The Legend of Corinair by Ryk Brown Page B

looting, killing each other in order to survive. In less than a decade, eighty percent of the population of the Earth and the Core Worlds had either died or left. If it weren’t for a small percentage of the population that seemed to have a natural immunity, the Earth and the Core Worlds would probably still be abandoned.”
    “But I still don’t get why our tech is more advanced,” Josh said.
    “With so few people left on Earth, there were not enough people to keep things going. Industry quickly ground to a halt, and within a century, the population of Earth became more tribal and agrarian. They were just trying to survive. Within a few generations, technology became nothing more than useless garbage. And since books had all been converted to digital format centuries earlier, there were no records of what once was. Everything was basically forgotten. What little was remembered was passed down through the generations through stories more than anything else.”
    “How did you guys rebuild? I mean, obviously you did, or else we wouldn’t be talking right now.”
    “Slowly, over many centuries. Most of our technology had to be rediscovered, relearned. We still had some memory of what we had been, but we’d forgotten a lot of the basics. Quite frankly, it was difficult. We lacked the population needed to support rapid industrial and technological advancement. And our health care was also sorely lacking. At the rate we were progressing, it would’ve taken us at least another five hundred years to get back out into deep space.”
    “So how did you make the leap?”
    “The Data Ark,” Nathan said.
    Josh and Loki looked at each other. “The what?”
    “A hundred years ago, archaeologists uncovered a massive underground complex in northern Europe. It contained all human history, culture, religion, and science, for as far back as human history had been recorded. With the knowledge contained in the Data Ark we were able to advance our civilization as much as three hundred years in only a century.”
    “What about all of us?” Josh asked. “How did we get out here?”
    “Well, we’re not really clear on that. It seems that only the very beginning of the plague was recorded in the Data Ark. Once it started getting out of control, the facility was sealed for fear of contamination. But what we have been able to piece together is that there were a lot of last minute expeditions carrying refugees trying to escape the plague. At first, they were trying to seek refuge on fringe worlds that had already been settled. But when the plague started showing up on those worlds as well, they started closing their doors to refugees. So the refugees must’ve gone farther out into the galaxy. There were quite a number of habitable worlds that had been cataloged and scheduled for exploration at the time. But to my knowledge, none of them were this far out. How your people ended up all the way out here is as much a mystery to me as it is to you.”
    Josh was deep in thought as he considered what Nathan had just told them. It was an uncharacteristic expression for the young man, whose face was usually quite animated. “But our tech is not that much more advanced than yours,” Josh observed. “I mean, if we’ve had a thousand years to build on while you all were back to pooping in the woods—we should be a lot more advanced.”
    “Most of those expeditions left in a hurry,” Nathan told him. “Like I said, the exact details are sketchy, since everything was falling apart as they left. But I would imagine that many expeditions left somewhat woefully equipped. Who knows how much tech, supplies, and equipment your forefathers brought with them? Or how many people were on your expedition as well? Or what happened to your settlements over all those centuries? There’s a lot of reasons that your development could have stalled to some degree. The fact that you have all done as well as you have, and this far away from Earth—that alone is