Silence hangs in the air for a moment, before a tsunami of protests and whining floods the auditorium. Neanderthal Lincoln next to Ximena is standing, and like many others around her, booing and muttering very ugly words of disapproval. It takes some time of Miyagi patiently appeasing them with reassuring gestures until his voice can be heard again.
“I hear you, I hear you, but this is non-negotiable. Censor Smith was very specific. Please, people, don’t make this a freedom-of-expression thing. There are rules even in the Lundev. You cannot show up, say, naked. The threshold today is just a tad higher. So please, out of respect for our fellow GIA students…” He extends his hand at them, all sitting in astonished silence in their neat white-and-blue robes, just like Ximena.
Miyagi folds his arms across his chest and stares on as the Lundev students grudgingly comply. It is a sight to behold, all those weird and flamboyant characters shrinking—that’s how it feels—into regular, almost boring looking students her age, dressed in regular Hansasian style civilian clothes. Next to her, Neanderthal Lincoln is unceremoniously un-Lincolned into a redheaded Neanderthal man in his twenties with a mean frown in his narrow brow and a “bollocks” on his lips.
“Thank you for your understanding,” Miyagi says with a slight bow of his head. “Now, cheer up,” he raises his voice with practiced confidence, “and shake off those long faces. You are in for a treat, people. The best lecture of your lives is about to begin!”
Yes, finally! Ximena tries to keep her legs from shaking with anticipation. She totally believes the man. This is going to be the most important seminar of her life. She feels it in her bones.
“History,” Miyagi begins in a solemn voice, “is a tough science.” He sighs theatrically, as if he were confessing his deepest sin. “A true bitch, trust me. Truth is elusive. Convenient lies always loom on the surface, so tempting.” He stops and stares into the eyes of his enthralled audience with an unusually stern expression. “You are here not only to learn what happened a hundred years ago. No, people, that’s not really that important. You can always look it up. Much more important, if I succeed, is to give you the mental tools to dig out the truth from under the heavy layers of historical bullshit.”
Some students chuckle. Ximena doesn’t. His words resonate deep in her, like an old melody she cannot remember. To dig out the truth…
“I’m dead serious,” he says. “A tough science requires tougher scientists. The aim of this seminar, my aim, is to make you think tough. So, I expect you people,” he slides a finger across the auditorium, “to do much of the talking. I want to hear your thoughts, take part in the analysis, and come together with conclusions and historical theories that—like any other science—approximates us to the objective truth.”
The objective truth.
Miyagi’s smile returns. “So, woo-hoo.” He playfully wags his fingers. “This semester we are diving deep into events that happened just a century ago—early twenty-fifth century. Life then differed greatly from now. Why?”
He looks expectantly at the young faces. A shy hand rises from among the GIA section. It’s Cody.
“Please, why was it different, uh…?” He points at Cody, frowns, and then turns to Ank. “The name thingy, please?”
Ank smiles and nods. “Done,” she says without moving a muscle.
Miyagi points his finger at Cody again, and large, friendly letters appear floating over his head: Cody O’Higgin. “There! Cody, please. Why was life so different a mere century ago? I mean, think about it, it’s not that long ago. There are still people around that lived through those events. The ink of history is not quite dry yet. So, what was so crucially different back then?”
“Well, sir, a hundred years ago we were on the verge of extinction.”
“Please class, don’t call me sir, all right? Just Professor, or simply Kenji. And yes, humanity went almost belly up. But that doesn’t really answer the question. Why was it different from today? How do you know we will not soon go extinct ourselves?”
Cody falls silent, considering.
“Er… Well, there are no obvious threats now. Back then there was the Dem-Pandemic, the ritual deaths, the brief lives. Now all is different. Better. We have a larger population, technology…”
The redheaded Neanderthal next to Ximena—the former Abraham Lincoln—raises a hand. Professor Miyagi points at him with a nod. A name appears over his head. “Mark, please. Your opinion?”
“Well,” Mark turns to Cody who is still standing at the opposite side of the amphitheater, not too far away considering its size, “I don’t agree that population and technology are by themselves a guarantee against calamity. Not according to history. Take, say, the peak of the golden age, at the end of the twenty-first century. The human population was, like, twenty times larger than today’s. Technology was also more advanced back then, even if we are catching up. They had colonies on Mars, and on the Moon and some asteroids. And what, in just a few decades, humanity lost all that and collapsed to numbers not seen since, uh…”
“Good point, Mark,” Miyagi says. “We barely made it through both collapses. By the mid twenty-second century humanity was a pathetic shadow of its former self. Anything to say in reply, Cody?”
“Uh, yes, that’s all true, but I think the Dem-Pandemic made all the difference. Cause unknown. Impossible to cure. Nobody could escape it, not even with strict isolation. The first collapse of the golden age had obvious causes: environmental destruction, geopolitical tensions, technological disruption, and so on. All human-made. With time and common sense, all curable. But not Dem.”
“Again, good point,” Miyagi says with a curt nod. “The Dem-Pandemic triggered the second collapse when we were still licking the wounds from the first, and left us crawling through the mud for centuries. But even then, they
