Working Chapter 3 of my Is it for us alone? novel in progress

Our One Man – shall we call him Anders? Anders, the short, brown haired, green-eyed Swede. Yes, we shall from now on.

Anders sat in his father’s old room on a small stool in front of the 13-inch TV that had been the only source of entertainment for his father whilst he had eked out an existence ensuring Anders’ survival. This was Anders’ way of mourning – watching the channel four news at 10pm just like his father had always done. There was never anything on the news that interested Anders – dog sitting next to an elderly woman acting as her companion, droning about the economy, tsunamis ravaging parts of the world because there were high concentration of sinners there (or so some priest claimed) because they had invoked the wrath of god. Dry, dismal stuff, but this was his ritual mourning for his father, even though he told himself it was simply a break for his brain after a hard day of work.

There he sat, meditating, performing his unconscious ritual, absorbing the radiation and monotonous shit while he ate an open faced piece of hard bread with spreadable caviar from a tube and some mild cheese, when his brain heard something that snapped him back into focus.

Now, on any given day, Anders had zero interaction with other humans. He didn’t particularly avoid contact – it was just the status quo. As long as his life went on and his curiosities could be investigated he would leave his contract with society at ‘I give you money, you give me clothing and food.’

Unfortunately for the rest of the human population contract was about to be broken by society. A new contract would be drawn up, but Anders would not be included in it and he would receive no compensation for the breach of his previous contract. This did not go down well with Anders or his brain. While he worked on his solution, he listened to the repeating news that had changed everything in the background…

As calmly as possible, the young anchor advised that, “While Scandinavia will be safe for a time under the newly formed alliance, it will not last forever. For months the powers of North America, South America and Greater China have been plotting the destruction of the rest of the human race. They have built fences to ensure that we are unable to stop their genocide.”

This was the end of the end of the world as we know it, but not quite how our Nine Men from the Northern bunker had construed it – far too public, far too inefficient. How was it then that this came about? How was it that three billion people who were born in the wrong country now knew of their impending demise?

The young anchor, blond and blue-eyed with stellar posture, has the answer to that question. She reported without emotion that, “One of the military advisers working on the project had a crisis of conscience and went running to the largest global news network outside of the conspiring nations. From there the story has spread like wild fire. Tonight I have with me Anja Frick and Miko Karpetta, both from Lund University’s politics department to discuss the implications of this strategy by what has been dubbed the Triumvirate and how the Scandinavian Alliance might preserve our population.”

She paused to look at her notes before turning to Miko, a stout, balding man, and asked, “Will the Triumvirate continue with their genocide now that there citizens and the world are privy to the details? If so, did we really want to know?”

“I’ll answer the second part of your question first – assuming the Triumvirate proceed with their plans, I think that we are worse off now. If there is nothing we can do to dissuade the Triumvirate then we should have been lucky to simply be annihilated – “

“That’s ridiculous,” Anja interjected, “If we knew nothing we couldn’t even try to stop them – what’s so great about that?”

Visibly irritated, Miko continued, “Well it would be better assuming that everything we try fails to alter their final decision. Then we will all sit in anarchy until the final day when they pull the trigger – by which point we may well have destroyed most of ourselves without their help.”

Anja and the anchor gave no indication that they agreed, but neither did they voice opposition to this statement.

The anchor face Anja and asked, “Well Anja, can we safely say that the Triumvirate will move ahead with these plans of theirs?”

At this point it is worth commenting that the world is likely to end, but there is no real confirmation. Still, three commentators sit here debating the merits of that end. It was and to this day is even more absurd that the source of that end was not some petty group of rich nation rulers weighing self-preservation over morality. No, the source of the end of almost all humans was sitting and absorbing the content of this organised, televised farce. The end was nigh, but not one of those infamous horsemen would play any part in that end.

Was it sad for these horsemen? Yes, perhaps. Despite its cruel nature it was however kind that the end was at the hands of someone other than those devilish horsemen.