| abstract
| - President of the United States Newt Gingrich was sitting at his desk during a conference. The Secretaries of State, Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Justice, Labor, Transportation, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs were all in attendance, plus three four star Army generals, David Petraeus, Jim Morris, and David Rodruiguez, the director of the CIA Micheal Morrell, and director of the FBI Robert Mueller. "So," said the President. "I presume everyone here's well. Let's get down to business. So we need cut 10% of——" Suddenly the door of the room slammed open and three men that the President recognized appeared. They were Robert White, his vice president, and the senators of Florida and Iowa Marco Rubio and Chuck Grassley. "Mr. President, we have a situation." said White, sitting down in an empty seat. "What is it?" said Gringich. "It better be more important than what we were about to talk about. Another stock market crash? Terrorist bombimg? Spit it out, Bob." "Take a look at this." Bob slid the picture down the table to Obama. "And the story on this photograph is?" "Around 2:30 Central Standard Time this morning, this unidentified object crash-landed in Black Hawk County, Iowa, near the city of Cedar Falls. Reports from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which detected the object, display not only that the rear of the object produced trillions of ions a millisecond, but it also slowed down during impact. The impact and resulting shockwave of the object were theoretically less that an object of its size, since only about a quarter of the population was awakened during impact." said White. "Wha... but the... and the... but...Wow!" was all the president could comprehend to say. "So, basically we have a possible extraterrestrial vehicle or something on our hands." explained Grassley. "Correct." continued White."Ten of the local police units are on the scene, but, other then them and a few farmers who witnessed the crash, no civilians will be able to get a look at it until we've figured out what it is." "Okay, I get it. Now why is he here?" said the president, pointing at Rubio. "At about the same time, a similar object crash landed near Tampa, Florida, in Pinellas County. "Same thing?" asked the president. . "Same thing. A little larger, and a different shape, but, Yeah" "Well, what do you think I should do about it? Any suggestions?" "Mr. President, we have almost all the army, air force, national guard, and marine corps units in the entire United States standing by, plus a couple hundred foreign units. I need you're authorisation to release them." "Well...Okay, you have my authorisation." It was dark. That was all Jak could comprehend as consciousness flickered back into him. Last thing he remembered was that he was evading an Imperial Guardian-class cruiser, and suddenly they were sucked ito a wormhole and were about to crash-land on a planet. His throat was scratchy and dry, and he didn't know how long he had been unconscious. "Anyone there?" he asked. There was no answer. Jak stood up feebly, and limped around in the dark. "Hello?" Then he tripped and landed on something cold. A body. He thought. He knew if he was in space, the artificial gravity would be off because he had accidentally hit the switch during the chaos of the landing. So they must be on the unknown planet. "Sir?" said a voice. "Are you there? Is that you?" Jak smiled. he knew that voice. It was 2-8B, the ship's 2-1B medical droid. "Are you there?" "Yeah. It's me Jak. I'm over here, by the command chair, it think." Jak said. "I'm coming, sir." replied the droid. Jak sighed. Droids always knew where organics were with all their sensors and technology when even organics themselves didn't. Just then he saw two little balls of light floating in air heading towards him. Then he felt the metal legs of a medical supervisor droid and he stood up. "For kriff's sake, 8B, Where are we?" asked Jak with a tone of desperateness in his voice. "I actually am not sure, sir, where exactly we are. You would probably be better off asking MS-48, but I'm not sure even he knows." said 8B. "Well, go activate him anyway." said Jak. "If you say so, sir." Minutes later he returned with MS-48 and another droid, S-3PO. "Okay, MS, where are we?" he asked. "Actually, I'm not quite sure. It is quite possible that we are in the Unknown Regions or Wild Space, but with that wormhole we went through, I cannot be sure where in the galaxy we are, or if we are even in our own galaxy. We have detected about one hundred organics surrounding this craft, but it looks like a primitive settlement, or at least an outland farming colony. Would you like me to turn on my illumination?" "Yes, please." Jak had trouble adjusting from pitch darkness to bright light, then he looked around. The bridge was in shambles. Crewmen were spread-eagled everywhere, consoles were smashed or smouldering, and in general the whole place looked like a nexu had torn through it. There was no operational machinery working in the bridge. Clearly, power was offline. The