Difference between revisions of "The Thousand-Year Subscription"

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The Two-Thousand-Year Subscription was an accident, or event, of a kind not uncommon in [[Foundation]] space, but more unusual in the [[Alliance]], and most unusual of all for its having happened on [[Altronis]], at the end of [[The Corporate Era]].
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The Two-Thousand-Year Subscription was an accident, or event, of a kind not uncommon in [[Foundation]] space, but more unusual in the [[Alliance]], and most unusual of all for its having happened on [[Altronis]], toward the end of [[The Corporate Era]].
  
 
==History==
 
==History==

Latest revision as of 17:56, 12 October 2022

The Two-Thousand-Year Subscription was an accident, or event, of a kind not uncommon in Foundation space, but more unusual in the Alliance, and most unusual of all for its having happened on Altronis, toward the end of The Corporate Era.

History

Planet Altronis was nominally an Alliance Member World, but had little intercourse with any other worlds after the Ninety-nine Years War. By the time of the Alliance's Fourth Age, most Altronics believed the other Known Worlds were nothing more than a legend. Hints of their existence had come through about the time of the Necromanic Wars, but little else, and this may have been the source of the Two-Thousand-Year Subscription itself.

The time of the Subscription was Alliance Year 4563, Altronis Year 2021. In that year, a subscription to a certain scientific journal was issued to the mother of A.E. Clipson; but by some accident unknown, the staff in charge of dating the subscription and its expiration used an Alliance Calendar by mistake, which had come into their possession during the Necromantic Wars and never noticed. Thinking the calendar to be a local one, the scribes set the expiration date at "A.Y. 4001", and confirmed the subscription anyway. The good lady scientist, then, and all her heirs found themselves heir to that subscription for generations to come. Because no-one at the publishing-company claimed responsibility for the error (for fear of lending credence to the existence of so discrepant a calendar, with all that implied), it remained unchallenged.

Aftermath

The subscription, as noted in its name, lasted the better part of two thousand years. It became required reading for many of the family, even when none of them read it professionally. The whole family was thus better informed on that subject than they might otherwise have been. When it finally expired, the reaction to its doing so was one of stunned disbelief; after so many years, few believed it would ever expire at all. It was another generation or two before the subscription was renewed, with a more conventional expiration.