Chapter 31: The Life and Death of Kaelen Ror

Rick Sanchez's garage was a sanctuary of chaos. Shelves overloaded with jars containing alien parts, impossible weapon blueprints scrawled on every surface, and a clutter of tools and empty bottles covering the floor. In the center, the saucer-shaped spaceship lay half-disassembled. It was the physical manifestation of Rick's mind: brilliant, messy, and deeply dysfunctional.

Rick slammed the garage door shut, plunging them into buzzing fluorescent light. The rest of the Smith family remained outside, their worried voices becoming a distant murmur.

"Sit," Rick commanded, pointing to a couple of cargo crates serving as stools. His tone was no longer one of interrogation, but of a scientist about to dissect a fascinating specimen.

Padmé and Kaelen sat, side by side. She took his hand, a small gesture of solidarity in that place of madness.

"Your story," Rick said, picking up a sonic screwdriver and beginning to tinker with a panel on his ship, without looking at them. "Your life on Earth. Every detail. Start with her. With Diane."

Kaelen took a deep breath, the garage air smelling of oil and something vaguely acidic. The memories of his previous life, those he had kept locked away, began to flow.

"We weren't rich," he began, his voice an echo in the garage. "We lived in a small apartment on the outskirts of the city. But she made it feel like a palace. She was... happy. Always laughing."

Rick stopped tinkering. His hand paused.

"She taught me to read the stars with a cheap telescope she bought from a thrift store. She gave me my first computer, which I took apart and put back together dozens of times. She never quite understood my circuit diagrams, but she always hung them on the fridge like works of art."

A sad smile touched Kaelen's lips. "She'd tell me I had my father's brain, but she hoped I'd have his heart. Hers. A heart that knew how to stay."

Padmé squeezed his hand tighter, feeling the pain of a past she had never known.

"And what happened?" Rick asked, his voice a low growl.

Kaelen's smile faded. "Life happened. Or rather, biology. Cancer. It came out of nowhere. Aggressive. The doctors did what they could, but my world's science... it's primitive compared to this." He gestured around him. "She fought. God, how she fought. But she was gone. I was nineteen."

The silence in the garage was absolute. Even Rick stood still, his screwdriver forgotten.

"After that..." Kaelen continued, "I was alone. I had no one else. So I did the only thing I knew how to do. I dove into work. I became the best engineer in my field. I graduated with honors, got a job at a cutting-edge tech company. My life was my work. Long nights in the lab, successful projects, promotions... but nothing else. No real friends, no relationships. Just... work."

He looked at Padmé, and his eyes filled with a new understanding. "I never knew how to connect with people. My mother was my universe. When she left, I was just adrift in space."

"And then," Rick said, his voice now devoid of all emotion, "how did you die?"

"The stupidest, most ironic way possible," Kaelen replied with a bitter laugh. "After a 72-hour shift in the lab, celebrating a breakthrough. I was exhausted. I crossed the street to my apartment. A driver was texting. He didn't see me." He paused. "A life dedicated to understanding the laws of the universe, and I was taken down by the simple physics of a two-ton car. Then... darkness. And then, I woke up on Naboo."

He finished his story. He had laid bare the entirety of his previous existence: a happy childhood, a tragic loss, a life of self-imposed solitude, and a meaningless death.

Rick stood with his back to them for a long moment. When he turned, his face was an unreadable mask. He had heard the story of a Diane who had survived his abandonment, who had raised a son alone, who had lived and died from a mundane illness. He had heard the story of a son he never knew he could have had. A son who shared his genius and his solitude.

"So you're real," Rick said finally, as if confirming experimental data. "Your story is tragic and pathetically human."

He walked over to the workbench and picked up one of the fallen Ricks' portal guns, the one Kaelen had modified. He examined it with an expert eye.

"The Council will still come for you," Rick declared, not as a threat, but as an inevitable fact. "Your existence, an echo of a Rick from an unapproved universe, breaks the rules of their precious Finite Curve. You're an anomaly they can't allow."

He turned to Kaelen, and in his eyes, there was a new light. It wasn't sympathy. It was a cold, predatory scientific curiosity.

"Which means, in order to figure out how the hell you're possible, and to get them to stop screwing with my dimension, I'm gonna have to make sure you survive their next attempt."

He put down the portal gun and pulled open a drawer, taking out a set of surgical tools far more advanced and terrifying than Kaelen had used on himself.

"Your little self-tinkering last night was a cute, elementary school attempt," Rick said. "But if you want to survive what's coming, you're gonna need a real upgrade."

The implication was clear and terrifying. Rick no longer wanted to interrogate him. He no longer wanted to capture him. He wanted to study him. And to study a specimen, you first have to keep it alive. Rick Sanchez was going to invest in Kaelen Ror, not out of affection, but for the most dangerous reason of all: to satisfy his own divine curiosity.