by Rob Buckman
"The world is such a small place now, and we can no longer afford to play the old power game. If we don't learn to work together and stop trying to gain dominance over each other by political, religious or economic meant this will happen again, and the next time we might not be so lucky, or have a General Drake to do the right thing." She added among the thunderous applause that broke out, and she waited for the standing ovation to finish before continuing.
"It is time ladies and Gentlemen to start working together to solve the world problems, such as hunger, poverty, and intolerance, for if we do not, they will consume us. Already we are facing a worldwide food shortage, coupled with drought in many parts of this planet. Yet, the real insanity is, that we spend tens of billions of Dollars, Pounds, Yen, Rubles, Marks, and Gilders on building ever more deadly weapons we hope and pray we will never use, how insane is that?" She let the question hang in the air a moment.
"Can't we find better things to spend the money on? Let’s get rid of the borders that separate us, let’s rid ourselves of the intolerance that divides us, and start talking to those of us who are disenfranchised." Again, she waited for the thunder to die down before continuing.
"All over this world, we have groups of people fighting and killing in the name of some ideology or other, and it's time it stopped. Let’s start talking instead of killing and find a way to solve the differences between us." She tried to say more, but it was lost in the mounting applause and she gave up. The General Secretary took over them, adding his own comments.
"Madam President has suggested, and I concur that each delegate send a message home and ask the President, Prime Minister, or designated leader of that country come to the UN. Let us bring the leaders of the world here. Let us sit down in peace and discuss the problems that face us. Let us for the first, and maybe the only time, come to a resolution to our problems and find a way to solve them together, for, mark my words well ladies and gentlemen, we might never get another chance." The applause was overwhelming, and it took almost ten minutes before he could continue.
"I would also like to extend an open hand to the leaders of all the factions around the world. Let them come and sit down with us, no matter what their ideology might be, and listen to what they have to say. In our hands, at this moment, we have the opportunity to send mankind down a new path, one free from war." The standing ovation seemed to go on forever. The general assembly broke up after that and the respective delegates started talking to each other.
This went on all week as more, and more world leaders arrived and the talk escalated to shouting matches and screaming. Fistfights broke out and chairs sailed through the air, but they didn't stop talking. The UN medical center did report to the General Secretary that there was an increasing number of heart attacks and coronary thrombosis. In addition, an unusually high suicide rate as people started throwing themselves off the top of the building with amazing regularity. His answer, when asked what to do about it, was do nothing. The cleanup had started and he wasn't about to close any avenue, or opportunity to delegates who sought a different route to solve a problem with a truculent or obstructive leader.
A week later, they came back and sat down, and many new faces now sat in the seat reserved for the country's leaders, but he said nothing. One by one, they offered their solution to a particular problem. Spain offered the Basque Separatists, their own autonomous state. Turkey offered restitution to the Armenians, and agreed to pull out of the area that they controlled, and so it went as one after the other countries placed their proposal on the table. Ireland was reunited; Egypt, Israel, and Jordan set aside a portion of their counties and funded Palestine, each adding to the fund set up by the World Bank. In return, all Middle East countries signed a peace accord, proclaiming the State of Israel right to exist. The list of grievances was long, yet they paid as much attention to the smallest of the groups who came. From the Laps to the Timor Tigers, from Australian Aborigines and the Highland tribes of Vietnam, giving equal justice to all. After China returned autonomy to Tibet, she offered America and the other countries hit by nuclear weapons a revolutionary treatment they'd found several years before. It neutralizes all radiation within six months. No one berated them, or pointed a finger at the fact they had it and told no one of their findings. That was in the past, as it should be. By the end of the month a New World emerged, one without armies, except the UN.
This would be a true army, drawn from around the world, with a mandate to fight in any country, and with any aggressor with whatever weapons they needed. Any country that took up arms against another would be instantly economically isolated from the rest of the world until such time as the leadership changed, or would be immediately invaded by the armed forces of the UN. From now on, no country could afford to take up arms against another and no group driven to the point where they needed to take up arms. In many places, they used the old Chinese solution to the drug problem. The UN army moved in and promptly found and executed all known and suspected drug producers and dealers. The addict were rounded up and placed in medical facilities to detox. It was radical and needs, as were so many other problems facing the world. Many were unsolvable due to the laws of a particular county. Those laws did not bind the UN, so in the short term, until they did formulate a new set of rules to work with, they cleaned up. It was a good plan, and the President of the United States felt happy as she winged her way to Florida for a well-earned vacation, thinking that Scott Drake's sacrifice had been worth it. The plan the UN agreed upon would work, and secretly, they all had Scott Drake and his army of the dead to thank for giving the world one last chance. Maybe that was the fitting tribute to him and his men. He would wake up fifty years from now in a New World, one she hoped, he would be proud of, and maybe he would receive the reward they so richly deserved.
