Ahsoka Tano; Mightiest Force Wielder (Book 1: The Rise)

Alone on Coruscant 4

One day, Mike actually wondered, when the homeless shelter would move into "his place"? And see, the same evening a lady from the homeless shelter came telling him they wanted to move in soon, the kitchen would come within the next days. Gratefully Mike informed her, that staying here has helped him a lot to get his feet back on the ground and he would like to help putting the kitchen in. The lady replied that it would be wonderful and he could still stay there for some time, if he would not mind that the place would get full now.

It reminded Mike that he had to get a place of his own, sooner or later. Better sooner. He also needed to make progress with the armor, before the homeless shelter would get filled with stuff. In regards to a place of his own, he rented a small apartment in an apartment tower in a middle class area. Parking space in a parking deck was included. Once he had moved in, he soon found out, that the air condition was not sufficient for the size of the apartment, probably the builders saved cost. Somehow he felt the urgency, to put a new window into the sleeping room. One which could be opened and thus he had it installed. In regards to the armor, the problem was credits. He did not have enough credits to buy a significant number of obralisks, even though he had saved most of his wages. Following old habits, he ended up going to a gambling mal. Upon entering, all was familiar to him again, the smell, the noise, the people, the gambling machines, he was all excited. The smell of winning money was in the air. Something felt bad though, not right. He had brought almost all of his savings. He decided for a card game and won right in the first round, then again. That was a good day, a lucky day, he told himself, though a feeling told him to leave, leave immediately. He wanted to raise his stake, when the feeling got so strong, that he decided to give in and leave. Outside the gambling mal, an inner voice asked him why the owners have set the place up in the first place? For him to win money there or for them to win money there?

In the meantime, Mike had discovered, why the thought control system would not work, when using the force: the energy simply overloaded the thought pickup sensors. The chip sensor, that Ahsoka got inserted, suffered from the same problem. He did test it on the cap, not inside a brain though. Thus he did not know how bad it was inside the brain, could be better or worse.

He also found out, that Darth Vader more or less constantly had to use the force to move his heavy artificial body. Only using the force would make Vader's artificial body fast enough in fights. Mike reckoned that he constantly used the force to move his body to improve his speed further.

There was no solution to the problem. When the sensor is getting overloaded, then it's overloaded. A less sensitive sensor would not get overloaded, but was not sensitive enough to pick up the little energy from thoughts. He demoed a little motor, which was working with magnetic sensors. It ran fine, until he put a strong magnet in its vicinity, then it stopped after making an excruciating noise first. That's at least what Mike told Sienar and Vader.

With that sensor overload issue, the system was pretty useless for Darth Vader and he lost interest in it. Nevertheless, Sienar started mass production of the thought control system. For "non force sensitive" pilots only, was good enough for them. After all, there were not that many force sensitive pilots around. It soon turned out however, that the sensors would suffer from overload through electrical discharge inside the helmets of tie fighter pilots. Mike knew, that that was a very simple problem to fix (exchange the polyester helmet inlay by a cotton inlay), but Sienar made a political decision to not pursue this technology anymore because they were focusing on another new technology = fully automated TIE fighters without pilot.

That decision meant, the system was reserved for Mike and friends. And, he already had an idea, how that sensor overload problem could potentially be solved, but that one he did not tell anybody. Unfortunately he could not work on it any further, cause he had no access to a force wielder anymore.