I’m the Architect of the Death Star, and I Swear They Told Me I Was Designing a Military Resort

Yes, fine, kaadu egg on my face—I unwittingly designed a planet-destroying, fully armed, and operational battle station. But put yourself in my shoes: you’re a mid-tier, ambitious architect, and you get singled out of your whole firm, Coruscant Skyline Legacy, to design the biggest, baddest, bestest galactic RESORT FOR MILITARY PERSONNEL ever conceived… I don’t think you’d be asking too many questions either. Soldiers deserve respite!

You would have said yes too. The Emperor paid 100,000,000 credits. That paid off my mortgage, a winter home on Tatooine (I’m a snowbird, I know), future Galactic Upper Education tuition for the little ones, and an absurdly cozy retirement. I could have spent my life designing block condominiums. Big bantha yawn. Instead, I took the opportunity of a lifetime.

But, as we know, hindsight is magnified times two thousand, and I probably should have recognized that the hundred-mile-long “water slide tube” was actually a “planet-destroying laser tube.” You live, you learn. Well, in the case of Alderaan, they didn’t live. But I certainly learned—ask questions about hundred-mile-long water slides. After a couple of miles, it should stop being fun unless you’re a Gungan. Those guys go nuts for water.

My first hint should have been when they told me that the waterslide needed power from all of the station’s seventeen cold-fusion reactors at once. I said, “Sure, why not!” Truthfully, I had just been trying to say “yes” more at that time in my life. I do remember joking, “You know, that would be enough energy to literally turn a planet into a space sneeze,” and then they said, “Oh wow, yeah, that would be perfect.” There it is again, that damned hindsight.

There were a few other “pink flags” with this contract, like those windowless rooms with the floaty black needle droids. I was told that they were acupuncture and pilates chambers for the off-duty troopers, not torture chambers. And I didn’t bat an eye at the “private meditation” rooms. They still function in essentially the same manner… except they can only be unlocked from the outside, play no music, and the guards can send the occupant into complete vacuum with the push of a button. Yes, fine; they’re for prisoners. Had I known those were going to be high-security holding cells for the people who would then be shipped to the aforementioned torture cells, then I wouldn’t have taken the job.

Probably.

Look, I may be the villain, but I’m also the hero—for I am the very reason the Death Star was destroyed. Because of what my mom calls my “crippling naïveté,” I designed a luxury military resort with an external kill switch, simply because the middle of the station was supposed to have, like, a really big hot tub. You wouldn’t believe the budget for the jets. I swear, if I had known I was designing a battle station, I’d put that kill switch dead center and out of reach. Foolproof.

I’ll do better—in fact, I already am. Rebel Scum’s the word, as I’m under NDA, but I’m actually designing another big project for Lord Vader. It’s not a resort or a battle station—it’s better: a shopping center for military types. Think of the merchant stalls! The cantinas! The buskers! This one is going to top them all. And, get this: it has a hundred-mile-long indoor rollercoaster for the younglings!