UN Headquarters, New York.
It wasn’t long before the display screen tallied and revealed the votes.
United States of America: in favor.
Russia: opposed.
People’s Republic of China: opposed
United Kingdom: in favor
France: opposed
The moment the first no vote from the five permanent members of the security council appeared, everyone in the room, and the more politically savvy folks watching from home, knew the resolution had effectively been swatted. Even if the tally of the entire security council was in favor, no matter the margin, either China or Russia would use their veto power to kill Eden’s proposal. Still, that was a moot point, as more than half of the non-permanent members had voted against it, two more had abstained, and the supporters were pitifully few.
Most countries apparently either agreed with China and Russia that the UN was enough, or they were against giving up any of the power they currently held and didn’t want anyone to lord their authority over them.
The way the UNSC was set up, with five nations holding the power of veto over everything, it had devolved into a stage on which only they could perform, while the rest of the world could do nothing but watch the show. Occasionally to their benefit, true, but usually it was to their detriment or didn’t involve them at all. Over time, that had turned the UN into an ineffective organization that could do nothing but say pretty words and hand down resolutions that only weak nations were forced to follow, while more powerful nations could ignore them with impunity. If anyone needed evidence of their toothlessness, the Russian takeover of the Crimean peninsula and openly stated intentions on an invasion of Ukraine was more than enough.
That wasn’t even mentioning the corruption in the organization, which was only hidden behind a thin veneer of politeness. The issue was evident in the resolution following the closed-door hearing regarding the situation between Indonesia and Eden, where the Edenian ambassador presented hard evidence to support their side, while China was backing Indonesia. Needless to say, the corruption in every level of the UN was now blatantly apparent to anyone who cared to pay attention; the only thing saving the organization now was the fact that the hearing had been held behind closed doors and the security council was notoriously good at keeping secret what they need to keep secret.
Following the vote, the internet erupted in protests, which spilled over onto the streets and steps of government buildings around the world. People were fearful, and expressing that fear as they realized that their governments were dragging their feet on an issue where every second counted. Every second they weren’t researching, every second they weren’t discovering, and every second they weren’t building or training was a second that could potentially trigger a domino effect that would exterminate humanity as a species!
Unfortunately, even the protesters were as united as a dish of loose sand. Some protested against the united world government, but others protested against it. And those protests were mostly split according to how the vote went; countries that had voted for it were protesting against the resolution’s failure, and countries that had voted against it were protesting the fact that it had even been considered at all.
Another dividing line was along the level of countries’ development. More industrialized, “first world” nations—like America and most of the EU—wanted things to remain as they were, while the proposal of a united world government had gained momentum in less-developed nations, like those in Central Africa and Oceania. They knew that if they couldn’t get a united world government with a monolithic research institute, they would stand no chance at all of surviving if the visitors were hostile, so their lives were literally on the line.
Humanity had become irrevocably fractured. The divide between developed and developing, powerful and weak, rich and poor, old and young, conservative and liberal... the list went on. There was no unity to be found, and the discovery of an extraterrestrial civilization headed their way had torn away the facade that had previously covered the severe fracturing of the species and thrown all the moral bullshit and excuses out the window.
“I don’t know whether to applaud humanity’s selfishness or be enraged by it,” Aron sighed as he watched chaos sweeping the world. People were showing their helplessness, fear, and anger with widespread destruction, vandalism, and a skyrocketing crime rate everywhere except Eden, and again, weirdly, Australia. Eden, because their country was prosperous, happy, and developing well but also a very highly trained police force that knew how to deal with such things backed by a very swift but brutal just justice system that punishes people arcoding to the damage caused by the crime making all crimes in Eden have no ceiling of the punishment they could be given as a result of weight of the committed crime, while Australians were simply sanguine and phlegmatic as a whole.
Still, there was no mockery in Aron’s tone, only a bitter kind of sadness. He knew that human nature was actually humanity’s worst enemy, and part of human nature was for people to prioritize themselves when the species’ life was on the line.
[They don’t know that panicking is the worst possible reaction to have when their entire civilization is on the verge of destruction,] Nova said from beside Aron, where she was accompanying him in watching the painful process of the destructive act of creation.
“Says you!” Aron growled jokingly. He gave Nova a side eye as he remembered that her panic attack during his upgrade had cost him more than five billion loss that day which was chump change for him but still, he couldn’t waste and opportunity to mess with her.
[I learned my lesson after a single error, but humanity continues repeating their mistakes time and again. They say that ‘those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it,’ but I like the response by Friedrich Hegel: ‘the only thing we’ve learned from history is that we’ve learned nothing from history’,] Nova said in a shy voice.
“True. Humanity can only learn through experience, and experience is something you only gain through fucking up. So as long as they don’t experience the negative aspects of the panic, they’ll never learn to be calm and think carefully under pressure.” Aron was speaking as though he himself wasn’t human, something he didn’t realize had been happening more and more since his upgrade. But if he did notice it, he likely wouldn’t care regardless.
Humanity had disappointed him on far too many occasions, after all.
“Another thing that’s worsening the chaos is the herd mentality. Humans are social animals, and when gathered in groups, they act as a group rather than relying on their individual judgment. So none of them have any control over the situation, and none of them will allow an individual to take that control and direct the herd. A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals—especially in a situation where they lack any practical experience on how to handle themselves, like this one.
“Humanity is being tested, and it only remains to be seen whether they pass or fail.” Aron massaged his temples and pinched the bridge of his nose, then sighed.
“Give me a list of names. I want to know everyone who’s instigating and worsening the chaos in order to deal with them in the future. I can’t allow that kind of bullshit when we’re fighting for our lives,” Aron said. He knew that there were some true “agents of chaos” in the crowds inciting and triggering them, but the majority were intelligence operatives. He even saw a few agents he recognized by sight, having dealt with them relatively recently, either personally or through skirmishes between them and the Nyxians.
[Yes, sir,] Nova said, then got to work collating the name list and the evidence backing each individual’s inclusion.
Accompanied by a flash of light, a burly giant that stood nine meters tall, wearing ragged brown trousers and sandals on his feet appeared. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and his muscular upper body was covered in tattoos of eyes in every shape, size, and color, all of which rippled and moved seemingly on their own. He was none other than Panoptes, the AI that monitored social media and ran the Panopticon satellite network.
[There’s a situation online, Grandfather,] Panoptes reported. [The Panopticon intercepted signals between American, Chinese, Russian, and British satellites—it appears they’ll soon be coming for you to either take your tech by force or force you to ‘voluntarily donate it for the betterment of mankind’.]
“Let them come. I’ve been waiting for them,” Aron sneered as he focused on the second list Nova had collated for him: a list of people who had remained calm despite the situation.
