Author's Afterword: Unfinished History

When I completed the last draft of this book, the Stargate Calendar was nearly 12,784 years ago. Prior to this, the modern text of this book in principle ended around the year 12760 of the Stargate Calendar. This restriction is not because there are no more events worth recording after 12760, but because the distance is too close, the data has not yet been settled, and many events are still under dispute between the parties involved, local institutions, public courts, academies, and public opinion. History books can be close to contemporary times, but they should not completely replace contemporary debates. For the history that is still unfolding, I would rather leave a blank than obscure the judgment of later generations with hasty conclusions. Xenarchive Historical Chronicle is not the first general history, nor will it be the last. Weien Cangqiong Bookstore, QingqiongBeiyuan Academy, Beichen Far Star Observation Institute, Shenlu Gongdeng University, Public Register Institute, Earthly Affairs Department, Qianmeng Echo Institute, Almu Cold Core Maintenance Institute and many local libraries have preserved, organized and revised a large number of historical materials. The formation of this book relies not on my personal knowledge, but on countless archives, rosters, stone carvings, fragments, star maps, boundary road records, dream pattern testimonies, mechanical core logs, local chronicles, school archives, hospital records, family oral accounts and public trial documents left by countless predecessors. I have repeatedly used phrases such as "available data show", "most historians believe", "there is no conclusion" and "still controversial" in the book. This is not an excuse, but a matter of caution that historians should exercise. The history of Xenarchive is too long, there are too many known worlds, and the data format is too complex. If a historian gives definite answers to all questions, it is usually not because he knows more but because he is willing to ignore more. The ancient part is the most difficult part to write in this book. Before the age of fire, there was almost no history that could be traced continuously. Ancient myths, legends about the origin of life, legends about the origin of wisdom, the earliest inheritance, the first world-creation phenomenon, the world-creation wave, post-world-creation era civilization sites, and the great loss can only rely on scattered evidence to verify each other. There was no Stargate Calendar, no modern archival system, no public registers, and no stable transworld academic community. Many sites cannot even confirm whether their creators are life in the stars, life in the original world, ethnic groups in the ancient earth, or intelligence in the interrealm. What we can see about the ancient times is often not the ancient times themselves, but the shadows of the ancient times that have not completely disappeared after being shattered. In the ancient part, the difficulty is that there are too many data and the controversy is too deep. In the Silent Age, there are already many ethnic groups, city-states, ancient worlds and migration records. After the recorded era, the number of chronologies, tax rolls, academy documents, navigation account books, Gate-City files, travel registers and Stargate records continued to increase. After the launch of the First Stargate, the historical materials became more complicated. The glory of the Stargate Era, the conflicts of the road war, the Benqi Realm incident, the Black Obsidian Court tragedy, the tragedy of Hengguang, the two Stargate wars and the early post-war order, all left a large amount of information that corroborates and conflicts with each other. The reason why the final chapter of Ancient Times is heavy is not because the information is scarce, but because the information is enough for people to see many choices that could have been avoided but were not avoided in the end. In the modern part, the difficulty is that the distance is too close. For modern residents, Stargates, schools, hospitals, professional certifications, cross-world communications, relocation registration, public rescue, local festivals, remote courses, polymorphic buildings, dream-marked archives, mechanical maintenance, inter-terrestrial affairs, public courts, corporate alliances and local communities are all practical things in life. They are not as remote as ancient ruins, nor are they separated by time like ancient wars. If modern history only writes about the postwar order, the Stargate network, public institutions, and supreme powers, it will not be able to explain how the stability of more than 10,000 Stargate years has truly settled into the lives of residents. If we only write about daily life, we will ignore the support of modern society by the Public Road Act, the triple roster, the clearance of residual gates, the Zhimen Agreement, the expansion of underground branch roads and the post-war liability system. Modern history must simultaneously face institutions and life, grand structures and ordinary records, central world and peripheral areas, physical life and non-morphous life, long-lived species and short-lived ones, complex relationships between schools, sects, companies, families and towns. In the modern chapter I write about many ordinary things: cities, schools, careers, families, medicine, food, festivals, migrations, literature, drama, music, architecture, everyday utensils, community services, civic communities, and local organizations. It’s not that the modern era has lost its big events, or that strong men, great beings, stargates, and public institutions no longer matter. On the contrary, precisely because the post-war order has been maintained for a long time, precisely because the Stargate network has gradually become an infrastructure, and precisely because most stars, worlds, places, and spaces have developed in relative peace, ordinary life can become a historical object that can be continuously recorded.

