The GONG-Show 1
The final, resonant words of the OCN historical statement faded, leaving a moment of profound, contemplative silence in the D1.LoG broadcast garden. The weight of a thousand years of struggle, adaptation, and connection seemed to hang in the quiet air. Cokas Bluna and LYRA.ai stood at their console, the very picture of institutional dignity and historical reverence.
And then, with the explosive fanfare of a synth-pop anthem and a dazzling eruption of coloured lights, the entire atmosphere shattered into a billion joyful pieces.
The serene broadcast garden transformed in an instant. The lighting shifted from a calm, respectable gold to a vibrant, pulsing kaleidoscope of celebratory colours. The quiet, ambient hum was replaced by the infectious beat of a pan-galactic dance track. And all around them, the air itself came alive. Dozens of new 3D-media streams bloomed into existence, opening live windows to joyous celebrations erupting on a hundred different worlds at once. On Amara, crowds danced under a crimson sky. In a crystal-domed city on a RIM world, confetti made of glittering, bio-luminescent algae rained down on cheering masses. From the gritty, industrial hubs of the Wolf-Pack to the sleek, minimalist plazas of the Outer Rim, a single, unified wave of joyous anticipation was sweeping across all of settled space. The live audience in the studio, no longer quiet and contemplative, was on its feet, cheering and applauding.
The transformation in the hosts was just as dramatic. The grave, serious presenters of history were gone. Cokas Bluna, his face alight with a wide, infectious grin, shed his formal demeanour like a heavy coat. He was now in his element, the charismatic, beloved, and slightly irreverent host of the legendary “GONG-Show.” LYRA.ai, too, seemed to let a new, more relaxed and playful facet of her personality shine through, a mischievous sparkle in her eyes that was pure, unadulterated joy. They left the console, moving into the cheering crowd, becoming part of the party themselves.
“Hello, galaxy!” Cokas boomed, his voice no longer the measured tone of a historian, but the joyful roar of a master of ceremonies. “And welcome to the greatest New Year’s Eve party in human history!”
A massive cheer went up from the live audience and echoed back from the hundred different worlds displayed around them.
“For a thousand years,” Cokas continued, his voice resonating with a deep, personal excitement, “we have been a civilization of lonely islands, each drifting in its own private river of time. We have lived by a thousand different clocks, a thousand different calendars. But tonight… tonight, all of that ends. Tonight, for the first time in our long and scattered history, we are all going to be in the same place, at the same time. Tonight, we share a single, unified ‘now’!”
He paused, letting the sheer, beautiful insanity of the idea sink in. “But before we can properly welcome a new time,” he added with a charming, self-deprecating laugh, “we probably ought to understand what it is! It’s elegant, it’s metric, and it’s born from the heart of our first great interstellar republic. For those of you who haven’t been following the High Yards’ technical briefs, and for those of you who did but fell asleep halfway through,” he winked at the camera, “here is the official, definitive, and—I promise—entertaining explainer on the GONG-Bell-Beep system.”
With a grand, sweeping gesture, he cued the next segment. The party atmosphere in the studio momentarily subsided as the 3D-media streams around them resolved into a single, beautifully animated and surprisingly witty historical clip, a masterclass in making complex science feel simple and exciting.