It wants to build a nest. A burrow. Its last one was taken over by a pole-snake, and the mouse wants no part of that serpent. A skittermouse burrow is a peculiar thing: The critter tends to find a hole in the stone or the sand, and it lines its future home with bits of detritus scavenged from, well, anywhere and everywhere. A dead man in the desert will remain only so long before the skittermice come and take whatever the carrion birds have not: leather from a boot, tufts of hair from the top of the scalp, fingernails. Stories have been told of nomads in the desert seeing a bubbling fountain oasis in the distance only to come upon it and find the fountain is really an undulating pile of skittermice. Scare them and they scatter, revealing a dead man reduced to little more than bone.
Once the mouse has its burrow material, the creature begins to look for a larger object with which to plug its burrow to keep out other animals such as, say, pole-snakes. Presently, this skittermouse has found a bit of wire. Wire is good. Wire can be bent with the mouse’s tiny scissor teeth, and turned into a little place to curl up and sleep—or a place for babies to do the same.
But these wires are stubborn. They just won’t move. Tug, tug, tug.
Nothing.
They’re stuck. Anchored tight to a bulky hunk of metal—at least, a hunk of metal bulky by the skittermouse’s standards.
Ah. But what is this? A black metal thing. Cylindrical and already hanging off the side—it hums and sparks. This would make a most excellent burrow plug, would it not? The mouse gives up on the wires and moves now to this other thing, and the skittermouse squishes itself between the black object and the metal bulk to which it’s attached—the mouse suffers a sharp spark, but for a good burrow plug, it will endure. It must endure.
The mouse squeaks as it noses the black piece free.
The mouse gets behind it and with its delicate front paws begins to roll the cylinder into the dark, hoping very hard that ripper-raptors or vworkka do not spy it doing the industrious work of merely surviving on this heartless, desiccated planet.
For a time, all is still after the mouse leaves.
Then—then—two lights flicker and go bright as moons.
Slowly, surely, something comes back to life.
—
This is Mister Bones.
The B1 battle droid’s memory matrix remembers many things: It remembers darkness.
It remembers marching with its skeletal brethren in perfect lockstep, advancing on a village surrounded by green grasses, innocent people huddling there in the night. Innocent people who would not survive thanks to this battalion of battle droids.
It remembers spears of light, green and blue, cutting through the night and taking those metal men apart, one after the other after the other. Showers of sparks. Searing magma lines of melted metal. It remembers an incongruous memory, too: those beams of light held in its own hands. Not two hands, but four. Spinning about, vwom-vwom-vwom-vwom.
It remembers—no, he remembers dancing the la-ley. Singing for children. A program to amuse them. A program to please.
It remembers triple sixes. A designation, perhaps. Once.
More darkness.
This matrix is not one thing. It knows that. Bones is many minds and many lives. Some known. Others hidden. Protocol programs. Martial arts. Combat strategies. Puppetry. Child-rearing. They are fitted together by an eager if inelegant hand, the hand of a clever boy who needed a friend.
Bones recalls him, too. Friend. Boy. Temmin.
MASTER.
Though the boy is not his master because of how he is programmed. Temmin is the droid’s master because Bones knows the value of gratitude. Bones has lived many lives. All of them except this one are now ended. To be given life again—even as a patchwork quilt of identities—is a special thing. Rare and precious, and Bones knows that Temmin is his Maker.
And so, Temmin is his Master. It is only fair.
Bones, above all else, cares about fairness. About loyalty.
About friendship.
His friend’s face swims into his matrix-mind. Embers of data in the darkness bloom like mechanical synapses, and Bones remembers Temmin—panicked—giving him one last set of commands: Launch and get to Jakku. Find Mom. Protect Mom!
Mom. Mother. Temmin’s mother.
NORRA.
That is her, there in the dark. A newer, fresher image hits the droid’s memory banks like a concussive explosion: the image of blaster bolts clumsily dissecting him. Bones struggles to extend his matrix-mind outward to his limbs, but none of them respond. Diagnostic checks cascade through him and all of them report back: DESTRUCTION. All four limbs are detached and unresponsive. The droid’s head, too, is partly detached—its socket lies ruptured, but the metal skull remains connected to the torso by a telescoping cable.
Woe darkens the matrix-mind. Despair is not merely a human condition; droids know the doom of existence and the end of things. And Bones worries suddenly—a deep, hungry worry like a slick-walled pit one cannot escape from, a pit where even light is swallowed whole. He worries that he is dead. That he will not be able to fulfill his mission. That the life his Maker and Master gave him has been squandered, ended now on the floor of this desert, near to the Maker’s own mother.
The droid wills this to be untrue. Bones struggles against the fear that all his lives have led to this one worthless moment.
But! The restraining bolt that the trooper put upon him—his diagnostics return and inform him that though his limbs are gone, so too is the lock. And then, in that revelation, a new memory surfaces. Or, rather, resurfaces. That memory brings with it three letters: ARM.
Three letters that stand for three words:
Autonomic.
Repair.
Mode.