The Only Thing That Could Ever Unite Us

Fourteen: Homecoming

The Secretary General heaved dry air into dry lungs. He took a gulp of water and felt it slowly seeping into the parched fabric of his oesophagus. He was thirsty. And starving. It could wait. He checked his inbox, scanning through countless messages about the winding up of the UN and the national and local governments, progress on the 3T upgrades, an email from UNESCO about the hyper loop (he took a quick diversion to approve its designation as a World Heritage Site), and eventually found the message he was looking for.

Moments later he burst into the bridge.

"Where are we?" He asked, abruptly.

"Happy rebirthday, Earth boss!" Said the Captain. "We just docked at the Spire. You've been dead a long time. You rest."

"No," he said, "no time. Let me out."

"Come, now," she said "Earth boss, your kind are effete. Eat, rest, then go. Don't push your short little body too much."

"I need to go." He said. "Now!"

She shrugged and hit the hatch bay door button. "If you die, no refund!"

"Fine!" He shouted over his shoulder. On the elevator down the Spire, he scheduled the reconvening of the General Assembly for two minutes after he expected to get home.

When he projected into the General Assembly two hours later everyone was already there. They stared at him expectantly, hopefully, although the Ambassadors of the NWEU and Antarctica were probably hoping for the opposite of the others.

"They agreed!" He blurted. "We're changing the species! The whole species!" The Ambassadors of Patagonia, Canada and Siberia whooped and punched the air. The Ambassador for Antarctica's face remained studiously and carefully unchanged and the Ambassador for the NWEU looked crestfallen. His terror of public rule was understandable. The Referendum was reviled to the point of becoming something akin to a folk demon, a symbol of hatred, distrust and division. The Brejoining had been swift, and actually enabled by another referendum, but the UK had never regained the position of power and prosperity it had once known. It was passed down through the generations as demonstrating the need for a political class to shepherd the populace. However, the UK's error had not just been one of a prematurely direct form of democracy but more importantly the far more dangerous error of nationalism, and this would end nationalism in an irrevocable, total and permanent way. The Secretary General hoped the NWEU was wrong, and he was right. The risks were massive, and the Ambassador's fears were well-founded. But the potential. The potential.

"How are the plans here looking?"

"Well," said the Ambassador for Siberia, "You've probably seen the state of your inbox. In summary, all local, regional and city governments closed a week ago, national parliaments will disperse tomorrow. The departments of the UN will be ready for closure the day after. The relay to link the Arthur C Clarke Arrays is in place in a synchronous orbit with the terrestrial anomaly and the Martian one is waiting next to it. Once they receive your approval it will be deployed. We've tested the anomalies. We can get to Mars in a couple of hours, surface to surface. Once they receive the command the Martian relay will be deployed, and the Arrays can be linked up in minutes. The 3T is ready for enhanced traffic and an update has been rolled out to everyone's nanobots. When the Martian relay comes online, we'll be able to absorb the extra traffic from their end while their Array is upgraded and roll out the nanobot updates. Then you just need to clear that inbox and we're done."

"Wow," said the Secretary General. "You've done all that so quickly?"

"All our governments poured extra resources in. They're all pretty excited about this. Well," he cast a glance towards the NWEU and Antarctica, "almost all of them are, anyway."

"So," asked the Secretary General, breathlessly, "do we have any other business?"

There was silence.

"Give the order to proceed. This Assembly is concluded. The Charter will be suspended with immediate effect. You are now free humans and owe the United Nations no more service." He found his voice constricting. "This is truly the end of an era, and, I believe, the beginning of something far better for all of us. Thank you all so much for your centuries of service." Bruce looked around the table. "Bye, I guess."

They disappeared as they severed their projections. Except for Ruslan.

"So," he said, bashfully sidling up to Bruce as though he was going to ask him for a dance at a prom. "Now we're not colleagues.... I was wondering.... Maybe. Maybe we could hang out sometime? Now we've figured out the hyper loop maybe we could hang out.... Physically?"

Bruce smiled more sincerely than he had in about a hundred and twenty years.

"Yeah man," he said. "I'd like that. I'd like that a lot."

Ruslan's kiss was sudden, brief and shy. And then he was gone.

Bruce looked around the assembly room. Echoes of the past swept through his mind, threatening to take him with them, back into the past. He mass-manufactured endorphins and ignored them. Why look back when there was so much forwards?

He closed the aperture on the great room, re-pressurised it for whateverthe crew would do with it now, ended the projection and woke up in his bedroom.His cheeks, to his annoyance, were wet.