Let’s get some fiction back on this blog. Remember this list? It’s back with number 5:
A young novice discovers an ancient tome that reveals a mystical, magical source of zero-point energy that powers faster-than-light travel, allowing them to explore the galaxy.
Well, that feels like cool world-building but I didn’t want to write the whole world so instead, I’m going to do what I implied in the title and give a speech on the topic.
Inaugural Speech, 23 Tantal, year 3341 of the Decaperial Calendar
My friends, I welcome you here today to this momentous occasion. It was on this day three hundred and forty-two years ago that Cantrell Phipps III, after stumbling upon a box locked by his great-great-grandfather, the explorer and eccentric Cartell Phipps VI, discovering a tome that would unlock for us the secrets of space. Of course, we all know now the significance of the number 342, but when Cantrell found that book, he had no idea of the impact it would make in the lives of everyday citizens around the galaxy– or rather, around this world as it unlocked the galaxy to us.
What followed, you all of course know. His tedious translation of the book, the discovery of an actual arcane force that was useless in the days of its discover and thence lost but for young Cantrell, a physicist and engineer and polyglot, opened his mind to space. The first tentative exploratory missions. The discovery of planets abounding in previously unknown flora and fauna. The incredible advances in medicine, textiles, biological research, and the eruption of the space travel industry. The first colonies. The short but intense commercial wars that led to the creation of a newer, more equal government. The galaxywide expansion of life, trade, and the flourishing of our civilizations. The tragedies of Maxellian IV and Neo-Plannas.
Today is not a day of dry history though, but a day of celebration. Today we open the Cantrell Memorial and Research Institute here, on the grounds ancestrally owned by the Phipps family, dedicated to going beyond and reaching for the impossible. And today I am pleased and honored to have the chance to inaugurate it with a statue of Cantrell Phipps III. Created by sculptor Trental Perrian, it shows the spirit that Cantrell inspires in each of us. One hand grasping the tome of wonder, the other reaching upward, forever surrounded by these swirling figures representing exerpts from the book in question, of equations that allowed it to adapt to our ships, and with a flight of such ships flowing up from behind it. Note that the ships represent significant historical ships in the founding of the galaxy we know today.
And with that, I bring my speech to a close. I don’t want to keep you too long from the canapés that I know interest all of us. But I ask that as we go through this party, we do not lose sight of all that this organization, and this history, means to all of us.
Thank you, and on to the stars!
Intellectual Property of Elizabeth Doman
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For a moment I thought there was a numbering mistake between generations, then saw the small difference in their first names of grandfather and son. Otherwise, I’d be thinking you were on a weird tale of a family where each generation sets an expiry date on a given name, or could be taken to mean that last person with that ‘the 1st’ designation must not procreate.
Yeah I wanted to be a little silly with the fancy people names.