Chapter Text
Din Djarin removing the Mythrol from the speeder on Pagodon. Image from The Mandalorian, Season 1, Episode 1, The Mandalorian. Calendar from DataWorks.
“Why did I tell them that Pagodon was a frozen planet? Because I thought that would be more interesting.”
Grogu looked at his dad and shook his head. How were they ever going to maintain production integrity if Din Djarin continued to tell people things that were almost true, but not actually true? What if his mom relented and they brought Jon to a galaxy, far, far away and he noticed all things that that the Mandalorian had been ‘creative’ about describing?
When his mom finally brought him to Pagodon, Grogu found that it was a beautiful Earth-like planet. Of course, Earth before all the polluting and clear cutting and willy nilly development of every scrap of sand near the coastlines of their continents. When they flew over Earth on the N-1, Grogu had requested that his dad do a full sweep of the planet to make sure they had a good idea of where population centers were. Turns out, they were everywhere.
That’s when they picked the one near the ocean and the place called Santa Monica, which pretty much proved his rule. If you have a lovely bit of sand and a view of the ocean, the inhabitants of earth will build their dwellings there to limit who else could see, use, or appreciate it. It’s like the people of Earth liked to live dangerously on purpose. That was not the way it was on the real Pagodon.
Nope. The real Pagodon was a model of hub and spoke design and utilized the lands that couldn’t produce any other sustainable system. Yup, buildings, dwellings, factories, markets and all that were part of a specific sustainable system that ensured that the planet had time to rejuvenate while still sustaining life. It was pretty cool. Very unlike Tatooine, or Nevarro, or Coruscant. Grogu figured that was due to the fact that Pagodon had never been part of the Imperium or the old Republic and really wasn’t part of the ‘New’ Republic either. What is was part of was never mentioned, but he was pretty sure that his mom knew all about it. He wondered if the same thing could be done for Earth.
“Buddy, your mom says it would take a lot of work and that generations of people would have to be willing to make a change.”
Grogu grumbled that it was possible for people to do that. After all, the rebels had managed to fight against the Empire and win.
“Buddy, that’s very true, but that only took four standard years. In part that was because a whole galaxy is pretty hard to manage, even if you are a Sith. The people who fought the Emperor and his ilk remembered what it was like to live in greater freedom. They understood what they were losing minute by minute. I’m sorry to say that most folks don’t understand what’s already been lost on Earth.”
Grogu sighed. That was probably true. On Pagodon, the oceans weren’t frozen over and they were teaming with all manner of life. Huge critters like the ravinak, which didn’t really try to eat anyone’s vessels because there were so many fish and squid and other critters to eat. And teeny, tiny plankton that were the food source for whales, that made the ravinak seem small. The giant quid were fascinating to Grogu because they would occasionally push a vessel in front of them in order to hide from the ravinak. He was pretty sure that’s how the myth that Ravinak tried to eat speeders and starships started.
On Earth, according to a vid program he’d watched, the oceans were suffering from all sorts of problems because humans liked to dump their trash into them. Maybe ‘like’ was the wrong word, but they certainly didn’t stop doing it even after they realized how wrong it was.
He asked his dad why humans were that way. He thought it was a fair question since Grogu wasn’t human and Din Djarin was clearly very human.
“Buddy, I don’t have a good answer for that question. According to Mandalorian history, Mandalorians did the same thing. They stripped the resources off the surface and sub-surface of Mand’alor in order to support their expansion into other planetary systems. But why they decided to keep expanding at the cost of their actual home planet never made sense to me. I guess it’s pretty easy to tell when you don’t have enough food in your preserver, but its harder to tell that about your planet. Then you find yourself eating ration packs made somewhere else because your home planet can’t produce enough food and after a couple of generations people think the only food is ration packs.”
Uff. What kind of nightmare was that? Grogu was not a fan of ration packs. Not at all.
“Well, you were lucky. You had that arboretum in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant and were able to grow the food you ate. But Coruscant itself was dependent on dozens of worlds for its food supply. You once described the planet as a cross between a mech and droid. They require energy but its not in a format that living beings can use. Any planet is a collection of complex systems and you have to pay attention to them all or failure will be catastrophic.”
Grogu nodded his head at that. A lot like the time they crashed on Maldo Kreis, an actual ice planet.
“Buddy, that was a hard landing, but you’re correct. The Razor Crest took a huge amount of damage and it took me a good amount of time to do what I could do to fix just enough of it to get off planet.”
His dad paused for a moment, no doubt recalling that moment and then continued.
“And I could only get that much done because Teva and Wolfe took care of those spiders you woke up. You didn’t consider the impact of eating that one tiny pod and look at what happened. I guess, for Earth to be more like Pagodon, the real Pagodon, we’ll all have to think more before we take action, rather than do whatever it takes to survive after the disaster is chasing us down frozen pathway that we didn’t really think twice about walking along to begin with.”
Grogu nodded his head. They would have to think more and not with their stomachs or their desire for power or their desire for a good view. He liked Earth and he really hoped that one day it would be more like the real Pagodon and less like the one that was a frozen wasteland. He didn’t want it to be the next Mandalore or Coruscant or Tatooine. He hoped that the people of Earth would think about it every day. It was the only planet they had.
Happy Earth Day!
