Gaia sighed as she realized the amount of work it would take for Aron and her to push the new imperial government into existence, then to acceptance. [How are things on your side?] she asked Panoptes, who was monitoring the internet.
[Judging by how things are going, and not counting the explanation Emperor Aron is going to give tomorrow, the number of rebel groups is going to skyrocket. But hopefully, most of them will lose interest in rebellions once we begin the propaganda push.]
[But those that remain will be even more dangerous. They’re the problematic ones,] Nyx interjected. She realized that she really needed to focus on recruitment in the very near future, as her nyxians would be completely swamped with work for the next few years.
[The recruiting drive should help,] Nova comforted Nyx.
Nyx nodded in agreement, a shock of surprise passing through her as she realized that Nova could read her “mind”. The surprise shortly dissipated as she remembered who it was that birthed her and was the actual owner of the quantum superclusters that all of the AIs operated on. Thus, it was only natural that Nova would know every thought that passed through her children’s heads.
……
President Nazurbayev had finally regained control in the assembly hall. “Is there anyone who has another amendment to propose?” he asked, only to be met with a deafening silence.
“Then I declare today’s summit meeting over.” He banged the gavel. “Tomorrow morning at 8AM, we’ll reconvene and begin the debate,” he said, finally putting an end to the ten-hour marathon meeting.
One by one, the exhausted world leaders stood and filed out the door of the assembly hall. Once they were out of view of the cameras, they stretched, yawned, and slumped their shoulders as they tiredly trudged toward their waiting Aegis teams and transport vehicles. Some of the younger ones, who hadn’t been completely defeated by the long session, clustered together and walked in groups, discussing the proposed amendments.
It had finally sunk in for all of them, though, just how immense the workload would be over the next few weeks, or even months. Only the first day had passed, and they all knew it was merely a self-directed play for an uncooperative, belligerent, and unappreciative audience: the general public.
......
The angry netizens, and the trolls that fanned the flames on the internet, took to the streets around the world to express their dissatisfaction with Aron’s proposal, but they were disunited. Some protests were met with violent counterprotesters, and none of the protest groups were even protesting the same things; after all, there were a lot of proposals, and everyone had some they supported, some they loathed, and others they felt nothing strong for either way.
America and the European Union had the highest number of protesters, followed by some of the Eastern European nations. The rest of the countries had either taken a page from Australia’s leaflet and decided not to care about the mess and just go with the flow, or were still unaware as to what had happened during the first day of the summit for reasons like time differences and such. Soon, they would catch up on the eventful meeting and begin a second wave of protests as they climbed out of bed.
New York City in particular was bursting at the seams with angry, violent protesters. Riots had broken out all over the five boroughs, and some intrepid inciters had even gone so far as to attempt to demolish the Time Warner Center. It was no secret where the leaders were staying during the summit, after all.
Aron, watching the riots from above in his helicopter as he traveled back to the Mandarin Oriental, put a quick stop to the violence much like firefighters fought fires with fires. He simply ordered the Beowulf to make a pass over the city and yeet a couple battalions of ARES troopers in their full battle rattle to aid the NYPD in riot control, resulting in a largely pacified city with most of the ringleaders and inciters arrested.
……
The next day.
Despite the rioting that had taken place the day and night before, the scheduled meeting began precisely at 8AM, once again in the UN general assembly hall. The summit attendees filed in once more and took their seats as President Nazurbayev brought the second day of meetings to order.
“Today, the agenda is to do a first pass on the proposed amendments. Some will be discarded, others will be immediately ratified, and quite a lot of them will be tabled for further debate. Let’s get to it, shall we?” he said, then ordered the technician seated next to him to display a sorted list of the previous day’s proposals.
“We can begin by eliminating the redundant proposals, such as freedom of speech and absolute freedom of speech. All in favor?”
Everyone in the room raised their hands and chorused their approval; cutting out the redundant proposals would save them quite a lot of time and effort.
“The ayes have it.” President Nazurbayev nodded to the technician to proceed with pruning the list, then took his seat and let the meeting begin.
“But first, we must define what exactly we mean by ‘humanity’. For instance, what if the visitors are actually our ancestors who left Earth behind long in the past and are returning to enlighten and uplift us? Should we consider them to be part of the human race, or as fundamentally alien? What falls under the umbrella of ‘human rights’? And what exactly are human rights, anyway?”
He pointed to Alexander and said, “I yield the floor to the representative from Eden to list what we should include as fundamental, inalienable human rights.”
Alexander stood from his seat and began his remarks. “Thank you, President Nazurbayev. In Eden, at least, our view of what it means to be human is to be born and bred on the face of this very planet. And as far as human rights, our beliefs mainly align with those of the UN Human Rights Committee. There are only a few minor differences....” As Alexander spoke, a holographic screen came into existence seemingly without any signals from him to anyone else. It displayed a powerpoint presentation on the subject of humanity and human rights that had been mostly agreed upon by the majority of countries in the world.
