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The pages are fresh. It's like they were created and abandoned on this desk only moments before you came in. 

You take another look over your shoulder at the pristine room in the belly of these strange underground ruins you've stumbled on. It's been hundreds of years since the last person stood here in this exact spot, staring down at these exact papers. Or so you assume. It's not like you'd really know, would you? They didn't do much record-keeping back then.

The air is stale and undisturbed down here. It's paused as if stuck in the past. The universe moved on, but not this room in the deepest level of the old United Regions of Earth. 

It feels like this room is waiting because any second now, the previous inhabitant is expected to return.

You flinch, anticipating that moment when the door opens and the ghost of the President floats in. 

It doesn't show. There's no one down here but you. 

And you have these documents in your hand. 

You might as well read them.

I mean, these are the tales of your ancestors, after all. So much of their history is still indistinguishable from the drunken anecdotes slurred across the galaxies, so you might as well get the truth right here, right now... right?

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