Hopefully not, yes ma'am.

I mean, most of them are either way before or way after your time, I think - but still.  And I can't assume anything I know about the Force is right, either.  Ugh.  Next thing I know Korriban's going to turn out to be some lush jungle planet instead of a sandball full of Sith tombs.  

Korriban is a desert world known for its tombs, yes ma'am.

...I think I was being - well, not exactly sarcastic, but - close enough - but thank you nonetheless.

...Actually, I do have one more thing I want to check - does 'rakghoul' mean anything to you?  That one might be a live problem.  Not exactly galactic-scale threatening, but it lasted a while.

...I'd say your alchemists were too focused on whether they could to think about whether they should, except that releasing a plague upon whoever-it-was's enemies was the point of that particular exercise.

No ma'am.

...Well, that's...  Something.  Sith alchemy is a thing, right?

Yes ma'am.

...This probably seems unrelated, but - how much onboard memory do you have?  As in, databanks, not active processing.  I - well, I don't know what the design philosophy would have been for your language modules, which seems foolish in retrospect when I had been hoping they'd be a source of information.

My system handles various kinds of memory separately from each other, ma'am; I'm not sure how to best answer your question. I don't have an especially large database of general knowledge, though; for the most part it's intended to be equivalent to what a normal adult human with no special knowledge living in the Empire would be aware of, plus any knowledge necessary to do my work well.

I see.

I suspect that means that you wouldn't know if rakghouls were a thing, though, considering that in the alternate history they were more of a low simmer of plaguevector in Taris's metaphorical back-alleys than something you nuked from orbit just to be sure nothing got away.  Unless you were a Mandalorian, apparently, in which case they actually did nuke a freshly (and totally) infested planet from orbit.

(...Frankly, something is very wrong with that picture, because I can't fucking believe it was that much of a threat to properly armored Mandalorians while not being that much of a threat to a blasted city-planet full of people who didn't fight for a living, but I don't make the rules.  I think there was a post-exposure prophylaxis at some point, at least.  That probably helped.)

I wouldn't expect to know about a problem on that scale if it wasn't happening near lord Pritruth's compound, yes ma'am.

Yeah.  Drat.  Well, thank you, regardless.  I now know that I probably don't know anything!

(...The exclamation point is sarcastic.)

Yes ma'am; I'm sorry this wasn't more useful.

Will you be coming for another lightsaber lesson this evening?

No, no, I'm sorry about that.  I wish I had something useful, but it turns out all I had was from the wrong universe.

Re: lessons: Of course?  I'll probably need to tinker with the comms a bit while I'm there because realistically I shouldn't have said some of this over a nominally insecure line - not that we're realistically expecting anything like that to be a problem, but it's a matter of principle - and also I think Great-Aunt Ophelia will want to be able to message you if and as we figure out what we're going to do about Pritruth, and the people that enabled what he did.

I expect master Deskyl will want to talk to you about the makeup of lord Pritruth's compound, too; perhaps we should plan to meet with your great-aunt for dinner after the lesson?

That does seem like good information to have, but - I feel like you should know, we're still - I'm still - working on what we'd need to use that information.  Teleporting out of local - phase space - is hard to do.  And I just had to make that word up.

I do have a couple ideas, but this is - well.  It was cutting-edge magic before multiverse travel got factored in.

Still...

Better we get the information while it's fresh, so.  Perhaps we should, actually.

"...Do you --?"

"Yes."

She's up for it.

Yes ma'am. The schedule should work well if you come to work on the comms while master Deskyl is watching the sunset, if you'd like.

That seems workable.

We'll see you then.

And so they shall.  She arrives, with her enchanting tools (as well as her lightsaber(!), which has not left her side since it was made), a bit before sunset, because she doesn't want to interrupt Deskyl's meditation by poking at her comm.