipes in on his face.

It’s just his luck that he suddenly gets grabbed by one of them and yanked into one of the deserted conference rooms, much to everyone else’s horror.

“ Fu -” Tendi’s shout is bitten off as another clone makes a wild dash for her that she narrowly avoids.

Beckett turns to shout something to Boimler and-

He’s not there.

She comes to a stop so quickly that Tendi slams into her back, almost toppling her over.

“Wha-”

“Where’s Boimler?” She attempts to sound calm, but can hear the thread of panic in her voice.

Tendi spins around. “Oh- oh fuck .” A look of realization dawns across her face as her eyes widen. “He didn’t,” she breathes.

Beckett pushes her down the hall. “Get Rutherford, I’ll-”

“Mariner, he might not-”

“He’s fine , at least until I get my hands on him,” she snaps. “I’ll meet you in the shuttlebay.”

____

She does not, in fact, meet Tendi in the shuttlebay.

No, about five minutes after she splits up with the perky orion, she comes across her--the Orion having beaten her to finding Boimler, who she’s loudly arguing with. Rutherford, surprisingly, is there too, covered in scrapes and bruises and watching worriedly.

Beckett can’t for the life of her figure out how they managed to fight off a pack of deranged mutated clones, double back to find Boimler and start a fight with him in the time that Beckett had come across them, but she supposes it makes sense. Rutherford and Tendi are just built that way.

“You can’t just-” Tendi is sputtering, fists clenched.

“There isn’t time and besides-”

“Mariner is going to kill you -”

“Damn straight I am!” Beckett cuts in, voice raised over the noise of the starship literally being destroyed. “We’re on a timecrunch here, guys, what the fuck are you three doing ?”

Boimler sighs. “Marin-”

“We think we may have found a way to neutralize the clones,” Tendi blurts out. “I synthesized a noxious gas that’ll run through the airvents and take them out before they destroy the Cerritos -”

“Good! Great! So go ahead and release it so we can-”

The lights turn off.

“Someone has to upload the program that will release it shipwide to the network-” Boimler begins.

Beckett glares at him in the dim light. “If you’re suggesting what I think you are-” She grabs her best friend by the shoulder, attempting to drag him away from the console. With surprising strength, he brushes her off.

“Mariner I-” His face twists into something pained--a usual expression on him, but certainly unwanted at the present moment. “The Cerritos is already on red alert and we have less than ten minutes to-”

Beckett growls, making to grab at him again.

“Right, we have less than five minutes to get to the escape shuttle-”

“Yeaaah, that's kinda the problem?” Tendi cuts in, wilting back at Beckett’s furious glare. “We can’t do it from the shuttle. Someone has to stay behind and manually do it.”

Beckett stops.

“Oh fuck no,” she snarls, glaring at each of her friends. “No one is staying behind-- no , not even you, “she adds, pointing to Boimler, who’d opened his mouth to protest.

“Look-”

“No.”

“Just hear me out! The Cerritos doesn’t stand a chance against--”

“We’ll find a different way--a way that doesn’t include any of my best friends serving themselves up to be eaten by mutants!”

“This is the only way!” Boimler throws his hands up in frustration. “We don’t have time to come up with a new idea and I can upload Tendi’s code to the-!”

“Wha-no, why does it have to be you that stays behin-”

“Because the real Boimler is on the Titan !” he bursts out.

Beckett freezes.

She hears Rutherford exhale and can feel Tendi go still. All eyes snap to Boimler in an instant, who wilts under the combined force of their surprise.

“It took me a while to realize it,” Boimler-- Brad admits, “but when Tendi ran that test and I-”

“Boimler,” Tendi whispers. “You don’t have to-I should’ve told you-”

“It doesn’t matter,” Rutherford interrupts, shifting nervously. His eyes cut to the ceiling as another squeal of the haul cracking splits through the air. “-clone or no clone, you’re still our friend and we-”

“And someone needs to stay behind and take out the clones or-”

“Which is why I’m going to do it,” Beckett snaps.

“Wha-how is that any different -”

“Mariner, you can’t just-”

“Why do you two have to make killing yourselves a competition?” Rutherford slaps a hand over his eyes and winces when his implant glitches. “How about we all leave and-”

Brad groans. “Someone has to detonate the-”

“We’re not just leaving you-” Beckett all but shrieks.

“You don’t have a choice-”

“Like hell I don’t, if you think I’m just gonna leave you here-”

“There’s another me out there!” Brad shouts, above the noise of the starship being blown apart. His eyes narrow in on Beckett’s, completely ignoring the protests and annoyed mutterings of their two friends.

“Look,” he says, voice quieting so only she can hear him. “I’m a Boimler, but not. Not yours.”

Beckett’s breath catches in her chest. She lets her gaze flick over him--from his meticulously pressed uniform, to the dirt smudges on the side of his face, to the dumb anime hair that surprisingly works for him. His eyes--a light hazel that tricks you into thinking they’re green in the sunlight or brown in the darkness--stare back into hers helplessly.

“You need someone to stay behind and detonate the gas,” he says, after a moment of quiet--save for the countdown being droned out by the AI. “So just please-”

“And you’re a better candidate for staying behind because-because there’s another you? That’s bullshit, Bradward,” she snarls, grabbing his collar and hauling him close.

