Starfire

Chapter 5: -Earth... and The Courthouse-

The lessons mimicked what had happened in the past, with new species and their cultures introduced on the timeline where the Yu-Liang would have first encountered them. Besides that there were recountings of alliances formed, enemies made, disasters weathered, and history made, all of which the ancient travelers long since stored so that it was possible for Najma to be learning it now. He saw thousands of years pass by in a blink. The rise and fall of entire planets, wars, peace, advancements, setbacks. Of course, not everything every recorded was held within the lessons. That would be ridiculous. It was only what was natural and necessary for him to know in order to properly do his job. Languages, broad customs, and major historical events were among the most prominent. Optional studies at the ends of some lessons gave him the opportunity to learn a bit more, such as things in the histories that weren't quite planet-changing or finer details about the alien in question.

   Keeping his mother's advice in mind that most people were partial to a judge that looked more like themselves, he shifted each time a new species was introduced. He used the template provided, which really was only an anatomy chart, but it worked nonetheless. Even shifting began to hurt less and less, especially when it was a form he'd already mastered.

   His mother checked in on him frequently. Though he wanted nothing more than to continue with his accelerating progress, he had to admit that her reminders and additional words of advice were helpful. He might not have slept at all if it weren't for her.

   Over the course of several long years that he filled with enough learning for a lifetime, he began to catch up to the present day. He hardly allowed himself to stop, nor did he want to, but his Mother did cajole him to spend the odd day or two elsewhere. He traveled to relatively close locations in her and his father's footsteps on several occasional. Never farther than the edges of the system, and being such closely neighboring planets, they were among the first the lessons he had covered. The brief visits to planets he'd already learned so much about only served to fuel the fire of his feverish learning.

    Most days the lessons simply floated by among the millions, assimilating slowly into his memory, but then... One small subsection of a very political lesson caught his eye. This, and those of its kind, were the only sort that Najma ever got bored by. It was practically an argument, with too much talk of laws and opposing views and such things. It regarded the laws put in place to protect secluded planets from intermingling with off-planet influences until they met a very strict set of criteria. There were dozens of restricted planets, some even nearby. The text dragged on, but when he read past a small block of text about a small planet called Earth, something about it caught his eye. It was almost as though it was familiar, tugging at him like a memory that didn't quite fit.

   When he was finished with the lesson, he paused and stood to look up any information on the outlier planets, wanting into the shelves. The section amidst the shelves was small—a few verbose documentations on this or that planet. He searched through them to find Earth. Had his mother mentioned it? He hadn't failed to remember something yet, so this vague familiarity was strange. He read the first word and...

   "Najma?" his mother's silent voice was projected to the room, searching. She didn't know where he was, so he hurriedly returned to his desk, clutching both the data cube and the reader.

   "Mother." He smiled as her familiar bulk came through the aisles.

   "Hello, dear." He felt the warmness in her silent voice and wished he could press into it as if it was actually physical. "What do you have there?" she nodded faintly to the items he held in either hand.

    He set them on the desk. "Just something I was curious about. Do you know what Earth is?" he tilted his head, thinking hard. Surely, he'd heard it... but where? An outlier planet, and restricted at that. Why did it feel important?