“Stories in the Sand” - From a Certain Point of View

"Stories in the Sand", by Griffin McElroy, puts us under the hood of a tiny jawa on a sandcrawler. Jot's duties on the sandcrawler are to collect and clean parts scavenged from the sands which pass by his station on a conveyor. Jot has a bit of an individualist streak, and spends time cultivating his own personal collection of valuables, which he hides in an impossibly small compartment he discovered under the conveyor. Over the course of his "tour" on the sandcrawler, Jot discovers items that unlock a larger world beyond the sands of Tatooine. One day, he discovered something that changed his life. McElroy gives us a neat glimpse into life inside a sandcrawler.

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WARNING: This is a plot summary of the short story, spoilers ahead:

Unlike most Jawas, Jot craved his own personal space - something that was basically unheard of inside the cramped behemoth that was his clan's sandcrawler. But Jot was tiny, even for a jawa, and he found a small compartment under his conveyor in which he stored his valuables. One day, the sandcrawler located an ancient starship that had been long buried in the Dune Sea, but was just recently exposed by the winds. As the jawas excitedly scrubbed the ship inch by inch, Jot found a holo projector that he managed to get working. In private, he watched the recordings of the adventures of the wealthy starship owner. Jot dreamed of one day joining the crew of a ship, and leaving Tatooine behind. Eventually realizing that the holoprojector had no more stories to tell, Jot asked for a transfer of duties on board the sandcrawler so that he could maximize his opportunities to obtain new tales.

Jot joined the crew that repaired and cleaned scavenged droids. It was his job to erase the memories of the droids so that buyers would have a droid with a clean slate. He became skilled at discreetly removing the memory data from droids and viewing them via the projector in his hidden "room", prior to wiping them and replacing them into the droids for sale. Jot was cleaning a newly acquired blue and white astromech droid, which looked to be in amazing condition. Excited, he swiped the memory data and scurried off to watch. He saw a brand new recording of a human woman conveying an important message. While he didn't understand the words, something about the woman's demeanor made him imagine that the message was of vital importance. More interestingly, it was new, so he figured whatever the woman was talking about was basically happening right at that very moment. Jot decided that he was witness to something that needed to be preserved, and that he would leave it up to someone else to decide what to do with it. Jot left the memory data in tact, and placed it, unharmed, back into the blue and white astromech. He felt that maybe it was his only real chance in his life to participate in something grand.

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