“There’s two of me and only one of you!” he shouts back, throwing his hands up in the air, but losing the effect the gesture would usually have by slumping in her grip. “And as it stands I’m not even the real-”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard!” She lets go of him, throwing her own hands up in the air in a mirror image of him. “Of course you’re the real you! Just because you weren’t here first doesn’t make you not a person-”

“I’m not your me, though,” he cuts in, “And it doesn’t matter anyway, because other me would be doing this whether or not he was the clone so-” He turns back to the terminal, brow furrowed. “Just-just get in the stupid shuttle and-”

“Not without you!”

“Then you’ll die here!”

“ So ?”

Brad types in a series of commands and then shuts the screen down. He turns on his heel and grabs Beckett’s wrist. “Fine,” he grits out, “let’s go.”

____

Surprised at the sudden change in whatever-the-fuck that was, Beckett allows herself to be tugged through the shattering starship--Tendi and Rutherford on their heels. Tendi exchanges a couple of glances with Brad, something passing between them that Beckett-much to her annoyance-can’t read.

The dash to the shuttle bay is hectic, but Beckett barely notices. Her attention keeps being stolen by the furtive glances Brad gives her when he thinks she isn’t looking. Or the warmth of his hand around her wrist that releases whenever she has to do some badass shit to get them out of there, but always comes back when they’re in the clear.

Finally, they’re in the shuttle bay.

“Uh, I’ll get it up and running,” Rutherford says, ducking inside the beaten up shuttle that they’d come in on.

Tendi and Brad look at each other for a moment.

Then, she tosses him her datapadd.

“I also synthesized a memory saver for the clones, because I’m a genius. It might not work,” she says, carefully, ignoring Beckett’s confused sputtering.“None of them deserve to die, so I did my best to give us an option where they don’t... completely . There’s a possibility that your consciousness will upload to the network, but it’s not guaranteed.”

Brad smiles at her, shaky but grateful.

Tendi goes on. “So if it doesn’t, I just want you to know-”

“Yeah,” his grin is more of a grimace now. “I know.”

She nods once, eyes quickly darting over him, before turning and disappearing into the shuttle.

Just Beckett and Brad left.

“Brad-”

“Mari- Beckett -”

“If you think for one second -”

“Someone has to stay!”

“But why you?” she says, crossing her arms and trying to ignore the tears pricking in the corners of her eyes. “All you’ve ever wanted to do is-is explore deep space and nerd out over dumb shit. Not die in the middle of a fucking warzone.”

Brad grabs one of her wrists, pulling her out of her defensive position and sliding his hand into hers. Both of his hands into hers.

His palms are warm and surprisingly soft. She wonders for a second if he moisturizes and then immediately knows the answer is yes because she’s seen the amount of lotion he carries in that dumb manpurse of his on shoreleave.

“I didn’t stabilize right,” he says, voice pitched soft. “That’s why when Tendi ran the tests she-well. I wouldn’t have lasted anyway so-” he sighs, shoulders drooping. “Just let me do this one thing for you guys. Let me make it all count.”

Beckett doesn’t realize she’s full on-crying until a sob heaves out of her. “I can’t leave you.” She shakes her head, trying to get control of herself. Something in her chest is twisting tightly, cutting off her airway. “I can’t.”

Something in Brad's face shifts. He lets go of her hands, much to her dismay, and she’s reaching out, reaching to grab some part of him to keep him from running off, from doing something stupid, something permanent , something that will take this version of him away from her forever-

One hand suddenly cups her neck, thumb tilting her chin upward.

Everything in her world comes to a standstill.

The sound of the base coming down around them, Rutherford and Tendi tersely barking orders to each other and across their comms to the Cerritos , the red alert blaring above them. Even the sparks shooting off around them from broken wiring and the lights wildly flicking on and off seem to slow.

Brad barely leans in before she grabs him by the collar with both hands and drags him down.

It’s desperate. Almost uncomfortably so. For the first few seconds their teeth click against each other and Beckett’s nose is smooshed against his cheek, but then she pulls back a centimeter, breathes in the space between them and dives back in, tilting her head to get the angle right this time.

It’s awful. His lips drag against hers and one hand moves to the small of her back and suddenly he’s pressed up against her, warm and real . One of her own hands makes its way into his stupidly coiffed hair, devastatingly delighted at the fact that he doesn’t upset at her messing it for once.

It’s all consuming and it’s burning and it’s searing and it’s awful , not because it isn’t good. No, it’s awful because Beckett knows what it means.

She knows it’s goodbye.

When she finally lets him pull away, they’re both panting. He rests his forehead on hers for a moment, eyes half lidded.

“You have to tell him,” he finally rasps. “Because he won’t-he’ll never, if you don’t first.”

Beckett squeezes her eyes shut tightly and then quickly opens them again, not wanting to miss a moment of their stolen time. “Brad-”

He shakes his head, pulling away from her. “Tell him.”

“It’s not too late,” she says. “You can still come with us.”

Brad gives her a lopsided grin. “What, one of me isn’t enough for you?”

The AI blaring the countdown hits the last minute. Brad’s face sets. Resigned.

“For what it’s worth,” he says, as he gently--but swiftly--begins herding her toward the shuttle, “I- he -is sorry. About everything. So, when you see him next, just give him a chance, okay?”

She’s inside the shuttle, one hand braced on the side of the door, trying to keep him from shutting it. He puts a hand on her shoulder to keep her from jumping out.

“Brad-” her voice is shaking.

“I know.” He looks over her shoulder, probably at Rutherford or Tendi. Nods to them once. “Just make sure he knows too.”

He pushes her.

She stumbles onto the shuttle floor as the door slams shut with a hiss.