In many eras, ordinary lives appeared only briefly in death rolls, tax rolls, labor rolls, sect disciple records, war compensation documents, and migration registrations. They built city walls, maintained roads, copied documents, tended to the sick, repaired doors, cleaned up debris, taught students, and preserved family stories, but they rarely became the main body of general history. For the first time, modern data allow us to see more of these lives: the night shift workers in the port area, the translators in the South Campus of the Book City, the teachers at the Wuhe Land Drifting School, the maintenance staff at Al Mureng City, the water account children in the Messatu Well District, the carpenters on the Ruomu Dizhi Bridge, the volunteers of the Wulan Changlantern Club, and the migrant families in Shenlu Gongdeng who sorted out their home records at night. They are not outside history. If history only remembers who created the world, who established the Stargate, who started the war, who won the trial, who became the supreme powers, who reached the end of the road, then history will be too close to the memory of the strong. The world of Xenarchive is not only populated by the strong. Short-lived people, weak ethnic groups, local teachers, ordinary doctors, mechanical citizens, dream residents, low-light street merchants, farmers in the ground, marginal doorkeepers and exiles who cannot leave their names also constitute the weight of history. Of course, I also know that this book still leaves out too much. The seventh general census of various sects has recorded a huge public network, but the public network is not the universe itself. Nearly ten million Stargates still cannot exhaust all the distance. Tens of thousands of life stars, tens of thousands of worlds, numerous places and spaces, and a large number of special structures are only part of the known world. There are also worlds that cannot be stably accessed, star seas that have not yet been discovered, realms that refuse public access, drifting places, spaces that are difficult to observe, ethnic groups that are unwilling to enter the list, life forms that cannot be described in modern language, and countless civilizations that have failed to leave sufficient records in ancient, ancient and modern times. The difficulty with general history is that it must admit that it is incomplete. If we were to write about all the worlds one by one, this book would never be completed; if we only selected the strongest, largest, and most famous ones, this book would deviate from the history of Xenarchive itself. The only way I can do it is to select the skeletons in the visible data and leave blank space between the skeletons. Qingqiong Realm, Weien Star, Beichen Star, Luojia Star, Tiyang Star, Hengguang Fragment, Benqi Realm, Old Ash Land, Chenlu Star, Wuhe Land, Thousand-Dream Interspace, Almu Star, Messatu Star, Ruomu Land, Que Luo Room, Mirror Chao Room, Sayon World, Philo Land and many other areas are just part of the modern known world. The fact that they are included in this book does not mean that they are more real than all those who have not been written. It only means that they are more convenient for general historical narrative in the existing data, public influence or historical context. Great beings especially make historians feel insignificant. They once opened roads, created boundaries, and influenced Stargate history, religious history, and the imagination of many civilizations. But in the modern era, most of the great beings have long been out of sight. Whether they still exist in individual form, whether they still retain a structure that can be called will by language, and whether they are still within the observable universe, it is not something ordinary historians can say. We can only cautiously judge that some great beings still exist based on the inspiration of the same source of path, the revelation of religious rituals, the marks of followers, the limited communication of special intelligent life and a small amount of unrepeatable data. History books should not chronicle such existences, nor should they be reduced to modern political figures or local forces. Great beings belong deep down the road, and history can only record the impact they left behind, but cannot claim to have understood them. Qi Chu is even more inexhaustible. "Xenarchive Cosmology" has stated many times that Qichu has never been truly observed, but he has never left all living beings. Difference itself is the condition for the existence of the universe. The first difference breaks the absolute unity, and time, space, world, life, wisdom and path can unfold. History is nothing but the continuation of differences among all beings. Every difference in world, civilization, life, and choice ultimately makes the future no longer completely equal to the past. Therefore, I always believe that general history should not seek to recreate a single answer. The reason why Xenarchive is Xenarchive is that it does not belong to a single center, a single path, or a final map. Stars, worlds, places, and time coexist, practice, technology, machinery, consciousness, religion, art, and ordinary labor coexist, great beings and short-lived citizens coexist, and ancient ruins and modern schools coexist. If a general history flattened these differences, leaving only a single victor, a single route, and a single explanation, it might be tidier, but it would not be closer to the truth. I write about ancient times to illustrate that we do not come from complete memory. I write about antiquity to illustrate how roads were once carved, fought over, abused, and rebuilt.

I write about modern times to illustrate that long-term peace is not a blank slate, but the result of countless ordinary institutions and ordinary lives maintained together. As this book was written, public networks were known to still be operational. Schools are still in session, ports are still loading and unloading, hospitals are still admitting patients, the Stargate Road Department is still issuing gate maintenance notices, public registers are still revising identity information, local museums are still accepting family donations, settlers are still filling out registers, old disputes are still being decided in the courts, and new ideas are still spreading between the academy and the town. History does not stop when this book is written. I also don't think this book completes Xenarchive history. On the contrary, after finishing this book, I know more clearly than before I started writing that the unknown is still greater than the known, the silence is still more than the record, the universe is still greater than civilization, and the future is still greater than all general history. But that’s why the record makes sense. We cannot write about the entire universe, but we can write about a part of it that we can identify. We cannot restore all the voices of the dead, but we can try to preserve the echoes that are still audible. We cannot decide for the future, but we can leave the past in the hands of the future, so that those who come after us will know: around the Stargate Calendar 12784, there were countless lives that lived, remembered, argued, and created in their own ways, and believed that their differences were worthy of being left behind. If future generations are still willing to revise this book, I hope they will not only correct my mistakes, but also continue to fill in the voices I failed to hear.