*
The afternoon sun lit up the urban environment as the streets were lined with antique architecture. A once surviving culture of the past, it was hard to uncover records from before a certain time in history, but archaeologists and expert preservers boast of their near perfect replication skills. These town's worth of a drastically different style of architecture wasn't actually ancient buildings from the past, but imitations.
Chock full of old ceramic tile roofs and reinforced wooden walls, they stand in all manners of heights and paint a colourful urban landscape. Music fills the street, adding weight to the air as they passed through the wide open foot path, it was lined with numerous shops with any service imaginable.
Under the sea of tourists was a flood of chatter, buying, selling, advertising, negotiating, this was the noisiest that Yggdrasil has witnessed human activity at. She couldn't hear her own heart beat or footsteps, submerged in the sea like any other person. The class traveled as group, trudging through the crowded streets. Positioned towards the back, Yggdrasil's group had it easier as they calmly followed along.
The scent of freshly made street food wafted over the afternoon air, the sun's rays bore down without any obstruction through the vibrant blue sky. Bottles of unknown saturated liquids shine with blinding reflections, teasing potential customers with sheets of condensation outside of their cool containers. It was right after noon, the sun had past its highest point, the sizzling of stoves and barbecue sauce was particularly enticing during this timing when people had their lunch.
"... When will we reached there? Isn't this street too long?" (Sariel)
"I don't know... Aren't you our senior? You should stop complaining..." (Arin)
"As a magical girl, yeah! Don't make me sound old!" (Sariel)
"Now, now... I'm dead tired too." (Yggdrasil)
They hadn't had much of a breakfast since they rushed out of the hot bath to reach the timing. They have had a few snacks that were stashed up in their bags beforehand, and that was it. Far from enough for the long trek. Yggdrasil decided to change the topic, seeing as mentioning their grievances got nowhere.
"Even so, this place is... Drastically different than all the rest.
How do places end up deviating this much?" (Yggdrasil)
"... Have you heard of evolution?" (Arin)
"... Uhh, yeah. But what does that have to do with this? " (Yggdrasil)
" Evolution in the long term, is the accumulation of changes generation after generation. Random mutations occur during one's lifetime, beneficial traits are retained by being passed down.
Maybe speciation is a better analogy... Back then before we had a world government overseeing all of humanity, there was more than one government... We weren't so closely knit back then, being isolated from one another made people gather up different ideas, different design intents and philosophies. Just like how new species are born from old species, humans similarly encountered geographical isolation and other things that pushed people to be so different. " (Arin)
It's a drastic difference from now, where there was only one government and administration. Numerous cultures still persist, but similar to the tourist attraction they are standing in now... They all lost their roots. Names, origins, most of it was lost to time. The Internet from the primitive World Wide Web may have preserved some of it, but the culture they were witnessing now isn't part of any from that primitive era.
There is the old internet, from the age after the death of a certain messiah. Then there is the new internet, a more sophisticated and modern database of information conceived in the era of peace. That era consisted of these past 11508 years. Unlike old Internet, sources of information were much more rigorously scrutinised, passed through numerous points of detection and verification, before being allowed to be posted online.
While the scope of what a person can post online is quite liberal, allowing virtually anything to be posted online, the categorisation is extremely precise and thorough so that inappropriate content does not mistakenly wander into an unassuming person's feed. For example, content that is deemed unsuitable for children are restricted stringently behind filters, people who are looking for cooking videos will not have any sewing videos recommended.
In this golden age of peace and abundance, the pressure for fame and wealth is a lot lower, subsequently the need for viewership is also substantially negated. There isn't much concern about visibility or advertiser willingness. Due to the large population of earth and the new Internet having existed for many millenia, any topic that isn't contemporary under the sun has been explored. Any niche topics could be found, and any communities would be formed.
Content is segregated under the distinct veil of 'verified' or 'unverified'. Entertainment is tacked with warnings that they do not reflect reality. Media and information is freely shared and distributed by the world government. All of this to say... The transitional phase between the previous calendar and the current calendar, all of that information was mysteriously wiped away.
We can break it down into 3 definite phases. The old calendar that persisted after the formation of society and religion. The transitional calendar that has lost all information, speculated that it was the doing of sophisticated technology. Lastly, the present calendar denoting the era of abundance. This culture that we were witnessing was from the transitional calendar, a hodge podge of traditions and practices as well as ideas from the old calendar. It has no name because the name can't be found.
Something happened during that transitional calendar...
"... Even our language deviated and there was a long period of time when people couldn't communicate with each other if they lived in vastly different places...
Well, I hadn't witnessed such a thing myself. We're all born after a common language was fully established and develop across the globe. " (Arin)
'Then we splintered back into numerous countries and had a world war in the transitional calendar...
How sickening, we couldn't even maintain a semblance of peace unlike the old calendar...' (Arin)
Her face turned grim as she delved into her own thoughts, reminiscing a time long past. Arin not only persisted in the past before Lastia's curse took effect, she also witnessed the calendar change...
' Unlike back then... The human population isn't splintered now, what happened to me... To us, was a result of centuries of insidious corruption...' (Arin)
Now Eterna rules with an iron fist and an ever unceasing source of resources. Eliminating scarcity was the primary reason peace could be maintained for this long, dulling the natural instinctual desires of the whole human population.
Naturally Arin couldn't let her thoughts leak. She carefully regained her composure, as if moving on from chewing on something bitter. She turned with a smile, exclaiming that that was the extent of her knowledge.
"That's it! Even though everything is on the Internet, it's better to experience some things in person." (Arin)