The Weapon - Apocalypse - part 20
By Diana the Valkyrie
Hail, Hail Freedonia!



Moira:

People would write to us, telling us how much they agreed with what we were
doing, and could they make a donation? I thought about this, can a business
(because we were a business, despite our purposes, let's be honest) take
charitable donations? In the end, I decided that there was no good reason why
we should; there's charities set up specifically to handle this kind of
generosity. So I directed the funds to them. The problem with accepting funds
from the public, is that they quite rightly expect to be given a detailed
breakdown of where the money goes, and that would have meant a whole bunch of
book-keeping work that we simply didn't have the staff for. And the best-known
charities for helping children, spend half their donations just on raising
funds, which might look bad, but they don't really have any choice. They have
to keep those donations rolling in.

My main job turned out to be fending off the grasping hands of greedy
governments who thought they had a better use for our money than we did. Sure,
we had to pay the devil his due, but my principle was "and not one penny
more". Which meant long drawn-out fights with the Revenue departments of every
country that we operated in.

Her Majesty's government was the worst, because that was where we were
headquartered, and they felt entitled to squeeze us till the pips squeaked.
They'd already tried the Oil Revenue Tax scam on us, and although Wendy had
managed to persuade them not to implement it, I felt sure that they'd try
again. Governments always think they have a better use for money than the
people they represent. And were were an especially fat golden goose.

But Wendy had recently completed our island in the middle of the Pacific
Ocean, far beyond the territorial limits of any country, and using rock and
dirt that didn't come from any country. She built a few houses, an small
office area, a couple of parks and the inevitable creche. We got our power
from a diesel generator, water from a still and communications via a comsat
that Wendy hung in geostationary orbit 23,000 miles overhead. And when it was
ready, Wendy flew Duncan and myself out there to be the first two inhabitants
of our new island.

Since we were the "discoverers", and also the "natives", we felt entitled to
establish a new country, independent of any existing country, with our own
Constitution (copied shamelessly from the US, because imitation is the
sincerest form of flattery), our own laws (taken from the English legal
system), and our own government. But first, we needed a name. The whole
company had a naming contest, and there were some great ideas; Wendia,
Ruritania, Themyscira, The Western Isles were all candidates, but the one that
everyone like most, was Freedonia. Duncan claimed it was because we were
setting free the human spirit, but I gave him a sideways look and said "Yeah,
Rufus" and he blushed.

So then we had an election, which I grant you was a bit sudden, but you can
never establish democracy too early, and we could have another election when
we got a population substantially larger than the three that we currently had.
The babies, of course, were not eligible to vote, but we decided that it would
be very racist if we denied Wendy a vote, simply on the ground of her not
being human. And no-one brought up the awkward detail of her age; even though
she hadn't been in existence for much more than a year, she obviously had
sufficient judgement to be able to vote. With a franchised population of
three, and two candidates, the count was pretty fast.

So, we had the election, and surprise surprise, Duncan got elected president
with a two thirds majority with me as the opposing candidate, and I swept in
as vice-president (also ambassador to the UN and anywhere else) beating Duncan
quite soundly. Duncan appointed Wendy as the General of the Freedonia
Military, also Chief Pilot of the Freedonia Airline. I also got to be in
charge of the Treasury; I established a taxation rate for businesses that was
very similar to many others around the world. The revenue from this taxation
would, of course, be used for "humanitarian purposes", meaning that it would
go to the Baby Rescue centers, which we thought was a much better way to spend
the money that many of the things that Her Majesy's squeezers had been putting
it into.

Fiona designed a flag for us, it showed Wendy dressed in her red Pretty
Flamingo outfit, but wearing her Guardian of Humanity white cape, on a sky
blue background. The red, white and blue was a deliberate ploy to get the
sympathy of other significant countries who used the same colour scheme. Why
do so many countries pick those three colours?

All this might sound a bit silly, and I have to confess that we did feel a bit
self-conscious about it all, but it was necessary that we have a legally
watertight case to take to the UN; it was my most important job to go there to
get recognition for Freedonia. Because with UN recognition, we would have a
degree of protection from interference by other countries.

