World Peace Initiative

Back on the Poseidon and ready to return to Earth, Mark could tell something was bothering Rayven. Figuring it was because he had left her on the ship today, he apologized for not taking her to the surface.

Rayven just hugged him and said that wasn’t what was upsetting her, as she started describing the call she just had with Annabelle less than an hour ago, “There had been a situation at the Port of Atlantis with a couple going through security. The man went through security first and, as soon as his wife removed her head covering, it was clearly visible that she had been beaten, but the shocker was that the ‘wife’ was a child. The man made a scene, security took him into custody, the girl went into a medibed, now she’s cured and she doesn’t want to go back, obviously, but the man hasn’t actually committed a crime on Atlantean soil and he is technically her legal guardian. How can a ‘civilized’ planet such as Earth allow such an atrocity to happen?”

Mark said, “Sadly, not all of Earth is civilized and that practice is criticized by almost every country on the planet, it only happens in a few areas. Annabelle’s probably a mess too, I think we should give her a call!”

As he and Rayven went into his office to make the call, Mark notified Adam that something had come up on Earth and he needed to make an important call before they engaged the FTL drive.

On the way, Mark asked, “Cricket, what’s the process for underage refugees?“

Cricket replied, “I’ve already talked to Annabelle, there are refugee laws, but basically this child falls under the vulnerable persons or persons at risk law, despite the fact that her legal guardian is her abuser. Those laws don’t require a person to be a citizen or of age. The catch with minors is that she has to be cared for by a government approved sponsor or organization until she reaches 16 years of age, although she can take the citizenship test as early as 13 years of age. She has already requested help and we have photographic and video evidence of her abuse. So we don’t have to give her back, but we do need to setup government monitored care for her.“

As Rayven sat in Mark’s lap at his desk, they made the call to Earth, where Annabelle answered from one of the parks near the palace.

Annabelle breathed a sigh of relief and a big smile came across her face, “I love you! I’m so glad you called! Did Rayven tell you what’s happened?”

Mark said, “Rayven told me, but I’d like to hear it from you, just in case she missed anything, because she is pretty upset about all this.”

After apologizing for upsetting Rayven, Annabelle then outlined the sequence of events, “There was an incident at the airport just after 10:00 when a young girl removed her head covering when going through security. Everyone could see that she was just a child that had been badly beaten, as she pleaded for Taryn to help her. Her ‘husband’, if you could call him that, got mad and tried to break into the security booth. Security locked him up, while medics took Imaren and put her into a medibed. Just after lunch, Imaren came out of the medibed and security escorted her to the palace and my attention.

After talking with Imaren for a bit, she told me that her mother had died a couple of months ago and that her father had recently sold her and her older sister.

Cricket told me that she fell under the persons at risk law and that we didn’t need to give her back, but we did need to setup a government monitored facility to care for her until she is 16 years old, so Solara and I came up with some ideas and, while she was working on a design, Imaren and I decided to go outside and relax in one of the parks.

Since the man hadn’t actually committed a crime on Atlantean soil, they released him around 13:00. He, of course, immediately asked where she was and they told him she was being cared for at the palace. He took a lift to the city centre and damaged everything he could in the interior of the lift along the way, so security was waiting for him when he landed near the palace. When they told him he was under arrest for damage to public property, he started causing another scene. It’s a good thing the lifts auto-reset the interior between trips, as he totally wrecked the interior of the lift.

As we left the palace and were walking to the park, the man spotted Imaren and started threatening both of us. It wasn’t until he said, ‘That bitch is my wife! I’ve paid for her! She belongs to me!’, that I approached him and thanked him for admitting that he paid for her, as that made her a slave ... regardless of what other names he might call her. Slavery is illegal in the Federation!

I then told him to enjoy his cell until his flight back to wherever he came from could be arranged.

After the man had been taken away, we went to relax in the park, hoping you would call ... and here you are!”

Mark then outlined, “You don’t need to actually create a refugee care facility, I mean we really should probably create something, but it’s not a priority, as long as you can find someone to foster her until she’s 16. I would say, for now, give her one of our rooms in the palace, until we can find someone to be a foster family.”

Annabelle then had a big smile, “Maybe mom and dad would foster her!”

Mark nodded, “Ask them! That would be awesome if they did!”

Annabelle widened the call and introduced Imaren to Mark and Rayven. She was a pretty little thing now that all her bruises had been healed and she had a big smile, knowing she was finally safe.

Annabelle then asked Mark, “Any ideas on how to locate her sister?”

