The Archivaas learn of the history of humans banning and burning books and other reading material, and how some DeRegulations STILL do it, to try to hide information from people. -- Lessons
Knowledge is power. People have known this for centuries. Whoever controls the knowledge has the power over those who cannot access all of it. Interestingly, it only takes a few fragments of misinformation to spawn a million conspiracy theories.
Some people will believe anything if it thereby makes them the smartest person in the room.
Thus, recovering and classifying information has always been the goal of the Archivaas. So much has been lost to the erosion of history. And some of it was blown up on purpose. For profit, for politics, for the pursuit of power... the result was always the same. Something was destroyed. Something was lost. Something... was missing. The Aarchivas have been trying to get a lot of it back since their inception as a sort of cult.
They preserve, annotate, and cross-reference everything. Especially the lies.
Acolyte Archivaas Font was learning the disturbing truth that impassioned many a devotee to the Archivaas cause. The one truth that sent many of them into the long robes and a lifetime of cataloguing and restoration.
"The Shattering didn't do all of the damage," said Head Librarian Binding. "There have been efforts throughout Terran history to erase parts of it for all concerned."
"The numerous first emperors of China?" offered Font.
"That's the more famous effort, yes. There have been others. So many others." Binding lead font into a hall lit with imitation candles[1]. A hall filled with black granite, and names.
A memorial hall. Not for the fallen people who may have been lost in any given war, but of titles. Titles of books and poems. Titles of media.
Titles were all that remained.
Titles, and the reason why they were erased from the record. And, if such information were available, who expunged them and why.
There was a screen at the very end of the hall. A constantly updating list. Those on that screen were too late, of course. The Archivaas preserved everything with a literal religious devotion to the task.
Those determined to erase every copy had to work for it, now that the Archivaas were solidly on the case.
Some purges were tragically mundane. "Everyone has a copy," Font read. "It aged poorly. Having that is not a good look." There were hundreds under one heading, "Deemed subversive."
"Those who side with fascism love that one. They also adore classifying things as pornographic."
Font silently skimmed over the titles under that heading, "Many of those sound like children's primers."
"They were children's primers. Books for children to learn how to read. Books about allegedly deviant behaviour, like dressing up and playing pretend. Books about things that were real, like two male penguins who adopted a chick. Books that said things they didn't like, in a manner that even a child could understand."
Font frowned as they continued down the hall. More and more, the 'classified pornographic' designation turned up. Some were marked with an R for Recovered. It was nice to see those R's, no matter how rare they were.
Then came the screen. A constantly updating scroll of planets and books and whether or not fire was involved. The screen of pointless endeavour, since every publisher in the Alliance routinely sent copies to various sects of the Archivaas as a matter of law.
Every single planet trying to purge literature from their citizens' experience... was a Deregger world.
"Why do they keep trying?" wondered Font, tears spilling at the thought of so many fires on so many worlds, of so many libraries going up in smoke.
"Those who side with fascism despise the idea of others learning things. They seek to spread only the ignorance they approve of. Even to the books they purport to follow."
Once more, two words entered the screen, as they frequently did. Two words, and the digital image of a flame, indicating that someone, somewhere, was burning every copy they had.
The Bible.
[1] No open flames are permitted anywhere in Archivaas library complexes. In fact, their fire prevention measures are almost fatally extreme.
[Photo by Jonny Caspari on Unsplash]
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