Now our story is over. And I guess you think you’ve just read an “alternate universe” story about how things could have gone in the Star Wars universe. This story must be nothing more than the fevered ramblings of some obscure writer, so many wasted keystrokes sent off into the void of cyberspace. Right?

That’s surely all it is.

But what if I told you that this story is actually canon? And what if I told you that the Episode Seven released in theaters is actually nothing more than corporate fanfiction? Call me crazy, if you must… and yet I can prove that I’m right!

* * *

There’s a country club called Circle Jay’s just outside of town where I work weekend shifts. Sometimes they hold Eyes Wide Shut-style parties for local luminaries. Don’t be too impressed, it’s people like, the guy who runs the state’s biggest concrete mixing company, or the head of a union, the guy in charge of local news, stuff like that. That being said, they are into sketchy stuff. I’ve had to help drivers handle drugged up strippers, or set up props for weird rituals. My first time there, I thought I was peeling back the curtain and finding out how the world really worked. And maybe I was. But at this point, on the night that I want to tell you about, I had already built up a callous on my soul, and I didn’t really care what they were up to.

One late Friday night, when I was keeping tabs on jackets and cellphones at the desk, one of our guests - a small man in a fine suit - rushed out the side door cursing up a storm. He was heading straight for the golf course. Usually guests left at the end of the main event, and since the golf course was surrounded by dark woods perfect for getting lost in, I told my coworker he would have to handle the station by himself. I raced after the man.

The little man was storming off toward the greens, his elbows bent as if expecting to clobber an opponent. In a sudden fit of rage he stripped off his masquerade mask and threw it on the ground, then continued storming off.

“Sir!” I said. “Is everything okay?”

“No, everything is not okay!” he shouted. Turning around to face me for a moment, he added, “I’m going for a walk!”

I nearly tripped. Though I couldn’t be sure, the man looked exactly like George Lucas! We couldn’t exactly let the creator of the Star Wars franchise get lost and die of dehydration on the ninth hole, so I set off after him.

“Quit following me!” he immediately shouted.

“I’m not!” I said, lying. “That is, I’m just keeping an eye on you. I’ll get in trouble if something happens to a guest.”

“Get in trouble?” he said, not bothering to slow down.

I doubled my pace to catch up with him. “Yeah, I’ll get fired. Or worse!”

He sighed and gave me a long look. While it was dark outside, I began to imagine that it really was George Lucas. Whatever the case, something about what I had said seemed to cool his anger.

“So you’re not one of those perverts?” he said.

“I just work the door, sir.”

“Work the door, huh? Lucky kid!”

Though it seemed like a joke, his sentiment sounded genuine. Suddenly uncomfortable with the situation, I laughed nervously. “Are you mad, sir?” I said, not really sure how to handle the situation.

George Lucas sighed again. We kept walking, drawing further and further away from the lights set up around the country club, and deeper into the cool, dark night. The sounds of laughter and music faded, and soon there was only the soft squelch of the manicured lawn beneath our feet.

“Mad doesn’t begin to describe it,” he finally said. “Everyone thinks I have it made. I was robbed. But then again, I’m a billionaire, so who cares, right? Might as well take everything from old Georgie. He can afford it!”

I got scared, because I thought at first that he meant someone had stolen something from him that night. There was no camera behind the desk where my coworker and I worked, so if my coworker stole something from someone’s jacket, it would be hard to get out of the way of the backlash. Slowly it dawned on me that he wasn’t talking about somebody taking his wallet or his phone.

“Are you talking about Star Wars?” I said. “I thought you… uh, I thought you sold it to Disney because of… well, the money.”

George scoffed. “Kid, I was already a billionaire. Why would I need to sell anything when I had that kind of money? Especially not the most important thing in the world. To me, at least.”

“But how could someone steal Star Wars from you?”

