THE GOVERNMENT OF PLANET EARTH

** At the World Assembly, 2082 **

The hundred members of the assembly stand in small groups of four or seven while waiting for the new session to be announced on the giant flat screen in front of them. Some members seem to be getting impatient. They anxiously alternate their gaze from the screen to their interlocutors. Others are waiting for this moment with enthusiasm. Their arms crossed, a little smile of satisfaction hanging on their lips, they let out a few bursts of laughter between two words exchanged. Suddenly, the screen displays the theme of the session while a female voice invites the members to return to their seats inside the assembly hall. A middle-aged man is sitting on the podium, surrounded by four other people much younger than him. The members noisily enter the assembly in a cacophony of laughter and exclamations. The most enthusiastic ones rush to take their seats while everyone else seems to want to delay this moment as long as possible. Once settled, they keep fidgeting leaning forward or backward. After a few minutes, silence gradually spreads across the large room. Finally, the middle-aged man begins to address the audience who stare at him with great interest. His voice is as serious as the expression on his face:

"The news that I'm about to deliver to you must remain within the four walls of the assembly for obvious reasons."

The man takes a deep breath before continuing:

"The colonies on Mars sent out a call for help a few weeks ago. Their system is no longer able to maintain life on their planet. They can't explain why, but their atmosphere and their purification system no longer produce the oxygen necessary for their survival."

Then, the man remains silent as if to give his audience time to assimilate the seriousness of his words. Silence returns, heavy and uncomfortable. It grows heavier and heavier as the man remains seated silently. His dark gaze seems lost into that of the assembly. Finally, the man continues dryly:

"We can choose to help or ignore them. No one on Earth will hold it against us, at least not their few descendants who remain on our planet..." he adds, barely hiding the disdain in his voice and on the look of his wrinkled face.

One of the members of the assembly slowly gets up from his seat.

"We can't just abandon them like this," the old man, who is addressing the large assembly, hardly contains the dismay in his voice. Like most of the men and women sitting in the gathering, his skin is light brown. His light brown hair, and olive skin with a slightly lighter complexion than his younger audience's don't indicate anything about the old man's origin.

"MP. Leszczyński, we'd like to remind you that they are the ones who abandoned us in the late sixties when the planet lost three-quarters of its trees and other natural resources," a young man starts, standing up. "They didn't hesitate a second to leave us to our fate when unlike us, they could afford the luxury of going into exile out of space."

"The planet didn't lose anything. We're the only ones to blame! We squandered all its wealth and resources," the old man retorts.

"Wrong," the young man interrupts, raising his index finger, "These people are the same owners of multinationals who've exploited the resources of our planet to exhaustion. They're the ones who've funded space research and it's only they and their families who've benefited from it. If today they have problems at the other end of our solar system, well it's their problem, not ours!"

The people in the assembly give a round of applause, shouting in agreement. The old man hears their anger, and as harsh as the young man's words may sound, they are true. The exile of the first colonies was experienced by the rest of the population of planet Earth as a betrayal, an abandonment. The fattest rats were getting off the ship because it was sinking, leaving the less fortunate ones to their fate. He still remembers how the media talked about it; he was approaching seventy. "What goes around comes around," he remembers his grandmother often saying; she was right.

"We're talking about men, women, children", the old man defends himself once the crowd in the assembly has finally calmed down.

"Precisely, we have neither the resources nor the space," a man exclaims.

"They're human-beings like you and me," the old man continued desperately.

"They wanted to go into exile on another planet, they're no longer from this planet. They have to ask for asylum."

"...And we decline their request! Let them get anywhere closer to our planet and we'll give them a lesson they surely won't forget!" A woman's voice exclaims in the assembly. 

The crowd claps louder, cheering, and shouting. The old man collapses in his seat without a word as if crushed by the clamour of the assembly.

While the ministers gradually leave the hall in a hubbub of exclamations and laughter, Minister Leszczyński remains seated, sadly watching them. When he finds himself alone in the large room, he calmly places his hands on his knees, he closes his eyes and he sits up, leaning on the back of his seat before taking a few deep breaths. Then, he slowly opens his eyes to stare straight ahead of him, still looking thoughtful and concerned. He lets out a long sigh before looking down at his phone watch.

"Nina Xi Huang," he whispers to his phone.

The device immediately dials the senator's number. It rings for a minute until the old man finally decides to hang up. He gets up with difficulty off his seat, then he slowly heads to the exit, his steps heavy.