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Your name is Anakin Skywalker.
You are a slave.
You suppose you should be grateful that you got to keep the name that your mother gave you, instead of being forced to take some master’s nickname for you. You suppose you should be grateful that you've been able to stay with your mother, instead of being sold to someone else. You suppose you should be grateful that Watto isn't cruel or overly violent, mostly just impatient and mean, and that you can keep your mother from the worst of his ire.
But gratitude doesn't get you much on Tatooine.
When the off-worlders show up in Watto’s shop, you get the feeling that something is about to happen, but you can't tell if it’s going to be a good thing or a bad thing. The girl is beautiful, an angel, which is ironically the only thing that keeps you from begging her to get out of Mos Espa as quickly as possible before something happens to her: because she is beautiful and you want to be around her for as long as you can.
The old man with her seems like he’s used to being thought of as kind, and you can tell that he’s trying to think of a way to make you like him, so with him you watch your step. You know that things like kindness lead to things like gratitude, and gratitude is nothing more than a handful of fake credits, in your opinion.
You have no idea what to think about the alien but you mostly just hope that he doesn't get himself killed.
They're looking for a specialized part for their ship. They're lucky that they went to Watto first, because you know of some people who would have taken the opportunity to go out to the ship and just steal whatever they wanted. It wasn't like a bunch of stranded off-worlders, especially ones as soft and well-off-looking as these, could do anything to stop them.
You can tell that they don't really know what they're doing and that if someone doesn't help them they're going to be in big trouble.
But if you're going to help them, you had better figure out what you can get out of it. Luckily, you have an idea.
You're good at scrounging things, sometimes by trade, sometimes by flattery, sometimes by being quick with your fingers and quicker on your feet when you leave. It got you a droid, a podracer, and enough things to make your mother smile, if only for a moment.
It's the podracer that gets the old man’s attention and he hatches some complicated scheme that involves, among other things, you finally getting a chance to try your racer out. So that's one plus for you: you hadn't been able to find a way into the racing circuit, so this will give you a chance to find a potential buyer for the podracer before Watto figures out how to take it from you. Sure, he might still try to take your money, but at least you have a better shot of hiding credits than a racer.
The other plus is that they’ve offered to help you get parts to finish building it, and none of them have any idea how a podracer works. Which is good for you, because you've been working on another project and you need only two more parts to finish it and change your life forever.
Slaves aren't supposed to be able to figure out where their trackers are implanted, but you know where yours is and you know where your mother's is. You're not actually sure how you know… it's as though you can visualize every part of your body and the tracker stands out like a dark spot amid all the light. It takes more concentration to find your mother's, but you can still see it somehow.
If you get the right parts, you can finish the device that deactivates the trackers.
Your name is Anakin Skywalker and you are about to die.
It's not a guarantee but you're pretty sure that, although you might make it to the finish line of the Boonta Eve Classic, your podracer is going to explode in the process and you're going to die.
The time you should have spent double-checking the racer last night was spent finishing the tracker deactivation device, which you used on yourself and on your mother this morning. So even if no one but your mother knows it, if you die here at least you're going to die free.
As you try to keep your pod from swerving off the track entirely, you have an idea that doesn't even feel entirely like your own. But maybe it is, because as long as you're facing some difficult truths here (like how you're going to die), you might as well admit to yourself that you're really angry. In fact, now that you're thinking about it, you’ve been angry your entire life.
Some of it is directionless: you're angry at the fact that you had the bad fortune to be born in these circumstances, that your mother has had to spend your entire life trying to teach you how to have dignity in a galaxy that has tried to keep you from having anything at all. You're angry that some people, like the off-worlders you're helping, haven't even heard about the kinds of things that you deal with on a daily basis. You hate the fact that everything is taken from you; not just your possessions and labor but also your choice of who receives your gratitude.
Some of your anger does have a direction, though. The things you lose are all taken away by someone: the masters, the bullies, and the crime lords who hold the whole system together. It’s just that, as a slave, you couldn’t do anything about that anger except hide it in order to survive.
