Council Chairman Chooses ‘The War Chapters’ for Sacred Text Reading Event

With the entire ancient canon available, he picked the siege warfare bits

The Earth Unified Council’s Office of Cultural Optics announced this week that Chairman Harlan Voss would participate in Galaxy Reads the Ancient Archives, the annual event hosted at the Museum of Pre-Collapse Texts on Earth Station Prime, running the 19th through 25th of this cycle.

The event, for the uninitiated, invites prominent galactic figures to publicly read from humanity’s pre-Collapse literary and spiritual heritage — poetry, philosophy, natural history, early scientific texts, moral fables, the complete works of approximately four thousand years of human civilization.

Voss chose the siege warfare chapters.

Specifically, a pre-recorded segment — pre-recorded, note, so nobody could ask any clarifying questions — in which the Chairman’s voice will solemnly intone ancient passages describing the violent conquest of neighboring territories by a militarily superior coalition. The victors, in the text, are blessed. The defeated are not mentioned much.

Wait, it gets better.

The Museum of Pre-Collapse Texts confirmed that the Chairman’s office submitted the selection “with enthusiasm” approximately three weeks ago. This is the same three-week window during which the Solar Defense Compact formally renewed its joint-operations charter with Earth Command — the one authorizing continued “peacekeeping operations” in Outer Rim territories that, as this magazine has noted before, contain significant deposits of Element-7 and navigational rare earths.

I’m not saying there’s a connection. I’m just noting the timing exists.

“The Chairman finds deep meaning in the ancient traditions,” his cultural liaison, a person whose entire job is to make things sound less weird than they are, told Earth Network News. “These texts remind us of humanity’s long journey toward unity.”

The passage selected does not contain the word “unity.” It contains the word “smite” four times.

Now, to be fair — and I am always fair, it’s my most exhausting quality — the ancient texts are complicated documents. Scholars spend careers unpacking their contradictions, their mercy and their violence, the way the same tradition that produces calls for radical compassion also produces calls for, well, siege warfare. That’s interesting. That’s worth a symposium.

What’s also interesting is that the Chairman specifically bypassed approximately 847 pages of material about caring for the poor, welcoming the stranger, beating swords into agricultural equipment, and the general proposition that powerful people should be humble.

They said this. Then they did this. I’ll wait.

The Museum’s director, to her credit, noted in a brief statement that “all readings are welcome” and that the event “celebrates the full breadth of human moral inquiry.” She did not comment on whether one particular breadth was over-represented this cycle.

The pre-recorded format means Chairman Voss will not be present for the question period following each reading. He will be, his office notes, “attending to galactic security commitments.”

In the Outer Rim.

I’m not saying reading about ancient conquest while simultaneously conducting modern resource extraction is on-the-nose symbolism. I’m just saying that if a first-year student at any colony academy submitted this as a creative writing assignment, their instructor would write “a bit obvious?” in the margin.

Anyway. The event runs all week. Other participants include poets, agronomists, a philosopher from Titan Station, and three children from a Frontier Settlement school who will be reading the parts about kindness.

The Chairman’s segment airs first.