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The museum is bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside. Kankri had been drawn in by the blown up posters, pictures of space that were so much more colorful than what the night sky above them was showing. Mituna was less enthusiastic--"I thought the whole point of me leaving work was I wouldn't have to see all this dumb stuff"--but he hadn't said no. He'd followed Kankri, if nothing else.
The displays start in the same hall as the entrance, and Mituna immediately makes his way towards one in the center--their solar system, Kankri thinks. He looks at it for about two seconds before spinning around, calling for Kankri to come over, and then spinning back around in the space of an additional two seconds. A few people glance in the direction he's yelled at, but no one seems too concerned.
Kankri waves, but steps off to the side, almost immediately hitting a young troll wearing the museum's uniform. She hands him a map before he can apologize.
"Don't worry, it's crowded! Good thing you brought someone else, this place is so easy to get lost in." She's chipper, and Kankri wonders if she's actually this bubbly or just in it for the extra stipend (not that Beforus would ever admit to their lower castes being paid less than they’re worth). She's warm, a bronzeblood maybe, so it could go either way.
He unfolds the map, pauses, says ”I don’t think I’ll need this, but thank you,” and then looks down to see a layout nearly impossible to get lost in, each room leading to the next in a smooth circle that ends exactly where they're standing. He doubts they would've gotten lost anyways, but that'd be their luck, to come this far only to get caught in a museum.
"You know, you two are cute together." She waits for Kankri to look up before nodding at Mituna. "He's your moirail, right?"
And thank some unspecified deity that Mituna wasn't near enough to near that, because if he were, Kankri would never hear the end of it. He crosses his arms, lost for a response--again, he thinks about how much easier this would be if he were speaking to a highblood right now. Or even just speaking as a mutant. No one would ever even think he and Mituna might be moirails.
The thought settles more bitterly than he'd expected, and he clears his throat. "Actually, we--"
"Are you coming or not?" Mituna interrupts before he can answer, tugging at his arm. The girl gives him a look--commiserating is the word, caring not because she's supposed to but because she relates. It's a word he'd learned a sweep ago, though he'd not gotten the chance to use it until just recently. Mituna hangs off his arm, and Kankri is very aware that if he doesn't want to move, Mituna isn't going to move him, and not just because he lacks the cis-indigo strength.
And so Kankri lets himself walk, remembering to wave goodbye a moment too late, Mituna talking directly into his ear.
"You blush bright. " Too bright for a burgundy, he means; Kankri has never seen himself blush, but he's seen how bright even just his skin is compared to others. He'd not even thought about blushing. "Was she hitting on you?"
"Is the blushing still obvious?" He ignores the second question (judging by Mituna's grin, he's already come to his own conclusion) and pulls his jacket over his face.
"If you're asking if she noticed, the answer is yes definitely," which doesn't at all answer what Kankri needed to know. He drops the topic and his jacket; anyone who sees him will figure he's with Mituna. It's a strange way to hide--Mituna is so visible that people would rather not look.
There are signs posted all around every grand display. "For your safety, all moving parts are kept behind glass," Kankri reads aloud from one, ignoring the exclamation point and smiley face scrawled at the end. He thinks of the wide glass doors in his cullers' hive, too heavy for him to open.
True to his word, Mituna doesn't look half as entranced, even as he pulls Kankri to the center display that had caught his attention before. He scrunches his nose and points. "Beforus is supposed to move around the sun."
"What?" Kankri follows, stepping delicately around the younger kids crowding the display.
"It goes around the sun, but look, it isn't doing that here." Mituna points. It is a model of the solar system. It's almost overwhelming, with almost every figure spinning on both an axis and an orbital. Beforus only spins, though its path through space is marked by a dotted line.
"This says it's kept still so it's easier to find." Kankri doesn't even finish the sentence before Mituna scoffs, and he responds with a silent eye roll. It isn't like their own planet is difficult to pick out.
Kankri only skims the information, looking for what Mituna would find interesting. He wants to talk about that--how so much of this is based on reading when so many people can't read. Maybe the guided tour is more accessible in that manner?
He focuses on the section about "Our nearby planets!" and pauses. "We have always known that we were probably not the only ones in the universe. However, centuries of space exploration have confirmed that Beforus is the most developed of all planets."
He looks at Mituna, who shrugs. "Not like I've been to them."