George turned and looked me up and down, as if gauging me. “Once you get to a certain point in life, money ceases to mean anything. I’ve got more of it than anyone could ever want. And it’s not just me. Everyone else working at my level is the same way. They don’t need money, so that’s not their first concern.” George’s eyes narrowed with long-buried anger. “No. For them, it’s about power, and control. They saw something they wanted, and nobody was going to keep them from taking what they wanted.”

It all sounded a little ridiculous to me. What were they, gangsters? Was some corporate thug in a suit going to send someone over to George Lucas’s mansion to beat him up if he didn’t sign the papers and hand over Star Wars? I had no idea what to think of any of this. “Huh,” I said, then fell silent.

“What? You don’t believe me?” George smirked. “Let me tell you how the world really works. It’s not money that runs the world. It’s blackmail. You get powerful people together and offer them stuff they can’t normally buy. Sex, drugs, things like that. But you take pictures the whole time, that way you’ve got something on the person. And maybe they have stuff on you, too. So everyone’s blackmailing each other. That way nobody talks. But if they do talk, you put pressure on them. Crooked intelligence agencies run all media, and politicians are just temp employees taking direction from intel agency spooks. Twitter is nothing but assassins sending codes to each other. You know that? Or ads from people selling black market goods. Some of the most popular people in the world are just AI-generated faces attached to CIA comms about worldwide drug production. Moving product you can use for blackmail honeypots is the true currency of kings. Money?” George snorted. “You can print that stuff out all day long. When you print out too much and the country collapses from inflation, you just move somewhere else, start the whole thing over again. Did you know that?”

“No-o-o,” I said, laughing. “Didn’t know about that!”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so! But now you do.”

We walked in uncomfortable silence. I considered what he had said. While I really had no idea what he was talking about, I knew something of how he felt. “I think I get it,” I said. “I’m a little older than I look. I’ve been writing for years, and never really got anywhere. It feels like all the avenues for turning this sort of thing into a career dried up a long time ago. Now you have to know somebody who knows somebody. So it always feels like I’m on the outside looking in.”

“You’re a writer?”

I immediately felt self-conscious. Ignoring the feeling of coming up short under scrutiny, I nodded.

I thought George Lucas might give me a patronizing smile. Instead, he licked his lips, then his gaze darted left and right. He suddenly looked desperate, and hungry.

“That’s… that’s great!” he said. “So you… you’re tellin’ me you’re not associated with any big league perverts? None of the Hollywood mafia?”

“No!” I laughed.

“And those jokers back at the lodge? You on their payroll?”

“Not personally, no. The country club pays me to watch the jacket room. It’s just a weekend thing.”

“Good. Alright. Great!” George suddenly smiled. “You write anything that’s like… hm, how do I put it. Science-fictiony?”

“Yeah, of course! All the time!”

I jerked in alarm as a hand suddenly grabbed my elbow. I felt the sting of embarrassment when I realized it was George, pulling me close while he looked off to the side, as if wary of surveillance.

“Listen, kid,” he said, speaking through clenched teeth. “We’re going to write a new Star Wars script together. Alright? And it’s going to pick up right where the saga left off.”

“Wh-what?!” I said, laughing despite my confusion. “You mean, like, write an Episode Ten?”

He turned and gave me a withering look. “No, genius. We’re going to pick up where I left off. Did I film any Episode Seven? No? Then that’s where we’re going to pick up the story.”

“Oh… oka-a-ay…”

“Yeah. Okay is right. Here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to turn around and walk back to the club. I’m going to act drunk and you’re going to help me back in. Then you’re going to drive me out of here. Then we’re going to talk about Star Wars all night long, and for most of tomorrow, too.”

“Are you… are you fucking serious, man?”

“Yeah. Now stick to the plan. Alright? I came here begging these people for help, but most of them are just spies making sure I stay in line. If they hear us talking about taking back Star Wars, you’re going to end up dead. You understand?”

“No!”

George shook his head. “If you don’t know that these people already have suicide notes for you and everyone else who works here, just on the off-chance that you see something they didn’t mean for you to see, then I don’t know what to tell ya.”

