It took them a long time to get to the planet the Archivaas called home. But there was a reason they went there. Many, many generations of their family had been avid photographers, or as they jokingly called themselves, a whole family of "shutter-bugs". Photos and drawings from earth before the time of the shattering, before the first humans even went to the moon, albeit, very rough photos, all the way through the generations to digital media, saved in a large crate filled to bursting with photo albums and carefully preserved digital images is what they were escorting. And why were they giving this to the Archivaas? Because they wanted to share these works of art with the universe, and wasn't interested in money for it. They had a good job, took time off to do this, it was more the exquisite satisfaction of knowing how many more would be able to enjoy the artwork that tied their family together and had so much joy to their own life as well. -- Anon Guest
It's not every day that an entire family history gets shipped to the Archivaas. Not in physical form. One might expect a crate or two, but this family made lifetimes out of capturing moments. From quick-sketch artists to impressionists to the first photographers to entire families with Box Brownies[1]. If it made an image, this family used it to capture elements of their lives. The sublime. The rare. The mundane. All the way through the digital age and beyond.
It was more than one crate. The crate was a sample of the eras. Somewhere between a summary and an index, for generations and even deep time. The rest of it was in a fleet of cargo vessels waiting for the word and the co-ordinates. Because the Lumiere family were searching for the Archivaas homeworld. A quest with the primary difficulty that there was no such thing.
The Archivaas didn't make homeworlds. They weren't one colony, though there were branches of them that went down deep-time wormholes with other objectives. Namely to be there with enough technology to pick up old or formerly lost transmissions, usually from Earth. What the Archivaas do is build libraries. Depending on the sect, some are wont to use the resources of entire solar systems just to keep records in assorted physical formats[2]. Those are not the ones the Lumiere family seeks.
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