She never made it to Florida, as somewhere high over the Rocky Mountains Air Force One exploded, killing all aboard. There was no doubt it was sabotage, but if the perpetrator thought it would change anything, they were wrong. It had the opposite effect, accelerating the process to the point where it couldn't be stopped. A year after the agreement was signed by a majority of the members, most weapons manufacturing had shut down. The remaining weapon stockpiles were either destroyed or turned over to the UN. Countries that refused, or carried on clandestine manufacturing found themselves cut off from critical industrial or consumer goods. Their banks couldn’t trade, and within a short time, their economy was in a shambles. It was harsh but necessary if the binding agreement was to have any meaning. This even extended to illicit manufacturing by organized crime syndicates who were treated much the same way as drug traffickers, slave traders and child porn rings. They were taken out and shot. Gradually the weapons and the ability to create them disappeared. By then, no county dared wage war of any kind against its neighbor. The UN Courts showed no lenience to anyone found with a weapon, and using one even in self-defense carried the death penalty. Within fifty years a different world emerged, one without border or countries, and controlled by a true world government, the United Nations. A world at peace with itself for the first time in forty thousand years.
CHAPTER TWO: FUTURE SHOCK
Somewhere in the darkness, he felt pain, or thought he did. Then he felt cold, a bone deep cold, like being on the arctic tundra without clothes. It was as if the cold was coming from everywhere. It surrounded him, sending jagged needles of pure agony deep into his body. He couldn’t move, couldn’t get away from it, as if trapped in a dream, or nightmare. Just when he thought he couldn’t take it anymore, it faded away until only the blackness remained, then that faded away as well. He returned to consciousness and blackness, or he thought he did, lifting his arm this time to feel his face, wondering if he'd gone blind. His face felt fine, but then again, so did the rest of him, so why couldn't he move. It was hard to keep that thought as he kept drifting away, seeing his wife and children one moment, hearing voices the next, or phantoms from a past he barely remembered, only to drift off to sleep again. The nex
t time he awoke, there was light this time, and a voice.
"So, you’re awake at last.” A strangely accented, disembodied voice asked as he blinked to clear his eye and his mind.
This time the light was on and he found he could see, and he felt a profound sense of relief, wondering if this crazy idea to send him into the future had a price tag no one was aware of, like blindness. The sourceless, soft pearly light didn’t hurt is eyes as he might have expected, but as before, he couldn’t move his body his upper body. The voice sounded as if English wasn’t the speaker’s native language.
"Yes, I'm awake, but where am I.” Scott asked, straining to sit up. He could move his arms and legs just fine, even turn his body a little, so he knew he wasn’t paralyzed, so why was his back of all things stuck to the bed, or whatever he was laying on.
"You are in a research medical facility where you have just been revived from Cyro-sleep. What is your name?" The first statement made sense, as it should, the second part, didn’t. How the hell couldn’t they know his name?
"My name?” He repeated, wondering what was going on. "My name is Scott Drake.” He said, feeling as if he was in a fog. His last thought before drifting off to sleep in the research facility at Point Magu was lying down in a tube like chamber, wondering if he’d ever wake up again. Why he’d let the President talk him into the crazy scheme he didn’t know, only that it sounded like a good idea at the time, not he wasn’t so sure.
"Good, very good. When were you born?” This was starting to get a little odd. All this was in his medical record, unless this was a test to see if his memory was intact. If so, he’d play along for the moment.
"I was born on January twenty fifth, nineteen hundred and sixty one, why?"
"Oh, nothing, just checking." Scott tried to turn his head to look at the owner of the voice, but he couldn’t. Like the illumination, the voice came out of nowhere.
‘Like hell’. Scott thought, ever suspicious of tech types. Whoever was asking the questions was on a fishing trip. His futile struggle to sit up got him nowhere.
"Checking on what?" He asked, at which point the door opened, and in walked a gnome of a man with wild hair.
"Who on earth are you?" Looking at the man out the corner of his eye. The man’s skin had an odd pallor, as if he didn’t get out in the sun much, and his hair was reminiscent of a man who’d been dragged through a hedge backwards.
"Doctor Hienrick Kessler at your service,” the little man bowed slightly, and Scott almost expected him to click his heels together, but he didn’t, “how do you feel?" He had bright puppy eyes, deep brown and the expression was that of a deer caught in a car’s headlight.
"Fine, thanks, except I can't move." He looked sideways at the little man in a white lab smock, dirty and stained as if he’d hadn’t changed it for a long time.
"Oh, that, just a precaution, I didn't want you rolling off the bed and hurting yourself.”
He touched something on the wall at the head of the bed, and Scott found he could move. He immediately sat up and looked at his body, throwing back the covers. He wasn't sure what he was looking for. Just checking for anything missing as some wild thought passed through his mind. A quick glance showed he still had 21 digests, and he didn’t feel as if anything else was missing.
"What do you think, my boy?"
"Think? About what?" Not liking the sound of ‘boy’.
"Your body, do you like it?” It sounded like the dumbest question in the world. "Go and look in the mirror, please.” He motioned Scott over to a blank wall, and a little puzzled, Scott complied.
