Chapter 32: Tea, Galactic Politics, and a Garage of Horrors

The garage door clicked shut, leaving Beth, Morty, and Jerry on the porch, processing the whirlwind of revelations.

"Well," Jerry said, adjusting his shirt. "Looks like they're distant relatives. We should offer them something to drink. It's polite."

"Jerry, do you ever read the room?" Beth snapped, running a hand over her face. "My father just found his... interdimensional ghost-son echo who's married to a space queen, and he's taken him into his lab of horrors. This isn't a family gathering, it's a pilot episode of a demented sci-fi show!"

Just then, a land speeder (a slightly dented sedan) pulled into the driveway. A teenage girl with red hair and an expression of existential boredom on her face stepped out. It was Summer. She pulled off her headphones.

"What'd I miss?" she asked, seeing the rest of her family on the porch. "Don't tell me Grandpa turned the lawnmower into a war mech again."

"Something like that," Morty said, his voice trembling. "Rick has... guests."

Summer's curiosity outweighed her cynicism. They walked into the house, finding Padmé sitting alone on the living room couch. She had moved away from the garage door, giving Kaelen the space she knew he needed, though every hum and metallic clank from inside sent shivers down her spine.

Padmé stood up as they entered. Despite the chaos, her Senatorial poise took over. "My apologies for the intrusion," she said with a calm that belied the insanity of the situation.

Beth observed her for a moment. She saw the strength, the intelligence, and the exhaustion in this strange woman's eyes. She decided screaming wouldn't help. She opened a bottle of wine.

"Sit," Beth said, her tone softer than usual. "Looks like we're gonna be here a while. My name's Beth. These are my kids, Morty and Summer, and my husband, Jerry."

"It's a pleasure," Padmé said, sitting back down. "I'm Padmé Amidala."

"Yeah, we heard the queen part," Summer said, slumping into an armchair and checking her phone. "So you're like, royalty? Got a castle and stuff?"

"I was elected Queen of my planet, Naboo," Padmé explained patiently. "Now I serve as its Senator in the Galactic Senate."

Jerry perked up. "Ah, politics! I'm on the neighborhood planning committee. I know how hard it can be to get people to agree on hedge height!"

Padmé offered a diplomatic smile. "The disputes are... slightly larger in scale. We've been dealing with a Separatist crisis that threatens to plunge the Republic into civil war."

The conversation that followed was one of the most surreal of Padmé's life. She tried to explain Republic politics to a dysfunctional family from a technologically primitive but socially complicated planet.

She talked about trade blockades, and Jerry compared it to a dispute with the paperboy.

She talked about the Jedi, and Morty asked if their lightsabers were hard to wield.

She talked about being a decoy to protect her life, and Beth nodded with grim understanding. "Yeah, I know what it's like to put on a brave face while your world falls apart."

Summer, however, looked up from her phone when Padmé mentioned the Battle of Naboo. "...so while the Gungan army fought on the plains, we infiltrated the palace to capture the Viceroy..."

"Wait, rewind?" Summer said, now interested. "You... you fought? With laser guns and everything?"

"It was necessary," Padmé replied. "I led the assault team. My husband, Kaelen, was the one who designed the strategy that gave us victory."

The image of the elegant diplomat shattered in Summer's mind, replaced by that of a warrior queen. "Okay, that's... actually pretty cool."

As they talked, intermittent and alarming sounds came from the garage. A loud electrical hum, followed by a muffled yelp from Kaelen. Then, Rick's voice, muffled but audible: "Stop whining! It's just your nervous system realigning to accept high-speed data input! Babies do it!"

Padmé flinched, her smile tightening. Beth noticed her reaction.

"My dad... he's complicated," Beth said quietly. "But he's brilliant. And for some reason, he seems to have taken an interest in your husband. Which, believe me, is both the best and the worst thing that could happen to him."

Padmé looked towards the garage door, the place where the man she loved was being rebuilt by a mad god. She listened to this strange family discuss their mundane problems—Morty's grades, Jerry's job, Summer's latest boyfriend—and realized the immense gulf between their worlds.

She fought for peace, democracy, and order. They lived in constant chaos, driven by the nihilistic genius of a single man.

And now, her world and theirs had merged. And the man she loved was caught right in the middle, being transformed into something neither of them could foresee. The conversation in the living room was a desperate attempt at normalcy, a way to ignore the terrifying truth humming just beyond the wall.