* * *

I know this is hard to believe, but over the next few days, we actually did hang out. Quite a bit, too! We met in public, and George would always be looking over his shoulder. Mostly we met at Digg’s Cafe, and over coffee and pie we talked about the new Star Wars movies, then we knocked out some ideas for what could potentially be a new trilogy.

We took a few days apart to work on our own, and in the daytime before I went to my real job, I worked on what later became the first three chapters of this very story. I sent them off to George, figuring that he would email me back some suggestions. I never got that email, though.

That’s because he decided to drop in on me at work!

It was in the middle of my full-time job, third shift at a warehouse. I was pulling a pallet down from the dry goods racks with a reach truck, when I heard the back door open up. Glancing over at the far end of the warehouse, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw George trying to talk his way in, with one of my coworkers blocking his path! George’s eyes fell on me. Smiling with recognition, he pointed and continued smooth-talking. Finally my coworker waved him on, and George made his way over toward me.

I parked the reach truck and went over to him. “George!” I said. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be in here. This is a secure facility!”

“You want me to be in this facility,” he said, moving his hand through the air like Obi-Wan. “Hey, what was I supposed to do? Send you a text? You don’t even have a smartphone!”

“I have a burner!” I responded, looking around to make sure my manager wasn’t seeing this. “Come on back here, I don’t want to get in trouble.”

George laughed. “You think this will get you in trouble? You’re liable to get cancelled, writing the kind of stuff you write!”

“You think so?”

George snorted. “Uh, yeah. Look, I’m not saying it’s not interesting. But stormtroopers as the good guys? You think people are really going to buy that?”

“Is it really that crazy?” I said.

“Is it not?”

We stopped in a shadowy corner behind a wall of giant tubs of mayo, where I hoped we wouldn’t be seen. I leaned against the steel racks. How could I explain it to him?

“When we were kids,” I said, “Tatooine looked exciting. Like in Mos Eisley, all those different crazy characters, people getting shot in bars and it’s just business as usual. Real tough-guy stuff. It seemed like a crazy, cool place to be. Everybody wanted to go to Jabba’s Palace and dance to some alien jams. But we only thought that way because we had it so good. The world was more or less stable, even if we didn’t know it at the time. Especially back in the eighties. Guys could get a job out of high school that would pay for a house, and they could afford to have kids, too. The world’s a much different place now. When I see Tatooine on-screen these days, I see what it looks like downtown, right now, in the real world. And it’s not a fun party with kooky characters. It’s a nightmare. It’s the third world knocking on my front door. It means crime, it means keeping my head down, it means staying in because going out is too risky, or at the very least, just totally unpleasant. I don’t want to live in that world. You know? How can I not look at those Imperial officers with their nice uniforms, the clean lines on the bridge of a Star Destroyer, or the Death Star, and not notice that they’ve got it a lot better than we’ve got it now? And it’s not just me. A lot of people are noticing. There’s a lot of people noticing that maybe the Rebels were flying off the handle, working against their own interests.”

“So you think it speaks more to the concerns of people these days?”

Though George was trying to appear critical, I could see a little half-smile playing at the corners of his mouth. I nodded.

“But they are the bad guys,” said George.

“Yeah, well. So am I, according to the talking heads on TV. Let’s just call it… well, it’s a redemption arc, but we keep the rough edges on the characters. Keep them a little bit unlikeable. Just like real people.”

“Talking heads,” he said. Just when I thought I almost had him, I could tell I lost him there. “Did you know most of the talking heads on TV are aliens?”

I laughed involuntarily. “Like shape-shifting reptiles?”

“Think I’m joking?! I’m not talking about some goofball conspiracy theory. No, they look just like us… I mean, they are us, mostly. But they teleport in from other worlds. This is all one big farm. I didn’t want to believe it, but working in this business, you figure it out pretty quick. They make movies and shows just to keep you thinking a certain way. And they-”

I laughed again, and his mouth suddenly clamped shut.

