Chapter Fifty-Four: Education

Icarus and Dae explore a library on an alien planet called Roanoke, finding evidence of an advanced civilization (the Roanokians) that appears to have voluntarily abandoned their world in an orderly manner. After conducting a thorough planetary scan, they find no hidden populations or signs of catastrophe, only mystery.

Icarus strolls through an alien ecosystem on Roanoke, reflecting on how life follows similar evolutionary patterns across different worlds. Dae joins him, and they discuss the library discovery—a repository of physical books with a clear cutoff point around the technological level of Earth's nineteen eighties, suggesting the Roanokians transitioned to electronic storage after that era. They observe roamers (mechanical servants) cataloging the books while maintenance bots occasionally attempt to retrieve them, creating an amusing conflict. The library books themselves are remarkably well-preserved, maintained by automated systems. Icarus and Dae then conduct a comprehensive three-day SUDDAR planetary scan, mapping the world to several miles in depth. The results confirm their suspicion: no Roanokians remain anywhere on the planet—no corpses, no abandoned vehicles, no signs of hasty evacuation or mass death. The flora and fauna are thriving and unaffected. Dae notes that this pattern of orderly, voluntary exodus repeats across every alien world they've visited, suggesting a coordinated phenomenon affecting multiple intelligent species. Both acknowledge unease about what the eventual explanation might be.