Scott looked down at his body again, then swung his legs off the bed to the floor, and stood up. He was naked under the covers, but it didn't bother him. He expected to feel dizzy for a moment and held on to the edge of the bed, but nothing happened. Nor did he feel weak in the legs or anywhere else for that matter, in fact, he felt great all over. That wasn't right, as he knew from experience. He should be as weak as a kitten after a lengthy stay in hospital, to the point where he couldn’t stand, but he wasn’t.
"What gives Doctor?" There was something definitely out of kilter here.
"What do you mean?" The gnome gave him an innocent, wide-eyed look.
"I mean I shouldn't be doing this," he said, walking across the room, "I should be weak, dizzy, and just about unable to walk."
"So you are pleased with your body then?" Kessler asked again. Mike still thought it was the dumbest question anyone could ask.
"You asked me that before," he said, giving the Doctor a sideways look, "what do you mean by that?” He asked, standing in front of what at first appeared to be nothing but a blank wall that without warning somehow turned into a mirror.
Then it hit him. He stood there looking at his reflection, seeing a twenty five-year-old man looking back at him. His sandy blond hair was there, long, and full, covering his head. The rest of his body didn't have a single scar, and he definitely had more muscles than he started with. He should be looking at a slightly balding, forty year old man with multiple scars across his body from years of getting shot at, blown up and generally having a lot of pissed off people trying to kill him one way or another, not the body of some Greek god.
"What the hell did you do?” He asked in an awed whisper. The little gnome chuckled, beaming from ear to ear like some happy father, almost dancing from foot to foot in his excitement.
There was one thing that didn’t make Scott very happy. He’d always thought of himself as a well-hung man, and now he wasn’t. A shiver ran up his back as he looked at what he could only describe as a nub, but it was the lack of balls that hit him the hardest. Wild thoughts ran through his mind, like his nuts got frost bitten and they had to remove them, or in this future, castration was considered a birth control method.
“What… what happened?” He asked, almost whispering, his hand waving down to his crotch.
“Oh, that. Nothing to worry about. Everything is there. It’s just packaged a little differently, that's all.” That didn’t make sense, how could you re-package something like that. “You have all you um… well, let say your normal sexual functions if that’s what concerns you.”
“Concerns me!” He choked out. “What the hell am I suppose to do with this fucking thing?” He pointed at the nub. To his amazement, the crazy little man laughed, rubbing his hands together in glee.
“Oh, I can assure you that at the um… appropriate moment, you will find that you are more than adequately equipped to um… well, to perform sexually.” For some reason, the little twit was even blushing slightly as he said it. Scott wasn’t sure what to make of that. None of this made any sense. "I'll tell you more about it later. Are you hungry?" He asked, rubbing his hands together again.
"Hell yes!” Scott exclaimed, suddenly realizing why his stomach was growing at him, he was famished. He vaguely remembered the techs telling him not to eat everything twenty four hours before undergoing the procedure. Technically, he hadn’t eaten anything for fifty years. The thought was vaguely funny considering the growling sound coming from his stomach.
Before he’d even finish speaking, the Doctor pulled a robe out of a hidden closet and handed it to him, motioning Scott to follow. He led him to a cheerfully decorated, but utilitarian dining room at the end of a short passageway, and it was then that Scott realized what was wrong; there were no windows in this place. It was also odd that the place was empty, and with none of the usual cafeteria smells, you usually associated with a place like this. This place smelt empty and sterile, as if it hadn’t been used for a long time.
He kept silent, waiting for more information before saying anything. The dining room looked like the typical institutional cafeteria, and could seat about twenty people, but there were no serving counters, just a row of stainless steel doors, or hatches along one wall, from which the Doctor pulled the tray of food for Scott. The meal was another surprise, as it was served ready to eat on a stainless steel platter covered with some sort of clear plast
ic. The meat, if it was that, was unidentifiable but tasty, and the vegetables had an unusual tangy taste. The only thing that remained the same was the coffee and after dumping in cream and a ton of sugar, much to the horror of the Doctor, he gulped it down, looking around for more. The Doctor didn't eat, claiming he’d already done so, but there was a slight look of distaste on his face as he watched Scott eat said something else. It was almost as if he embarrasses at watching someone else eat. He also barraging him with a continuous stream of questions, some Scott answered, some he didn't, generally getting fed up with the whole process. He needed information, and this little twit wasn’t giving him any.
"Look Doctor.” He said at last, his voice carrying a slight edge to it.
"You’ve been shooting questions at me for the last half hour, yet you should know most of the answers if you'd bother to read my 201 file, or my medical record."
"But that's just it, my boy. I don't have any information about you." He looked surprised. “What is a 201 file?” He asked after a moment, and Scott froze.
"Don't have... That's impossible! The Navy has everything on file.” Scott replied, wondering why this mad Doctor didn’t know what a 201 file was. Maybe the designation had changed in fifty years and now called something else.