THE WORD PARLIAMENT

Since Ousmane and I had settled in the United States, I had started to get involved in politics. First, I volunteered in some local elections, then I started running for those elections. My journey as a middle child and my marriage to Charlene made me very popular with the growing black and no longer minority communities, as well as with the white communities. Each side was looking at me from the only side of me they liked to see; the side that looked most familiar to themselves.

For black Americans, I was first and foremost black because of my mother and my grandmother. For immigrants, I too had immigrated to this country. For the white communities, my father was European, and the colour of my eyes and my features looked like theirs. For the Hispanic community, I spoke Spanish fluently and my mother was Cuban. For believers, my son was a Muslim. For the LGBTQ community, I was married to a trans woman. I could tick off all the boxes on the questionnaire list without really belonging to any of those categories.

Charlene, on the other hand, hated politics and politicians. The latter had taken up the habit since the beginning of the century of using the two communities she belonged to (the black community and the LGBQT community) as a powerful means to gain more votes while reviving old conflicts and creating new ones. It was working well for them, so why were they ever going to change? All they had to do was to pretend they wanted diversity and inclusion while dividing people and making profit out of it.

For me, I had no box, no side, no tendency, no inclination other than to respond to the frustration of young and older people who had been neglected by leaders for too long. As Ousmane had spat in my face a few years earlier, the only thing they really cared about was their own ass. Everything else and everyone else never mattered.

Even in 2082, I still hear people say that young people will change the world.

Oh really?! And how?

Are we parents, throwing our own children into the paws of the enraged and hungry lion so that we can run away, saving our own lives? Since when are children the ones who have to save their parents and elders? How about them? Who will show them what the courage to love means?

It is us mature men and women who build the world, not the youth. Young people are only here to tell us off with their powerful piercing cries, because that's all they have. They don't yet have the strength nor the means to build the world they dream of. So, we should stop reversing roles and start working more seriously, more ardently for those children whether they are ours or not, whether we have brought any into this world or not. This has always been my sole ambitions and motivation before death.

***

'Wait!' I exclaimed. I bent down to pick up the small USB stick at my feet.

I rushed up the stairs of the large building in front of me and the middle-aged woman who had turned to stare at me, perplexed. She was a very short woman, with dark and curious eyes on a light-skinned African-American face, thick dreadlocks falling on her frail shoulders; this woman's body undeniably bore the marks of a camp of artificial intelligence. 

The omnipresent claws of hunger inside the camps had forever left their scars on the bodies of the children who grew up in Little Paradise. Due to ongoing malnutrition, their limbs would only develop by half the normal size at puberty. Unable to give them a precise age, their small bodies would forever remain those of the surviving children of Little Paradise.

'You've dropped that,' I said, handing her the USB stick.

'Ah! Thank you,' she began in an enthusiastic tone with a broad, frank smile, 'We definitely don't want to lose this,' she added, then she immediately put the stick inside the case placed on top of the laptop and the stack of books she held with both hands. She stopped short to examine my features for awhile as if she was trying to guess their origins.

'You still read books in paper format!' I said. I laughed as an attempt to distract her attention from my face, 'I thought I was the only dinosaur that still enjoys reading old-fashioned paper books.'

She gave me a knowing smile then said, 'My husband and children love reading on paper pages too. So, there are at least five dinosaur survivors.' She placed her laptop and stack of books on her right forearm to warmly offer me her hand, 'I'm Senator Nina Xi-Huang.'

I grabbed the woman's tiny little hand and shook it carefully. She squeezed mine tightly, looking me straight in the eyes. I smiled at the idea that she could also be a middle child.

'MP Borys Leszczyński,' I resumed.

'Ah yes, you're the newbie!' she exclaimed. I seemed to have rekindled her natural curiosity. 'So, MP Leshzyski, what do you expect to accomplish at the World Parliament?' she asked.

'Serve the world, however impossible this task may seem,' I replied, standing proud and self-assured.

'Ah! You're in the right place then, but surrounded by the wrong people! Members of the World Parliament only think about themselves and their offspring,' she retorted then burst out laughing, 'And what is the result?' she wondered, pointing at the glass ceiling above our heads.

We were inside an artificial greenhouse which protected us from the sun's rays while entertaining us with a green landscape which hadn't existed for several years. She stared at me sadly for a few seconds.

'You will have to be determined and brave, MP...' she said then stopped short to ask me embarrassed, 'Can I call you Borys?'

I burst out laughing. I gently patted her on the shoulder. By then, the senator looked to me as strong and impressive as the Cuban mountains of the landscape in my childhood.

I spoke earlier of men being like stars, sharing the same space, crossing each other at different points in time. Well, that was my impression when I met Senator Nina Xi Huang on the stairs of the World Parliament as well as many years later the current president of Togo, Koffi Laré. I had saved Nina from the grip of artificial intelligence when she was just a young woman, and I had led Koffi as a young soldier to the greatest trauma of his life. Like stars, our destinies crossed all over again at the whims of a living space whose plans and secrets we didn't understand.