2093

Mayla felt an irritation in her ears; annoyed, she tried to shake it off and succeeded. Now she no longer heard it, but a male voice addressed her: "Mayla, courage, you have to get up, I already turned off the alarm!" "You turned it off? But who are you?" she said, still half-asleep. "Mayla, I'm Oscar, your 'refreshment unit,' have you forgotten me? I've been at your service for two years now, don't you remember? Come on, wake up or you'll miss the train!" She saw that he still wasn't dressed, she rubbed her eyes and looked at him again in a certain way. He addressed her: "No, Mayla, not last night." Now fully awake, she threw the covers aside and prepared to get up; she also had nothing on. Once standing, she looked at herself in the mirror that occupied a good part of the back wall, then looked at him again and said: "Oscar, you're not telling me the whole truth!" "But why this doubt? I've been in your bed so many times, why should I deny it? Last night you were tired and fell asleep almost immediately; you tossed and turned a lot tonight, you seemed agitated, you must have been dreaming." Still dazed, she stepped into the shower. "Do you need help?" It was Oscar's voice from the other room. "No thanks, I'm already late enough, I'll do it myself today!" Mayla's voice, covered by the sound of the water, would have been hard for a human ear to hear, but Oscar was not human. The World Parliament of States had been established after three pandemics which, caused by an unknown mutant virus, had followed one after another, and in less than a decade had almost halved the world's population. At first, the various nations had tried to manage the emergency through their own governments, but already with the arrival of the second virus, it became clear that nationally organized control was mere utopia. Hospitals, due to the excessive number of infected people, were unable to provide assistance to everyone. Attempts were made with improvised military-style tent hospitals, warehouses and disused spaces were requisitioned and equipped to make up for the shortages, but soon deaths and burials became commonplace and cremation had to be resorted to to save space in cemeteries and to be able to inter or entomb the small urns containing ashes instead of bulky coffins. The world economy, at first faltering, entered an absolute crisis towards the end of the second pandemic, and to the deaths from the virus were added the many suicides of bankrupt entrepreneurs and unemployed workers: men and women without the means to feed themselves and their families preferred death to the torment of watching their hungry and infected children die before their eyes. Some of them took their children with them, certain that a quick death would be better than a long agony from hunger or illness, not to mention the increase in crime due to necessity. A few years before 2030, it began to be understood that there was no alternative but to attempt a single health management of the emergency. Endless meetings took place between representatives of the largest and richest states, who saw their human and economic resources being destroyed in a short time. With the help of scientists and logic, they understood that the only way to stem this disaster was to do it all together with a single strategy that involved the entire world. Little by little, even smaller, dissenting or opposing states joined them, who, in the name of their country's salvation, renounced absurd political ideologies and the doctrines that had supported them so far, and "The World Parliament of State" was born. What convinced almost the entire world that this was the right and only possible direction was the unexpected and rapid agreement between the United States and the Russian Federation, which was soon joined by the European Union and many Eastern states. Finally, "obtorto collo," even historically more skeptical governments, like China, adhered. People were afraid of death, and the solution of a united defense offered the hope of overcoming the pandemic. Moreover, any national government that had expressed a negative stance would have had to answer to its inhabitants and would certainly have paid the consequences. People were at the end of their tether; there was no family in the world that did not mourn its dead and fear for the survival of those still alive. Politicians reluctant to agree would surely have risked lynching. When an adequate vaccine was found that was also effective against mutations, life could finally return to normal, but in the meantime, the world population, which at the beginning of the three pandemics was just under eight billion, had settled at about four billion by 2030; half of the human beings living on earth were gone. The most terrible massacres occurred in countries with the highest number of inhabitants, such as China, which, despite the harshness of the measures adopted by the regime, at a certain point was no longer able to stem the numerous popular insurrections and protests in the streets. Although a female voice from loudspeakers installed in the streets reminded at regular intervals: "Do not try to leave your homes or you will be shot on sight," they could not be quelled and led to inevitable gatherings with consequent greater spread of the virus and with the addition of further deaths who, hit by bullets, were left lying in the squares of the major cities where the rebellion had been most intense and indomitable for days, partly as a warning and partly due to the difficulty that the police and staff encountered in removing them, remaining exposed to attacks by organized and enraged groups who, taking advantage of the delicate moment, assaulted them. With participation in the meetings and the subsequent adherence to "The World Parliament of States," the population of China calmed down awaiting the new decisive events that everyone hoped for, but the survivors had fallen to less than half, and China's great economic growth was a mere memory. With the world economy on its knees, poverty had spread to every corner of the planet, stock markets were in perpetual collapse, and no one could claim to be safe from events. In India, where asceticism contributed significantly to the greater spread of the virus among the lower castes, the situation, although different in methods, execution, and repression of national protest, had even worse results than in China. Of course, even geographically smaller countries were not spared, especially those with significant population density like Italy and Japan. The virus, very democratically, recognized neither ideologies, nor religions, nor politics: thousands of deaths were counted among those who denied its existence, among those who prayed to their God, and among those who protested by blaming the government in power. In Africa and other countries with limited culture and low economic wealth, limited communication and the ignorance of a deliberately ill-informed population caused its spread and thousands of deaths. But by the end of the third decade of the new millennium, the synergies implemented by the World Parliament, that is, the union and sharing without any secrecy among the various world research laboratories, led to the creation of the vaccine and the end of such a human drama.