a brief history of ooranye
24: Holding the line

[continued from 23: The Age of the Wise]

the Grardesh Sponndar

The student of Uranian history is bound to notice, at an early stage in his perusal of the timeline, that the eras can be grouped into two main categories: the very short, ranging from minutes to an Earth century or two, and the very long, ranging upwards from ten thousand Earth years. (There are three exceptions, eras of intermediate length, a few thousand Earth years, namely Eras 54, 57 and 77.)

Next, the student may notice, when examining the sequence of eras, that it is unusual in Uranian history for two of the long ones to follow directly on from one another without any short era or eras in between. This is because the major transitions, instead of being clean breaks, often consist of a volley of crises, which are apt to cause more than one world-quivering eomasp in quick succession.

But Eras 72, 73 and 74 are exceptions to this pattern. Each was very long (60,000 Earth years or more), and they occurred one after the other with no intervening short eras.

It is not difficult to explain the smoothness of the transition from 72 to 73. It was deliberately managed. The mighty brain of the last of the Simulators made sure things flowed smoothly over the threshold between the Hafnium and Tantalum Eras. Afterwards, the great Ghepion lived on, quietly, reclusively, having announced that it would take no further part in human affairs.

Our account has now reached Era 73. The Tantalum Era lasted 17,532,219 Uranian days, 714 Uranian years, equivalent to 60,000 Earth years. By Uranian standards, though not by Earth’s, it was a decadent era. It lived off the moral capital of the past without adding to it. In the main it was not degenerate, but neither was it heroic. This is most unusual for Ooranye.

These statements must (of course) be qualified. A relatively few individuals were heroic. They “kept the world turning” by their own standards of honour, courage and public service, as well as by flashes of personal genius. But they had to do so while operating within a culture of cynicism and of lack of confidence in its own values.

It is no accident that this is the era in which most of the lawyers and police in Uranian history have lived. Most other periods have had no such close equivalents to these typically Terrestrial phenomena.

Two of the era’s most famous characters were: a great detective, named after the legendary twice-Sunnoad, Restiprak Zentonan (another sign of decadence: in no other era were people “named after” anyone), and his opponent, the un-named criminal mastermind known simply as the Grardesh Sponndar. Adventure is something that no Uranian era – decadent or not – has ever lacked.

It is perhaps no coincidence that the sunnoadex dwindled into a largely ceremonial institution for much of this period. Most of the Sunnoads of Era 73 were figureheads rather than foci of events.

>> A Brief History of Ooranye