A school finds a time capsule buried in the era of human kind's first interplanetary flight. Inside of it are little keepsakes and letters left by the young children of the past. -- Anon Guest
It was meant to be opened a century after it was finally buried, in 2132, TCE[1]. By then, several things had gone awry. Things got forgotten. Mistakes were made. A school no longer needed was demolished to make room for fields. A field is eventually taken over by a new city. A new city digs a new sewer system and finds... a container covered in ancient writings.
An archeological treasure.
Fortunately for history, it came to light in an era when such discoveries were carefully examined rather than torn apart for the valuables they might contain[2]. The exterior bore a translation of every written language at the time. Simple words, Commemorating the launch and landing of the first Martian colony in the year 2032. In the hopes of teaching tomorrow what it was like for those who lived it. Do not disturb until 2132.
It was almost three hundred years since its anticipated opening. Further, just the casing was a rosetta stone for languages that had been lost since the beginning of the Shattering. Opening it was a similar gift.
Journals. Artefacts. The mandatory newspapers. All from a passage of two years during Terra's first mission to colonise Mars.
An unprecedented snapshot of history. Not just from the nation that began the mission, but from all nations. There were children's drawings of the launch. There were imaginings of the landing, replete with fictional Martians. There was fan art including a blue police call box for some ream.
Of the diaries and journals, the first translations came from a young schoolboy named Jesse. Thus, some large portions of the world fell in love with him across the centuries.
The first entry, "Mi dum teechur is makin me do jurnals becoz sum othr pipl ar gon to marz. I hav 2 do this 4 TOO YEERZ! That iz too yeers to logn." And he drew a picture of a dog in a space ship entitled, No Laika this.
The infonets adored him. Thousands of readers tuning in for the deciphering of the Time Capsule Texts could sympathise with a kid not wanting to do their homework. Jesse would much rather doodle in his journal than talk about what was going on with the first manned mission to Mars.
He drew his family. He drew his friends. He drew parodic pictures of his teachers. He drew his wishes, fantasies, and imaginings. His spelling very rarely improved over the years.
He drew little comics about his personal injustices.
When the mission ended, and the colonies were deemed 'boring' the project came to an end. The journals and everything else was gathered, preserved, packed, and sealed away for too much time. The people who lived in the 2030's could not have predicted what happened between them and 2132. Few ever could have.
Jesse vanished from the record.
Nobody could know if he grew up, how he dealt with the changing world. Nobody knew the rest of his story.
All they had was this two-year fragment from the sum total of his life.
Debates raged on about probability and statistics, and the politics causing various collapses and riots during that era of history. The larger fandom ignored them and produced essays that boiled down to one single sentiment: We hope Jesse made it and had a happy life.
[1] Terran Common Era
[2] Look up how Howard Carter treated the body of Tutankhamun some time. It's gross.
[Photo by Mockup Graphics on Unsplash]
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