In galactic civilization, speaking the truth had always been connected to power. In the early days, various autonomous governments concealed incidents that reflected badly on them. They understated the scale of accidents, altered death tolls, and deleted mistaken orders from the records. On planets where passages had been severed, they announced that no requests for rescue had been received. Those who had sent the requests had to begin by proving that they were alive. As the galaxy's passage network expanded and record-keeping systems developed, such concealment gradually became more difficult. The same incidents were observed on countless planets, and different artificial intelligences preserved the records. Even if a government deleted one record, copies remained in other star systems. In the Zero-Delay Catastrophe, the times of the initial isolation order and its cancellation, the erroneous readings at observation stations, and the sequence in which passages were closed were all reconstructed. It was also established that the government's announcements differed from the actual records.
It took a long time to establish what had happened. Investigative commissions gathered records, heard testimony from survivors, and examined the chains of command within the institutions responsible. Even synchronizing clocks across different regions was difficult. Some worlds received the same order before the disaster began, while others received it after everything was over. Even after verifying the records, investigators had to decide what constituted a single incident. When the investigation was completed, the government acknowledged its mistakes. Victims demanded corrections to the records and measures to prevent recurrence. Citizens throughout the galaxy agreed that those in power should never again be allowed to conceal the truth. The right to speak the truth was written into the Galactic Charter. No one could be punished for testifying about an incident they had experienced.
The problem came afterward. There were countless accidents throughout the galaxy. Passages collapsed, oxygen supplies to settlements were cut off, and power to memory preservation facilities was mistakenly disconnected. In some accidents, dozens died; in others, millions became people awaiting restoration. There were also worlds where the entire population disappeared, leaving no one to testify. A single signal discovered on another planet could lead to the reopening of an investigation into an incident that had been closed long ago.
For each incident, numerous people began to speak the truth. Those who had been present testified to what they had seen. Those who had lost family members in an accident recorded the fact that they had been alive. Those who had participated in rescue operations explained the sequence in which orders had arrived. Those who studied the accident discovered causes that none of the others had known. The testimonies were not all the same. People on opposite sides of the same passage remembered different moments. The moment a rescue operation began for one person was the moment the passage closed for another. There were also cases in which survivors' memories did not agree with the figures in automated recording systems. The courts acknowledged that memories could be mistaken, but ruled that this alone was not grounds for depriving someone of the right to testify.
After prolonged debate, the Galactic Records Verification Institute was established. Its task was not to determine the truth but to protect it from being concealed again. The Institute preserved original records, disclosed histories of changes, and ensured that witnesses could speak without coercion or retaliation. In its early years, the Institute genuinely established the facts of many incidents. As time passed, a new problem emerged. Thousands of years after an accident, fewer people remained who had experienced it directly. Even when copies of their memories survived, not all could be restored. Descendants testified in their place, scholars studied the incidents, and various federations and organizations preserved the names of victims. Some institutions studying an incident outlasted the descendants of its victims.
The Institute had to decide whose statements would be included in the official records. It could not give equal weight to every claim concerning an incident. Some people fabricated evidence, while others sought to gain new political power by exploiting old accidents. Accepting every statement without verification would not protect the truth. The Institute began establishing qualifications for speaking. Those who had directly experienced an incident, the victims and their descendants, accredited record-preservation institutions, and experts who had studied the incident were granted priority speaking rights. The opinions of other citizens were distinguished from official testimony. At first, this was a reasonable procedure. False testimony declined, and it became more difficult to use incident records for political purposes.
The criteria for qualification were subsequently subdivided. Even for those who had experienced an incident directly, it was necessary to establish which part of the incident they had experienced. It had to be decided how many generations of descendants would be recognized as qualified. The question arose of who would verify an expert's expertise. Where several organizations represented the victims, it was also necessary to determine which organization would speak first.
In an outlying settlement, new records of an old accident were discovered. The person who found them was neither a victim nor a descendant nor an accredited researcher. He was an engineer sorting through maintenance records from a closed passage. The documents contained times that did not agree with the existing official records. The Institute accepted the documents and was able to verify their authenticity. When the engineer tried to explain the significance of the incident on the basis of those documents, his qualifications to speak became an issue. The Institute informed him that he had the right to submit records but not the authority to speak for the incident in interpreting it. The engineer replied that he was not trying to represent the incident, but to explain the possibility that the times in the official records were incorrect. The Institute preserved his opinion as reference material. An institution with the appropriate qualifications would review the official interpretation at a later date. His documents were not deleted. Nor was he prohibited from speaking. Anyone could consult them in the public records. They were simply not included in the official account of the incident. In the meantime, the existing records continued to be cited. The engineer had never been judged wrong, but neither had he been judged right.
The Galactic Records Verification Institute did not turn falsehood into truth. It faithfully carried out its work of preserving records and identifying false testimony. Over time, the institution came to protect more than records. It also began deciding which records should be read first, who could explain the meaning of an incident, and which questions could be raised again. The later Galactic Code stated that everyone had the right to speak the truth. That provision was never amended. Galactic civilization established a separate review body to determine who was qualified to speak the truth. Another institution was needed to verify the decisions of that review body. At no point in any era was an order issued to monopolize the truth. There were only regulations intended to protect records and witnesses and prevent the distortion of truth. Speaking the truth remained free, but explaining the truth required qualifications.