0255 - 2025.10 Parliament

The Imperium Presidency came with great honour, as well as great responsibility. That is self evident, I hear your unsaid thoughts, but as your tour guide and historian, I suggest there is more than meets the eye.

For those not aware, the Imperium replaced the United Nations in the second half of the twenty first century. It was not a clean transition as those of you who remember their history lessons may attest, there were some hiccups, but neither was it accompanied by bloodshed.

They say that war is diplomacy carried on by other means. In this case diplomacy prevailed, although it was a close thing. A number of chest puffing autocratic dictators thought they could divide the world between them, with a large handful of smaller powers vying for a big enough share of the rest to keep themselves happy.

Strangely there was a balance, but the United Nations was increasingly sidelined as leaders saw themselves as rulers and ignored the rule of law, vetoed resolutions and withheld funding.

Then, within a few months, the leaders of the three largest blocs died, all from natural causes despite conspiracy theories arguing otherwise. They were all old men and Father Time caught up with them.

They were all powerful and didn’t believe in succession plans, after all they were invincible. The resulting vacuum was total and while there was a lot of argyle bargy jostling, backstabbing and general misbehaving.

By then AI was closer to General AI and increasingly running a lot of the world, from traffic lights to food production. We’re not sure but suddenly we reached stopping point, critical mass if you like. The question was asked: Who should lead?

The logical answer was given, that one person should run all the countries, and GAI volunteered to do the job. That went down like the proverbial lead balloon, but when the tumult died down the logic of the suggestion gained favour.

With colonies on the Moon and Mars not yet advanced enough for independence, when the time came would they be part of Earthly affairs, or separate? We are all the same people, let’s keep it that way. That’s the argument that won, as was the concept of s as CEO of all countries,

With the flavour of command and control after the success of the Chinese economic miracle, but without the capitalist and communist, it happened. A lot of AI being there scenes, it was effectively the operations manner providing continuity whenever the leader changed.

It worked for nearly a hundred years, twenty leaders with five year terms, no one country ever having more than one representative in the top position.

The parliament of the world was known as the Imperium, the elected leader the President.

Which brings me to this artefact. It is an image of the Imperium, all 200 original member countries and subsequent space based communities as they became self sufficient, at least economically.

The image is how the then President saw the Imperium. Not as people and faces but as pillars. The AI read the room -both in person and virtual attendees - and monitored the emotional and physical state of each representative.

No-one except the President knew of this, it was a well kept secret that passed from leader to leader and it only became public after the demise of the Imperium.

White is in favour, black is against, and shred of brown as are in between. We know now that the success of the President was in picking the moment when most parliamentarians were in agreement, for or against, and calling for the vote.

This image is one of a few preserved, they were dynamic after all. It is the final vote for the secession of Mars, which increasingly saw itself as independent of Earth.

With a population with over six generations natively born on the lower gravity planet, they were still humanoid in appearance, and spoke the same language, but otherwise became tall and gangly, at least the descendants of the first arrivals.

Then it became semi-obvious that, one, such people could never return to Earth to live and, two, reproduction was almost impossible between the two populations. They called themselves Homo Martians. A new species entitled to self govern.

Then the Moon colonies wanted the same rights, even though it was impossible to live there permanently and they returned to Earth for a gravity fix.

So the rot set in. The asteroid miners and the fledgling Jovian outposts argued persuasively that they were too far away from Earth for any meaningful governance. Just like the colonial powers lost their far flung colonies.

So the vote for Mars under the stewardship of President Rarya. The Imperium was vacillating. A few strong nays, a large cohort of ayes, a larger undecided - the light browns - and a large body abstaining. Call the vote, make the undecided choose.

They chose yes and the rest is history. The beginning of the end of the Imperium, of world-wide peace, and a return to tribalism. Mark my words, history will repeat.

Technique: #digital
Theme: #abstract
Highlight colour: #white #black

Series: #space #mini-sci-fi