Short Stories [CountryHumans]

11. Uniting (1945)

"If you want my honest opinion," The League of Nations sat across from UN, looking at the plans sitting on the coffee table between them.

"Putting them in a room together is a recipe for disaster. especially a room like this." He tapped a blueprint.

The room he was talking about was planned to be structured like a lecture hall, with tables laid out in a semi-circular pattern, but the layout of the space was not what the League was taking issue with.

"Give them ten minutes with each other and no humans to enforce the rules, and it'll end in bloodshed." He said, "At least if they're all in Geneva, they have incentive to follow the law."

The League's misgivings came from the fact that the room was in what he had taken to calling the void. A rather dramatic name for the pocket dimension the headquarters would be situated in, and one UN hoped could be renamed soon. It was rather too Lovecraftian for his tastes.

"I'm sure they'll behave themselves." UN was sitting across from him. "And I don't want it to be in a city. That would be showing favouritism, even if it is Geneva."

And he was certain many countries viewed him as biased just for starting his existence in San Francisco.

"So just move the conference around. One year in New York, the next in Moscow, and so on," League said.

"I'm not looking to make just a conference, the humans are doing that already. I want to make a proper institution." He'd used the system that allowed countries to travel to and from other nations through embassies, although his version had been modified to allow the country to enter the headquarters from any previously set up location and without requiring permission to do so.

"Even if your theory is correct, do you really think the countries will even be willing to try?" League said, picking up one of the draft manifestos of UN's new organisational branch. "They are not as mature as you would expect, even the older ones."

Especially the older ones, if what UN had heard was to be believed.

"I am sure that if we give them the opportunity to understand each other, they will put aside their more childish grudges in time."

The League looked unconvinced.

"I suppose you have managed to get their governments on board. How did you manage to do that, given the tensions with the bomb and the situation in Berlin?"

UN glances at the pile of letters on the table, each stamped with a variety of governmental symbols, demanding attention.

"Ah, that is where my secondary goal comes in," UN said. "I didn't waste my breath to advertise this as a means to world peace, but as a way to investigate and control the increase of supernatural activity." He pointed to the archive, then to the laboratory on the blueprints.

"National leaders are already distancing themselves from associating with their own countries out of concern of the increase in unexplainable occurrences that happen through association; if I frame it as an endeavour to protect those most at risk of having their lives disturbed, who are of course people who know of our existence, that being world leaders, they will certainly be more likely to give the go-ahead to our project."

UN sat back. He was rather pleased with the idea. The League was not.

"People already paint our kind of organisations as some sort of malevolent conspiracy." He said carefully, "You don't need to actually make one."

"Getting the countries to become friends for the sake of world peace is hardly some evil plot." UN crossed his arms, "And I am genuine about trying to understand the supernatural."