Purgatory Interlude

[ysonesse]

Dream World: Bonadan

"Do you know what 'Gahido' is?"

They were sitting in a crowded spaceport café. The sound of ships landing and departing could be heard just outside the building. There was the buzzing of indistinct conversations in the background.

Han had a beer mug sitting in front of him on the table. In front of her sat a small black bottle topped with a gold cap.

"No, I've never heard of it. Is that some kind of Corellian thing?" Nalieza asked.

"Yeah, it's one of those weird things from the Ancient Days. Something my grandmother believed in."

"But you never did."

Han took the mug and drank from it. "No. Religion's never been one of my strong points."

'That's not surprising." She picked up the bottle and began twisting the cap.

"No, you don't open it that way," he said.

"How do you open it, then?"

"Let me see it for a minute."

She put it down, and he reached out and picked it up. Then something struck him, and he looked at it for a few seconds. Like he recognized it from somewhere.

"Have you seen that bottle before?"

"Something like it." He turned his head and noticed the curtain of D'ian orchid vine hanging by the side of the table. "Actually, this whole place looks familiar."

The sound of booming engines came from outside, interrupting both their thoughts.

Han blinked, and then said, "Bonadan?"

She looked at him. "What are you talking about?"

"This place," he tapped his finger on the table. "I was here, on Bonadan. Back in my smuggling days."

"Isn't that the Corporate Sector?" She reached out and twirled one of the vines around her right index finger.

"It should be, unless they moved the planet into The Sword's Edge."

"Are Bonadan and Gahido the same place? Because we were starting to get into that topic before the bottle distracted the conversation."

"Yeah, that's right. Sorry about that." He leaned back. "Well, I've been doing a lot of thinking. Because that's all I can do since I'm stuck. And I started thinking about what my grandmother used to tell me about her religion. One of those things was about what happens after you die. There's a place for the good people, a place for the bad people. And then, there's a place for the ones who weren't one or the other."

"You're talking about limbo."

"That's what Gahido is in the Ancient Days. Actually, it's also got a lot of purgatory thrown in to make things interesting."

"So you think being in carbonite is your form of being in a combined limbo and purgatory experience?"

"What else can I call it? There's no other way to look at it."

Nalieza shifted in her seat. "I guess so...but that would mean you're dead. And you are obviously aren't."

"Are you sure? How do you know this isn't some kind of purgatory for me, and that I'm being tested before I can go on to some better place?"

"Because you've been alive this long. I doubt you've died since we've started having these encounters."

"That doesn't prove anything. Maybe I died during one of those times when you're awake. I might be imagining all of this. You know that stuff we talked about before? About the dead dreaming?" He stared off to the side, looking blankly through the vine curtain. "I'm starting to believe you were right."

"Han, you are not dead. Stop thinking that way."

"How do you know? Maybe I'm just sitting around in a nowhere waiting for somebody to decide where I wind up for eternity." He slammed the mug down, then put his hand to his forehead.

Nalieza wanted to say something. Anything that would convince him. But she had to admit that he might be correct. She had no way to prove that he was still alive on some level.

"I don't know what's real anymore," he said in a low voice.

She reached across and put her hand lightly on his wrist. "Nothing's real when you're dreaming. That's why it takes place inside your mind." Then she a little. "But even when it isn't completely real, it's still a good thing. Because you know when you're dreaming that you still have life."
"You still think that I'm not dead. Why?"
She gave him a steady look. "Because I can feel it."

"Did you just graduate from Jedi University?"

"It's not a mind trick, if that's what you mean. I don't do any of those. Except for one...being able to go walking around in dreamscapes. Of living people. Notice what I said there. Living." She pointed at him. "Right now, that would be you."

He was silent for a few moments. Then he said, "This would be a stupid place for purgatory. A spaceport caf. A Corporate Sector caf, no less."

Nalieza laughed. "Oh, absolutely. What a terrible way to spend your afterlife." She looked down at the table and noticed the still unopened bottle. "With bottles that you don't know how to open. What a miserable way to nonexist."

"I do know how to open it." He put his thumb on top of the gold cap.

"Aren't you going to pick up the bottle first?"

"No, because this is what happens when you open it." He pressed down on the cap. It popped off, and a large chorus line of letters and figures suddenly appeared on the black surface of the bottle. They danced around the bottle in gaudy colors, bright and overly showy. There was a smaller grouping of symbols down at the bottom, flashing and making their own rotation in a similar but less obnoxious fashion than their larger counterparts.

One minute passed before the tacky light show ended.

"See what I mean? Would you want to hold that in your hand?"

She picked up the bottle. "Now, since it's not doing...whatever it was just doing."

"Believe it or not, that's advertising. Corporate Sector style."

"Advertising? What, exactly?"

"It's Bonadan wine. That stuff running across the bottle talks about what it tastes like, how sanitary the conditions were when it was bottled. Pointless trivia like that."

"You're joking."

"Nope."

She shook her head. "You visited some weird places, Solo."