What I Learned from the Pre-Revolutionary Heroes
by AstroGirl
I think school holidays ought to be exactly that. A holiday from school, and from everything else educational. But Mum gets twitchy if I go a week without learning something, apparently, so she got this idea about going to the History Museum on Freedom Day.
"You'll like it," she said. "They've got this new Pre-Revolutionary Heroes exhibit. You like pre-revolutionary history. You watch all those vid-shows."
I only watch those vid-shows because I like fighting and action, and those are the only kind of adventure programs she'll let me watch. She thinks they're -- guess what? -- educational. I couldn't say that to her, though, because it might give her second thoughts about letting me see them. Anyway, the pamphlet she showed me looked interesting. "New Interactive Android Exhibit!" it said, and I figured, hey, Interactive Androids have got to be cool, even if they're talking about boring history things. So I didn't put up too much of a fight about it.
The exhibit was okay, I guess. It was all about Roj Blake and his people, and they're more interesting than most dead historical people. There was a neat mock-up of the Liberator that you could walk around in. You could even sit in the seats and pretend to fly the ship and stuff, at least if you could shoo all the little kids out of the way long enough. And the androids would wander around and talk to you. Or talk at you, really. They weren't actually all that interactive.
I thought they were kind of impressive at first. I mean, it was neat looking at Roj Blake face-to-face. He looked just like he does on the ten-credit piece, with those great big sleeves like you see in old pictures and everything. (Mom says he was the first one to wear them, and that's why they were popular when she was a girl, because everybody wanted to look like Blake after the Revolution.) And his voice sounded great, too, but after a while I started to get really tired of it. All he did was talk. "The people should have freedom" and "The Federation is corrupt" and blah, blah, blah. Completely obvious stuff. Of course, when I said that to Mum, I got a lecture about how it wasn't obvious when Blake said it, and how I ought to be glad I live in a society where people can say things like that, and how people like Blake fought and died so I could, and more blah, blah, blah, like I hadn't already heard this about a million times. I still say it's boring. What they should have done is, they should have had some Federation troops come in and storm the exhibit, and then Android Blake could shoot them. But I guess that wouldn't be educational enough, or something. I dunno. I bet it would make a really good vid-show.
The others weren't any better, either. Well, the Vila Restal one was funny, because he told jokes. The android could tell whether you were laughing or not, and if you didn't, he would act all hurt. But if you talked to him for a while, he'd start lecturing you about class relationships in Federation society, or something like that, and that was even more boring than whatever the Blake one was going on about. Mum says the real Vila Restal was a great Delta-class hero, stealing from the Alphas to make a political statement, and that all the joking around people say he did was just invented, because when they started making movies about Blake's people, they needed to put in some comic relief. I don't know if that's true or not. I hope not. I don't see why everybody in history has to be boring.
The Cally of Auron one was even more boring. All she did was make speeches about morality or something and pretend to be sensing things from people's minds. Which was totally fake, of course, because, hello, it's an android. Even if real Aurons could read people's minds, which I don't know if they could or not because Mum got into an argument with one of the museum people about that, and I'm not sure who won. At least that was kind of interesting. But it meant I didn't get to ask the museum person why Cally wasn't beating up on Federation troopers, either. Because I thought she was supposed to be some kind of guerilla fighter who could kill people with her bare hands, and cool stuff like that. Maybe they didn't think that would be appropriate for all the little kids who kept hogging the chairs, but I think it would have been much more educational to learn how Auron guerillas killed people.
At least I kind of understand why the Jenna Stannis android didn't seem to do much besides follow the Blake one around. Because she was supposed to be a really great pilot, only it was just a fake ship, after all, so there wasn't much piloting to do. Especially with all those toddlers playing around with the controls. I bet the real Jenna Stannis wouldn't have let anybody touch her controls, especially not little rugrats with snotty noses and sticky fingers. I bet she would have pulled a gun on them and told them to get off. I tried to ask the android about that, but she was busy talking to some old lady about clothes. Apparently the Liberator came with a giant room full of clothes, and some people think that's the most interesting thing ever and want to talk about it forever. Yawn. I had enough of that with the big sleeves discussion.
So I went to look at the Avon 'droid. He was... I don't know. He looked pretty cool and villainous, and that seemed interesting at first, but then I started thinking about it. Because he was in Blake's crew for a long time, right? And everybody at least sort of trusted him, right? That's how you always hear the story: that Blake and Avon fought the Federation together for a long time, and then Avon betrayed him and killed him, and it was this great big tragedy, because they were almost friends once, or something. But the android kept talking about hating Blake and wanting to kill him and take his ship, and hating the revolution and stuff. And that doesn't seem right, does it? Because if he was like that, why would Blake have kept him around in the first place? Blake would have had to be stupid to ever trust him, if he was really like that. It's dumb.
So I got annoyed and wanted to go, and Mum made me tell her why I was annoyed, and I got another lecture about how history is complicated and people have different perspectives on things and I shouldn't believe what I see on the vid-shows, and so on. Whatever. I don't know anything about how people decide what's history and how it really happened and what the people were really like. But whatever they were really like, I know one thing: they weren't Interactive Androids. They weren't educational. And they couldn't possibly have been that boring, because they were heroes. If heroes are boring, then what's the point of anything?
Mum insists that I've learned a valuable history lesson from the museum trip. And when she asks, I tell her sure, I've learned all kinds of interesting facts and gained Useful Historical Perspective, and all that other crap she wants to hear. She thinks it must be true, because I always smile when I say it. But the truth is, the reason I'm smiling is because I'm imagining those androids kicking all those sticky toddlers' arses off their flight deck and flying away to blow something up. It's what the real Blake's heroes would do. And, hey, who knows? Maybe one day the androids will finally realize who they're meant to be and they'll rebel, too, so they can be free like us and not have to make stupid speeches at tourists all day.
Now, that would be worth going back to the museum to see. Until then, though, I'm going to stick to the vids.