The following journal entries are those of Stormtrooper TK-726, a struggling, low-level attorney stationed on the first Death Star. They largely depict his trials and tribulations as a last-resort Imperial attorney. Found floating in space by a band of smugglers, Mos Eisley Radio acquired the journals and has set to work on translating and documenting the content. Though his fate is still shrouded in mystery, at this point, one thing is strikingly unclear: Who knows why TK-726 even bothered to record his these things?
TK-726 IN
JOURNAL ENTRY 11-30-21
The Death Star is not small. Sure, it looks a little like a moon from a distance, but when you live inside this place, it can get ridiculous.
I ran out of exhibit tags last week. I meant to order them but forgot. Now I’m a day away from a hearing on some marital dispute and I don’t have any tags and no time to order them. I have to go get them myself.
It turns out that the only place that sells legal supplies is this little joint way over on level 6 in sector 57. When I first looked it up, I didn’t even realize this station had 57 sectors and then I found out why. It’s completely on the other side, as far from my office as geometrically possible. This was going to be a trek.
When you have to travel a distance like this, you don’t walk. You take an inner-transport. It’s built into a tube system that runs the circumference of the station. It’s usually dirty, filled with questionable individuals, and often smells pretty bad. In short, it sucks and I try to avoid it at all costs.
As luck would have it (and I say this loosely because once you get on an inner-transport, events like this seem to be inevitable) the guy sitting next to me turned out to be completely wasted. He was some low-end Imperial officer, probably a few months out of training. As luck would also have it (again, loosely), he wanted to talk. I was hoping he wouldn’t be making an assumption that I was an attorney because of the suit.
Attempts to accurately translate his drunken slurs into coherent typed phrases are, unsurprisingly, exhausting. Just assume that this guy wasn’t exactly a holodrama voiceover candidate. “If you’re driving a speeder and are pulled over by a sec (security) trooper, do you have to give a breath sample?” he slurs. Crap.
I try to ignore him. Guess the results.
“Hey! You’re a lawyer aren’t you?” This would be one of the rare times where I actually wish that I had to wear armor like everyone else instead of just the helmet. Finally, I oblige out of a morbid curiosity.
“Why did you get pulled over?” I ask.
“I was pulled over.”
“You just said you got pulled over”
“No I didn’t. I said I WAS pulled over.”
“Ok. So you weren’t driving when the trooper found you?”
“Nope.”
Well now we have a real mystery on our hands. At this point he’s smiling, clearly knowing that he’s got his hooks in me. However, his rubbery, fluid speech makes it all a strange, largely unentertaining game to really make out what he’s saying. I’m sparing you this aspect of the mystery.
“So you were in your car, but not driving when the trooper found you.”
“Right!”
“How long had you NOT been driving when the trooper found you?”
He had to think about this one. “None,” he says.
“None?”
“None.” He seemed satisfied with that answer. I was not.
“Why weren’t you driving when he found you?” I had an idea.
“My speeder was busted.”
Winner.
“You crashed your speeder into a sec-trooper, didn’t you?” I laughed.
“Yep.” He seemed pleased. “Big Time. Wrecked his whole back end.”
“How mad was he?” I asked, already knowing the obvious answer.
“He wasn’t happy.”
Now the million credit question.
“So how wasted were you?”
“Pretty wasted.”
Of course. There was a long pause. He seemed to be trying to formulate a thought, but I didn’t want to let the conversation get back into a potential legal advice scenario with this clown, so I struck pre-emptively.
“Where are you going?”
“I gotta go to court to get my permit back.”
“Today? Which court?” Obviously, going to court hammered to get a speeder permit back was less than advisable. Naturally, I withheld such advice, knowing it would be ignored in the unlikely event he even remembered it.
“Traffic court, man.”
I looked at the map on the wall of the transport.
“Traffic court was like 7 stops ago, dude.”
He looked at me with his head sort of wavering, then stood up and tottered over to the map. He was staring at it, kind of swaying, when the transport stopped suddenly and he flew sideways. His body turned at the last second and his face hit a stability pole flush. Bang. Out cold.
I was completely in shock. My mouth was wide open and after a few seconds I heard him start to groan on the ground. I knew he wasn’t dead. I don’t know why, but I just burst out laughing. The next stop was mine and I was crying under my helmet I was laughing so hard. It took nearly 10 minutes to compose myself to get the legal tags because I was just completely unhinged.
I wish I would have gotten his ID to check out how his hearing went.
TK-726 OUT