Mark said, “Hi Imaren, you don’t have a picture of your sister do you?”

Imaren could speak English, just not very fluently, “No, I was not allowed possessions.”

Mark asked Cricket, “We have the technology to see people’s memories when they commit crimes, is there anyway we could use that same type of technology to extract some pictures of her sister from her mind?“

Cricket said, “Sure I could do that through a medibed.“

Mark smiled, “I thought as much, but I had to ask! I might have an idea to find your sister. If you agree to this, you can go lie in a medibed and we can scan your memories and get a few images of your sister. Then with our high tech gadgets, we can scan the entire world for her.”

Imaren smiled even bigger, but Mark then warned, “It would be a long shot, since it was quite likely that your sister will have her face covered, but on the off chance that it isn’t covered, there was a slim chance of success.”

Imaren agreed and Annabelle said she would take her to Cleito’s Temple right after they ended the call.

Mark again said that he was very proud of her, and Annabelle was feeling better now that she had got to talk to him.

As Mark suspected, part of it was just nervousness from having to make such a monumental decision and having to restrain herself, yet act queenly in the face of an absolute asshole who really should be given a one-way ticket to a two-door cell.

With both of them happily up to date, they said their goodbyes and ended the call.

Mark then contacted Adam and said they could get underway anytime. Seconds later they had engaged the new FTL drive and were on their way back to Earth.

Mark hugged her tight, “Hopefully we’ll be able to find Imaren’s sister. Then we’ll need to look into what else we can do for the people. I think the Middle East should be ground zero for launching our world peace initiative.”

Rayven then opened up and voiced what had really been bothering her, “I can’t believe that sort of heinous activity is even allowed on a civilized world, she’s lost her youth. The worst part is the fact that it was their father that had sold his daughters.”

It only took a day of sex, sports and workouts and they were back in orbit around Earth. Those new FTL drives were going to save a lot of travel time!

Cricket had found numerous images of Mahasin from Imaren’s memories, and she discovered that Imaren had actually seen the man that had purchased her sister. Since it might be easier to locate the man, she had configured the drones around the greater Middle East region to look for both the girl and the man.

Apparently, taking this man’s underage wife from him had made news headlines around the world. While the majority of the world was praising them for actually doing something about this heinous activity, there were also a number of organizations and governments saying that Atlantis had overstepped its bounds by interfering with foreign traditions, laws and religions.

Once the story had broke, a group of protestors and a bunch of reporters had made their way to Atlantis, intending to create havoc for the inexperienced queen, since it was public knowledge that Mark was off-world at Magellan ... another story that made headlines right after the wedding.

With all the reporters and protestors arriving at the port, Cricket had warned Mark, but he just smiled as they were likely expecting to be confronting Annabelle.

Mark called Annabelle as soon as they dropped out of FTL and warned her of the reporters and protestors and told her that he would be there soon. She was surprised that he was back so soon, but agreed that she would wait in the palace for him.

Maren landed on the new elevated shuttle platform attached to level 2. On the trip back, Mark had decided that since Maren was his official pilot and communications specialist, she should just leave the shuttle at the palace and move in with them. Since Atlantis had been reborn, she had been keeping the shuttle on the Poseidon and staying in her quarters there and, while she was needed quite frequently, it wasn’t the same, but now she was happy to be part of his entourage again.

When they landed, Annabelle, Gyges and Gaderius were on the way down in the elevator. Annabelle ran from the elevator across the walkway to the landing platform and jumped into Mark’s arms, sharing a passionate kiss and welcoming him back home.

They then went down to the ground level and left the palace, surprising the reporters and protestors that Mark was actually there. The protestors immediately rushed to confront Mark and Annabelle with their signs and shouting, ‘Free the girl’ and ‘Mind your own business’.

Athena stayed close to Mark and Annabelle, while Gyges and Gaderius watched the periphery, as Mark approached them and asked, “What are you guys protesting?”

One lady at the front, with a ‘Free the girl!’ sign, said, “The Queen overstepped her authority by kidnapping the girl from her husband.”

One guy in the back spoke up, “Mind your own business, you can’t just force your laws on countries that don’t want them.”

Mark laughed, “Typical protestors, you just want to make a scene and haven’t done your homework! Try researching your facts so you know what you are protesting about, it’s this sort of ignorance that really makes me question human intelligence!”

The woman then said, “You can’t call me ignorant, we have the right to free speech.”