____

Carol gets the report before she hears it from her kid.

The situation hadn’t been ideal from the start. When they’d originally intercepted the distress call, Ransom had muttered something about requesting backup that Carol had strongly considered. Ultimately, they would’ve been unprepared either way.

Either way, two thirds of the teams she sent onto that ship would have died, including her daughter’s best friend.

“Where is she?” she snaps at the ensign that seems to hang around Beckett and her friend group. He’s in medbay, nursing a broken collar bone, but snaps to attention the minute she enters.

“Uh…”

“Storage closet on Deck C,” an Orion, a few beds down, offers tentatively. Carol thinks she recognizes the girl as one of Beckett’s friends, but can’t be sure.

“Tendi!” the other ensign hisses.

“What, it’s her mom !” the Orion--Ensign Tendi--shoots back, but Carol isn’t listening. She’s already halfway out the door, despite the fact that a storage closet on Deck C didn’t narrow her search down by much.

It takes her almost an hour to find her.

The storage closet she’s camping out in is small--mostly likely used for medical supplies, judging by the sharp smell of antestic and alcohol that’s coming from-

Beckett has one hand tightly gripped around a bottle of vodka. She blinks up at her for a moment, comm lying open in her hand.

“Hey kid,” Carol says, trying to go gentle, but it comes across as tentative.

Beckett scowls. “What do you want?” she mumbles, fingers gripping her comm tightly. There are tear tracks staining her cheeks that make Carol’s heart ache.

Carol glances around the storage closet, grimacing at the empty bottles laying scattered around Beckett and the strong smell emitting from them. “Just to talk. Think you come out of here for a minute?”

Beckett raises her comm to her mouth again, muttering something indistinct into it before snapping it closed. She makes to stand up, but can’t quite make it. She seems off-balanced, teetering off the edge of sobriety.

Carol gently grabs Beckett’s wrist and pulls her to her feet. She sways slightly, still very obviously under the influence. With a sigh, Carol tugs her forward.

“Oh kiddo,” she says, when Beckett buries her face in her shoulder and begins crying in earnest.

____

Brad collapsed on his bed, equal parts weary and riding an adrenaline high.

The mission--now completed and never to be brought up again except in his n̸̜͘ḯ̷̹g̸̥̎h̵̬͛ẗ̷̬m̴̦͗a̸͈͂r̶̡͝e̶̢͘s̸̤̒ --was barely notable compared to the previous twelve he’s been dragged on, but he still is riding the high of almost dying . It’s, tragically, becoming his new normal.

And not in a fun Mariner did something cool that almost got us all killed but it’s totally cool because she looked hot while doing it kind of way. It was more of a holy shit I just almost died I didn’t join Starfleet for this what the hell am I doing existential crisis sort of way that has him regretting a lot of things.

Mostly Mariner related things, if he’s being honest.

(He doesn’t regret leaving. He doesn’t)

(He absolutely does.)

So here he is, a few months older, but certainly not wiser, lying in his lonely room, wondering what Mariner’s getting up to these days.

Almost on cue, his padd pings him a voicemail.

3 missed calls from Beckett Mariner.

Brad frowns. It’s been a while--a very very long while--since he’s heard from Mariner. Not that he’s blaming her, because he knows, he knows that he pulled a dick move transferring without telling her and then ghosting her calls.

He just doesn’t know what to say to her.

“Hey dumbass,” the voicemail opens with. It’s what most of them have, but this one has Brad pausing. There’s something monotone--something deadened about the inflection of her voice. It has his breath catching in his chest.

This voicemail is going to be different.

“Just calling to check in, I guess,'' her voice continues.

There’s a pause. So long that Brad wonders if Mariner had forgotten she’d called him. Then, “I don’t know if Tendi or Rutherford have called you yet, but I...look, can you just-”

Static, like she’s pressing her comm against her shoulder. There’s some indistinct murmuring, a deeper voice filtering through that he hesitantly assigns as Captain Freeman’s.

“I gotta go, but.” A shaky breath. “Call me.”

Brad swallows.

“Please.”

The voicemail ends with a click, leaving Brad in the silence of his empty room.

____

It’s been three weeks.

Three weeks since every emotion Beckett was capable of feeling had been shattered into a thousand pieces and dropped into a flaming dumpster fire. Her mom, after dragging her to her ready room and spending the entire day plying her with hot chocolate and hugs--which was weird coming from the woman who once told Beckett to walk a compound fracture off--seemingly decides to give her some space.

Which apparently includes giving her an undetermined amount of leave to deal with her shit.

Beckett doesn’t know what to do with that. What’s she supposed to do, take a vacation right now? Have fun ?

She spends the entire time either holed up in her bunk or exploring whatever dumb planets their missions take them too.

It all comes to a head far too soon.

And by head, Beckett, of course, means that her mom decides to interfere--like she always does--and drag Beckett kicking and screaming into a situation that she 100% would have avoided otherwise.

“Captain wants you in her ready room,” Tendi says, voice tentative in a way that is pissing Beckett off.

She doesn’t need to be tiptoed around goddammit.

The walk to her mom’s ready room is brisk and uninterrupted. Everyone’s giving her a wide berth these days. She’s not sure if it’s because they know or if she just looks unusually scary these days.

Her eyes are red rimmed and her uniform is beyond wrinkled and her hair is unwashed, falling around her shoulders in messy tangles. It’s probably not the latter.

