The Brave New World

Inside this room, all furniture had been pushed against the walls. All the doors leading to the room had been locked. Thirty soldiers and policemen formed two lines on both sides of a row of fifteen hiber beds. One line held timon implant kits.

The other line consisted of fifteen young men dressed in disposable cellulose gowns. The gowns were very light and loose, but the men looked uncomfortable.

A doctor and a paramedic stood at one end of this double row. The doctor - a strawberry-nosed man in his forties with dark-ringed, watery eyes - opened his mouth as if to say something. Then he closed it without uttering a sound.

At the other end of the double row stood Carlton Brock. He"d slid one hand under his jacket the way Napoleon had done. He was frowning at the line of men wearing disposable gowns. He didn"t like to see American policemen and soldiers, HIS policemen and soldiers, dressed as if they were a bunch of f.u.c.king fairies. He said:

"Men! Our future is in your hands. Our hands," he corrected himself quickly, glancing at his own manicured nails. He gave everyone a stern look in case someone found something funny in what he"d said. No one did. Rea.s.sured, he continued:

"You"re about to enter a new world. We"ve been given access to this world courtesy of our children, who have traveled back in time to present us with this amazing gift, with this... with this, uh, amazing opportunity. Yes. It"s an amazing opportunity. We must seize it with both hands."

He broke and looked at his hands again, noting that there was a comma of dirt under his left thumbnail. Where the f.u.c.k were his speechwriters when he needed them? He was paying those a.s.sholes a small fortune! He said:

"I, the president of the United States of America, congratulate you on being chosen to be the ones who will help secure... who will secure... uh, a bright and wonderful future for us all. Okay. Let"s do it."

He nodded and took a step back, b.u.mping into Lea Panatella, his chief of staff. Lea Panatella had a nickname among White House staff that she didn"t know about. Her nickname was Zeppelins, as in "here come the Zeppelins". It was inspired by her enormous, silicone-enhanced b.o.o.bs that pressed into Brock"s back when he stepped back.

"Oh hey, Lea. Sorry," said Carlton Brock.

"Not a problem," said Lea.

"Remember: not a word that we"re doing this to anyone, least of all to that a.s.shole Odongo," Brock hissed.

"Mum"s the word," said Lea. Her t.i.ts were still touching his back. Anyone standing less than half a meter in front of Lea would automatically be within range of her t.i.ts. Lea didn"t mind. People became much easier to handle when she touched them with her t.i.ts. This applied to both men and women.

Carlton Brock smiled at her. Lea was one h.e.l.l of a chick. He was glad she had his back.

The scene in one of the staff rooms inside the United Nations building in New York was replicated in many buildings, many places all over the world.

In j.a.pan, a group of young men wearing face masks vowed to restore the Black Dragon society to its full glory in the New World. A dozen stepped forward, the blue spots on their foreheads glowing brightly in the darkened room, and lay down on the silvery mats.

In Rostock, Germany, a group of important businessmen gathered at a luxury hotel voted to recreate the famous Hanseatic League in a New World setting. But this time around, the League would stretch far beyond the Baltic and the North Sea: it would penetrate into every corner of the New World. They all shook hands in agreement; then they dispersed to their rooms to lie down on the hiber beds taken from the glowing cube gleaming in the hotel"s parking lot.

In Glasgow, Scotland the regulars a.s.sembled at The Merry Bruce, a pub that had survived and prospered for over two centuries, raised mugs filled with frothy beer and swore to erase every b.l.o.o.d.y Sa.s.senach they encountered in the New World.

In Manchester, England, supporters of the City football club were gathered in the club"s home stadium. They stood on the pitch around the glowing cube, and made the pledge to destroy every United w.a.n.ker that made it to the New World.

In every country of the world, nationalists and chauvinists implanted themselves with timon and vowed to rebuild old empires in a new setting.

In every country of the world, local governments tried to locate and isolate the glowing cubes from the public. But there were simply too many, and quite a few hadn"t been discovered by the authorities.

Meanwhile, a new, global Old and New World policy was taking shape at the United Nations building in New York.

The very first vote during the afternoon session was on introducing the new, global currency proposed by Olaf Troll. Every unit of the new currency had to be worth exactly what it said it was worth. Up to ten metals could be used in the alloys used to mint coins: their names and values would be listed on the reverse of the coin.

A list of the ten metals allowed in the new currency, from aluminum to zinc, was quickly drawn up and voted through. Some Pacific island nations wanted certain seash.e.l.ls to be accepted as a legal tender along with coins; that motion failed to win the vote. On the other hand, a motion to include banknotes made of sheet metal pa.s.sed without any trouble.

The front of the metal banknote or the coin would display the numerical value of the coin and its name. The name didn"t matter. The number did. A value of one could be called a dollar, ruble, pound, peso, bolivar... It was all the same.

However, Olaf Troll recommended taking a more humble route and using names of the smaller denominations: cents, pennies, centimes, centavos, pfennigs. He pointed out that the scarcity of the new currency and its inherent value would cause enormous deflation. A single new cent would buy more than an old dollar could.

The value of 1 was defined as the value of ten grams of aluminum, a choice proposed by Russia and China. The Earth"s most common, easily smeltable metal was accessible to everyone - even small island nations with no metal ore deposits, but with a big refuse problem created partly by mountains of discarded aluminum cans.

Ten grams of aluminum were worth one gram of copper. Ten grams of copper were worth a gram of silver. Ten grams of silver were worth a gram of gold. It would be a return to the time when a single, small silver coin was enough to feed a whole family for a day.

By the time all the currency issues had been resolved and voted on, evening had fallen. The delegates made their way back to their temporary bedrooms inside the United Nations building. All delegates had already equipped themselves with hiber beds. The mats were just fantastic: they made the hardest floor as comfortable as a bed of eiderdown.

Carlton Brock was seen to hold a short conference with a strawberry-nosed individual accompanied by a uniformed police officer and a soldier. He seemed to be highly displeased with what they told him.

"I don"t f.u.c.king care if they"re cold," he hissed. "Bunch of f.u.c.king p.u.s.s.ies. Send them in again. Get others in too, on a rotating basis. One team warms up while the other investigates. Oh, and get hold of a f.u.c.king weaver or tailor or whoever that can make clothes from whatever"s available."

Having issued those precise, detailed instructions he retired for the night.

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