Star Wars - Kenobi

PROLOGUE
    “IT’S TIME FOR YOU to go home, sir.”
    Wyle Ulbreck woke up and looked at his empty glass. “What’s that you say?”
    The green-skinned bartender prodded the old human on the shoulder. “I said it’s time for you to go home, Master Ulbreck. You’ve had enough.”
    “That ain’t what I meant,” Ulbreck said, rubbing the crust from his bloodshot eyes. “You called me ‘sir.’ And then ‘Master.’ ” He leered suspiciously at the barkeep. “Are you an organic—or a droid ?”
    The bartender sighed and shrugged. “ This again? I told you when you asked earlier. My eyes are large and red because I’m a Duros. I called you what I did because I’m polite. And I’m polite because I’m not some old moisture farmer, deranged from too many years out in the—”
    “Because,” the white-whiskered man interrupted, “I don’t do business with no droids. Droids are thieves, the lot of them.”
    “Why would a droid steal?”
    “T’give to other droids,” Ulbreck said. He shook his head. The bartender was clearly an idiot.
    “What would—” the bartender started to ask. “Never mind,” he said instead. He reached for a bottle and refilled the old farmer’s glass. “I’m going to stop talking to you now. Drink up.”
    Ulbreck did exactly that.
    To Ulbreck’s mind, there was one thing wrong with the galaxy: people. People and droids. Well, those were two things—but then again, wasn’t it wrong to limit what was wrong with the galaxy to just one thing? How fair was that? That was how the old farmer’s thinking tended to go, even when he was sober. In sixty standard years of moisture farming, Ulbreck had formed one theory about life after another. But he’d spent enough of the early years working alone—odd, how not even his farmhands wanted to be around him—that all his notions had piled up, unspoken.
    That was what visits to town were for: opportunities for Ulbreck to share the wisdom of a lifetime. When he wasn’t getting robbed by diabolical droids pretending to be green bartenders.
    They weren’t supposed to allow droids inside Junix’s Joint—that was what the ancient sign outside the Anchorhead bar said. Junix, whoever he was, was long since dead and buried in the sands of Tatooine, but his bar still stood: a dimly lit dive where the cigarra smoke barely covered the stink of farmers who’d been in the desert all day. Ulbreck seldom visited the place, preferring an oasis establishment closer to home. But having traveled to Anchorhead to chew out a vaporator parts supplier, he’d stopped in to fill his canteen.
    Now, half a dozen lum ales later, Ulbreck began thinking about home. His wife was waiting for him there, and he knew he had better go. Then again, his wife was waiting for him there, and that was reason enough for him to stay. He and Magda had had a horrible fight that morning over whatever it was they’d fought about the night before. Ulbreck couldn’t remember what that was now, and it pleased him.
    Still, he was an important man, with many underlings who would steal him blind if he was away too long. Through a haze, Ulbreck looked to the chrono on the wall. There were numbers there, and some of them were upside down. And dancing. Ulbreck scowled. He was no fan of dancing. Ears buzzing, he slid off the bar stool, intent on giving the digits a piece of his mind.
    That was when the floor attacked him. A swift, scurrilous advance, intent on striking him in the head when he wasn’t looking.
    It would have succeeded, had the hand not caught him.
    “Careful, there,” said the hand’s owner.
    Bleary-eyed, Ulbreck looked up the arm and into the hooded face of his rescuer. Blue eyes looked back at him from beneath sandy-colored eyebrows.
    “I don’t know you,” Ulbreck said.
    “Yes,” the bearded human responded, helping the old farmer back onto the stool. Then he moved a few paces away to get the bartender’s attention.
    The brown-cloaked man had something in his other arm, Ulbreck now saw—a bundle of some kind. Alerted, Ulbreck looked around to see whether his own bundle was missing before remembering that he never had a bundle.
    “This isn’t a nursery,” the bartender told the newcomer, although Ulbreck couldn’t figure out why.
    “I just need some directions,” the hooded man responded.
    Ulbreck knew many directions. He’d lived long enough on Tatooine to visit lots of places, and while he hated most of them and would never go back, he