She storms into her mom’s ready room, prepared to pick a fight just to feel something when-

Beckett stops breathing.

“I’ll leave you two to it,” Carol says, giving Brad a pat on the shoulder as she passes him.

He’s in the stupid Titan uniform, which look unfairly good on him, Beckett distantly--begrudgingly--thinks. His hair is still in that stupid anime upsweep and his back is ramrod straight as always.

His eyes though are pinched in worry. Lips pulled into a frown.

“Hey.”

Beckett can barely look at him, but taking her eyes off him means she can’t see him and that’s an unacceptable option. She takes a step forward. And then another one. And then another one, until she has to look up every so slightly--because he has that goddam half inch on her--to maintain eye contact.

When she presses a hand to his chest, slightly to the left, just over his heart, he feels warm .

His pulse drums under her fingers, beat picking up rapidly the longer she keeps them there.

“Hey,” she says back. Her voice is cracked to all hell, rubbed raw from equal parts disuse and shouting whenever she’s in a particular mood.

The worried look on his face increases tenfold at the sound of her voice.

One hand reaches up to encircle her wrist. It squeezes tightly for a second before he lets go and takes a step back, putting space between them.

He’ll never, if you don’t first , Brad’s own voice sounds in her mind.

Beckett takes a breath and steps forward, closing the distance once again. She smiles faintly at how his eyes widen, pupils dilating slightly at their close proximity.

“Can we talk?”

____

#marinler #beckett mariner #brad boimler #d'vana tendi #sam rutherford #carol freeman #major character death #my fic #my fanfic #lower decks fanfic #star trek lower decks #star trek lower decks fanfic

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samleheny · 8 years ago

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Jedi and Lutherans: what Rey and Martin Luther might have in common

When I was a kid, I was a massive Star Wars nerd. How massive? I read the books. THE BOOKS! That’s when you know you’re lost!

One day I stopped, looked at my bloated belly, and decided that between the film, games, dolls, books, TV shows, legos, bed sheets, death star shaped ice cube trays, and Shakespeare reinterpreted to involve Star Wars characters, I’d consumed enough Star Wars to last several life times, and even without actually going all that ham personally on all the merchandise and expanded lore, merely living in a world saturated in such an omni-present franchise had rendered the Star Wars universe a fairly mundane setting for me. And growing up didn’t help, because as your tastes refine it becomes harder and more thankless to spot the one or two good things about the Prequel trilogy, which was ‘my generation’s’ Star Wars. And I didn’t have any industrial strength nostalgia goggles lying around.

So when Lucas Films was snapped up by the equally omni-present Disney Corporation and a new line of Star Wars films was announced, my reaction was “Neat... I’m going back to bed.” I still haven’t seen the Force Awakens nor Rogue One (Is Rogue One a code name? Or is it like “The one who is rogue��?) but just recently a mistaken click on some click-bait rumour article about the upcoming instalment The Last Jedi saw me stumble upon a fan theory that turned out to be the most I’ve been intrigued by Star Wars in over a decade. It started in the article with ‘Grey Jedi’ and ended in my head with the Vatican and the Protestant Reformation.

Strap in.

The rumour is that Rey, the main protagonist of this new line of films, is the first canonically recognised Grey Jedi. “What on Earth is a Grey Jedi?” I wondered. It’s a fan made term, or maybe one initiated in the obscure expanded lore which has apparently now been declared non-canon by Disney (it’s all very confusing) and its meaning is a little vague, but is usually given one of two definitions. The first is just a Jedi who’s a bit of a bad boy, and who has some trouble following the rules of being a Jedi. So I guess by that logic any Jedi who becomes an evil Sith Lord by definition has to have transitioned from Jedi, to Grey Jedi, to Sith Lord (the Black Jedi by the naming convention suggested by “Grey Jedi”). Fans have suggested that Qui Gon Jin was a Grey Jedi simply because he was a bit of an arsehole who never agreed with anything the Jedi Council said. That makes sense I guess. I recall Count Dookoo suggesting that Qui Gon had been fertile for conversion to the Dark Side.

But the second definition - the one I find interesting – is simply one who is in balance with the force (much like a Jedi) but who is not a Jedi. Does not subscribe to the force related teachings of the Jedi Order. Following the Order’s teachings has long been depicted in the series as synonymous with being ‘in balance’ with the Force, the only alternative being to make the force one’s figurative bitch, which seemingly defines one as belonging to the evil Sith. Basically the anti-Jedi. But the very existence of Grey Jedi calls that dichotomy into question, which means nothing if Grey Jedi are just a figment of the fandom’s imagination, but if the current makers of Star Wars are indeed planning on taking this idea and running with it, I could see that being very interesting and somewhat daring.

Here’s the thing. The now long extinguished Jedi Council were a bunch of idiots. That’s not how they were deliberately depicted, it’s just a result of George Lucas’ horrendously amateurish plot and character writing throughout the prequel trilogy that many Star Wars fans have this unofficial idea that the pre-Luke Skywalker Jedi weren’t as wise as the story would have us believe.

What? The guy who’s been acting like a Sith Lord all this time and has benefited from every bad thing that’s gone down to which he’s always had a super obvious connection turned out to be the Sith Lord? Oooooh nooooo, who could have figured that out except anyone?

Suppose that notion was also picked up by the film makers and officially recognised. If they don’t have the onions to just add the prequels to the increasingly crowded bin of Non-Canon, then they could at least acknowledge that the Jedi’s old fashioned mindset and rigid insistence that the Force moves in mysterious ways was partially responsible for them getting outsmarted and all but wiped out by the Sith.