“Alright, smart guy,” he said. “Look, I think it’s a good idea. I like where you’re going with it. I just want to make sure you understand how much shit we’re going to get into, doing this.”

“How much shit?” I said, smiling.

“Up to here, little man,” he said, putting the edge of his hand up to my throat. “Keep going with the story as it is. But I can already see I’m going to have to be the brains of this operation. You’re the kind of guy who likes to step in you-know-what and then clean his shoe off afterwards. But I guess that’s why you work in a place like this. What are you doing working here, anyway?”

“What’s wrong with this place?” I said, suddenly frustrated. “It’s a good job! It’s got benefits, retirement, free exercise…”

He nodded with his mouth and eyes in the shape of a big O, as if in awe.

“Alright… it’s not that bad,” I said. “I can’t get by just on my writing. It doesn’t work, not for guys like me. But here, I get an hour lunch break, sometimes longer, if we’re slow. Nobody bothers me, and with no smartphone distracting me, that gives me a big chunk of time every day when I can write. Just write. No interruptions. There’s people who have it a lot better than me who would kill for what I’ve got.”

“I have heard some cope in my time,” said George, “but you must have gotten that cope off the top shelf! Lunch breaks? Retirement? Are you messin’ with me? Kid, the way you retire is you come up with a big idea, then you make off with so much money that you can’t spend it all. At least, that’s how big rollers like you and me do it. You understand? Lunch breaks! Give me a break!”

At this point, I was so upset I couldn’t even speak. The last thing I needed was someone to tell me how ridiculous my situation was. I already knew it. But if I thought about it, if I dwelled on it, something in me would crack.

I guess George could tell what I was going through, so he said, “Just keep at it. Finish the script. Put these bad daddy stormtroopers in the situations we talked about. Then we’ll film this thing and make out like-”

“Script? I didn’t know it was supposed to be a script!”

“Or book, or however you want to write it. We’ll get someone else to put it in script form. But we are going to film this thing, bud. This is going to be the real Episode Seven.”

“Okay. Good. I tried writing a few scripts, but it was a dead end. You have to know somebody who knows somebody - I only knew somebody who didn’t know anybody, so nobody cared.”

“Ah. Well, you probably wrote a script that looks like a work document, something a director would look at before filming.”

“Well, yeah.”

“No. You can’t sell a script like that. Look, you don’t write a script in order to make a movie, with instructions and all that crap. You write a script to get money out of producers. So it has to be full of flowery descriptions, and pull the producer in, and, you know, pull the money out of his pocket. Just try reading a modern script. It’s nothing but flowery nonsense, written by some hack trying to jerk you off. But if it works, and some producer greenlights the script, they’ll get someone else to make a working document out of your script, something that a director can look at. Or they don’t. Sometimes directors don’t even look at scripts. They’ll have somebody read it and give them a general idea of what’s inside, and then they film whatever they want.”

“What? But how do they tell a good story, then?”

“They don’t,” said George, slapping me on the shoulder as he made as if about to leave. “Most movies aren’t about getting audiences in seats. It’s a money laundering racket. You know? Most movies exist so you can create a black hole where dirty money gets dumped into, and clean money comes out. A bunch of unaccounted money suddenly accounted for.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Not at all. When the world is nothing but secret wars between rogue intelligence agencies and thousand-year-old secret societies blackmailing politicians and corporate executives, you’ve got to be able to move a lot of money around. A lot of money. Like… freaking, just, a whole bunch of it. And it has to all be accounted for. Otherwise the politicians will turn the tables on the intel spooks.”

“But… then,” I stammered. “But… does that mean… that we…”

“No. Hell no.” George gave me a look of deadly seriousness, and said, “Guys like us, we do this for the story. We devote our lives to making art. We do it for the hell of it. Because we love doing it. We’re the good guys, you cornball blue collar dopey looking son of a bitch. And that’s why we’re going to win.”

George Lucas turned and left, and I stood there, trying to put my soul back into my body in the shadow of the tubs of mayo.