"It's a weird place to mention it." He is hyperaware of propaganda, now. Beforus sprinkles it in everywhere--happy, smiling faces and statements that no one can verify as true or false. "I never really thought about whether or not the other planets were as good as Beforus. I didn't think it mattered."
"It probably doesn't." And like that settles it, Mituna moves on.
The rest of the models are much the same, Beforus sitting steady as the others revolve. Kankri tries to search for any information about the other planets--who lives there, what their lives are like--but it seems that information hadn't made the cut.
What does make the cut is a room detailing the massive strides in technology Beforus has made through space exploration. They both pause when they enter the room; Kankri can't speak for Mituna, but what stops him is the work uniform on display across the room (behind glass, always). It's old, five decades at the least, but Beforus doesn't spend too much time updating the fashion of their workers.
Neither of them mention who they were when they first met--Mituna wearing a uniform, its fabric clean only because the Condesce demands they make Beforus look good, Mituna's fingers twisting and pulling and scratching at the fabric.
"Oh, the next room is about asteroids," Kankri says, because he'd noticed the sign, no other reason. And Mituna grins so easily that Kankri wonders if maybe he'd just imagined the hesitation--maybe work gets on his nerves more than it does Mituna, and there's a lot to unpack there, if that's true.
Regardless, they go to the asteroid room, and it's back to 3D models and digital screens. Not as real as the last room, which (he notes, bitterly), also makes it more enjoyable. Beforus knows how to frame the good parts.
One video shows an asteroid orbiting through space until it comes as close to Beforus as it possibly could've--it'd be visible from the surface, no doubt. Kankri watches it twice before Mituna tugs at the elbow of his shirt, not demanding, really (if Mituna wanted to be demanding, he would be), but insistent. Kankri thinks about waving Mituna's hand off, but he decides to just read, instead.
"In order to spare the emotions of Beforan civilians, government officials opted not to tell anyone about the near miss until days after the danger had passed."
"Sounds to me like they just didn't find out about it until days later." Mituna isn't good at whispering, the sounds getting stuck on his tongue and teeth. Kankri wonders what would happen if they just spoke out loud.
"How do you not notice an asteroid?"
"The better question is how would they have saved us if it was gonna hit us?" Mituna runs his tongue over his teeth. "Get all us psis to move the asteroid."
Kankri finds that he doesn't particularly enjoy that thought. That old uniform is only one room over. He wonders what has to happen to make a uniform important enough to put on display when the designs haven't changed, when you can see one just by being outside at the right time.
And anyways, "They'd probably have you destroy the asteroid entirely. That way, there's no chance of it coming back. Not you, specifically; I meant the general you, though in this case that would mean psionics, generally, which is also a much too broad generalization."
"I said the gen-generalization first," Mituna responds, working the word around his teeth. Another word they don't have many opportunities to use. "It'd be a lot more work that way. We'd have to put all the little pieces somewhere." He sounds only slightly annoyed, like this asteroid is more of an inconvenience than anything, the little pieces scattering like rice.
"Anywhere but Beforus, I imagine." Kankri's thinking of the display in the entrance hall, planets orbiting while Beforus sits steady. Stagnant. The sign declaring that we are probably not the only ones in the universe . "Out into the expanse of space, somewhere where no one will be in danger."
"And if they are in danger, they sure won't know!" Mituna says brightly, reminding Kankri again how differently the same propaganda works on them both. His heart hasn't stopped pounding since he packed his bag.
"Do you think it's better or worse not to know?" And then, because he knows Mituna, "Assuming you can't change anything. If the world were about to end, and you couldn't do anything about it, would you want to know?"
Mituna lets go of his sleeve, thinking, and Kankri steps back to let another group read the description. Three burgundies, space being popular among those who will never see it. The tallest rests their eyes on Kankri for a moment too long. They nod once before looking away, all their actions deliberate.
"Did I do everything I could? To save the world?" Mituna asks over the burgundies' shoulders. Stepping back isn't in his vocabulary; that's why they're both still here.
Kankri watches the reenactment again. The asteroid swings through three times, getting closer all the while; on the fourth time, it nearly hits Beforus, Beforus which hasn't moved, Beforus which spins on its axis but never leaves its spot in line. The world could've ended 5 sweeps ago, and no one would've even known it was coming.
The model resets before showing the asteroid's fate. Kankri follows the asteroid's trajectory, trying to picture where the other planets would've been. If the asteroid would've landed.
The model resets again. Kankri tilts his head. "Yes. You did everything possible."