Flavio Mancini, dottore in Statistical Sciences and, for the few who were aware, a luminary in Social Predictability, was torn between the two perspectives before him. In one of these he was to appease the military and deliver the action plan they had commissioned. By his own calculations, he understood better than anyone: in doing so, he would grant the armies of the countries belonging to IUPITER a political power that military forces had never had before. However, this would be the least risky choice on a personal level, laden with material benefits that might offset some guilt. In the other perspective, he was to sabotage their attempt to implement their unique idea of world peace and unity, filled with authoritarianism, hierarchies, and social elites. As soon as they noticed, and sooner or later they would, Flavio would be up against the secret services of a wide range of nations that usually presented themselves as peaceful. And then there was the other range, those nations that didn't care about appearing peaceful at all.

He vividly remembered being on the verge of abandoning the IUPITER project, and it was only the tragic night of the argument with Flavia that had changed his mind. That Flavia – or Claudia, as she now called herself – had awakened in a surprising return from the threshold between life and death, did not clarify his feelings about what he wanted to do.

On the contrary, the world into which he felt drawn was increasingly desolate and anchorless. Claudia had been out of the hospital for a week and did not want to see him. She had called him, and with no discernible emotion in her voice, thanked him for taking her to the hospital. Then she had been curt and cutting with him, declining his calls and refusing to meet.

What left him most puzzled and disoriented wasn't so much the rejection but rather the realization that he didn't feel all that upset. He felt neither profound disappointment nor heartbreak. He simply realized that of his Flavia, if she ever existed outside of his infatuation, all that remained was a specter, a ghost whose essence had dissipated, just like the memories of the past months that amnesia had taken from his closest friend.

The thought of losing Cristina, on the other hand, made his heart pound with anger and regret. From her, he hadn't even received the courtesy call that Claudia had granted him. Yet he knew he would see her again very soon because her reintegration into IUPITER was already being discussed with marked enthusiasm and a date set on the calendar. He also knew, and it hurt to think about it, that upon seeing him again she would neither embrace him nor even gift him with the smile that had always characterized her.

He wondered what had brought her back to the project. He liked to imagine that her ideas of equal integration among peoples remained unchanged. However, her abrupt return made him fear a change of heart, which he suspected was due to discovering that the project's creation was motivated by an extraterrestrial threat.

Despite Clelia presenting it as one of the possibilities, Flavio was not scared of a hypothetical clash with another civilization that, while manipulating energies at a level high enough to travel among stars, had been wise enough not to annihilate itself on its own planet. He was, however, terrified of those who, lacking the wisdom to avoid self-destruction on their own planet, were already planning to carry social aggression onto another planet they couldn't even reach.

Regardless of his decision concerning the action plan he was to deliver to the high officers of IUPITER, one way or another, he would have to confront their aggressiveness. The whole point was to decide whether this confrontation should occur within a very few years and on a personal level or more in the long run, having already compromised the future of human society.

This dilemma was closely monitored light-years away by the Interdimensional Assembly. While late afternoon approached in Rome, an extraordinary session of the Assembly was convening at dawn solely to alleviate the anxieties of those participating.

Although the sun had not yet peeked over the horizon of the dome, the basin was crowded with almost two hundred members. Among them, the only Earthling had risen early, driven by narcissistic curiosity. He wanted to observe the other Flavio, unlike the rest, not out of attachment to work that had been nurtured for centuries, but to see if he would ever glimpse the fate that a meteorite had robbed him of.

«Tell me, what was your relationship with great responsibilities seven years ago?» someone asked him.

«I'd say that if I had only imagined the responsibility I had then, I would have gone mad.»

He shook his head, with his eyes already lost in the void of a specific area high in the dome. The shadows of dawn became unnaturally dark, silence grew thick and, in that area, the projection showed the tense figure of Flavio Mancini.

The dim neon lights illuminated the corridor leading to the conference room. Empty and under that light, the passage seemed to Flavio even colder than the autumn clouding the evening outside. It wasn't an area of the building assigned to IUPITER, but General Leanza had requested it for the occasion, and the Air Force Command had granted it without any issues. The general had to send someone to dust off the room and arrange for some extra hours to keep staff there during dinner time. The command, acting as the "host", couldn't have cared less if IUPITER wanted to use that room, which was almost always closed, especially if they wanted to do so at dinner time.

The officers from the Research Department, driven by Flavio's work, had delivered enthusiastic reports, and thus, together with the general, they had decided to grandly present the plan they developed "in collaboration with Doctor Mancini". Dinner time in Rome was the most suitable time to gather officers connecting from time zones to the west and near east. As for those even further east... well, they generally made less fuss about such things than the others. And even if they wanted to make a fuss, their count of nuclear warheads wasn't very large. It was those to the west who had the larger one.

Flavio didn't care about who had the largest. He wanted to be persuasive and appear confident about what he was about to say, even though he himself had not yet decided what to say. He stopped a few steps from the door.

Although he had left home early, he had intentionally arrived a few minutes late. He smoothed a sleeve, checked the buttons on his jacket, but the suit that Flavia had given him for his graduation was already perfect. He gripped the computer he carried under his arm, tried to control the uncertainty of his gestures, and turned the doorknob.

The room wasn't exceptionally ample, but to accommodate everyone, less than half of it sufficed. A relaxed murmur filled the space, a product of a satisfied atmosphere. The warm light shimmered yellowish on the insignia of the high-ranking officers who had come from all over the country and were seated in the front rows.

