U-UN

Welcome to Fiction Can Be Fun, a blog which has a mix of posts with thoughts on writing, tips and tricks, and the occasional stories. Here at FCBF, we’re long time supporters of the A-to-Z Challenge. It’s a couple of years since I’ve done the challenge myself, for a couple of reasons, but this year I thought I would have ago at a fictitious travelogue. Buckle up as we explore the 50:50 Earth…

A slightly different approach today, still in the 50:50 world, sort of, but a short story setting things up.  Returning to the travelogue tomorrow.

---

“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.” – Ursula K Le Guin

No one would have believed in the first years of the twenty-first century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s – which is just as well, because they weren’t. Earth was a mess. The oceans were littered with the waste of humanity’s profligacy. The politicians argued over meaningless trivialities. Alien invaders taking control might have even been preferable to those mired down in poverty and despair. Or a nice friendly apocalypse to wipe the Earth clean. No such luck.

But if there was no single catastrophe that brought the world to its knees and humanity to its senses, there were points of light and hope. There was the Dutch kid who didn’t just stick his thumb in the hole in the dyke, but set out to capture all the plastics in the seas. There were the make-do-and-menders who furnished their homes out of upcycled pallets and drinks bottles. There were the architects and engineers who stopped competing over the biggest pile of concrete and started building ‘plyscrapers’ instead: wooden towers, taller than trees that changed the urban environment forever. There were the city planners who grew up reading sci-fi stories about ‘Caves of Steel’ and arcologies and pneumatic trains. There was the migration off the land and into the cities, leaving vast swathes naturally depopulated.

It never happened all at once, but change happened. People started stepping up, accepting the responsibilities that came with their rights. Meanness and ill-will still exist today, and the world still has its problems, but the environment is getting better.

So what happened? Like I said, it wasn’t any one thing that caused all this. But one big thing that happened was the UN white paper. And my grandmother was a part of that…

Andriana perched on the edge of Will’s desk and tried to resist the temptation to roll the document in her hands. It would have been tricky, because it was 150 pages, but she’d only thermally bound it thirty minutes ago, and the anxiety was building up inside her. Anne was trying to keep her head down at her desk, and failing. Anandini and Kwesi were trying to be casual by the water cooler, arguing the merits of various independent coffee shops. Odette, as ever, was running late.

Andriana tried to decide if she should knock on the Director’s door, or wait to be called in. When she’d woken that morning, she had been fired up: she would stride into the office thump the document down on her boss’s desk and demand that it be taken to the Secretary General. Since then she’d flip-flopped approximately every five minutes between this (uncharacteristically) decisive stance and something which she’d tried to convince herself was more moderate, but which might be construed by others to be wishy-washy.

Every now and again the cycle was broken by a desperate need to be sick. This had not occurred, so far.

This was the big one though. If this report was accepted, with her as first author, then she could do anything. Perhaps she’d get the field assignment that she’d been angling for. Maybe promotion. Maybe…but what if it bombed? The nausea started welling up again…

She ruthlessly supressed it and with a surge of confidence came back to the starting point of decisiveness. She stood up and felt the eyes of everyone in the team turn to look at her. At this point two doors opened simultaneously. Odette threw open the door from the stairwell and flurried in, shrugging off her light coat and apologising for being late, juggling coat, briefcase, and reusable coffee-cup; at the same moment, the boss threw open her door:

“I cannot hear myself think with you all breathing so heavily outside of my door! You’d all better come in and tell me what this is all about.”

They trooped in and the Director shuffled papers around so that she could sit at the head of the six-seater table that was to one side of the room. Everyone coveted this office, with the big picture window with the amazing view. Everyone knew exactly what they would do when they moved in, what furniture they’d have. Some favoured the floor to ceiling bookcase that filled one wall. Some cubes bursting with books and documents, others tastefully bare, with just one or two tastefully arranged knick-knacks and souvenirs. Several held
autographed copies of books such as Tim Jackson’s ‘Prosperity Without Growth’ and EO Wilson’s ‘Half Earth’.

Andriana took the seat next to the Director and handed her the document. The others took their seats round the table, and Will, who’s desk was closest, brought in an extra chair. He and Kwesu shared the other end of the table.
Madura Pau, Director of the UN Agency for Global Sustainable Development looked down and took in the cover page:

White Paper on the principles required for promoting the 50:50 Earth

Prepared by:
Andriana Crowner
Anandini Choudhry
Will Ledgerwood
Odette Marcon
Kwesi Nwosu
Anne Rossnitz
Madura Pau

“I’m not sure I see how I can be an author of this document, when I’ve never seen it before, and I can’t recall commissioning it. I trust this has not been distracting you from your duties.” The complete absence of threat in her voice, combined with the merest flick of a raised eyebrow was, paradoxically, one of the most threatening things any of these people had had to face.

Andriana flushed, but managed to stop herself from choking as she said “The title is pretty self-explanatory, I think. We’ve all chipped in to write a definitive case for a world where humans only live in half of it. We’ve covered some of the most pressing issues, and we’ve tried to consider what would need to be done from a technological view point to allow this. Of course this is very much a first draft, but we were hoping that you would give us some feedback. And take it to the Secretary General. When it’s been revised, of course.”

Pau’s eyes flickered to the book on the shelf and back to the document. She owed them the courtesy of taking a look, at least.

“No promises. But I will look at it. Now get back to work!”

They all trooped out again, barely having been sat down long enough to warm the chairs. Will wondered if it had even been worth bringing his chair in.

In the comfort of her office, Madura Pau picked up the document, a red pen, a block of sticky notes, and settled into an armchair.

© David Jesson, 2024