How This Infamous Droid Uploaded Its' Consciousness To The Death Star II
"Hey, we don’t serve their kind here!"
The cantina owner Wuher’s distain for droids is understandable, considering all the mayhem and destruction the droid army of the Separatists had caused during the Clone Wars. But this was not the only time that sentient machines presented a serious threat to living beings. In Daniel José Older’s cannon novel Last Shot (2018) a Pau’an name Fyzen Gor tried to take over the galaxy by creating an army of cyborgs, until he was stopped by Han Solo and Lando Calrissian.
More than 2 decades earlier (in our time) the plan of a single droid would nearly have ended the existence of all humanoid lifeforms in the galaxy far, far away. The short story, Therefore I Am, by Kevin J. Anderson, published in the anthology book Tales of the Bounty Hunters (1996) tells the story of how IG-88 actually inserted his consciousness into the second Death Star.
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The project to conceive and construct assassin droids in the Holowan Laboratories was funded by Imperial Supervisor Gurdun, who hoped to move up the ranks if he could provide the Empire with a squadron of highly efficient killing machines, to smash the growing rebellion. But the scientists at Holowan, under the leadership of a woman named Loruss got much more than they bargained for when they activated the assassin droid. After realizing his identity, his purpose and his superiority to any being of flesh and blood, IG-88 killed all the scientists in the lab and then copied his consciousness into 3 other IG droids. Calling himself IG-88A, he designated his counterparts B, C and D.
After wiping out nearly all the Holowan security guards, the four droids took a spaceship off-planet. IG-88A conceived a plan for a droid revolution, that would cause the machines to rise against their biological masters. His first step to achieve this goal was to take over the droid manufacturing plants of Mechis III, these were some of the biggest producers of droids in the galaxy. By injecting his programming into the core of the manufacturing computer, he made the droids on the surface kill all human workers in the plant.
Afterwards IG-88A kept the production process running, building millions of droids of all shapes and sizes, to be dispatched throughout the galaxy, all including the programming to turn against their masters, once IG-88 gave the order, executing the droid revolution. While IG-88B was sent out to divert attention from Mantis III, IG-88A went aboard the Executor as one of the bounty hunters that Vader sent out to find Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon. While on board the Super Star Destroyer, IG-88 discovered the plans for the second Death Star, thus presenting him with a new objective; to implant himself into the computer core of the battle station, in order to take it over and use it as a massive weapon against living beings.
To keep up the image of a bounty hunter, he sent IG-88B after Boba Fett to Cloud City to capture Solo, but the droid was destroyed by the man in the Mandalorian armor. Neither IG-88C nor D were able to get ahold of the carbonite-frozen smuggler either, as they were destroyed by Fett over Tatooine and by Dash Rendar on Ord Mantell.
These defeats didn’t bother IG-88A very much, as he was able to acquire the route of the Imperial vessels that carried the computer core for the second Death Star. While raiding the ships with a bunch of other droids that were disguised as stormtroopers, he met supervisor Gurdun, the man who was responsible for his very existence and killed him as well. Then he transferred his complete memory into the computer core, leaving his physical hull behind for good.
When the core was installed on the Death Star by the droid stormtroopers, IG-88 was able to take control of the whole station and witnessed everything that was going on. He even fooled the Emperor, whom he also regarded as a lesser being, by closing the doors of an elevator right in front of him and by refusing to open them up again for some time. During the Battle of Endor he witnessed Luke being brought on the Death Star and corrected the targeting mistakes of the gunners. Once the rebel fleet was annihilated, he would use the battle station to destroy the Imperial fleet as well, then he would give the order to all the droids that included his programming to rise up and kill their masters. Any resistance that still remained would be wiped out by the IG-88 controlled Death Star. He was still overly convinced of his great scheme's success when a small group of rebel ships flew into the belly of the Death Star.
Even though Therefore I Am came out 16 years after The Empire Strikes Back, the description of IG-88 in the story differs from the slender and rather spindly looking droid from the movie. Anderson describes him as a "bulky structural skeleton, armored arms and legs, a torso plated with blaster-proof armor shielding" and fingers instead of the single claws.
Like all the other stories from Tales of the Bounty Hunters, Therefore I Am became Legends in 2014, but it surely would make an interesting story for a What if…? series for Disney+, should Lucasfilm every decide to make one.
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