After walking a few steps away, Mark turned to the protestors and smiled, “I don’t have to call you ignorant, you’re demonstrating that quite well on your own! As for free speech, by all means we support free speech, but you are not a citizen of the Federation, so that right does not apply to you. An outsider coming into our country and causing problems is classified as terrorism, so unless you want to be arrested I’d suggest losing the signs and just enjoy the wonders that our country has to offer.”

Mark then looked at Gyges and Gaderius and said, “These people are not citizens of the Federation, if they do not dismantle their signs and continue to make a public disturbance, you have full authority to neutralize them and give them all cells at the detention centre ... and then have their identities banned from ever visiting Atlantis.”

Never having experienced an efficient law enforcement system that actually enforced the letter of the law, or a political figure they couldn’t push around, they soon found their protest quite stifled, especially after two of the people shouted defamatory comments towards Mark and Annabelle and found themselves neutralized and security had taken them away.

Meanwhile, the reporters that had gathered around, were getting wise to Mark’s ways, as they didn’t just start blurting out questions. They stood there with their hands up, waiting for Mark to acknowledge them.

The first question was about the girl, “Where is the girl now and why did you take her like that?”

Mark was taken aback by the last part of the question, obviously they hadn’t heard the whole story, as he answered, “Imaren is doing well and currently living with a foster family. The reason we intervened, was because she begged for us to protect her. The airport security booth was the first place she felt protected and out of her abuser’s reach.”

The next reporter then asked, “So you didn’t just take her away from him because she was underage?”

“Of course not, if she hadn’t said anything, we wouldn’t have done anything. Although, after talking with her, she actually had devised several plans to try and get away from him while they were on Atlantis.”

Another reporter asked, “They say that this is a common practice where they are from. Are you planning to do anything about that?”

“Actually we are! Our world peace initiative got a trial run at Magellan and it worked fantastically. We will soon begin implementing it here, starting with areas of conflict and countries where women and children are oppressed and abused ... or any other countries that request it.”

The guy in the back asked, “How does your world peace system work and how will it affect the world?”

Mark just smiled, shook his head, and said, “I won’t bore you with details, everyone can read the reports of what happened at Magellan, or you can check out the Phoenix Security website. More or less it’s that, but with a few minor changes. We hope no one will get hurt, but if you try to harm anyone, you will fall down ... gravity always wins!”

A woman that had been on the front corner of the group, finally got her turn, “What gives you the right to go into someone else’s country and impose your own laws, when they’ve lived that way for thousands of years?”

“Just because they haven’t evolved into a more civilized society after that length of time, doesn’t mean it’s right! It means they are intellectually and developmentally challenged, or they are scared of what the oppressed groups could really do if they had a voice! Are you saying it’s OK to violate women and children and kill anyone that doesn’t agree with you?”

“Well, no, of course not!”

“I didn’t think so! Besides, we aren’t imposing our laws at all, all we are doing is protecting people from harm by other people and it’s all being done using non-lethal technologies, unfortunately, the only thing we can’t control is where they fall down.”

Another reporter then asked, “The Federation has been fairly picky about what technology it releases to the world, up until now you’ve been offering your technology and services, not just rolling them out unilaterally. What has changed?”

“The Federation’s goal has always been to ensure people everywhere are able to live happy, healthy lives, free of war and oppression. Of course we always prefer for people to take the initiative and ask us to intervene, but the situation with Imaren has brought light to a problem that has existed for far too long, no one is doing anything about it and obviously the people in charge in those areas are incapable of doing the right thing. Without our intervention, the oppressed people in those areas would never be able to speak for themselves, because if they did, it would likely cost them their lives.

The recent events at Magellan showed us there was a better, faster way to bring about world peace that allows the local citizens to deal with the troublemakers. As soon as a troublemaker tries to hurt someone, they’ll be incapacitated, and they can then be detained peacefully, and without violence, to be dealt with by their governments. For those apathetic governments that won’t do anything, they’ll soon find themselves out of power, when the previously oppressed people rally support for new leadership.”

The tall guy in the back asked again, “Are you just going to do your world peace in those regions or will you be doing it worldwide?”

“It’s called world peace ... we hope it will eventually be worldwide. We will just start with the regions that I listed, or any country that requests it.”

The woman that asked the first question, got to ask again, “So why are you taking it upon yourself to force this on everyone else?”

“As you all know, I grew up on Earth ... for as long as I can remember, everyone has always said that if they could wish for anything, it would be for world peace, but no one has ever done much about it. Apparently, we are ‘no one’ since we CAN do something about it!

