201. SPOTLIGHT ON: Project Centennial Command Console

The centralised control mechanism for Project Centennial, designed and fabricated over a century ago by the University of Aglostarros to monitor and direct the Centurion probes as they carried out their missions of discovery across the unknown galaxy. The command console measures approximately three metres wide and two deep, and is characterised in particular by its tactile and largely analog design which its creators hoped would help the system survive the many years needed for the Centurions to fulfil their missions.

One of the Project Centennial console’s most remarkable features is in fact not built into the control unit but rather - as architectural blueprints reveal - into the structure of the Aglostarros University Museum itself. Eleven kilometres of wiring laced throughout the Museum since its construction make the building one of the largest existing transmitters and receivers of interstellar signals - a requirement when communicating with objects a great distance away. Speculation holds that disconnection from this receiver when the console was relocated may have caused the hundred-year loss in communication from the Centurions.

Despite Project Centennial being credited with discoveries that led to innovations such as faster-than-light travel and contact with neighbouring galactic civilisations, the console and its programming, like that of the Centurions, remain something of a black box understood only by the system’s original creators, few of whom still live today. As former AUM Curator Endelle Stroth once noted, “a single toggle or button-press might have consequences we won’t learn of for days… so we try not to meddle.”

SEE ALSO:

• Astrum-36 [Mineral]

• Ilbeed The Grand [Personality]

• The Local Loop [Scientific Project]