This post was inspired by a writing prompt in the Worldbuilding Community - Worldbuilding Prompt #754 - Starting over
It's part of a series of posts I've written intermittently, set in what is now the distant past of my sci-fi setting. I'll list other posts from this environment at the bottom of the post. I hope you enjoy it !
Image created by AI in NightCafe Studio
"Sit down, my son."
Vit Vi-Si gestured to the padded chair next to the one he called his throne. Si Vi-Si dutifully took the seat his father indicated. The older man looked tired, his face prematurely lined and worn. He was only forty years old.
"Well boy, tomorrow you come of age. You've known all your life that you would succeed me, I'm sure everyone has been telling you this. But perhaps they haven't told you why. I have an ambition; not for me, not for you, but for the future."
The King looked out of the un-shuttered window and grimaced.
"It wasn't always like this. Once, this would have been a minor town, a small undistinguished part of a flourishing worldwide civilisation. Now, it is the capital of the Alo Tribe, as we squabble with our neighbours and raid them for livestock and women."
Most of the buildings that could be seen outside were just shells, some derelict, others with crude huts built up against their walls, cooking fires visible through cracks in the simple shutters. But the shells themselves were magnificent, relics of an age that had been swept away.
"So, boy, tell me what you think I would want to see you achieve when I am gone and you are King ?"
Si Vi-Si hesitated, wondering if this was a trick question. His father was a wily fox, so he assumed it probably was. He went with a safe answer, picking his words carefully.
"I think you would have me make out tribe secure, training our warriors to defend our lands, and raiding more successfully than our enemies from Sohnt, Dantrib and Primat."
Vit V-Si couldn't hide his disappointment.
"NO !" he shouted, slamming his one remaining fist on the table. "You are thinking like a beaten dog ! If I wanted the next king to be just a bigger and better thug then the neighbours, I would have picked your brother !"
He calmed himself, and it took visible effort.
"What I want," he continued with forced patience, "Is someone who will search out all the science and knowledge we have lost and re-unite our peoples. Those tribes you call our enemies are nothing of the sort. We are all one people, but you were born after the mushroom blight so I don't expect you to remember that."
The king sighed heavily. "We've lost so much. A generation ago we were a great civilisation with a long and glorious history, just beginning to reach for the heavens. Our starships took settlers to the beginnings of what could have been a wonderful interstellar empire."
"Then we met the Tellurians, coming towards us with the same dreams in their hearts. We'll never know how the war started, but we see the end of it. Our cities in radioactive ruins, the few survivors eking out a living among the wreckage. Squabbling tribes fighting with swords and spears, broken laser rifles turned into primitive crossbows."
"So my ambition for you is to begin the process of rebuilding our civilisation."
"I got this," and he wiggled the stump of his left arm, "defending our last King, Vilse, at the end of things. I was the last of his Royal Guard still standing, and he gave his crown to me. There was no-one else left, no nobles, no great lords, no generals. That's a pretty good claim to re-unite the tribes, to start our world over."
He looked old, this battered veteran King. Not a man in his prime as he should have been, but a worn out survivor.
"When you inherit this throne, it'll be your destiny to start this process. Our world is a ruin, I expect it to take many years. If you don't achieve it, pass the rebuilding on to your son, and to his sons, as a sacred duty for as long as it takes."
Poor Vit Vi-Si. He didn't realise how bad things really were, that it would take ten thousand years for the radiation to die down and a new and very different civilisation to rise from the ruins.
But at the end of that ten thousand years, it was a remote descendant of his, Roflon The Great, who would finally be the one to achieve it.
Other posts in this series include;
Worldbuilding Prompt #312 - After the Apocalypse - The Mushroom Blight
Worldbuilding Prompt #626 - The Best Currency is Life
Worldbuilding Prompt #662 - The Last Tractor