Ex Lacrima Remnant

#B-Side II – Why should we care?

“Welcome back to Late Night Bash! Our interview with Minister of Technology Muriel van Perens has reached its climax! No more platitudes, no more scripted questions. Now it’s hammer time!”

Pre-recorded applause, as the massive figure of Konstanz van Vijrtel smiled at the full-field cameras. In front of him, sat a woman in her sixties wearing a red tailleur. Her hair had once been of the same color, but now most of it was white. She didn’t do anything to hide it, though, sporting her mane with elegance, accepting the passage of time. Van Vijrtel leaned forward, waved his hand in a willingly exaggerated gesture.

“Minister Van Perens, why should we even care about the Turn of the Millennium?”

The woman stared at him without saying a word, waiting for Van Vijrtel to add something to that frankly outrageous inquiry. Seeing as silence was her answer, the host pressed on.

“First off, it’s not even a true millennium, right? This ‘year’ unit that we use to define it is completely artificial – three hundred sixty five Sol days, equivalent to around three hundred thirteen Lagash days. This doesn’t fit our seasons, nor the revolution of our planet around our sun… and still needs adjustments every now and then because it’s not a perfect conversion either. Your ‘millennium’ is more like…” Van Vijrtel browsed through his notes “…eight hundred seventy-seven revs. Not even a round number.”

The minister contemplated not reacting, waited for him to go on. His first objection was the easy part, though, and maybe could have been addressed easily to break the ice. A calculated second later, she made her decision.

“You are perfectly correct, Mr. Van Vijrtel. The Sol year, or mother year, is an artificial unit from a time long gone, something that hearkens back to our ancestors in the Sol system. We brought it with us because all the systems aboard the Lagash – the seedship – were calibrated on Earth units. The main computer kept track of Earth days, months and years, like its makers wanted. Of course, when it landed here, those units had little to no connection with the way our planet behaves. This is why our official day is twenty-eight Earth hours long, and this is also why revs are the official unit of time, but ‘Sol years’ are so ingrained in our culture that common people still use them in their everyday lives. Say, Mr. Van Vijrtel, what was the last time someone told you their ages in revs?”

Van Vijrtel nodded, rested his cheek on his left hand. That was, indeed, the easy question, with a reasonably easy answer. Sol years were so ingrained in their culture that one thousand of them was a big deal, no matter how one spun that. Good retort, full marks for her.

“Thanks, Minister Van Perens. So, this thousand-years anniversary since the landing has some reasons to be celebrated. I get it, the symbolism of a millennium is hard to contest – even if it’s a millennium on a technicality. But, fine, let’s accept this as fact.”

“We’re estimating that three hundred million people will travel to New Netherlands for this event, Mr. Van Vijrtel, all coming in the next four days from every corner of the world, while more than one billion people is expected to connect to the real-time PV stream. So, I’d say it’s more than just a technicality.”

“With all due respect, Minister, it’s because your government marketed it as a big deal. Must be nice for the city administration to reap millions of eas just because New Babylon is the closest megalopolis to the First Seed.”

“It’s our duty to celebrate our origins and traditions.”

“Is it also your duty to embezzle public money and waste them on vanity projects, while Aralu is still a hell hole?”

The minister nodded. So, that was the angle she was going to be attacked from. Not a bad strategy, she recognized.

“Aralu is a different problem, one that cannot be solved in one day. We have plans for it, which will be set in motion after the celebrations end. I’m not allowed to say more at the moment, Mr. Van Vijrtel, but I assure you – we are taking the security issues of Aralu as seriously as possible.”

The host didn’t press the matter further. He could have questioned her words, dug into the Aralu issue more, but time was of essence and the Turn was more interesting for his audience. That question on the underground cityscape riddled with beggars, criminals and unregistered citizens was just a way to remind whoever was watching his show that New Babylon had problems bigger than preparing for a lousy, symbolic celebration. Now that he had done that, he could go back to the other questions he had prepared.

“Okay, then right back to Lagash. We got it, it’s a symbol. One thousand Sol years. Now, though, that’s just one part of it. The other are the vaults, right?”

“The last vault, yes.”

“Can you remind our audience how that works? Most of us weren’t even born when the last one was opened.”

