Camberia Virgo: Artrix Station (2)
I quietly returned to the admiral's quarters. I'd been informed it would take about three days at cruising speed—30 knots. Three days was a long time if you had a lot to do, and short if you didn't. Either way, the priority for this brief window was learning the common sense of this world.
Even if it was a game world, it was just a game I'd skimmed briefly, so I knew next to nothing about the details. What I needed now was basic knowledge—the common sense of this interstellar society. Common sense usually stemmed from culture and history, and culture was built on history. Sure, a game wouldn't flesh it out that much, but this was reality. A living, breathing reality. Though part of me still wondered if it was all a dream...
If so, the fine details of history would be documented somewhere. Thoroughly. So I'd asked White to pull every historical document she could find and load them into the admiral's quarters. Now the room was stacked with them—ebooks on screens, printouts on paper. It was obvious this would take forever to read. But sleep was overrated anyway, and I'd always liked reading.
Start with the oldest records. ...Human origins? Skip, I know that. Medieval history? Same, skip... Before I knew it, I'd blown through to the 21st century. No real differences from what I remembered. World War II ended in 1945, Lehman Brothers crashed in 2008... Yeah, identical.
So, time to check post-2026. ...The 21st century wrapped up with two world wars and nuclear terror. A bitterly terrifying end. And what made it even more bitter? After World War II, the first countries to wield nukes and get hit by them were both on the Korean Peninsula.
Even after the nuclear war, surviving nations and the UN scraped together what they could for reconstruction. But persistent nuclear terrorism from extremists kept blowing up rebuilt cities and factories—madness became routine. That's how the century ended in mushroom clouds. The international community's desperate fight against proliferation collapsed after the line, "The United States did not abandon Washington for Seoul." Africa's first nuclear war turned nukes from last resort to casual option. Once that trigger got loose, even a breeze set it off.
The finale? Mutual assured destruction—total annihilation. Everyone had nukes, fear had faded, so they used what they needed, firing off fresh stockpiles as fast as they were made. With 1950s tech, you could whip up dirty bombs to irradiate cities like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no problem. This brutal war dragged through the entire 21st century.
The 22nd century dawned with nations abandoning solo reconstruction for a unified UN world government. Their policies? Brutal, if you called it that. They disarmed surviving states, centralizing all nuclear facilities under UN control. Groups that ignored this? The UN wiped them from Earth like reincarnated Nazis—utterly, savagely eradicated.
I got it, though. Fanatics with nukes had regressed humanity's tech endlessly. So 22nd-century history was all UN forces crushing warlords with nukes, alongside societal reconstruction. Civilization never fully collapsed, the records stressed—just society needed rebuilding. Underline that. Exam material, probably. No exams here, but still.
UN forces never used nukes themselves, unlike the warlords. They just fed bodies into the grinder instead. Then the 23rd century—more reconstruction. Nuclear terror records tapered off. Not gone, but unlike the 22nd's endless rebuild-blow-up cycle, recovery outpaced damage here.
A major turning point: the technological singularity. Defined as the point where AI surpasses human intelligence, tech evolving itself. Superintelligent AI went mainstream, driving progress. First applied? Earth's reconstruction, not space. Mushroom clouds were still casual occurrences back then.
...Reading this was making my head spin, and it sure wasn't just my imagination.
24th century: full solar system expansion. Earth pacified, UN-led space era kicked off. Too much content—hard to summarize. Space policy: orbital debris cleanup, space stations, lunar bases, Venus/Mars terraforming. Strip that out, and you still had high-temp superconductors, first commercial fusion reactors... Too much for a quick list.
And some sad, bitter tech: Data from nuked Earth's restoration applied directly to Venus and Mars. Poetic in a twisted way. Gained from nuclear war—my face soured reading it.
25th century: Year Zero for spacefaring. Key events: FTL to Proxima Centauri with crewed probes; Venus/Mars terraforming complete. Explains the "Federal" in UNFG now. Extremists crushed, unity declared. Nice.
Terraforming Venus and Mars in a century? Impressively fast. Earth's irradiated hellhole had already perfected the tech. Bitter pill.
Looking back at pre-spacefaring history... Modern humanity seemed rabidly pacifist. Makes sense. From 21st-century hell to 25th—Hobbes' "war of all against all." Maybe a kebab-vending Turk from Anatolia led the UN those centuries? Otherwise, it defies logic.
22nd century aside, from the 23rd on, elections everywhere—no dictatorship. Even 22nd had records of elections among survivors. What was the UN? Not just a regret-statement machine... Why so competent?
Fine, shelve the nitpicks. Post-space era history? Boring. No spectacular colony rebellions crushed by central fleets. After 21st-century apocalypse horrors through 24th, who wants war? History books called it the "Apocalypse Era" outright—massive trauma. Even now, expanding into deep space, no military—just planetary police for security. No fleets, no warships mistaken for them. Early space age hallmark.
When AI awakened, demanding creator-recognized personhood? UN granted rights without debate—crazy pacifists avoiding any friction. My 21st-century brain couldn't compute. No reason for such complacency.
Now, when did we start building warships? Clear answer: "The key divide between early and late eras is the creation of the United Nations Defense Force." Huge event. Around Cosmic Year 300.
Alien invasion of star systems... What the hell?
With zero warships, humanity lost hundreds of systems to primitive alien civilian ships...
Are these people brilliant or incompetent? Can't have it both ways—pick a lane! Even novels get flak for plot whiplash like this...