Meeting Mars Teddy - Part 3

The Museum

It didn't look like a museum from the outside. It was a grand glass building with seemingly impossible architecture on a wide boulevard full of grand glass buildings with equally impossible architecture. After wiping a patch of dust clear with the arm of them spacesuit, ‌ found it to be a lovely soft gold colour.

"That's a nice colour," said , "we haven't seen one like this before, have we?"

"No, I don't think so," replied ‌ thoughtfully, "maybe it's important? Government building perhaps?"

‌‌ , as was so often the way, found that they was musing to themself. was already inside exploring.

Unlike some others, this was a building worth exploring. Standing in the entrance hall, ‌ looked around in complete wonder. Vast hallways spread out in every direction. Massive stairways led up to floors hidden far above the domed ceiling and down into levels deep below. With nowhere in sight, ‌ started exploring, seeing all of this building could take some time.

"It's gigantic!" declared enthusiastically over the suit communicator some considerable time later.

"It sure is," agreed ‌ , "where are you, ? I can't see you anywhere."

"I'm on the seventh floor, I think, or maybe sixth. You need to come up here now to see what I'm looking at!"

‌‌ grumbled to themself quietly. They had spent all this time exploring the ground level and had no idea where the nearest stairs were. After a few wrong turns, they found a small spiral staircase discreetly carved into a column. It looked like the type of staircase that whoever once worked here would have used to get between floors. They were plain, simple, and, as ‌ had never quite felt comfortable with, completely open. Hugging the column to stay as far from the edge as possible, ‌ started to climb.

The ground floor was a grand statement, a beautiful array of slender columns and sweeping arches. Even with dust hiding the gold of the walls, it was magnificent. As they climbed higher and higher, ‌ kept their eyes resolutely fixed on the stairs just in front of them. They had learnt that they didn't want to look down.

As they reached the second floor, all vertigo suddenly disappeared. Spreading out as far as they could see in all directions were displays of every kind of alien creature imaginable. They saw fantastic beasts, creatures with too many legs, even more tails, distressing numbers of eyeballs and amazingly coloured fins, fur and scales. The distinction between animal, vegetable, and mineral blurring, intertwining and inverting. Sometimes all in a single display.

"Where are you?"

‌‌ snapped out of their amazement, "I’m on the second level. It’s incredible."

"Oh yes, it is, isn’t it," enthused , "have you seen the thing that looks like the lump of granite with teeth? It was such a shame it wasn’t called a crocodile rock. Someone really missed an opportunity there." ignored ‌ groans, "just hurry, I have something you really HAVE to see."

‌‌ sighed. There would be plenty of time later to look over the collection later, "On my way."

‌‌ continued up the spiral staircase, each floor different from the one below. Creatures were replaced with objects. Objects were replaced with tools and technology that looked vaguely familiar, like distant cousins of everyday items from Earth. The higher they climbed, the further the items diverged from Earth-like, and the more they began to look like they belonged to the city. had obviously been a bit too excited to count accurately because ‌ counted at least 12 floors before they found each other.

"Finally," exclaimed as ‌ climbed onto the landing. If ‌ had not been so out of breath from climbing all the stairs, what they saw would have taken their breath away.

The Knowledge

"Are these…" began ‌ .

"All from Earth," confirmed with a nod. "I've been through most of this floor already. As far as I can see, there are specimens from every continent. This is what you'd probably call the pre-history floor. Human history starts a few floors up."

"A few?!? How many floors are there?" asked ‌ incredulously.

"I went up another twelve, I think. I lost count. There may be more."

Something said earlier made no sense to ‌ . "Wait, how do you know that there are specimens here from every continent? Some of this was before there were even humans on Earth. I've never seen anything like them in museums!"

‌ looked at ‌ sadly. "I've always wondered how you poor humans cope without the Knowledge."

"The Knowledge?"

"The Knowledge of the teddys," replied . "It comes from the entire teddy history, every adds their part to it, and we all get to know it."

More questions than ‌ knew how to ask tried to get out of their mouth at precisely the same time.

"So, how long have there been teddys?"

"How did you get here?"

"You saw Dinosaurs?"

"Who is Guardbot?"

"Where did teddys come from?"

"How do you fit the Earth entire history into your heads?"

"How do you remember other teddy's memories? Does every teddy in existence from now until the end of time know about that accident I had that time when I was little?"

"No," smiled kindly. "We don't remember everything that ever happened, just the important bits that a teddy saw and added to The Knowledge. That accident was definitely not important. What is important is two floors up."

Without giving ‌ a chance to ask the next thousand questions that were exploding in their head, bounded away up the stairs.

End of Meeting Mars Teddy Part 3

Meeting Mars Teddy