The Only Thing That Could Ever Unite Us

One: though fewer, we are (still) (too) many

The Secretary General of the United Nations of Earth straightened his t-shirt and moved his attention from last night's dreams to inspect himself in the self-projection. Not bad. The overnight processes seemed to have removed any signs of damage from the excesses of last night. He moved his awareness to his nanobot interface. He knew checking up on them was unnecessary, and that actually they tended not to like it when their hosts interfered with their work, but he was an old man with old-fashioned habits and liked to retain a semblance of human oversight. He brushed his hair while the statistics ran through his mind. Telomere replenishment complete, senescent cells, zero. Free radicals, zero. Inflammation, zero. Pathogens eradicated by overnight processes: neurodisruptive fungal strain Zombipocalypse-Alpha Omega, minor exotic bacterial infections from foods (all recent evolutions, well-controlled, moderate lethality in the absence of nanobots, but nobody needed to worry about that), HIV-Delta 96 (this year's newest evolutionary surprise - slightly embarrassing, but easy to get rid of and it had been a hell of a good night), something they thought might be a new form of malaria which had been scanned and uploaded for analysis, Covid-95. Again. Six months and it wasn't extinct yet? In epidemiological terms that was ancient. He cocked an eyebrow and sent a message to the World Health Organisation reminding them of their obligation to ensure that all potentially discomfiting pathogens were eradicated within 3 months of their evolution. All atypical cells successfully removed. Estimated biological age 19 years old. Good.

He drew his hair back - long and black in tribute to his Iroquois ancestors. He wasn't really all that interested in his Iroquois ancestors, and didn't even know much about them apart from the fact they were actually quite a small part of his bloodline meaning that his nanobots had to boost his hair's eumelanin levels to maintain a suitably persuasive visage, but, in craven, nostalgia-infested and identity-starved times like these, sicophantic and pretentious deference to concepts of heritage and ancestry did wonders for one's approval ratings, and, in a world of absolute perception, approval ratings mattered. A lot.

He fastened his hair in place with a silver buckle conspicuously festooned with appropriately excessive indigenous American elements which might or might not have been Iroquois - it didn't really matter - no one paid that much attention, so long as it looked on-point. Checked for wrinkles. None. Yeah, 19 seemed about right. He was, by his own standards and, indeed, the aesthetic and biological standards that were hardwired into the very fabric of civilisation, perfect. He sighed. Today would be a big one.

As his thoughts moved from his health to the day ahead the self projection and nanobot interfaces dissipated and he became aware of the species level thought trend torrent and his schedule. For the millionth time he said a small prayer of thanks for the thought trend torrent (commonly called the 3T) and with it the end of journalism. Rather than listening to politically biased and commercially motivated interpretations of the views of the populace he lived to serve, he could hear them directly - it was efficient, it was elegant and, best of all, it had closed down the news outlets and retronet social media platforms overnight when it launched, this last step contributing more to human peace and prosperity than anything else short of the Universal Disarmament Treaty.