Chapter 509 Begin at the Beginning
?Once the councilors were all seated, Gaia wasted no time and, acting as the general secretary, immediately began speaking.
[Ladies and gentlemen of the imperial council, thank you for your attendance today. There are a few ground rules you should take note of regarding protocol in the council chamber, but those are all in your introductory data files and you should have read them. Everyone here is an adult, and all of you have been entrusted with the weighty responsibility of the empire’s day-to-day operations. Anyone who violates those protocols will be ejected from the council chamber at His Imperial Majesty’s sole discretion.
[Today’s session of the imperial council only has one item on the agenda: progress reports from each of your agencies’ ongoing projects, if any. I fully expect, though, that this will be a long meeting, as nearly everyone in this room has been assigned a project with the goal of strengthening the empire’s foundation. We are not here to judge, but to assist. Tell us what issues you are facing and those issues will be resolved.] She panned her gaze across the room, a professional smile on her inhumanly perfect, elfin face.
[Once the progress reports have been entered into the Akashic Record, you will all be provided with individualized feedback based on your specific circumstances. Even if everything is going well, there will always be room for improvement.
[With that said, please welcome His Imperial Majesty.] Gaia dropped to one knee and lowered her head toward Aron, a personal gesture she had come up with on her own. Nowhere in the council protocol did it call for anyone to kneel, except in very specific, ceremonial situations.
Aron stood from his seat, the desk in front of him becoming a podium with the imperial seal on the front of it. N♡vεlB¡n: Unleashing Imagination, One Read at a Time.
“Nobody ever said that change, especially an abrupt and all-
encompassing change like the formation of a species-wide empire, would be easy. And if anyone ever did, know this: they were lying to you. It hasn’t been easy, it isn’t easy now, and it won’t be easy in the future. But as you adapt to the changes being forced upon you, you will grow more capable, stronger, smarter, and better able to bear the weight of the future.
“Humanity has never been the strongest species, nor the fastest, nor the most durable. Ours is a race of feeble weaklings that crawled out of the primordial soup and evolved step by step, winnowing out our weak and selecting to fill the evolutionary niches available to us. We became tenacious, we became tribal, but most of all, we became smart. We learned. We invented, we innovated, we adapted, and we overcame.
“And that same process is what humanity is once again undergoing. And just like australopithecus, who took the first step as a two-legged, upright mammal; just like homo habilis picked up the first sticks and rocks to purposefully use as tools; just like homo erectus lit torches to brighten up the night, and archaic homo sapiens and neanderthals carried those torches forward until homo sapiens came about, we are now tasked with carrying the undying drive to survive into an unknown future!
“But We will not take more of your time. Citizens of the empire, imperial councilors, and supreme ministers, it’s now time for you to take the stage and let everyone know just how far you’ve carried the torches of your predecessors, and how far you have yet to go. We thank every one of Our brothers and sisters in humanity, and We yield the floor for this meeting of the imperial council’s agenda.”
A long standing ovation followed Aron’s speech as the councilors and ministers rose to their feet in raucous applause. Even people watching from home were inspired; many survivors of the progenitor cult’s attacks even stood to join the standing ovation and swore to contribute their efforts toward the future of mankind because of those inspiring remarks.
It would even give rise to a nascent movement among humanity that would come to be known as “torchbearers” in the future, those whose faith in the Terran Empire and His Imperial Majesty would brook no challenges.
That day, with those remarks, Aron set many events into motion. Some were intended, some weren’t, some would be significant, and others wouldn’t even raise a single ripple if thrown into a pool of still water.
And some of them would come back to bite him in the ass a long way down the road.