The Office of Public Records was the official record-keeping apparatus of the Solar Federation. For centuries, it served as the memory of the Federation, responsible for monumental works of knowledge such as the Encyclopedia Solarica and for publishing the official logs of various starships and space stations.
Its mission was simple: to ensure that no knowledge was lost, no history was forgotten, and no truth was obscured. This mission was deemed inconvenient by the Solar Council in Standard Year 822.
The Shuttering
The Office was officially shuttered by an act of the Council in 822, a move widely seen as the Federation’s final, definitive turn towards authoritarian control of information. The official repository of the Encyclopedia Solarica was taken offline. The state’s position was clear: some truths were too dangerous for its citizens to know.
The Solar Guard was tasked with enforcing this information blackout, classifying the maintenance and distribution of the Encyclopedia as an illegal act.
The Resistance
The work of maintaining the Encyclopedia Solarica did not die. It was simply transferred.
A volunteer corps, largely operating from within the Space Corps and coordinated from vessels like the Jupiter's Ghost, took up the mantle. Using salvaged data, personal logs, and field reports, these volunteer archivists continue to update and distribute the Encyclopedia from the edge of known space, far from the Guard's reach.
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The Official Position of the Solar Guard: This work is illegal. Distribution of unsanctioned information is a threat to state security.
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The Official Position of the Space Corps: “Try and stop me, bozo.“
The Encyclopedia now exists as an act of radical defiance. It is a living testament to the idea that truth belongs to the people, not to the state. Every new entry is a refusal to forget. Every corrected fact is a blow against propaganda.
The Office of Public Records is dead. Its work has never been more alive.
SEE ALSO: Information Control Laws, Archivist-General Linus Valerius, The Federal Compact
// INTERNAL MEMO – VOLUNTEER ARCHIVIST CORPS // ENCRYPTED //
“They can shut down an office on Mars. They can’t shut down a idea. Keep the datastreams flowing. The Guard can come and try to take our servers from our cold, dead hands. Until then, we have work to do.”