But now you’re free. Nobody knows it yet other than you and your mother, but you’re free and you can do whatever you want right now. You were able to free your mother and help that young woman, and they’re both going to be able to escape this place because of you. You did that and nobody stopped you.
But what you also want is to strike back. You remember the stands when you were waiting for the race to start: Jabba and Watto and dozens of other people who you can finally admit out loud that you hate.
And here you are, piloting a machine that is nothing but a supersonic missile at this point.
You’re going to die, but you’re not dead yet.
There isn’t room for you to feel afraid. You’re too angry for that.
You haul on your controls as hard as you can and steer straight in the direction of the spectators watching the race, aiming directly at Jabba and hoping that Watto isn’t too far away from him.
You don’t even notice the fact that you pass Sebulba before everything goes white and red.
Your name is Anakin Skywalker and you are, to your complete shock and confusion, alive.
You aren’t sure how you survived and neither does anyone else. Sure, you’ve got burns practically everywhere and your right arm is definitely broken and you’re probably more shrapnel than boy at the moment, but you drove an explosive piece of metal into a massive stone structure and somehow, impossibly, you didn’t die.
You’re probably the only one who was pulled out of the wreckage alive, in fact. Jabba and Watto certainly weren’t. Not bad for your first day of freedom.
Mos Espa is in chaos. It's possible that the whole planet is in chaos and it's all because of you.
You overhear your mother and the old man arguing over whether or not to make for the ship and get you off-planet now or try to treat you here and leave once you're stabilized. That's when it occurs to you that you might be in worse shape than you thought and that you might end up dying anyway.
Padmé is there beside you, holding the hand of the arm that you didn't break and doing her best not to cry. She even cries beautifully but you really wish that she would stop. She isn’t the one that’s hurt, after all. On the other hand, your mother also sounds like she’s about to cry, and you can at least understand that because she’s family. But what are you to this beautiful girl who only just met you?
Maybe she feels grateful to you for risking your life to help her.
Gratitude doesn’t get you much on Tatooine but you’re starting to realize that you won’t be on Tatooine for very much longer and that wherever you end up going next might have completely different rules.
Watto is dead, and your trackers were deactivated anyway, so you and your mother are free to leave. You’re also free to stay, but you’re sure that if you do you’re both going to be killed because you did the unthinkable: you struck back at the masters and the bullies.
You want to do more of that.
You’re not stupid; you know that there are going to be masters and bullies no matter where the old man takes you, but now you know that you can use your anger and fight back. And maybe, if you can figure out how to get better at it, you can come back to Tatooine some day and get rid of all of them.
For now, though, all you can do is hope that your friend Kitster finds the deactivator you hid in your house and uses it on as many people as possible.
Your name is Anakin Skywalker and you aren’t as free as you thought you would be.
The old man brings you to Coruscant; apparently he took some of your blood while you were recovering and something about it made you valuable to him. You don’t know where your mother ended up going but you think she went with Padmé. The old man won't tell you anything more. You think it's pretty unfair that you managed to stay with your mother the whole time you were a slave (which is practically unheard of) only to be taken away from her now that you're free.
There’s another person, a young man named Obi-Wan, who follows the old man everywhere. The first time you hear him call the old man “Master,” you freeze.
The next few days are a nightmare. Everything is cleaner and fancier and everyone talks better than they do on Tatooine, so it takes you some time to read between the lines and figure out what they’re actually saying. You still don’t really know what the Jedi do other than sit around and talk, but a lot of them are called masters, including the old man, and they all have people like Obi-Wan following them around. The old man tries to tell you that they aren’t slaves, they’re something called Padawans.
The masters all act nice and their slaves are living in much better conditions than you did when you were with Watto, but you can tell that they’re still slaves no matter what the masters call them. Masters call their slaves all kinds of things, it doesn’t make them free.
