“Good, I’m glad everyone is having a good evening. It’s an important day in the history of our world, and it should be celebrated.” The senator looked around the crowd as the last of the applause fell silent. Finally, he launched into the main body of his prepared speech, his tone changing to one more befitting the topic.
“Long ago, humanity was tossed back into a period of darkness and despair the likes of which was unseen in human history. For over a thousand years, our ancestors struggled to survive in the wake of the most devastating disaster ever to befall humankind. A plague of biblical proportions nearly wiped humanity out of existence, leaving only those blessed with a natural immunity to survive and start over. But the great bio-digital plague did more than reduce our populations. It did more than destroy our civilizations and our infrastructures. And it did more than take away our science, culture and technology. It took away our unity as a people. It took away our common dreams and goals. In fact it took away our very will to carry on…”
The senator paused for dramatic effect, scanning the faces standing on his lawn, until he felt that the moment was right to add one word. “…almost.”
“For despite the hardships and despite the pain and suffering. Despite the thousands of mass graves and the countless suicides in the face of utter despair, humanity found a way to carry on. We joined together, in small groups at first, scratching out a meager existence. And in time, things got better. In time, we forgot. We forgot the horror, the despair, and the tragedy. But with each new generation, we also forgot ourselves, who we were, where we came from, and what we had once been. We even forgot that humans just like us were struggling in much the same way on worlds we had colonized out amongst the stars.”
The senator paused again, making eye contact with a few faces in the crowd. He knew that each person whose eyes he met equaled another vote.
“For centuries on end, we merely existed, making little to no attempt to reclaim that which had been lost. But eventually, as our populations grew, necessity again became the mother of invention. Slowly but surely we began to move forward, to rebuild. But we had to relearn all that had been forgotten. We had to conduct the same experiments, the same research and development, and suffer through the same countless failures as we slowly progressed. Until that fateful day of discovery. The day we learned that everything we once were had not been lost, but had only been misplaced. It was the day that humanity would regain all that had been taken from us. It was the day the Data Ark was discovered!”