The man didn't look that old, but no one knew better than him how outer appearance could be deceiving. After all, that Methos was almost his own age, too.
"Nothing near what you have, but enough to wish I hadn't." He didn't dare tell a stranger, even an ancient alien one, the truth, but some things he could say. "My parents, my entire family are dead, the house I grew up in has been torn down and there's nothing left in the town that I recognise. Even the language has changed."
"There's enough left that I still feel drawn to the country, but well ... it hasn't been thousands of years. Imagine a man from Ur returning to Mesopotamia today. Or someone from the days of the Pharaohs seeing modern Egypt."
"Seems to me, the most pressing thing on the mind of the one other person here who's seen Egypt at the time of the pharaohs is wringing my neck," Atlan muttered.
Louder, he said: "That's because yours is still a young people. Things change fast and hard. My people is a lot older. More set in its ways. Things are settled in a way that works. They are stable. Changes will not be nearly that bad."
"So how long had it been since he last change in your society when you left?" A culture that stable sounded tempting. Jan wondered whether he'd be able to blend in on that planet ... if the whole story was even true and the man wasn't just deluding himself.
"The last major changes on the homeworld? Several centuries before I left. I was rather young at the time, and it was political rather than cultural, too. There's war and all kinds of things along the perimeter of the Empire, but the homeworld isn't affected by that."
He stood and walked over to the window to take a look outside.
"A strange place, this," he noted.
War along the perimeter? Well, they could be wars of expansion ... though even those could turn bad and at the moment Europe seemed rather peaceful. Jan preferred to stay as far as possible away from any wars.
"Strange? How so? I thought it was a rather nice and quiet little town."
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Date: Saturday, 15 October 2011 20:32 (UTC)The man didn't look that old, but no one knew better than him how outer appearance could be deceiving. After all, that Methos was almost his own age, too.
"Nothing near what you have, but enough to wish I hadn't." He didn't dare tell a stranger, even an ancient alien one, the truth, but some things he could say. "My parents, my entire family are dead, the house I grew up in has been torn down and there's nothing left in the town that I recognise. Even the language has changed."
"There's enough left that I still feel drawn to the country, but well ... it hasn't been thousands of years. Imagine a man from Ur returning to Mesopotamia today. Or someone from the days of the Pharaohs seeing modern Egypt."
"Seems to me, the most pressing thing on the mind of the one other person here who's seen Egypt at the time of the pharaohs is wringing my neck," Atlan muttered.
Louder, he said: "That's because yours is still a young people. Things change fast and hard. My people is a lot older. More set in its ways. Things are settled in a way that works. They are stable. Changes will not be nearly that bad."
"So how long had it been since he last change in your society when you left?" A culture that stable sounded tempting. Jan wondered whether he'd be able to blend in on that planet ... if the whole story was even true and the man wasn't just deluding himself.
"The last major changes on the homeworld? Several centuries before I left. I was rather young at the time, and it was political rather than cultural, too. There's war and all kinds of things along the perimeter of the Empire, but the homeworld isn't affected by that."
He stood and walked over to the window to take a look outside.
"A strange place, this," he noted.
War along the perimeter? Well, they could be wars of expansion ... though even those could turn bad and at the moment Europe seemed rather peaceful. Jan preferred to stay as far as possible away from any wars.
"Strange? How so? I thought it was a rather nice and quiet little town."