But if Grey Jedi are a real thing now and one can officially be not only force-sensitive, but also successfully wield the force as a partner (like a Jedi) and not as a slave (like the Sith) without giving a toss about shunning emotion, or never hooking up with anyone, or wearing your hair in a stupid braid until the council tells you you can stop, or any other silly little rule from the How To Be Awesome Jedi handbook, then how much or how little authority do the Jedi as an institution actually have on the subject of the Force?

The reason this intrigues me is because I have an affection for internet history videos (how did my high school manage to make history seem so boring?!) and this potential ‘Force Schism’ reminds me of a medieval figure whose story I recently got pretty big into. Martin Luther.

His is the story of the Protestant Reformation, which was a huge goddamn deal for Christians and consequently anyone who happens to share a planet with them. I am an agnostic atheist; I don’t believe in the divine, but I don’t for a second claim to know that the divine does or does not exist. I typically don’t get on well with organised religion, but even I have to admit that I like a lot about the way this Martin Luther guy thought.

Who was he? He was a German law student turned monk born in 1483 and who by 1517 had grown increasingly frustrated with the Catholic Church’s corruption and abuse of authority over people’s immortal souls, authority which he believed it didn’t actually have. This came to a head one day when a friar arrived in town selling ‘indulgences’ which were basically little slips of paper absolving you of some of your sins.

Yes, you could buy that. As far as the Catholic church was concerned, redemption in the eyes of God was quite literally for sale. If you think that sounds a little messed up, Martin Luther agreed. He wrote Ninety Five Theses decrying the custom and famously nailed them to the church door before the eyes of the public.

From here his ideas became increasingly radical (and increasingly awesome) generally attempting to expose the Church’s rituals like the priesthood as being mere formality, entirely of human design, possessing no actual spiritual power. High ranking church officials were seen as holy, and having authority to dictate the will of God to the masses, and priests were often the only ones in each town or village who could read, or at least who could read Latin, which conveniently was the only language in which scripture was available. “God has a thing about condoms. You can’t read the bible, but trust me, that’s totally what it says!” But Luther denounced even the pope himself as imperfect and fallible like any other human being. At the core of Luther’s system of belief was “Sola fide” - “Only faith”. The belief that everything one needed to attain salvation in the eyes of God was their own faith, and not the outside help of anyone specially authorised to admit God’s approval.

In addition to spreading the idea that people didn’t need priests and as individuals already had everything they needed to practise their faith, Luther translated the bible to common, everyday German and used the new technology of the printing press to distribute it to the people on a massive scale. Now everyone could read the bible for themselves, breaking up the church’s tidy little monopoly on salvation. And when a monopoly gets broken up, the previous holder of that monopoly suddenly finds them self facing actual pressure to perform well in the face of new competition. The Vatican’s officially sanctioned interpretation of scripture was no longer automatically the correct one by simple virtual of being the only available interpretation.

This was a massive, massive deal because the Catholic church had been - without hyperbole – the most powerful institution in Europe, and that power was based on having built a necessity for themselves and their man-made traditions into what was the dominant form of the dominant religion throughout the entire continent. And Luther’s insistence that soul authority (har har) over what God says and wants was not held by anyone here on Earth led to massive fracturing in the church. Suddenly everybody had their own interpretation of scripture and everybody was going off to start their own church.

This wasn’t just a spiritual schism, it was a continental political revolution.

So what if the Jedi’s authority over matters of the Force is also assumed and has been gradually born of hubris and vanity? You might think “What?! But the Jedi are the good guys! The way of the Jedi has been at the centre of every mainline Star Wars story!”

Well… Not only have the Jedi failed spectacularly in their role as galactic, Force fueled peacekeepers at least twice, but I’d argue their methods have led to a repetitive loop of stale events and plot lines in the Star Wars films. I’ve always felt this weird inconsistency in the spirituality of Star Wars. A clashing between Western philosophical themes of dichotomy - of good vs evil, and Eastern philosophical themes of balance in all aspects of life and nature. The overarching goal of the Jedi throughout Star Wars history has been to “bring balance to the force”. Balance implies harmonious existence of two opposing forces, but the Jedi usual speak of this balance in terms of defeating and eliminating once and for all their long time counterparts, the Sith. And twice now within the films they’ve thought to have finally achieved this only for the Sith to pull the rug out from under them and reveal just how distant this dream of balance still is.

Well what if that’s because the Jedi have been going about it all wrong? What if this Western style dichotomy in pursuit of Eastern style balance never works because the dichotomy itself is a perversion of the Force? Is being an emotionless, celibate hippy like being a Jedi requires really what brings balance to the force? Or is this insistence on what are actually arbitrary, man-made ideals what causes force users to become frustrated and seek emotional freedom as Sith, seeking conflict with the Jedi allegedly being the only force sensitive alternative to being a Jedi?

Maybe the Jedi’s authority over matters of the force has become muddied and misused. Maybe all that pomp and ritual can be thrown off for what it is - meaningless. ‘Sola vis’ if you will. “Only the Force”.

