((A/N: for this entry I used the pictures 3, 4 and 9. The .GIF with the chicken robots stomping through a town, the skeletons and the woman in a black cloak with the mysterious figure.))
Vinjia raised her hand to her smooth head. Not too long ago the loss of her hair would have crippled her emotionally, but now she could care less. Her hair was the price she paid for knowledge. Combined with her pale skin and dark eyes, she looked like a ghost haunting her way towards the Professor. She darted quickly down passageways and her skirts whispered against the floors and the walls.
When she finally came to the Professor's quarters, the sun was setting outside his massive window. She found him watching the city as the skyline began to shift into a silhouette of black on gold. Her arms lifted and she put her palms together in front of her chest before bowing her head to him. He stared silently back at her from under a black hood.
"Vinjia, is it?"
"Vin, sir."
"Professor will be fine, no sirs in my chambers." He shuffled towards a stool, every movement looked like it hurt him. "Come, help me sit."
She moved quickly to his side and balanced the man with her arm across his shoulders. He felt like nothing but bones covered in black wool. That's the price of knowledge. She reminded herself as the old man sat with a hunched back. The cords plugged into the data ports in his back provided him with unlimited knowledge, but she knew they restricted his mobility and comfort.
"You may stand, or sit, which ever pleases you."
Although he made the offer, the only piece of furniture in the room was the stool he was already sitting on. Vin stubbornly sat on the floor and looked up at the Professor, who seemed pleased. "I'm here to learn about the time before the Great Peace," she said.
The old man laughed until he coughed, then coughed until he winced and almost fell off his stool. "So soon in your training?"
"I've mastered every class before this one in two thirds of the time of most acolytes. And I'm the youngest person ever to win a cranial data port." She couldn't help but smile at that.
"So promising." The Professor no longer seemed amused. "The Homonid Wars are a time that have nearly been erased from history. The delivery method of such knowledge is not very...traditional. That data port of yours will be useless."
"I've been warned, I'm very excited to see it."
"It's through that door, but be careful. Don't forget to put on the gloves, and don't rush yourself. If I see one fresh tear I'll have that shiny new port torn from your skull, got it?"
Vin stood up and bowed to the Professor again before exiting through the door on the far side of his chamber. In the room on the other side, she found a pair of white gloves hanging on the wall and slipped her fingers into them. When she finally allowed herself to see her prize, she was quivering. The book was smaller than she thought it would be. She fumbled as she loosened the leather strip that tied it closed. The cover lifted easily under her fingers, though the leather was hard and dry. The words were faded and difficult to read. She had been told the book was written by hand but she never imagined it would be so illegible. At least the introduction was written in neat, consistent loops and lines:
Long before the Great Peace overtook the Milky Way, the Hominid Wars raged for close to a century. A series a wars, intermingled with periods of strenuous peace, that pit nearly every known species of sentient hominid against each other in a struggle for control of resources and habitable planets.
The following is an excerpt from the personal diary of sentient inhabitant GF-327.82.993K, a rebel fighter who died shortly before the Great Peace.
