THE CHOICE OF MEN

The President remembers the plan of the Assembly by heart. Since Jeremy's artificial intelligence gave it to him, the old man has spent hours analysing it like a treasure map: each corridor, each passage, each staircase, the different accesses to the rooftop which allow arrival or exit through the air. He knows exactly where he is now, where he is going, and roughly how long his long septuagenarian legs would take to get him there. He speeds up, closely followed by his bodyguard.

***

When Jeremy arrives at the staircase, he finds his cousin there led by the Professor carrying his daughter on his shoulder. The agent takes off his helmet and throws it at his feet. Tempéra and Karl spin around immediately.

'Stay where you are!' he shouts, pointing his gun at them.

Karl waves Tempéra to continue as he pulls a gun from his long tunic before charging at his cousin, firing. Jeremy dodges the bullets swiftly and shoots at his cousin's right hand, which drops the gun. The Professor continues his way up the stairs. Karl drags his body on the ground in an attempt to pick up the gun, but Jeremy kicks it away before shooting at both of Karl's legs. Then, he immediately chases after the Professor, who has already reached the top of the stairs to the exit door.

Tempéra arrives on the immense rooftop. Further on the horizon, protected from the deadly heat of the sun by a long glass tunnel, a small group of the Assembly members hasten to board a helicopter. The long glass tunnel gives him the impression of being inside a tube like those he has so often used to facilitate the birth of his clients' children. It seems to him that he is the client now. Half-man, half-child, half-knowledgeable, half-idiot, he pays a high price for a product he doesn't really need. The desire to possess the precious product doesn't even come from him, but he can't resist neither the temptation of getting something easily, nor the illusion of infinity. Tempéra pauses for a moment to contemplate the sleeping masterpiece of his life: his daughter. What would her future be among people who believe themselves to be Gods and Goddesses of a world that came to exist long before them? They keep squandering this broken world of theirs even if they have the choice not to.

As Jeremy reaches the rooftop, the professor stands metres away from him, his back turned to the young man. Motionless, the professor holds his daughter on his shoulder, seemingly deep in his thoughts. He hasn't noticed the agent who walks slowly behind him. At the same moment, Kofi and his bodyguard rush out of the stair door.

'Tempé!' the president shouts, paying no attention to Jeremy.

The bodyguard at his side aims his weapon at the professor, who has turned around and now faces them. Jeremy walks towards the bodyguard to point his gun at the professor as well.

'You can leave if you want, we won't stop you, but give us Gaëlle back,' Kofi continues more calmly in Mina.

Tempéra hesitates for a moment inside his tube, alternating his gaze towards his stepfather and the two young men who are pointing a gun at him and his daughter. He doesn't know which end of the tube to get out of, but what he knows for sure is that Kofi will never hurt Gaëlle.

'She's ill,' Tempéra begins timidly in Mina. 'Me too by the way. You should keep your distance,' he adds. He places a gentle hand on Gaëlle's head.

'It's not an old man like me who's afraid of diseases,' the President retorts. 'If I have to die of an illness, let it be with my granddaughter in my arms,' he continues, walking slowly towards Tempéra.

The latter nervously takes a few steps back, then he glances over his shoulder at the small group still boarding the helicopter. They don't seem to have noticed them.

'You can go if you want,' Kofi resumes calmly, 'But you leave Gaëlle with me.'

Mrs. Karim's words suddenly come to Tempéra again: "What are you going to cling to when you've lost everything? Nothingness is much vaster than we think." Nothingness is therefore much vaster than a tube.

'Okay,' he replies. He takes a step towards Kofi, who continues walking towards the professor.

Gaëlle would be better off with people like her grandfather and her mother. They aren't perfect nor do they claim to be. They don't worship any man or any science and they have sworn never to submit human dignity to their will alone, because human dignity regained has neither price nor conditions.

