Back in the meeting room Rusty and Ophelia were lost in
conversation. “So how do you keep it all straight?” Rusty asked. “My planet
hasn't even been around three hundred years, we've had one war and I can't even
remember who led which side.”
Ophelia shook her head. “It's not about 'keeping it all
straight.' History isn't like math or computer code where you do equations and
it comes out the same every time. It took us hundreds of years to figure out
how to learn from our history. Names and dates don't do anyone any good -
knowing why certain pivotal points played out the way they did makes history
worth knowing. It used to be the five W's. Who, What, Where, When, Why. But
'why' is the most important of those questions by far. Why did a non violent
scientist, who discovered the laws of energy, help create a bomb that wiped out
two cities and leave the planet with the stigma of nuclear power? Why did men
get together and form an organization that belittled and marginalized women for
over two thousand years? And why did that organization almost lead us to the
end of civilization three times? Why did the oldest and most powerful nations
hand themselves over to the corporation? Learning from history is learning to
ask dangerous and difficult questions; and you begin to see the path of
humanity, and just how easily we allow it to be manipulated.” She was pacing
back and forth, stopped and looked at Rusty who was entranced.
“Well, I picked the wrong profession.” He leaned back in his
chair and glanced at the changing slide image on the wall. The space statue
popped up. “What questions should we be asking about them?”
Ophelia looked at the image. “Why don't they actively seek
out any of the colonies they could easily reach? Why when they do run into a
ship or a settlement do they not even slow down? They leave a wake of
destruction and nothing anyone has done has even come close to stopping them.”
He looked at the map of colonies that had been wiped out
once it popped up. “So every encounter with the statue is due solely to the
fact that it has an unchanging course and these colonies basically got in the
way?”
Ophelia nodded. “If we didn't have proof there is something
alive inside of it, I would assume it was floating dead through space.” She sat
on the table while Rusty got up to look at the map of the galaxy.
“Can you keep this image up for a minute?” he asked. She
nodded and pressed a button on the remote. Rusty began mapping out the course
of the statue on the larger map. “I was never a 'why' person. Growing up I was
always focused on 'how'. How can I erase the history of Toll downloading vid's
on my dad's computer. How can I build a mainframe out of junk, How can I hack
into a transit ring. Why wasn't a question I ever had the luxury of answering.”
Ophelia looked at the map trying to figure out the point he
was trying to make. “What 'how' are you trying to work out right now?” she
asked.
He took control of the keyboard and quickly acclimatized
himself to the map programs commands. The red line that showed the statue
ship's path extended out into it's future course, never curving or diverting.
The Galaxy map widened until Earth was visible and the red line ran right into
the planet.
“I'm trying to figure out how we're going to avoid
extinction.” Rusty answered Ophelia's original question, sitting down hard.
Far from being shocked Ophelia smiled warmly at him. “We
already knew it's ultimate destination... look, it's been a long trip for you,
a lot of stuff completely outside your control has happened to you and I
imagine that everything has you pretty much totally overwhelmed. But it's no longer just you and Toll vs the universe.”
She held back the urge to hold his hand.
“I just want to live long enough to go home, you know?” His
eyes had not left the map.
Ophelia was
distracted by her tablet alarm going off.
“oh!” she shut off the alarm and got up off the desk. “look
there's no point in driving yourself mad worrying about this right now. Why
don't you come with me? I think you'd enjoy my next meeting.”
