I've just turned forty five, and a lot has happened within the past five years.
The Eden project had taken a great turn for the better. Dead planet after dead planet was now covered with skyscraper Edens producing mega amounts of food. That wasn't all; one of my brilliant young engineers, a Kel Dor who specialized in exo biology, had successfully adapted advanced terraforming technology into the Eden design. Wherever Eden ships were placed, a slow but steady healing of the land occurred.
Slowly but surely, the land around every Eden changed. Dry land became grassland, grassland became scrubland, scrubland became bushland, and so on. The only place that Edens couldn't transform was planets entirely devoid of water. The sheer scale of the change was visible from orbit, a slow green tide spreading from each monolithic structure.
Eden and the many families who ran each tower had created a robust community. They would discuss what each family was growing and coordinate their planting and harvesting schedules. They swapped recipes and food stock.
It became like an old time farming community, where they would actively support each other. For entertainment, they devised their own games. Some younger members used some of the droids to reshape the newly formed grounds into a massive racetrack. Others introduced herd animals to take advantage of the newly grown vegetation. Cheese, milk, wool, all kinds of animal by products were being produced.
"The latest yield from the G-7 tower is 14% above projected maximum, Master Bee," my managerial droid, Unit 5, reported on my datapad. "And the terraforming initiative on Xylos is now classified as 4B: self-sustaining bushland."
Things were so good that I created a new blueprint, a new business, a way to cement my name in the hearts of all and make it so that they would always need me.
I had my Healing Halls to fix the masses, the Food Halls to feed the galaxy, and the Eden Project to supply the Food Halls. Now, I was planning cheap, cheap, cheap energy. Project Iokath, or the name I was most used to, was a Dyson sphere. I couldn't make a proper, full Dyson sphere because the resources needed were so vast that if I sold everything I owned, it wouldn't be enough to cover a single percent of the cost. Instead, a Dyson swarm, a massive, coordinated array of solar collectors, would have to do.
But before even that, a super mega duper computer would have to be built to manage all of the designs and calculations. This was a project that would take years, maybe generations, but I will take my time and do it right. After all, it took the galaxy wide empire twenty years to build a moon sized super weapon, I could afford a few decades for clean energy.
There were always problems when dealing with business. My biggest one would be the medical droids I use to staff my Healing Halls.
In the beginning, I would buy a new one every week, but now, the manufacturing companies couldn't build them fast enough before I would snap them up. My Healing Halls were placed throughout the galaxy, each one making profits that went into my pocket. But because of that, other places that needed a medical droid, such as Republic cruisers, went without. Supply and demand caused the price of Class One medical droids to skyrocket.
"The unit price of the standard surgical droid has increased by $210\%$ in the last quarter," Unit 5 warned.
The answer to that problem was simple: I just didn't buy anymore for a while. "Cease all new droid purchases for ninety days," I instructed Unit 5. "Ships will get their droids because of the excess supply the companies were making to fill my historical orders, and the price will come down to normal when my demand shrinks."
I want to say that the Jedi and Brotherhood of Darkness left me alone, but that was never going to happen.
The nature of the Brotherhood of Darkness meant they were always trying to gain an advantage. They would send dark side users to pressure and cause fear, acting like a mafia trying to shake families down for protection. Each time I would have to find the individual and crush them brutally. It wasn't that they couldn't learn from my brutality, but they didn't care.
And so, weapons were installed in every Eden, and new booklets were handed out on how to deal with Force users. The answer was simple: hold up in your Eden, turn the anti gravity on to disorient the attacker, and gas the place until they were dead or left.
"If the intruder is immobilized, contact local militia immediately," the Eden Security Manual read. "If the intruder is a Force user, engage Protocol 7: Zero Gravity and Atmosphere Depletion."
The Jedi didn't visit anymore, but I knew that the extra government pen pushers that would send messages about tax audits or safety inspections were instigated by them. The answer to that were lawyers, lots of expensive lawyers, counter-suing and just causing a massive annoyance to anyone who thought it was a good idea to mess with me.
There was a great moment when a particularly arrogant and annoying head of state of a Core World increased my taxes due to my massive profits. No counter legal means seemed to work, as they were ignored by his political machine.
"Senator Vark has pushed through a $70\%$ luxury tax on all 'Bee' branded services," Unit 5 confirmed. "Our legal challenges have been dismissed without review."
Instead, after fighting the much higher tax, my Healing Halls and Food Halls simply left the world. It was made public why I had pulled my support. I ran holo ads showing the starving and sick citizens, overlaid with the image of the Head of State's smug face. It only took a month before the Head of State was removed by his party and new tax relaxing laws for my firm were introduced.
This is what I wanted all along. The common people had stood up to protect their benefits, and in turn, they had protected my interests. I rewarded them by lowering my price to reflect the new tax breaks I would get.
Life wasn't all good; the dark side users were learning. Despite not knowing exactly how I was killing their mafia like intruders, they had noticed that I would always take the starships as my own. They set a great trap for me, one that I only escaped because of a fatal flaw: a lack of coordination and intelligence on my enemy's part.
I had done the usual thing of disposing of my enemy in the most efficient way I could. This time, it was a simple mine blasting a hole in the side of a captured enemy ship, watching the Force users use their abilities to save themselves, only to find a selection of timed grenades and pistol fire to either blast them to shreds or blast them out into the coldness of space.
However, this time it was different. As I was collecting my spoils in the cargo bay, a squad of Dark side users, dressed in black armor, cut me off.
"Surrender, fat man!" one of them yelled, lightsaber drawn.
I didn't make it easy for them. I killed at least twenty of the shits using a combination of environmental manipulation, crushing telekinesis, and concealed blaster fire from my armor. I was finally captured, but they had no idea who I was.
With no way to escape, I changed my identity. The Brotherhood of Darkness had been fighting the fat businessman known as Bee, but they only found the considerably slimmer Ban Bailo. I had used my thick fat suit as a powerful bomb to kill some unlucky punk who got too close. The dark side user had some impressive skill with a lightsaber, but a grand explosion vaporized the flailing plasma blade, leaving him in tatters.
The remaining dark siders assumed I was Bee's personal pilot or perhaps a Force sensitive bodyguard, and they captured me.
"You will tell us everything about the man who calls himself Bee," the lead interrogator, a severe looking man with heavy facial piercings, demanded, restraining me with heavy Force bonds.
They found out I could use the Force when they tried to interrogate me and couldn't use the Force to find answers in my mind. That was when I found out the Dark Side was just a tad more brutal than the stories would suggest.
Torture was common in turning Force users to the dark side, and I was no different. They prodded and probed using specially designed droids to find ways to break Force users. Even though I had special training as a healer that I expected to block the invasive torture, the droids pressed on, systematically finding ways to cause pain, like an exposed nerve in a tooth.
"Unit 88, maximize synaptic overload on the subject's parietal lobe," the torturer ordered, watching the readings on a holographic display.
I had to cut my pain receptors to save my mind. I used the highest degree of Force Control to surgically sever the connection between my nerves and my brain's pain centers. It would take some time to fix, but it was better than losing my reason to hate and pain.
At this point, I changed the color of my eyes to emit a soft orange glow using the illusion skills I had picked up in my self study of Alter powers. This was the change the Brotherhood of Darkness was waiting for.
"It seems the pain has brought you to a new understanding," the interrogator smiled, noticing the orange flare in my eyes. "The fear of death is the path to power."
From this point onwards, the torture relented, and I was transported to a sort of Academy for the force users of the Brotherhood of Darkness.