Vanaka walked out into the city with two of her favourite people, determined to enjoy her day. Erine and Losan picked up on her sheer rush to distract herself, but she batted aside any attempts at probing.
Once the simple spectacle of this very special city started losing some of its novelty they sought out other entertainment, and in the district surrounding the hotel there was plenty to be had. They stopped at a couple of eateries, eating small snacks at each place for the sake of experimenting. It was Losan who spotted the sign that led them to an acrobatics display: strung between two pillars were several ropes and people in brightly-coloured costumes performed stomach-clenching feats of agility and muscle control high above the ground, to the gasps of newcomes like their little group, watching from four separate platforms.
After two hours of that they sat down for a proper meal, and selected a place whose title none of them could read for the sake of trying out something truly local. Communicating with the server took a bit of patience, but eventually they each got a baked roll of some sort, filled with some sort of plant mush. It was unique enough that Vanaka had nearly finished hers by the time her tastebuds decided to like it.
A gaming hall was set up on one of the bridges and Vanaka took a peek inside. It had a little bit of everything, from plain solid-matter shooting tables and target stands, to floor-to-ceiling electronic screens on which people competed against one another. It all looked like fun, but was also quite crowded at the moment and Vanaka decided to file this one away as a possible later distraction.
One floor of a pillar was devoted to a museum of clothing. Inside carbon cases hung clothes from various points in the planet's history, as well as a few distinct uniforms, religious ensembles and cultural outfits from offworld.
The floor above that one had a museum of local industry, which she found less interesting but still worth the modest entrance fee, and about an hour of her time.
The floor above that one, finally, had a plain history museum. Vanaka hesitated next to the desk that one had to pass before ascending a spiral staircase, and the casual chat the ansoti had been engaging in with one another and her died down. They could tell something was bothering her; had in fact been bothering her ever since the morning, buried under layers of distraction.
Vanaka’s last dismissal of the subject was some hours in the past, and so Erine took the step of slipping a hand into hers. Vanaka turned her head to find a gently questioning look on the woman’s face. She was reminded once again that despite the power a Vylak held over their ansoti, the latter could at times render the former oddly helpless.
“It is...” she tried, only for words to fail her. She tried again. “It is... simply thoughts.”
She felt like an utter idiot.
“I mean, I have been thinking. About things. About history. And... here we are.”
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Vanaka found her resolve. They paid the entrance fee, and then Losan took her free hand and they ascended as a group.
It truly was a full-fledged museum, devoted to no particular era. The displays were a combination of historical artefacts, models, statues, artistic renderings and a few holographic displays, each one accompanied by plaques in various languages. The museum took up the entirety of this floor of the pillar, as well as that of a neighbouring one. An overbuilt bridge connected the two, and of course allowed for more floor space for more displays.
Following the numbers of each display let them start with Earth, and a summation of what hard-copy information about humanity’s infancy had survived through the Big Flash. Next came the decidedly scarcer information about the First Civilisation and its vast empire of virtually magical technology.
Then came that terrible fall and the ensuing Age of Silence, during which each planet was left entirely on its own with technology that no longer functioned. The section of displays that followed showed several well-known cases of the barbarism that had followed. Mad cults led by tyrants that offered blood to their gods, virtual annihilation of entire planets that had had no food production of their own, devastation as immense buildings people could no longer maintain collapsed...
Historians seemed to agree that savagery was not universal, but to a great extent it was an age of ignorance, blades and guns. Then, here and there as circumstances allowed, worlds began developing again, almost from scratch. The secrets of the teleportation platforms remained a mystery to this very day, but in time mankind was able to journey between the stars again, with primitive leap drives.
But even as contact was reestablished and hints of galactic order returned the Sea of Stars remained vast, with many dark corners that no one could police. For centuries there was nothing stopping anyone who could muster enough armed ships from seeking out a backwards world and terrorising it from orbit. Hence the term ‘sky-king’.
One particularly dramatic image, clearly a reprint of a painting by some bygone master, was twice as wide as Vanaka was tall and showed a man in archaic armour, with a sword on one hip and a gun on the other, watching from the bridge of a warship as a planetary surface was bombed.
What must it have been like, Vanaka wondered, to have had this kind of power? What twisted thrill did one get out of it?
History continued on as it always did, with setbacks and triumphs, risings and falls, technological breakthroughs and unexpected consequences thereof, and the gradual rise of the current great powers of the galaxy and a general order to things. But there was always violence. It waxed and waned in intensity, but always returned as reliably as a sunrise. People either needed something another group of people had, or were led by a leader who needed a conflict to maintain power. And although the plaques didn’t always spell it out, each of these was marked by some form of othering. She supposed it was the psychological self-defence mechanism mankind had designed for itself, to be able to inflict harm on a large scale for its own benefit, whether perceived or real.
There was always that other. The other ones. The evil ones, and the evil ways in which they were different. Vanaka lingered before an old photo of a perfect example: an ethnic slaughter of an enclave of the Veroki subtype, on some planet Vanaka had barely heard of.
The elder’s words had haunted her whole day, but now she truly thought of them for the first time.
It was Erine who pointed out that exactly two hours remained until the meeting Vanaka had been invited to.
“Right, right,” Vanaka said.
She looked at Losan.
“We’ll see Erine safely back to the hotel, grab a quick meal, and then head out.”
She took a steadying breath.
“It is time to get serious, I suppose.”