light had managed to wake everyone else up, and soon the bridge was bustling with life again. "Oh, there's my medical dummy." said 8B, beckoning toward the floor. There lay a dummy of a human sprawled on the floor, and the thing that Jak had touched in the dark. "You're safe." said Carda as she kissed him on the cheek. "So are you." said Jak. "Is everyone okay?" "Yeah." "Jak!" said Chall as he approached the captain."I have good news and bad news. Which one do you want to hear first?" "Hmmm. Let's say... good news." "You know that planet with life that we were contacting before we crashed?" "Yeah" "Well, that's the planet we're on." said Chall. "And the bad news?" "We don't know what the life is. It could be Imperial, Chiss, or even some undiscovered species or race. Our best hope is that they're an Outland farming colony. They look primitive, but we can't be sure what they're capable of." With that, Jak turned to face the scratched and scraped window pane on the bridge, which gave a somewhat blurred view of the surrounding area. he could make out about a hundred humanoids with slugthrowers surrounding the ship, with strange-looking groundcars with lights on ther top, and could make out at least one tank, with tracks. "I'm going to send out a few probe droids." said Jak to Chall."Get them ready for deployment." "Yes, sir." Jak turned to face S-3PO. "I want you to go out there and negotiate with them, whoever they are. See if they're friendly." "Outside?" responded the droid, looking as horrified as a droid could get. "I can't. I won't. You organics always risk the lives of other droids before yourselves. We're innocent. It's too dangerous. I, an innocent droid wait here, serving my master loyally when he asks me to go outside. I'm standing here while you're having delusions of grandeur about me. Surrender is a perfectly reasonable option. Just think of it. I'm sure they will be quite merciful. besides, it is against my programming to—" "Just do it. I'll give you an oil bath when we get back to base, and anything else that you want me to do for the next month." said Jak. "Well...Okay. I can admit that you do have a way with droids, Master Jak." "Thanks." Jak turned back to Chall. "I'm going out there." he said. "What?" "I'm going out there. I want to see what's outside. Maybe 3PO will buy me enough time for me to slip through all the lifeforms outside." "Are you crazy?" "Look," said Jak, leaning toward Chall. "We're never going get out of here if we don't explore." "But—" "But nothing." "They might be unfriendly." "You don't known that." "They might kill us all." "You don't know that either." "Fine, you can go." "Okay. Thank you." "Just promise me one thing." "What?" "Don't sound the alarm this time." Jak grinned. He knew this was going to be alright. At least, he hoped. Four-Star United States Army General Jim Morris stood atop his M1A2 Abrams tank, holding up binoculars to his eyes. He was watching the hatch of the crash-landed extraterrestrial spacecraft. "General Morris! I found something!" called a voice. The general turned around. He saw his personsal assistant Colonel Sandusky running towards him with a piece of paper in his hand. "What is it, Sandusky?" "Well, you told me to make a search for anything relating to that ship, right?", "Yeah." "Well, I saw those markings on the ship, and I thought they were familiar. I remember the name was Aurabesh, so I googled it, and I found it was related to Star Wars. So I went on the Star Wars wiki online, you know, Wookiepedia, and I found this article about something called a CR90 corvette. You know, the one the rebels used?" General Morris looked completely blank. "Do you ever watch any movies? Anyway, the picture of they had of it on there looks was exactly like that ship. Can you believe that? If you want to look at it, here are the website coordinates." Morris took the paper handed to him by Sandusky. It read in print: corvette "Thanks." Suddenly men began screaming and some ran back the exterior of the crater. "It's opening!" cried a soldier. The general looked at the hatch of the ship as steam poured out of it. "Return positions!" hollered Morris. The sound of cocking guns all at once almost made him deaf. Every man in the half-mile long crater aimed their guns at the hatch. Almost immediately after the hatch opened it closed. Morris could make out a figure in the steam. He imagined an otherworldly creature to come out, something hideous and ugly. Instead, out came a blue humanoid robot, with lighted eyes, a round figure in the center of its torso, and legs and wires, all right where they should be. "Hello, my name is S-3PO, Organic-Cyborg relations. I am fluent in over 6 million forms of communication an can fluently and readily prepare negotiations between this planet and our ship. In case you need to know, we are——" "Get him!" yelled a Colonel. Men ran up and grabbed the droid. "You ruffians! Get off me! I ask you for one little time for negotiations, and you att——." "Take him back to Base Nine." commanded General Morris.
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