As he approached the table that diagonally occupied a corner at the back, he spotted some of the officers from IUPITER's Rome administration scattered between the second and third rows. Ruffini's shoulders and, next to him, a slender neck with hair gathered at the nape belonging to Cristina. Flavio passed the video camera that was capturing the room, walked straight down the aisle between the chairs, and reached the table where General Leanza, Clelia, and the rest of the scientific board were waiting.

He took his seat between Clelia and the general. Projected on a screen at the other corner of the room, faint images of various conference rooms connected from around the world were visible. On the main wall, the projector displayed the blue standby screen. Flavio connected his computer, and as soon as everything was ready, General Leanza stood up.

«Gentlemen,» he began in English, «after years of research, the IUPITER project has finally managed to produce an effective social prediction model. As you may know, a significant part of this work is attributed to Doctor Mancini, who is here beside me. It is under his guidance that we derived the action plan we are about to present. Based on the drafts we've reviewed so far, we can say we are on the right track. I know there are some concerns, but I can assure you that mathematicians' analyses from various countries participating in the project have confirmed the plan's validity in its broad outlines. Doctor Mancini, please proceed with the presentation.»

The general signaled to dim the lights, and the images from both projectors became sharp. Flavio opened a file on his computer and began to present a long series of slides. Various charts alternated with geopolitical maps, statistical lists, and operational schemes. Crowns of arrows along political and cultural borders showed the expansion and alteration of spheres of cultural and economic influence. Areas outside of IUPITER were crushed, penetrated, and devoured by the project's control lines. The colors of cultural autonomies faded, drained graph by graph by insidious and relentless social attacks; ideological and social minorities were annihilated by an insurmountable and fiercely uniform dominion.

Flavio's colorless voice emphasized the mathematical consistency of various points of the plan while inviting the divisions from various countries to perform their own verifications, armed with the numbers. Out of inertia rather than energy, the presentation flowed, acquiring a confidence that drained any enthusiasm from his gaze.

This is what they wanted, he thought. Whether he agreed or not, they would not stop pursuing their goal; they had the means to proceed anyway. What else could he do? His approval wasn't requested. No one would blame him for his resigned attitude. Perhaps, sooner or later, the sense of anger, disgust, and helplessness tormenting his consciousness would fade. Or maybe not?

«Listen, President, I don't think that's how things should shake down...» Wilol whispered.

Kidhe kept his face, carved with pain, turned to the projection and shrugged his shoulders.

Sitting in the middle of the semicircle between Sleeld and Clyella, Flavio was at the edge of concentration, engaged in a series of mental calculations. He murmured for the computer to give him a calculator, and a holographic screen formed in front of him with all functions clearly indicated in green tiles made of pure light.

«Not this! Give me something I can hold, something with buttons!»

The holographic screen dissolved, and in Flavio's hands materialized an ergonomic tablet made of a light alloy and equipped with a soft and smooth keyboard made of rubbery organic polymers. The functions indicated on the buttons were the precise description of the equations and theorems Flavio had defined in his purple notebook.

With one ear tuned to the audio of the projection, he began to type on the keyboard at a frantic pace.

Sleeld leaned over to peek at his calculations. «Hey, let me know as soon as you have something.»

Clyella's gaze had not left the projection for a moment, and her eyelids closed too infrequently over wide-open eyes. The lips she kept slightly parted seemed about to speak to the boy in the projection.

«Summing up the key points,» he continued, eager to reach the end, «the plan I have outlined envisages, first of all, redirecting the armies towards domestic action. The masses will welcome a decrease in foreign military activity in favor of the defense of order, security, and city peace carried out by a police force made up of military units. This will strengthen trust in the armed forces and the sense of national belonging and loyalty among the populations.» Flavio moved on to the second slide of the summary. «With the right propaganda, we can then coordinate the insinuation of a culture of power delegation to those who are more intellectually endowed, and then implement an invisible police state, guided by the authorities that the plan itself will forge over time.» A new slide appeared in projection. «To fuel the spirit of colonization, it's necessary to fund projects for floating cities in the equatorial oceans suggested by the Tokyo division. If proposed as an ecological initiative, it will be easy to convert them into a new strategic military tool.» The presentation moved on. «The allied countries in the Middle East should offer free education programs and intense cultural exchanges for foreign minorities with whom they are currently in conflict. This is the quickest way to gather information, place infiltration forces, and definitively suppress hostile cultural identities.» Flavio Mancini moved on to the penultimate slide. «As for investments in Asia and Africa,» he continued, and it seemed that pressing the key for the next slide had drained all his energy, «they should be accompanied by a return to local cultural traditions which will allow the fragmentation of the various ethnicities while they are absorbed by the developed bloc.»

He closed the computer and the main screen of the room became a dimmed rectangle. «That is all I had to present to you today. All the technical details have already been made available to the various research groups.»

Flavio scanned the conference room with his eyes. He momentarily met Cristina's gaze, hard as stone, and then sought respite by fixing his eyes on the back, where numerous rows of chairs were completely empty, in the dark.

A voice echoed from the amplification system, speaking in English with a strong Asian accent. «Is it not possible to achieve similar results with a less aggressive approach?»

Flavio realized he was already turned towards the video camera for the connection with the divisions in other countries.

«Within the timeframe envisaged by the IUPITER project, no.»

«And the possible corrections to the mathematical model you had announced?» asked another officer from the opposite side of the globe.

Flavio's jaw tightened and did not relax until he had the courage to make a decision. Then he took a moment to be sure that his voice would not waver.

«There are none,» he lied.