Cooperation, Above All Else

 

Naomi sat huddled by the television, surrounded by her family. To her left, her mum and dad had their eyes glued to the screen, while her younger brother and sister sat cross-legged, playing with their toys on the carpet. They were too young to understand or at least interpret what was happening in front of them.

Across the country, and in most parts of the world, this family scene was the same. Everyone sat in their homes, trying to understand what was happening, and deciding whether the event they watched was welcome or not.

The television wasn’t unusually quiet, but Naomi’s mum spoke softly to her dad, trying to stop her from hearing. “It’s not them. Everyone knows it’s not them. What the fuck are we going to do?”, said mum in succession. Naomi couldn’t remember ever hearing mum swear before, and so took extra notice of what they were saying.

Appearing on the screen before them, in an event being transmitted across the globe, was a live picture outside the United Nations building in New York City. Ignoring disbelief and caution of those around the world, the headline on the bottom of the screen read ‘UNITED NATIONS DECLARES WORLD PEACE’.

It was a trope of fiction and idealism, her mum thought. The world coming together and putting aside every difference they had. Things like this didn’t happen in the read world, and especially in such short amount of time.

And she was right. As a matter of fact, it was just yesterday that the world seemed the same as usual; Major superpowers held suspicions toward each other, and world leaders were acting more petty than ever before. When Naomi and her family woke up this morning, they were greeted with the news playing clips of every world leader embracing cooperation and unification.

This alone though wasn’t the thing that filled the parents, and indeed the world, with mistrust. The suspicion was almost entirely with the manner with how they said it and held themselves. Everyone knew the mannerisms of major world leaders; Their way of speaking, their rhetoric, and even their walk. Each had their own, and it’s what gave that person their humanity.

That morning, when the family sat down to breakfast, watching each world leader give the same announcement to their people and the world, apart from the unique voice everyone had, their way of speaking and inflection was completely the same: nonexistent. Every speech was delivered exactly the same, without any emotion whatsoever.

Trump spoke eloquently and without a teleprompter, and Putin spoke calmly without harsh undertones of Soviet nostalgia. They were like robots, with no discernible characteristics between them.

Before the entire world, spoke a few hundred individuals, each less human than possible, and yet speaking the greatest of human ideals. Like everyone else watching from home, workplace, school or local pub, Naomi’s parents knew this wasn’t their leaders in front of them. But what could they do, and should anything even be done? After all, isn’t cooperation a good thing?