Imagine how productive this world would be, if countries didn’t waste most of your hard-earned tax money on their military peacocking, which really is useless against a technologically superior foe, which any space-faring race would be. They could reduce your taxes to a fraction of what they currently are and it wouldn’t take long to fix all of the problems in their own countries and then help less fortunate countries around the world.”

A shorter man, who had been quiet up until now, finally asked a question, “If you are forcing this on everyone around the world, don’t you think some countries might take offence to it and try to attack Atlantis! Aren’t you worried about retaliation?”

“Well we aren’t forcing it on everyone around the world, just a few select really bad places and for any country that asks for it. Yes some might try to retaliate, but any attacks on us would be very costly ... just ask the Chinese ... and we were very lenient on them! Governments of the world have had centuries to try and make things better for everyone and they have epically failed. All we are doing is what they should have been doing all along, making the world a safe place for all.”

The tall guy at the back asked, “What about hunters and sport shooters that carry weapons?”

“We aren’t banning weapons, we are just protecting people from harm. Anyone can still carry and use weapons, just don’t point them at an another person. Targets are OK, as are animals, as long as you have a license to hunt them!

Which brings me to mention that all law enforcement agencies, around the world, can now contact us to request our non-lethal weapons to replace their ballistic service weapons. This is the future, and this technology will make your jobs easier and safer!”

“So when will world peace be worldwide?”

Mark laughed, “When it’s peaceful around the world!”

He then got a more serious look on his face as he continued, “We’re starting with the problem areas, but I have no timeline for implementing world peace. There’s no doubt going to be some backlash as a lot of people, cartels, companies and even governments make money from the proceeds of war, crime, chaos and oppression. It’s soon going to be a more civilized world and we can begin to work on all the other problems and issues on this planet.

Now if you’ll excuse us, I’ve just returned to Earth and have much to do.”

“Cricket, how fast can you generate non-lethal sidearms?“

Cricket replied with an air of smugness, “After what happened on Magellan, when you turned on the drones two weeks early and it worked so well, letting their normal law enforcement take care of their own problems ... I knew that’s what you would end up doing on Earth. I’ve already got the moon factory producing the weapons, we’ve got just under a million weapons ready right now.“

Mark thought, “That’s awesome! Now I should probably get the breakfast club building some sort of requisitioning system, “ as Cricket laughed, but said no more.

Mark and Annabelle walked to the western path and out to their office. Inside he found that they were up to about 20 staff now, and even Henry and Amelia were there, which surprised Mark a bit. Despite that he hadn’t talked to Henry much in the past couple of months, but he did still receive monthly reports on the security company’s bottom line.

Mark greeted the couple, “Henry. Amelia. It’s good to see both of you. I’m glad you got a chance to come see Atlantis.”

Henry shook Mark’s hand, “We’re just visiting on this trip, but we are considering moving to Atlantis. In addition to seeing the new office, we were going to look at some property on this trip.”

“That’s wonderful!” Mark said, as Cass walked up to greet them.

Cass then asked, “Hi Mark, what brings you over to see us today?”

Mark then said, “I’m starting something and I need a website or two built.”

Cass ushered everyone into one of the meeting rooms and then messaged Zack to join them.

Mark caught them up with his world peace initiative and the need to add a world peace section on the Atlantis site, as well as a weapon requisition form for law enforcement agencies.

Zack said he had already been working on the site, it just wasn’t live yet. He said he got a message from Cricket a couple weeks ago saying they needed a requisition system for distributing non-lethal sidearms to police departments around the world.

The system he had already developed was based on the pallet system at the factory. Cricket had said all weapons were manufactured without serial numbers, so as each pallet of weapons was distributed to each police station, the guns would be imprinted with the station name and a serial number. That way if a weapon got stolen all they had to do was report it stolen and it could be disabled and tracked, likewise if the weapon was given or sold to non-police personnel, it could be traced back to who provided it to them, which was a violation of the terms of use.

They also made it known that every time the weapon was fired, a 10 second video would be sent to the server tagged with the gun’s identification and the exact location it was fired, so their management teams could review all weapon discharges. The video also had an embedded image at the top right, that displayed a map of sorts and showed what other weapons were in the immediate vicinity. The fact that all weapons could be tracked, traced and disabled was something that was made very clear in the agreement they had to read and sign when accepting the weapon shipment.

The website, of course, had all sorts of information about the weapons, including the shot range and the fact that every weapon was trackable, traceable, could be remotely disabled by Atlantean security only, and that every time it was fired, a video was recorded and tagged with the location.

The pallets would be transported by shuttle, then delivered directly to police stations by security personnel and a video was taken with the agency chief as he accepted the shipment and signed the terms of use agreement.

