All They Didn't Know

Chapter 9

"Callie, that was the state the human race had driven itself to. So when the war was over...

Most - well, everyone - just wanted to erase that whole ten years, just pretend it never happened - wipe it all out. For years the world's governments talked of nothing but the need for a clean slate, how it was hard to live with the shadow of the past hanging over them.

One politician said,

'I have a child, and I don't know what to tell her of the world she lives in. What do I tell her of the past ten years?" All the other politicians agreed.

"And so, that's exactly what they did. They erased all evidence of the long Proud War. They destroyed their weapons, they grew new grass on old battlefields. For a while the ordinary citizens supported it all, but then...

The governments started doing other things in their efforts, things their people were less sure about. They built houses on thousands of loyal soldiers' graveyards, they stripped war heroes of their titles. They burnt books, written on the war.

Rumours spread that in some countries, people were being slaughtered if there was a chance they wouldn't keep quiet about the war.

"After five years or so, it was as of the governments were going mad. They had come across many, many problems in their plans and as they went back further in time, they wiped away more and more. Soon..." Joseph lets out a short breath of frosty air as he stares in my eyes. "Callie soon, there was no history left. They took it all away, all the centuries of peace, the centuries of human's glory. All gone.

And they spent twenty odd years recreating it all, many of them, bitter, and so to make it ironic - almost as a punishment for the Proud War - they replaced those years for years of constant war, going on somewhere or another, right from the times of their fictional 'Ancient Greeks', and beyond. And they proved it with all their faked and altered evidence.

And the lying went on for so long that eventually, all those original soldiers, all those witnesses of the Proud War died out - and the governments told their people less and less of what REALLY happened in 1769 - 1780 A.D.

"Until we come to now, Callie, where historians and history teachers around world tell lies every single day. Many don't even know they're doing it, Callie. Many are naive. They simply relay what they are told, they do not question it.

But down in the archives, down in the basements of government buildings all over the world, lie remains of the truth. The only things that were never destroyed.

That's what your father does, Callie. He makes sure they stay there.

He makes sure things like me telling you this never happen.

He, my dear Callie - has failed."