The hopelessness in the way the Jedi have always operated, and the accompanying contradiction has I think long been unintentional and the result of sloppy writing. But now is a new era of Star Wars, so why not get meta with its narrative? The writers should pull the old “Nah, we meant to do that!”. Take the nonsensicalness of the prequel Star Wars era and embrace it – recognise it as nonsensical and use it to explain why the Star Wars story keeps looping (then nobody can complain anymore that Return of the Jedi seems pointless now that we know the peace didn’t last five minutes). Just as Star Wars is recovering from a run of bad writing, let’s have the characters’ understanding of the force recover from thousands of years of flawed, fallible people assuming undue spiritual authority (Thousands? Hundreds? I don’t know, every era in Star Wars history feels pretty interchangeable).

The moral compass of the Star Wars world has traditionally been a pretty simplistic one (ain’t nothin’ wrong with simplicity): Jedi good. Jedi are awesome. Jedi know what’s up. Do you want to be absolutely sure that you’re one of the good guys and that you’re talking sense? Then make sure you’re a Jedi. So it would be quite a drastic change to the franchise to suggest that all this time the omni-present Jedi have been getting it at least a little bit wrong. But it’s also exciting to think that maybe being a Jedi is just one way of using the Force harmoniously, and that this balance will finally be possible once the Jedi finally stop and ask themselves “Huh... what is the point of all these super specific rules?”

I hope it turns out Rey does indeed reject the Jedi teachings without losing her harmony with the force and becoming a Sith. And what if Kylo Ren comes to the same realisation from the other side of the court? He seems pretty insistent that the Jedi suck, but he also seems unsure of himself as a Sith. Sounds like he should give this Grey Jedi thing a try too. Unless it turns out I’m misreading, completely, and The Last Jedi turns out to be going after something completely different and this was all a waste of time...

2020 edit: Fuck sake, Abrams. Yes, I do in fact remember my childhood. We established that with Force Awakens. But that can’t hold up an entire trilogy if you’ve nothing else on your mind!

#star wars #the last jedi #rey #grey jedi #jedi

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nolimitsongrace · 5 years ago

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October 24: What Is an Apostle?

What Is an Apostle?October 24, 2019

And He Himself gave some to be apostles…. — Ephesians 4:11 NKJV

When I was growing up, I was told there was no such thing as a living apostle. Our denomination taught that all the apostles died at the end of the “Apostolic Age” — along with miracles, signs and wonders, and gifts of the Holy Spirit! To my young mind, the term “apostle” belonged to a group of 12 legendary men who walked with Jesus 2,000 years ago. Once they died, that was the end of that!

But over the past decades, we have learned that much denominational teaching was wrong. Miracles, signs, wonders, and gifts of the Holy Spirit are still “alive and well.” Prophets, also previously considered relics of the past, are recognized and honored. No one would argue that the Church is also blessed with fiery evangelists, powerful pastors, and profoundly God-gifted teachers. But now — at the end of the age — it is finally being recognized that the apostolic gift still exists.

The apostolic gift has always been around, but the theology I grew up hearing wouldn’t sanction someone being called an apostle. To call someone an apostle seemed ludicrous and arrogant. Everyone “just knew” there was no such thing as an apostle — and to call a person by this name was almost considered a blasphemous insult to the first 12 apostles.

*[If you started reading this from your email, begin reading here.]

So thanks to our scholarly ancestors who read and spoke Latin, we reverted to calling apostles by the Latin name missionaries. But “missionary” is not a correct term in this context. The only reason we called apostles missionaries was the fear of retribution for calling them apostles, as they often should have been called.

I am not implying that everyone who is a missionary is an apostle. Some people are called to be missionaries — people who sense a need to go on a mission to help the work of God. This work is very beneficial and needful, but it does not in itself constitute an apostolic call. Often these are truly missionaries and not apostles — people sent by the local church or their denomination to help in some way on the mission field.

An apostolic call originates in a divine revelation and encounter with Jesus Christ. As Paul said, his calling was “…not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ….” (Galatians 1:1). These precious apostolic gifts may not have always been recognized as apostles, but they have always been present in the Church throughout history, and they are present and active in the Church in this hour. Ephesians 4:11-13 says that all the fivefold ministry gifts — including the apostle — will be present and active “till we all come in the unity of the faith….”

The Church of Jesus Christ cannot reach full maturity unless all of these Christ-given gifts are imparting their unique portions to the Church. Like the other fivefold ministry gifts, the gift of apostleship is an essential element to carry the Church upward to her destiny as a “…glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing…” (Ephesians 5:27).

But before we go any further into this teaching about the role of apostles in today’s world, let’s back up and study where this word apostle comes from. Today we’ll look at the Greek meaning of the word, and tomorrow we’ll look at the various historical usages of this word “apostle” in New Testament times. You may be very surprised to see the various ways this word was used and how they all had application to a New Testament apostle.

The Greek word for “apostle” is apostolos, which is a compound of the words apo and stello. The preposition apo means away, and the word stello means to send. When the two words are combined, they form the word apostolos, meaning one who is sent away. This Greek word appears 79 times in the New Testament. The root of apostolos is the word apostello, a word that appears no less than 131 times in the New Testament and more than 700 times in the Old Testament Greek Septuagint.

At first, it may seem that the definition of this word apostolos — one who is sent away — denoted one who had been dismissed, set aside, or rejected. However, this word didn’t refer to a person sent away in dishonor or disgrace. Rather, the word apostolos was a term of great honor that referred to a person who was personally selected, commissioned, and sent on an assignment on behalf of a very powerful government or individual. This person wasn’t merely sent off; he was empowered, invested with authority, and then dispatched to accomplish a special task.

So when we talk about apostles, we are discussing individuals who are appointed, empowered, invested with authority by the Lord, and then dispatched to do a special task. And their task is the establishing of the Christian community in places where it had not existed heretofore.

