Commencement Letter

   You all know this. I don’t really have to tell it to you. But I will anyway. It’s important that you always keep this in mind.
   We were great once. 
   We are pretty certain we did not start out here--we came from “the stars”, or so the old stories tell us. And we have no reason to doubt that. Too much about our world and our physiology just does not line up. Bifrost is comfortable enough, we do well on it--thrive even--but there is no way we are a product of some natural evolution of this world. 
   And then there are those stories. Most of us grew up with an elder telling us that our people were star people. We came from the stars. Made this world our home. Our people built great machines that could answer any question or build your heart’s desire--all you had to do was think of it! The time of our ancestors was one of greatness--people who never knew want, or deprivation, or cold. They could have anything. They could be anyone. Our people were master sailors--merchants and explorers on a jet black sea. And one day we would go back.
   Historians, working from fragments, tell us these stories are true. We can still see the evidence. We are told this set of ruins was once a great library. That one a wondrous factory. Another, some other exotic installation we do not even have the ability to comprehend anymore. And even the fantastical part of the stories we have recently realized were true: These silent machines literally responded to the thoughts of those who used them. As the mind speakers have ceased hiding in the shadows and come out into the light--perhaps you among them--we have shed centuries of fear and ignorance. We can doubt this no more. 
   We were great once. 
   We had a mastery of reality that beggars belief, enabled by a rare gift that literally allows a person’s mind to touch the very fabric of creation. A gift that we realized, too late, was also a dire curse. When the Scream came, it came only for those so “gifted” as to be able to hear it. In an instant, every individual capable of actually commanding the godlike power of our civilization was dead, their minds burned to a cinder by a horrific screech from the depths of space. 
   There are fragmented histories of survivors here and there, people not instantly killed by a power beyond mortal ken, but doomed nonetheless: minds permanently broken beyond repair, fractured with madness, and completely unable to control the huge energies at their command. It has taken generations for us to even begin to repair this damage to our people’s minds, and even now the most powerful and stable of the gifted are the quietest echoes of the minds of the past. And where tens of thousands of lanterns once beamed, only dozens of small candles flicker in our night.
   Our records of the actual event, its aftermath, and several years following it are almost nonexistent. It seems after generations of having machines that were responsible for recording even the most trivial of details automatically, guided by the light of a gifted mind, it did not even occur to the survivors that they would have to manually record their history now. 
   This, too, is important for you to keep in mind: The only way our future generations will know what you have done, what you have learned, is if you tell them. 
   The fragments our ancestors tell us that the damage was not limited to just the minds of human operators. We are told there were once floating cities, but they fell one by one until none were left. There was a gate, we are told, floating above our world that allowed ships to travel easily to other stars. We have since found what remains of it: a cold, lifeless skeleton of a ring pockmarked by centuries of rocks. 
   We know our ancestors did not learn things too deeply. Why bother? Any knowledge could be had in a moment, on a whim. Minds would simply dive into great archives that contained the sum total of our species’ knowledge. However, with all the minds capable of sorting through such a vast storehouse of information gone, finding even the most trivial things became an enormous undertaking. And eventually, even the archives went silent, worn out and unrepairable. 
   Remember their failure, and use it to fuel your drive to improve. To excel. Whatever your role, you must learn it until every fiber of your being is bent to it. And when your time comes, you must assure the next generation can carry the torch I am handing you now, made ever so slightly brighter by your own precious knowledge.
   A decade after the Scream had passed, even the most foolishly hopeful amongst us realized that no help was coming. Whatever tragedy had befallen us had been universal. When our communication devices went quiet, no one ever thought to check what had happened to our colony as no one was listening. We were on our own. 
   As you will be, out in the night. You are our light, driving back the darkness. You are the hope that no child ever again must hide from the dark, shivering from the cold. 
   And hide we did. We slipped into a dark age. We regressed back to a technological standard that could be maintained with what little knowledge remained to us and eked out a cold, miserable existence. For centuries.
   But still we never stopped telling the stories. The elders took the children out beneath the night sky and pointed out the Sentinel Star. Pointed out the Angels. Made the children watch as they slid across the blue-black expanse above. The elders whispered: those bright lights were the tools of our people, placed there to protect us from the darkness beyond. Told us that they would keep us safe through the night, no matter how long, until our people could once again see the dawn. Until we could go back up there and reclaim them. 
   And now, after centuries of night, our dawn is breaking.
   By the end of this day, I will no longer call you Cadet. Your time here is done, and you have earned the honors being bestowed upon you. You have proven yourself worthy of carrying the hopes of our people. Now go out and lead us into the light.

                                                        Vice Admiral Clouise Sterson
							Commandant
							BRN Orbital Academy