And you’re definitely not free anymore. The old man doesn’t want you to leave and even thinks that you should be grateful to be allowed to be his slave. Obi-Wan agrees with him and you wonder what kind of bizarre tracking device they put in him that he seems so eager to obey the old man. At first, you thought he was just really good at hiding how he felt, but it turns out that he’s sincere. You met a few people like that on Tatooine, ones whose masters broke them so badly that they were no better than droids with restraining bolts.
All the slaves here seem to act like Obi-Wan and you realize that even though your bed is softer and your food is better and no one is hitting you or calling you worthless, you’re in a much worse place than you were before. And they expect you to be grateful for it.
You’re desperate to get out of here. You keep trying to run away but they always find you. You’re not sure how they’re doing it because you’re absolutely sure that your tracker isn’t working anymore, but this place is still new to you so maybe there's technology here that you don't know about yet.
The old man says that he’s teaching you but really all he’s doing is telling you what the rules are. One of the rules, it turns out, is that you’re not supposed to get angry. You almost smile at that because now you know how you’re going to escape.
Your name is Anakin Skywalker and you’re ready to fight back.
You’ve been working on building your anger, figuring out how to shape it and make it do the things you want it to do. The old man has tried to teach you other things, and it’s true that he and Obi-Wan can do some pretty strange stuff, but so can you and being angry makes it much easier.
They keep telling you to stop being angry, so you wait and practice when they’re not around.
The old man brings you and Obi-Wan with him to Naboo; probably so that you won’t run away while he’s gone. But once you get there, you want to run away even more, because you find out what happened to your mother: they made her a slave again.
It turns out that Padmé was one all along, too: she belongs to some queen who calls her a handmaiden but you know what that really means. Your mother isn't called a handmaiden but she's still with Padmé and you aren't allowed to see her. You can’t believe you missed it; you were so convinced that people that well-off wouldn’t have to live like that.
At least you have a good first test for your new skills. You’ve gotten really good at hiding and sneaking around, even better than you were on Tatooine. It’s like you’re invisible, even though Obi-Wan and the old man seem to be able to find you anyway, but some Zabrak attacked them and you ran off while they were distracted.
You decide to go find Padmé first; she can tell you where your mother is and then the three of you can escape together. Some people are shooting at her and at the queen, but you know what to do: your anger turns out to be a really good tool for hurting people. You grab Padmé and try to get her to leave with you but she doesn’t want to go. You try to apologize for not realizing earlier that she wasn’t free either. She protests that it isn’t like that, that she is free, and you start getting angry with her because she sounds just like Obi-Wan does when he talks about the old man. You don’t want to hurt her because you know that it isn’t her fault that she’s like this, so you just ask where your mother is.
She tells you but you realize that you’re never going to be able to reach your mother while all of those droids and Gungans are fighting. Luckily, you’re really smart when it comes to droids and you figure out that they’re all being controlled by some massive space station that is basically just a giant droid itself.
You swipe a ship and the R2 droid that was sitting inside and you head up to the station. The R2 unit turns out to be really friendly and approves of your idea, but points out that you don’t necessarily have to blow the station up. If you’re as smart about droids as you say you are, R2 says, why not just fix the station so that it does what you want it to do?
Your eyes widen as you think about what you could do with that many droids.
Your name is Anakin Skywalker.
You will never be a slave again.
The old man dies on Naboo and that means you’re free again. You find your mother and leave before anyone realizes what you have planned. R2 comes with you, although first you make sure it knows that it doesn’t belong to you and that it can do whatever it wants.
You're only nine years old (almost ten, your mother points out) but you just stole an entire army out from under the Trade Federation in the middle of a planetary invasion. You saved Naboo; you wonder if they're grateful and what you can get in exchange for that.
But first, you're going back to Tatooine, rescuing every single slave, and then blasting the sands of Mos Espa into glass.
After that, you'll let your anger guide you. It hasn't let you down yet.
There are masters and bullies everywhere and they should start being very afraid, because you're coming for all of them.