Be It Ever Thus

The narrative follows a group of graduating students from an advanced science institute who tour a vast Museum of the Conquered, where relics and living survivors of an earlier, vanquished population are displayed as trophies and teaching tools. Led by an officious instructor and class president Billy Kasker, they examine ruined cities, impoverished native enclaves, and rituals of control such as unremovable identification bracelets and ceremonial weapons. The visit quietly exposes how conquest is normalized, how physical resemblance can mask deep differences in status and thought, and how institutional memory sustains inequality.