Small Story 1: Palpatine is dead.

"Why is he not returning?" Sergey Tabosky asked as he looked at all the results of his cooperative investigation with Darth Sidious. They had together been able to control the Force, they had been able to create immortality, they had been able to scientifically recreate things that ignore any scientific law present in this galaxy.

Yet, why had their plans failed?

He looked at the ten younger versions of the Emperor Palpatine, soulless, modified with Sith alchemy and science. Why hasn't he occupied one of the bodies? The calculations he had made with Darth Sidious said that traveling from the furthest part of the galaxy to this installation in the deep core through the force would take at maximum one month. Yet, nothing had happened in almost seven months.

But how? Darth Sidious was powerful enough to survive the Force for at least a year – unlike the pitiful fate of other people that die in this galaxy, their souls being consumed by the Force. How, how then had he died? Where had it failed? Where do these calculations fail?

As the scientific and head of the government of the Imperial Government in the Deep Core shouted with frustration, the Deep Core still worked for the return of Palpatine, fleets were being constructed, legions of Stormtroopers trained, new doctrines created, secret diplomacy done with warlords and prominent officers in the rest of the Galaxy.

In the streets of the planets controlled by the Empire in the Deep Core, a motto was repeated.

"Palpatine Lives!"

But, he in fact, did not live.