“Neither was I, since it happened one Sol century ago. But, okay, remember how I said that the First Seed was calibrated using Sol units? This goes for all its system, including its ten vaults. All of them were engineered to open after one Sol century, one after another in a predetermined sequence. Each of them contained new technology, knowledge we didn’t even know was possible, bending and extending our understanding of the universe. Every Sol century, Lagash, our planet, gets a new gift from the seed ship. This is the last gift, the only vault that is still sealed. This is why the Turn of the Millennium is so much of a big deal, Mr. Van Vijrtel – it’s not just a thousand Sol years since the landing, it’s also the last present from our forefathers.”

“And what could this ‘last present’ possibly be that we haven’t developer ourselves? The archives of the eighth and ninth vault contained only rubbish that was already discovered by our scientists. What makes you think that this won’t be the case either? We have outpaced our ancestors, we evolved faster than they expected, Minister.”

“Because we stood on their shoulders. But, no, we expect the last vault to be valuable, more valuable than all other vaults put together. You see, the seed ship left us a hint hidden in plain sight.”

“A hint?”

“How can something so complex stand in almost pristine condition after one thousand years? Parts of it should have broken, decayed, or ceased functioning long ago. But Lagash looks like factory new, because its structure is constantly fixed by swarm of micro- and nanomachines, with a level of complexity that we can’t even fathom. That and its drive core – the mechanism which allowed Lagash to travel through space is still unknown and reverse-engineering it is a no-go. Our ancestors learned it the hard way when they tried to force the sixth vault open before the Turn of the Century. The security system of that old mothership is truly something, I tell you Mr. Van Vijrtel.”

The host turned a page around, went through more of his notes.

“But why do we need them? We’ve already built Neon on our moon almost a century ago! Ten million people live there as of now. We have daily launches and exchanges with it and we have even setup small orbital colonies! So why? Why do we need new tech to travel through space?”

“Because humanity must survive, no matter what.”

A scenic pause, seconds of silence. Till Minister Van Perens started talking again, her fingers crossed in front of her eyes.

“Quite frankly, we don’t know what’s going on on Earth. We don’t know if any of the other seedships found a planet in the habitable zone of a star. And, for what we know, we could be the only human beings left in the whole universe. Which means that a sudden plague, an asteroid, a solar storm could wipe our species out of history, like specks of dust in the cosmos. Our sun won’t last forever either. This means that we urgently need a plan B. We need to restart the cycle, make our own Lagash, our own seedship, so that humanity can keep spreading in space.”

Van Vijrtel stared at her, rummaging through his notes, trying to find some hooks, some questions that could put his guest in a more difficult position. He didn’t seem to want to call it quits. Most likely, the debacle of the Zonta interview made him even more eager to find a way to improve his public perception. His eyes landed on one extra page, one that looked like tucked in at the last second. He quickly browsed it, before going back to glance at the minister.

“So, huh, about this. There are rumors that a human corpse was found in the eighth vault, two hundred years ago, and that it was already there when the vault was opened on the Turn of the Century. Notable historians believe that it might not be a hoax, and this spawned a net of conspiracy theories.”

“Such as?”

“That the government can already open all vaults, that all tech inside Lagash has been collected and that the Turn of the Century celebration is a farce to keep people in the dark about what we can already do.”

Laughter. Muriel van Perens burst into laughter.

“My, my, this is rich! If that were the case, we wouldn’t have needed nine Sol centuries to gather enough knowledge to build Neon, right?”

Van Vijrtel cleared his throat, coughed.

“There are other theories too, but… those are more outlandish. I can’t say they sound reasonable.”

“I’ve heard about them, Van Vijrtel, and let me tell you something: if there really were another human civilization before ours, they would have left traces behind. Anything, really. Even a single building, or a single handmade artifact. The fact that we’ve never found anything except that mummified corpse means that it can’t be the case. So, do me a favor…”

She crossed her hands under her chin, her eyes staring deep into the host’s soul.

“…stop with your worries. The Turn of the Millennium is coming soon, and it will be the beginning of a new era for Lagash. All the rest is inconsequential. You, I, this audience. We’re just rounding errors in the course of history. What our children will remember is what we do for them. All together, for the future of mankind.”

Close up on Muriel van Perens’s face, on her eyes, shining with resolution. Then, applause. A genuine applause. From the whole audience.

An applause that resonated all around Lagash.