Chapter 4 — The Last Seed Keeper

Three mornings a week, Green Dome children do not go to the work areas with their parents or career counselors, but gather in the Study Hall — a semicircular room in the middle of the residential area, where generations of adults are taught to read, write, calculate, and above all, are taught about their own history.

Khe Mien sat in the third row, between Dieu Lam and a boy named Huu Ban with whom she was not very close. In front of her was a large projection board displaying a familiar line that every Green Dome child could recite from the moment they became literate: CHRONICLE OF THE ECOLOGICAL DOMES — THE OFFICIAL HISTORY OF THE ECOLOGICAL DOMES.

The teacher in charge of this subject is a middle-aged man named Cung Dac Hoa, his voice is monotone, almost chanting, because he has taught this exact lesson countless times during many years of teaching.

"You have heard this story since you were young," he began, his familiar voice echoing throughout the Hall of Study, "but today, when you are old enough to understand it more deeply, I will tell it a little more fully. Before the Great Cataclysm, the world of our ancestors was far larger than you could have imagined — there were billions of people living across the face of the Earth, with cities so large that a Dome like ours was only a small corner of it."

Khe Mien had heard this opening paragraph at least five or six times in her life, but this time, just a few days after standing in front of the glass overlooking Dong Tro, she listened with a completely different attention than before - no longer the passive attention of a child listening to a fairy tale, but the attention of someone who had just touched the glass separating her from death.

"In the decades before the Great Change," Master Cung Dac Hoa continued, "the Earth's climate had gradually changed, becoming more and more harsh — temperatures rose, polar ice melted, arable lands gradually became arid. Humans, instead of working together to find ways to adapt, fought over the remaining resources — clean water, arable land, energy. Resource wars broke out everywhere, further weakening humanity's ability to cope with an aging environment. At one point, those two factors—extreme climate change and resource war—resonate to an irreversible level. That's the Great Change: not a single event, but a series of collapses lasting many years, ultimately leaving a world almost unlivable, except where humans were able to build ecological Domes to protect themselves."

He stopped, looked around the classroom as usual to check the students' concentration, and that's when Khe Mien raised his hand.

"I have a question, teacher."

Cung Dac Hoa slightly raised his eyebrows - not because he was uncomfortable, but because this was not a lesson that usually had many questions, students usually just listened quietly, took notes, and then answered the periodic test questions correctly according to what was taught. "Okay, you can ask."

"You said people compete for resources with each other. But who started the competition first? Did everyone compete equally, or was there someone... who controlled more resources than everyone else before everything happened?"

A short silence spread throughout the Study Hall. Dieu Lam glanced at her friend with a surprised and worried expression, as if Khe Mien had just asked something that shouldn't be asked, even though neither child really understood why that question changed the atmosphere in the room.

Cung Dac Hoa took a moment before answering, and when he did answer, his voice was no longer monotonous like when lecturing, but a bit more rigid, more careful.

"That's a good question, Khe Mien," he said, using her name — something he rarely did, usually just calling her "children." "But the recorded history from that period is incomplete. A lot of documents, records, and data were lost in the collapse itself — servers crashed, databases were no longer maintained, the holders of the most important information largely did not survive the most chaotic period. What the Chronicle of the Great Transformation records is the most reliable overall picture that the founders of the Arches could compile from the remaining pieces. Details about who was responsible more responsibility, who less - that, unfortunately, history no longer has enough evidence to judge fairly."

"But if there is no evidence," Khe Mien continued, not realizing that Dieu Lam's eyes had now turned from worried to almost begging her to stop, "then how can I know for sure that it was an 'inevitable natural disaster', as Bien Nien writes? Could it have been avoided, if... if someone had done things differently?"

This time, the silence lasted much longer. Cung Dac Hoa looked at her for a long moment, and in his eyes, Khe Mien — though too young to name the exact feeling — recognized something like hastily concealed confusion, not so much that he didn't know the answer, but more like he knew there was another answer, but not the one he was allowed, or wanted, to give in front of the class.

"It's more of a philosophical question than a historical one, Khe Mien," he said at last, his voice returning to its familiar monotone, like a door that had just been closed. "And perhaps it's more suitable for you to reflect on yourself, instead of finding a definite answer in a single lesson. The most important thing The Chronicle of Great Change wants you to understand, is not who was right and who was wrong in the past — which, as I said, we no longer have enough evidence to judge — but is a lesson for the present: we, the survivors, must learn not to repeat that mistake. Not to compete. Not to hoard too much while others are lacking. Unite to exist."

He moved on to the next part of the lecture, talking about the first years after the Great Transformation, about how the founders of Green Dome built the Filter Roof from the ruins of an old agricultural research facility, and the class continued as usual — only Khe Mien was still sitting there, her question hanging in her head, not really answered, even though the teacher had tactfully closed the conversation.

During recess, Dieu Lam pulled her hand to a deserted corner of the Study Hall.

"What are you doing?" Dieu Lam whispered, her voice both worried and curious. "Why do you suddenly ask those questions? My parents told me not to ask too much about things before the Great Change, adults don't like it."

"I'm just curious," Khe Mien replied, although she wasn't entirely sure why that question came out of her mouth so naturally. "Don't you think it's strange? Everyone always says the Great Catastrophe is an inevitable natural disaster, but when I asked a little more, no one could really answer why it was so certain."

Dieu Lam looked at her for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders the way children do when faced with a problem too big to think seriously about. "Probably because it happened so long ago, no one remembers it clearly anymore. Well, let's go play, recess is almost over."

Khe Mien let herself be pulled along with her friend, but that question - along with Mr. Cung Dac Hoa's briefly confused eyes - did not completely disappear from her mind, just quietly sinking deeper, like a seed buried in the dark soil, not immediately germinating, but not dying either, just lying there, waiting for a certain condition, a certain moment in the distant future, to begin to crack its shell.

That night, while recounting the lesson to her father over dinner, Khe Mien noticed that Vu Dinh Khoat had a similar reaction to the teacher—not exactly avoidance, but a very short pause before he answered, a small caution that a normal nine-year-old probably wouldn't have noticed, but Khe Mien, who had just been taught to pay attention to the smallest signs in the Nut Store, had noticed.

"That's a good question," he said, trying to sound casual. "But there are questions, my child, the answer to which lies not in the past that we can no longer change, but in what we choose to do today, with what we still keep. You are learning to keep the seed. That is already an answer, even if you don't realize it yet."

Khe Mien nodded and didn't ask any more questions, but that night, in the notebook under her pillow, she wrote a line different from all the previous lines — not a lesson about farming, but a question to which no one had yet answered:

*What if the Great Change is not inevitable? Who will have to answer for that?*