Chapter 47

Chapter 47 is the forty-seventh chapter of the Astra Lost in Space manga. It is the tenth chapter of the fifth volume.

Synopsis
Charce explains that many years ago, humanity lived on Earth, but soon learned that an asteroid was going to strike the planet and destroy all life on the planet. They decided to search for and migrate to a new world instead. Following the slogan "Per Aspera Ad Astra", humanity underwent a massive space exploration project to locate a new home. In a stroke of luck, explorers were able to locate Astra only 2 years later.

Quitterie and Kanata ask why these events were never told to the public, and Charce replies because it's being kept a secret - with only a handful of members such as a few members of the world government and the king knowing the truth. In order to keep this secret, the Imperial District was created and isolated from the rest of the world to preserve the secret. Many of the old relics from Earth were kept in the Imperial District, including the older Ark ships.

Each king that has ruled Astra knew of the secret, passing it down to the next king, although the current king intended to rule forever with the help of the cloning technology. Ulgar asks how Charce knows this, and he replies that the king had told him about this along with making him memorize very important facts as a necessary backup in case the memory transfer didn't work. In order to preserve this secret, history was altered in the name of peace.

With the advent of wormhole technology, humans used up to 10,000 wormholes to send machinery and robots to begin to terraform Astra in order to be prepared to be settled by the inhabitants of Earth. While rough at first, eventually the development sped up. Back on Earth, the secret was revealed to the public, and soon afterward all hell broke loose as war broke out on a worldwide scale, with all global issues erupting into violence in a devastating war beginning in 2052. Only two months in, the world's population was reduced by half. Even worse, certain countries begin to weaponize the wormhole technology to kill their enemies.

After the devastating war, the survivors deeply regretted their actions and vowed to make their new world a world of peace. All nations were abolished and united under a one-world government, along with natural resources made public property, a unified language set in stone, and two major issues - religion and weapons - abolished for good. As Charce explains, humanity used this opportunity to start over and achieve true world peace.

Humanity spent 4 years emigrating to Astra, and in 2057 the asteroid destroyed Earth. Once everything was settled, the new world government abolished all wormhole technology (from the theories and documents to even the scientists who knew about them), in order to achieve world peace. The company that had created the wormholes, Vix Industries, was given the right to rule humanity's new home for their contributions to humanity.

Kanata asks how Charce was still able to have a wormhole, and Charce responds that one gate was secretly kept open despite reporting everything was destroyed, as an insurance policy in case they wanted to take over the world. However, reporting that all wormholes were destroyed left one huge problem: how to explain to the public how they got to Astra in the first place. Reporting they did it by ship was too ludicrous, so instead the government decided to erase the exodus itself from history.

The stunned crew listens as Charce tells how the government carefully rewrote history in order to make it seem like the exodus never existed. Ulgar and Zack question how such a big exodus was able to be erased from history, along with the fact that only 6 years had passed since the exodus to present-day given the level of technology in the present day. However, as Zack thinks about it, he comes to the startling revelation that the government instead chose to set the calendar back 100 years.

Chaos breaks out in the room as everyone begins shouting how this was possible. Charce explains that while the official narrative was the world government was formed in 1963; in fact, the world government was created in 2063, in order to match the societal and technological level of the time. The others protest, saying there was no way people would be able to believe such a ludicrous sounding narrative.

However, Charce asks if either of them or their parents knew about this narrative. The only people that knew the truth were over a hundred years old today and were in few numbers, and the fictional truth had been forced upon the people so much that it was now a reality on Astra. Yun-Hua asks then what was World War III. Charce tells her by saying that World War III was a fictional event conjured by the government to explain why civilization had been reduced in such great numbers, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, which occurred around the same time, in reality, was conveniently used as the instigating event for the fictional World War III and twisted around enough to make it seem like World War III broke out because of it.

Paulina is able to connect the dots and tells the others that the government used World War III as a fitting explanation to explain the development of Astra, a society risen from the ashes of an old world. The others begin to understand this, and Charce explains that while the revision of books and records were easy, human mouths were much more difficult. To ensure compliance, the government strictly forbade the first humans on Astra from mentioning the events, but it didn't matter as every one of the first generation humans were completely on board with the government's plan as they wanted to start the world all over again and were willing to allow the government to rewrite history in the name of peace.

Aries suddenly realizes that if the world government truly came together in 2063, then in actuality the true calendar date was 2163. And even better, Paulina was actually asleep for 112 instead of 12 years, meaning Paulina is over 140 years old. This causes Paulina to faint from hearing this.

Later the others discuss and process what Charce has told them, and discuss the moral implications of the first generation humans from keeping the secrets from their descendants, all in the name of peace. Aries remarks that they are all like Charce because they all thought that way because they were raised that way. However, she mentions that she would like everyone to see the world with their own eyes and question it, and grow from their experiences.

Zack asks Charce who the next king will be, and Charce suspects since he has no direct heir, it would be one of the Vix nobles. But in actuality, he thinks it will be the leader of the faction behind the assassination of Seira. When they return to Seira, Charce is going to find the assassin and convince the assassin with money to testify against the faction's leader, and Ulgar promises to help with his investigating skills. The others are rejuvenated at the idea of exposing the whole plot and get ready to make plans to bring down the whole conspiracy.