They did a quick run-through of the site and decided it was good enough to go online. They could always adjust it on the fly if they had to, so before Mark even left the office, the Atlantis website had a section titled ‘World Peace Initiative’ and under that section was videos from Magellan, links to the Phoenix Security site and the non-lethal weapon requisition form.

A few hours after the interviews, Mark started receiving messages from governments around the world regarding his world peace initiative, as well as thousands of inquiries from law enforcement agencies around the world, asking how to get non-lethal weapons. The governments, as you would expect, didn’t like that they weren’t being involved with the decision to implement world peace.

Surprisingly, there were also several countries that were already asking to have the system implemented in their countries. Mark expected some countries would eventually request it, but he didn’t figure they would ask for it before they got to see how it worked. Oh well, it showed they trusted what the Federation was doing.

Throughout the next few days, the World Peace section, the Phoenix Security website and the report about the early activation at Magellan all saw very heavy traffic, resulting in several more countries and several towns and cities request it be enabled there. Unsure if he wanted to get into the internal politics of other countries by enabling it in certain cities, he decided to talk to Annabelle and his advisers.

To better verify the participation requests, they modified the form to say that the request had to be made by the top elected official, and were asked for the website about the country or municipality that listed the elected officials and that they would be contacted to confirm their participation, but did not ask for phone numbers or email addresses, just so that the general public wasn’t signing up the country or municipality they were living in, thus circumventing the authorities.

Over supper at the pavilion, Mark posed the question to the group, “Since launching the websites, we have had several countries request that we enable security there, those countries have also requisitioned non-lethal weapons, so all of those will be part of the first wave. My dilemma is that several towns and cities in countries that have NOT asked to participate, want to have the system enabled there. Do we want to get into micro managing where we implement it?”

There was a lively debate for a few minutes, before everyone eventually agreed with Annabelle’s argument, “Whoever asks for it, should get it. The system is going to eventually go worldwide anyway, but by having examples in local areas, the naysayers would be able to monitor those areas closer and see how well the system works first hand, instead of through media reports from other countries. If they want safety and security, they shouldn’t be told they can’t have it.”

So Mark told the breakfast club, who frequently joined the group for the communal meals, to update the website and say that any municipalities could participate, regardless of whether the country they are in participates.

The next day, they had thousands more municipalities of all sizes requesting to be part of the program.

Through the wonders of Federation scanning technology, they had a very detailed map of the world on the website, so as each country or municipality was requesting participation, their city or country was being highlighted on the world map.

Surprisingly, Mark had been expecting more backlash from some of the countries in the world about forcing world peace, but so far they seemed to be sitting it out and waiting to see how it worked. Mark was just glad to see that the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba had signed up for the program, as had most of northern British Columbia and the Yukon and Northwest Territories. Effectively about half of Canada had signed up for the program, despite the fact that Canada as a country had not signed up.

Mark attributed the signup of most of the western provinces as part of their bid to become sovereign nations within Canada, in hopes that they would get the same treatment from the government as Quebec does, as unlikely as that dream would be, but it also laid the groundwork for separation if it came to that. Part of becoming a sovereign nation was having their own police force, as the RCMP would be relegated to what is called a “C” division, which only enforces federal statutes, not community policing.

The countdown to phase one was set to midnight Atlantis-time on October 15.

The first phase was to enable the system in what they called “glow” mode. It would automatically put an orange glow around anyone carrying a weapon, a red glow around anyone carrying explosives, a green glow around anyone carrying a virus or toxin and a yellow glow around anyone carrying more than 250 grams of drugs. The drones wouldn’t actually paralyze the violator, unless they showed intent to harm or injure another person, then it would take action.

The drones were smart enough to recognize if the person carrying the gun was hunting or shooting for sport, so those people would have a drone following them.

As the countdown was nearing the start time, many reporters flocked to Atlantis to talk with Mark and Annabelle. Likely expecting many countries to be upset and up-in-arms about forcing peace on people.

Mark and Annabelle let them have their interview mere hours before the deadline.

When the reporters asked if they were nervous, both of them were calm as could be and Annabelle answered the question, “Of course not, this system has worked for over a thousand years on many planets, the only difference with Earth is the fact that after decades of being surrounded by drugs, death and violence, many people have become complacent and uncaring. The world is going to get a wake up call in a couple of hours.”

Another reporter asked, “Several law enforcement officials, that I have talked to, have expressed concerns that they will not have prison space to lockup all the offenders the system will identify.”