Work Text:
“The 20th century”
At some point the Princess had noticed such terms as “light-years” being used and, briefly like any Earth child from the end of that period, alighted onto the language of spinning planets and “awesome” scale diagrams with such great fervor one could imagine her building up out of the canopy a ladder to the stars. And, oh, what a shame! that between all the Terrarian magic, civics, design, and human history and biology to be tutored on, no one had remembered to specifically teach her about the solar system that she’d never known as her only one. For all of four months, the Princess and the Angler, with the help of the group and some of their scavenged cyber-drives, marveled at the Earth rotating on its axis more than a thousand kilometers an hour, at the revolving Earth orbiting the sun more than 100,000 kilometers an hour. The Solar system moving among stars as the whole Milky Way itself rotates around 800,000 kilometers an hour, and the galaxy moving around 300,000 kilometers an hour, and the Universe expanding at 70 km/s/Mpc, and then, and then—
The rest of the flock is no better equipped than the children to comprehend such a scale.
Anyway, this came up when the Guide was reminded to explain, as he had when he’d first found them, that his knowledge of Earth for some reason cut off at some point in what he knew was known as “the 21st century.”
“But with every year that passes, I can see a bit further into the past. Which doesn't necessarily make sense either. Other than what you (the #squad) tell me, I've been able to glean some stuff of human history through my magic powers as the Guide alone. Maybe Earth is 500 light-years away from here, and that fact somehow influenced my reach. I’m not so sure,” he said, “since still none of you have managed to find Earth in relation to this planet, and so we haven’t even any radio broadcasts from over there to date, if we even knew which direction to look.”
***
“Camp Funston is in Fort Riley which is next to Manhattan, Kansas (both of which are in Riley County) btw,” said Angler.
“Gurt,” said Princess.
“Yo.”
Pay attention!
“Right, so, everyone knows the Spanish Flu originated in the United States. Maybe even that around 700,000 Americans died to it-” “Wow, that’s like, 14 times as many as the war deaths-” “, compared to the 50,300 American soldiers who directly died strictly within WWI (of which over half died in just the Meuse-Argonne offensive), which is, in comparison, a lesser number than the 1,385,300 French soldiers and 900,000 British soliders.”
The Pirate looked up from the ship console and said, “You kids know how, as WWI started from like a whole domino effect of colonial empires’ relations, a lot of people in the army of things like Britain and France were from colonies such as those of the Caribbean, Africa, and even Asia, right?”
“Yeah,” said the Princess, “we’ve started learning about that elsewhere and will come back to that later but are focusing on America in the 1920s right now.”
“So like the Spanish Flu right?” Angler said. “As a proportion, how many people alive were affected by it?”
“1 in 5!!!!!” Princess said. “When was there an outbreak of it, one of the earliest ones, at a training camp in Kansas?”
“The spring of 1918! How many troops were at that induction?”
“50,000! How many people are estimated to have died from the influenza pandemic worldwide?”
“20 million! Though estimates vary, how many casualties (in case you just got here, casualties ≠ deaths, we’re just using the slang) were there from WWI?”
“Over 37 million!”