It was almost too much like a real board meeting, The American mused. Several people sitting around a giant table with the holographic screens and tablets and rules of order and nice suits and everyone’s just waiting their turn to speak to brag about what their sector has accomplished, just hoping to get a bit more recognition than the person next to them. He’s supposed to be listening to all the other presentations so that he can make his own presentation from a position of informed unity, but The American couldn’t see how anything anyone else was doing would make his announcement any better.
While Southeast Asia wrapped up on desalination efforts to provide clean water around the world, The American shifted his weight to lean on the table. He was next, he needed to look serious, because he was going to drop a bombshell on the table. Cresting his fingers in front of his chin, he waited patiently for The Speaker to thank Southeast Asia and introduce him.
“It looks like everyone’s on track for the next decade so far,” The Speaker cautiously began, “but we haven’t heard from The United States yet.” Turning to The American, “Mr. Smith, do you have any good news for us?”
The American stifled a chuckle at the irony of the intro, took a deep breath, and as solemnly as he could manage, spoke. “They’re not ready. If our projections are correct, we may have to abandon them and begin the Repatriation Project by 2025.”
Silence filled the conference room, until North Africa spoke up, “What do you mean ‘They’re not ready’? At the last meeting we were told the US was on track to convert the remaining offshore rigs into geothermal and tidal plants. Has there been a delay?”
The American looked up from the notes in front of him, casting a glance at The Speaker before settling his gaze on North Africa, “I’m sure everything there is working according to plan. However, the US populace is not ready to be re-integrated yet. They’re still operating with a 20th Century capitalistic mindset and no breakthroughs have happened yet.”
North Africa, confused, “What do you mean ‘re-integrated’?”
The American, “No one told you? Mz. Dembale should have given you the full run-down before you even took her seat.”
“She gave me all the information she said I would need, I assure you. But I don’t recall any of this being in the files.”
“So you’ve been coming to these meetings for the last decade without knowing anything at all about the forced interdimensional emigration of the US?”
North Africa’s wide eyes answered the question for him. He could have sputtered some kind of question or defense of himself, but North Africa didn’t get where he was today by not knowing when to react and how to new information, “Perhaps,” North Africa managed, after composing himself, “now would be the time to explain, in detail, what it is that I must have missed in the files.”
“Americans have always been an unpredictable group. In fact, they pride themselves on it. But they’re also easy to project, because they have a habit of getting crazy ideas then sticking with them for a long time. So when Carter lost his re-election against Reagan, we did a bunch of projections and there was a greater-than-average chance that a bunch of public policy would be put in that would absolutely come to bite the world in the ass a few decades down the line if they didn’t flip in the next decade. This was shortly after The Group was formed, and our projections weren’t as precise as they are now, of course, otherwise we would’ve taken much more drastic steps right then instead of the tenuous ones we did take.”
The American leaned back in his chair, pulling a softpack of cigarettes from his breast pocket. Fluidly, his fingers acting as only fingers can after years of practice, he shook a single out of the opening and placed it between his lips, while his left hand procured a pack of matches from his jacket pocket. Eastern Europe cleared her throat, indicating that smoking was a major faux pas and not allowed in the chamber, but The American just stared her down while he lit. Taking a drag and blowing the billowing cloud above his head, he began speaking again. “You’re familiar with Project Unending Horizons? The attempt by The Group to achieve galactic travel by hopping between earths in different dimensions, presumably in different spaces? Long story short, and lots of engineering jargon later, travel was too costly, but the existence of dimensions in synch with our own proved to be useful. So in late 1982, we quietly pushed the entirety of the US into a parallel that was mostly indistinguishable from our own. It was entirely uninhabited, of course, and from that point on, all news to the US from outside was dictated by our projections and all news to the rest of the world from the US was dictated by the goals we needed to be reached. Literally everything most people have heard from the US, including cultural exports, internet memes, even visiting dignitaries and ambassadors has been faked by The Group, while we waited to see what would become of the actual Americans in the parallel.”
Dotting the air with his cigarette as he made his points, The American continued, “We’d hoped that after a term or two of Reagan, the people would swing wildly back towards the future and maybe we could push them to stay that way. Dumb, now, in hindsight, but we had no other options. We assumed the nuclear crises of the latter half of the century would sway them away from war for fear of annihilation, but even their most liberal members continued military advances across the globe. By 1992, with the Cold War in the rearview and the promise of a hugely prosperous decade in front of them, nothing much had changed, policy-wise. A growing partisan divide made it much easier for the few to convince as much of the many as possible to support and demand their political maneuvering to allow them to keep and secure as much of the available resources as possible, while entrepreneurship began focusing on commodifying everything. Free from the omnipresent fear of nuclear holocaust that the Cold War had ingrained into society, the people began casting around everywhere they could for new fears to hold onto. The sinister Soviets were now replaced with shady neighbors, political rivals, non-white people, and vaguely imagined strangers. Soon, there was a perfect storm of influences that their leaders only had to mention to summon an army of support for whatever it was they wanted to happen. And everything, while looking better from most angles, managed to get worse.”
The American sighed, “So around the end of the millennium, we’d found a new parallel that might work. We did a load of projections and research on it while doing some tests with the populace to get even better results for projections – mostly involving world ending predictions, which we thought peaked at the Y2K Bug – and began the process of gathering everything we needed to do another dimensional transfer. This dimension just had to work, we thought. It’s a dimension where literally everything that can happen does so to the point where it just seems like ridiculous parody. We assumed with the new dimension and some clever pushes that the absolute ridiculousness of everything happening would shock the populace into seizing control and and demanding a better future. And so, in early 2001, the dimension shifted again. Less than a year later, a major terrorist attack happened in New York, Washington, and elsewhere, the US declared war on a country that provided resources to the terrorists, and literally everything’s been downhill from there. World ending prophecies became so common that they simply became the new joke. And nothing was being done about the impending climate disaster.”
“Surely it can’t be that bad?” asked Pacific Islands. He knew the answer, of course, but he always got carried away when listening to the story.
“Well, after electing the first black president, everything got so much worse. Conspiracy theories took over regular political discourse and racism suddenly got much worse. And just when you thought you’d seen it all, they elected Donald Trump for president afterwards and that was just greasing the skis for a faster trip downhill. At this point, I’m not even sure this is salvageable.”
“Nothing’s unsalvageable anymore, though,” prompted The Speaker. “Surely there’s something that can be saved.”
“The world’s richest man is a man who fooled everyone into thinking he’s some kind of genius because he bought companies and the right to call himself the founder of those countries. Ever since he started becoming a more-public speaker, he’s proven time and again that he’s an idiot who thinks he’s great. He’s made pot jokes, dumb memes, prompted investment into cryptocoin, and now he’s just bought twitter because people are mean to him on it and thousands of his fans are exclaiming that he’s going to bring free speech to it. This is a normal week here now. Nothing makes sense anymore and it’s all happening so fast that no one can keep up with it all. I think we’re just going to have to leave them there and figure out what to do with the fake US in our dimension.”
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