There is a lot for us to see on this subject, so tomorrow we’ll look more deeply at the historical meaning of the word “apostle.” I pray these Sparkling Gems will open your eyes to a greater understanding of this gift and how desperately we need this gift to be active in the Body of Christ today!

MY PRAYER FOR TODAY

Father, I ask You to help me recognize those who are apostolic gifts — those who have apostolic callings — in the Body of Christ. We need all fivefold ministries — apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers — for the building up of the Church. If one of these is missing, there will be a certain portion of Christ’s impartation missing from the Church. I ask You to help me be open-minded to the reality of the apostolic ministry gifts and to honor them in our midst.

I pray this in Jesus’ name!

MY CONFESSION FOR TODAY

I confess that apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers are all present and active in the Body of Christ. I am open to each of these impartations of Christ. Because I am open to them, I will be a recipient of the grace of God that is delivered through each of these. I will receive ministry from apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers — and it will contribute to my edification, growth, and to the building up of the Body of Christ!

I declare this by faith in Jesus’ name!

QUESTIONS FOR YOU TO CONSIDER

Do you personally know anyone who stands in an apostolic anointing? Who is that person? Why would you say he is apostolic? What is the evidence that makes you believe this person carries an apostolic calling?

How will what you’ve learned in today’s Sparkling Gem influence the way you respond to and receive from the apostle’s ministry in the future?

Are you clear about the distinction between missionary and an apostle or “sent one”? How would you describe that distinction?

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peakwealth · 6 years ago

Text

The Will of the People (2)

The Public Against the Public Interest

“To the fool-king belongs the world.“

(Friedrich Schiller, 1759-1805)

January 20, 2017 in Washington, DC. Day one of the new age when reality turned liquid. (Screenshot)

Of all the canaries twittering away in the coal mine of Western dystopia, the one that chants about infant immunizations must be among the loudest. The other day I noticed a picture taken during a demo of people opposed to the compulsory immunization of their children. One of the so-called antivaxxers held up a printed sign that read

STIFLE

UNCOMFY

SCIENCE

The words have shock value for they capture the present revolt against reason and empiricism, against what is perceived by many as the unsettling, uncomfy nature of science -- as if it were a stained old IKEA sofa to be dragged onto the sidewalk and disposed of before dawn. The notion has taken hold that if science makes you feel bad, if it doesn't resonate with your inner self, or your religious faith, you can simply reject it. Opt for 'science' you are comfortable with, be it pseudoscience or complete bogus. Or no science at all.

There is of course nothing new about the discomfort caused by science or by any other sort of manifestly rational knowledge. The late German philosopher Norbert Elias (1) explains, as have countless others, how the human species, once it has domesticated the forces of nature, ends up feeling disenchanted. When the world is no longer revealed through religious myth but through reason, it turns out to be a thoroughly unsettling place. Existence itself, stripped of magic and fantasy, is a sobering affair. And the closer nature is examined, the less it shows any sign of making sense. It seems to lack the deeper logic that humans have always craved to give purpose to their short, insecure lives.

In other words, when reality does not match our hopes and dreams, many of us will reject it out of hand. But, says Elias, we have to grow up, we have to get over it: the universe is neither good nor bad, it is blind and doesn't care about us.

There we have it. In a blind universe, not only is there no god and no devil, there is no Santa either.

To make matters worse, observable reality isn't what it used to be. Ever since it came up with the story of Adam and Eve, authority has looked upon factual knowledge with suspicion. Knowledge was and still is equated with arrogance and transgression. For thousands of years, religions have ignored or contradicted rational thinking and have instead provided comfort to those terrified by the unknown as well as to those who revel in it.

But as science is not compatible with religious dogma, so empirical knowledge necessarily challenges ignorance. When science expands as rapidly as it does today, the world inevitably becomes a more disorienting place to people who are suspicious of the modern age and of all its complexity. Rather than bending their convictions to accommodate the evidence before them, they resent science for failing to provide the reassurance that will allow them to sleep at night.

Rational thinking can only go so far. Lacking transcendence and being a purely human enterprise, science is 'only' a process based on the best available evidence and therefore liable to change over time. It does not provide absolute answers and is therefore as powerless as ever against the rigid beliefs suggested by tradition and sanctioned by society.

The quest for unscientific answers never ends (Jehovah’s witness, 2016, Buffalo, NY, USA)

Again, such stubbornness is hardly new. Back in 1801, Friedrich Schiller wrote the famous line that "against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain" (in the somewhat less elegant German original: Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens). This leads me to surmise that today's problem is perhaps less with the discomfort produced by scientific relativism as with the word stifle, the aggressive readiness to sweep reality under the rug, to look the other way, claiming it is 'part of a vast cover-up'.

In this respect I may be behind the times. A few years ago I started hearing the argument that reason and science were evil ploys used by the elites to keep the people down. (Tellingly perhaps, the same was said about literacy or correct spelling as another tool of oppression).

Uninhibited anti-intellectualism like this has gained traction. It was adopted by right-wing extremists around the time when hooliganism morphed into political revolt, when the ultras, the heavies, les casseurs emerged from their soccer stadiums and moved into politics - identity politics.

But why? It is easy to point at the effects of capitalism or the intuitions of steamroller materialism (impulse shopping, binge watching, uncontrolled eating...) which in turn have given rise to impulse politics and gut-based decision making as exemplified by Donald Trump. I persist in thinking that at least some of today's populism finds its roots in trash culture, the unrelenting cult of celebrity, in computer games, spectator sports and so-called reality TV, all of which spread symbiotically in the late 20th century.