Tempéra gently hands Gaëlle to Kofi, who takes the little girl in his arms. He holds her against him while staring at Tempéra. Kofi plunges his nose into the child's hair to inhale its familiar scent before placing a soft kiss on her hollow cheek. Teardrops start rolling down the old man's wrinkled face. His stepson has changed a lot in the recent weeks, but still enough to be able to love his own daughter. He no longer has the empty, impassive gaze of people who don't give a damn about human pain unless it is their own. Watching without saying or doing anything is the same as giving one's consent.

'Thank you, Tempé,' Kofi says, gazing sadly at his son-in-law.

Tempéra nods, looking intently at his daughter with a smile until the president turns around to join Jeremy and his bodyguard.

Tempéra stands there until they disappear behind the door leading to the stairs. Then, he turns back to the other end of the tunnel As he resumes to walk inside his tube towards the helicopter which should take him to yet another world, Mrs. Karim's words start singing again in his ears. "Nothingness is much vaster than we think." Tempéra stops a few meters from the woman posted in front of the aircraft. She checks the identity of the passengers before letting them board. What would the goddess of a rotten world do if she knew that one of the passengers was taking death on board with him?

'I'm Professor Tempéra Akheeli, sole survivor of the lab team that treated the Supreme Goddess,' the professor declares in a clear, confident voice. He smiles at the golden-haired woman.

The Assembly member pauses for a moment as she evaluates the statement of the man standing in front of her. He seems aware of what he has just said. He doesn't look sick, but you never know. Suddenly, she pulls out a gun from under her tunic.

'I'm sorry Professor Akheeli,' she exclaims coldly.

She targets Tempéra's forehead; the professor doesn't flinch. "Sorry? What are you sorry for? Nothingness is much vaster than you think," he thinks to himself, still smiling. Without hesitation, the woman shoots him right here. His body collapses on the ground at the gunshot.

Isabelle rushes through the halls of a hospital, her vision clouded by her tears. She arrives in front of a receptionist and barely manages to give the woman her name. The receptionist indicates with her hand gesture the second corridor to the left. Isabelle goes down the second corridor on her left to stop in front of a large window. Behind the glass, her father and daughter sit on two separate beds, each surrounded by nurses covered from head to toe; they handle them like dolls. The president and Gaëlle look up towards the window at the same time and notice her. She waves at them with one hand while wiping her tears with the other. The little girl doesn't react, her whole body anesthetised by the extreme fatigue and the drugs of the last three days. So, she just stares at her mother through the glass as if to cling to the sense of safety and comfort that she has been missing so much in the recent weeks.

***

Jeremy places a light hand on Nina's shoulder. She stands in front of a large window. Borys is beside her, looking gravely. The woman turns a hazy look at the young man then she gives him a gentle smile full of gratitude. The bitch has bitten her again, but this time Nina doesn't feel sucked into a chasm like three years ago. She keeps her feet firm on the ground, surrounded by courage and audacity of all ages. She is particularly proud to be able to live this moment. For her, who lives each foot in two completely different worlds since the Earth turned upside down due to a mistake of Mother Nature; as if nature ever made mistakes without having a very specific goal in mind; a mysterious capricious gene that has shaken the human species by erasing forever the lies of the past. For her and all those alike who grew up before that moment in time, there will always be a world where they are condemned to always be less or greater than simply because of their origin. Now, there is also today's world where their indelible imprint turns the heads of the fallen men. The Wretched of the Earth, the heirs of misery have become blessed, just like that; pretty much overnight. So, the last shall be first, and the first last. She never believed she would have lived long enough to witness the biblical parable come true. She had dreamt of it many times though. To her disappointment, even after the cataclysm that has changed the order of the world, men still haven't woken up yet. Instead of a change, there has been an exchange, inequitable power passing from one hand to the other to satisfy the greed of a handful.

In times like this more than any other, she has hope that the bitch will know how to dismember the human race over and over again to teach them how to put themselves back together. Through the large window in front of her, Nina gazes at the swollen, but peaceful faces of her two grown children. She no longer needs to worry about the bites of the bitch either on her, or on them, or even on the human race, because the bitch never makes mistakes. The bitch won't stop biting until the real existential lesson beneath the wound is learnt.