They ended up infantilizing a broad section of the population and unmooring them from evidence-based thinking. The resulting narcissism of the selfie generation and their lack of empathy then went on to infect the internet (2). Add the rising incidence of educational failure in 'advanced' societies and a new age of ignorance, superstition and triviality has emerged.

With his ample background in reality TV, Donald Trump quickly came to epitomize a post-political age where elections were popularity contests or open invitations to insurrection. The ballot box must look increasingly quaint in an age of web manipulation and click-farming where "influencers" gather vast constituencies of "followers" on Twitter or Instagram.

‘DEUS OMNIA VIDET’: from an all-knowing god to an all-seeing internet. (London,UK, 2018)

The internet has thrown everything wide open. Without reliable gatekeepers to police the discourse or to catch post-factual nonsense, it has given free rein to people who distrust reason and dislike complexity. It also suggests that, just as there is convenient and inconvenient science, there is a good truth and a bad truth, and that one is free to choose between them.

Before the internet became universal, factual reality was better shielded from manifest unreason or scientific deviancy. All kinds of people held all manner of wild ideas, as ever, but there was a cordon sanitaire around them that kept them at a distance. In order to publish scientific findings, for instance, you needed academic credentials and peer reviews. Getting any book published was a big deal. Access to the old media, far fewer in number and therefore more influential, was similarly restricted, ring-fenced, filtered by professionals whose job it was to check and double-check information. Such a system of checks and balances may have been perceived as censorship or elitism by some, but it kept the madmen out of the room.

Not any more. The unmediated democratization of access has meant that anyone with an easy onscreen manner, no matter their lack of qualifications, can build up a following of millions. What works for make-up tutorials on YouTube can also do wonders to subvert the political process.

Liberated from restraint and social control, it wasn’t long before the web turned toxic. It was overwhelmed by conspiratorial fantasies, doublespeak and torrents of resentment.

Conspiracy thinking derives from paranoid disbelief, the haha! suspicion that things are not what they appear to be, and seems to be as intuitive as belief itself. It can be argued that one is indistinguishable from the other.

Belief in alternative medicine, in magic and miracles has been around for ages, as have religious practices such as the refusal to accept life-saving blood transfusions. Sometimes reason and paranoia actually intersect as in the perfectly rational distrust of big pharma. Generally, though, amalgamation is central to conspiracy thinking, as is the malicious disregard for observable reality.

The world changed two days after Donald Trump's was sworn in as president of the United States when photographs showed that the crowds along Washington's National Mall were much smaller than those at Barack Obama's inauguration. Not so, said Kellyanne Conway, a member of Trump's inner circle, they had 'alternative facts'. The photographs were not to be believed, your eyes deceived you. It was a historic moment. Trump's assault on reason, irrefutable facts and the media who report them hasn't stopped since that day.

Needless to say, post-truthism or postmodern disinformation didn't start with Donald Trump. Born-again George W. Bush was famously disconnected from reality, perhaps never more so than when he mistakenly declared war on Saddam Hussein in 2003 or when, standing on the deck of an American aircraft carrier only a few weeks later, he declared 'mission accomplished'.

But Donald Trump has created a matrix of all-out lies, disinformation and utter incoherence that is unprecedented and stands in the way of meaningful governance. Trump declares white to be black, only to reverse himself two minutes later and when confronted with the evidence of what he just said, turns around and says it's fake news. And his political constituency doesn't seem to mind.

Defactualization and magical thinking are now around every corner. Farcical as it may seem, some people continue to embrace the belief that mass shootings in the US are inside jobs staged by actors, that 9/11 was an obvious fabrication or, more insidiously perhaps, that European Union bureaucrats in Brussels are to blame for anaemic vacuum cleaners or dim light bulbs forced upon the United Kingdom.

Facilitated by social media, regression has corrupted politics and fed an us-against-them narrative. After moving into the mainstream with Donald Trump, it was embraced by populist imitators such as Italy's Movimento 5 Stelle (Five-star movement). They swept the elections in Italy's underprivileged, undereducated Mezzogiorno earlier this year. As a result, conspiracy theorists are now part of the ruling coalition in Rome and the incidence of measles is on the rise as unvaccinated children spread the disease. Politics in Poland and Hungary have similarly been upended by paranoia, anti-establishment rhetoric and outright anti-Semitism.

Wave after wave of primitivism and voter rage are destabilizing Western societies. Some of that anger has been a long time coming. Politics has lacked credibility for decades. Europe's leadership has been weak and often asleep at the wheel. In failing to assert its historical legitimacy, the gilded bureaucracy in Brussels has become an easy target of popular fury, no matter how uninformed or ill-advised.

The big, ugly question has become this: what to do, in representative democracies with universal franchise, when the will of the people is increasingly at variance with the public interest?

How can governments be expected to govern when hostile voters support irrational, counterproductive governance? How does the British government go about implementing Brexit, a decision imposed by a belligerent electorate against the country's manifest interest? How can the European Union continue when so many members of its own parliament oppose the very idea of a united Europe?

The Roman empire took centuries to unravel. We live in speedier times.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(1) Norbert Elias (1897-1990): Humana conditio (1985)

(2) ‘They Laughed at Berlusconi’ http://peakwealth.tumblr.com/post/146399295392