So, I turned up at the UN and knocked on the front door. And guess what? They
weren't interested. They classified me with umpteen other crackpots who tried
to create a new country, and they weren't interested. I kicked up a fuss, I
made waves, I spoke to the press. The press, of course, treated it all as a
huge joke, and made monkeys out of us. Surprise surprise.

And then I got a letter from the UN Security Council. "We understand that
Freedonia is in possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction; these must either
be destroyed immediately, or else turned over to an international UN
peacekeeping force."

Huh?

The most lethal things we had on the island were my kitchen knives. Then I
realised - they were referring to The Weapon. Wendy was probably the most
dangerous item on the planet, and for several light years around. I'd asked
her once, what was the biggest thing she could break. She looked up from
playing patty-cake with Rosetta on the carpet, and said "Um, I could smash up
a star." I asked her how on earth she could do that; she explained that it's
just like kicking out a bonfire; if you spread the burning bits around, then
you don't have a bonfire any more, just some smouldering pieces of wood that
soon flicker and go out. "It would take a pretty big kick to kick over a
star!" I pointed out. "Yes, but I'm a billion tons, you know, and I can kick
pretty hard. Once I'd splashed the core all over the place, it would stop
burning. They look big, but a lot of it is just, like, gas and flame. Only the
core really matters." I just looked at her, she was serious. "Or I could just
filter out all the carbon, they need that, you know, it's a catalyst. Without
the carbon, it would just sort of fizzle." I stared at her. "Or I could tow a
decent-sized black hole into it, and then it would implode into blackness." I
couldn't think of anything to say. What can you say to someone who's just
given you three ways to destroy a star? But she was just getting started. "Or
I could give it a ..." "OK, Wendy, OK, you've made your point. I don't need
ten ways to smash a star." While we were talking, she hadn't missed a beat of
the patty-cake game. 

Now, I don't know if they knew about star-smashing, but they obviously knew
that she was very powerful, and you can understand how people might be uneasy
when they thought about The Weapon having so much power, controlled by the
state of Freedonia, about which no-one knew very much, on account of there not
really being any history yet. Remember, they hadn't met her, talked with her,
seen her playing baby games on the carpet while people round her were trying
to have a serious business meeting. They were thinking of her as if she were a
stonking great bomb.

So, I wrote back, saying that if Freedonia isn't an independent country, then
they should be addressing their letter to whichever country or countries was
claiming it. On the other hand, if Freedonia was an independent country, then
perhaps they should meet with the Ambassador, for disarmament discussions.

So, they said, "If we recognise Freedonia, will you relinquish your WMDs?" And
I replied, "You can't even ask that question until you've recognised us,
because who are you asking?"

Duncan called me a devious old witch. I told him that since I was now a
politician, I'd taken Devious as my middle name.

So, I got UN recognition, because without it, they couldn't ask Freedonia to
give up our WMDs. And now that they were able to ask, I gave the the obvious
answer.

"That's a matter for the Freedonia Government, and I shall convey your request
to them with all due deliberation." Obviously, I dressed it up a bit, padded
it out to a dozen pages full of clauses and sub-clauses, but that's the gist
of it.

The name of the game is delay. The idea is that if you procrastinate for long
enough, the other people get interested in something else instead, and leave
you alone. I spun out the discussions and consultations for nearly a year, by
which time we were well-established on the island, with a population in the
hundreds. People liked working there, because it had a great climate, sandy
beaches, clean water and decent housing. Plus, every now and then, you'd hear
a double sonic boom, and if you looked up, you could see a red, white-and-gold
figure streaking across the azure sky.

On the first anniversary of the establishment of Freedonia, we had an
celebration and an election. Wendy didn't run in the election, but got quite a
lot of votes anyway. Duncan got another term as president, and they tried to
drag me into another term as VP, but I categorically refused. I wanted to get
back to doing real work; dickering with suppliers over bulk purchases of
diapers, that sort of thing. So I was able to gracefully retire from a role on
the world stage.

Sally refused to serve, too. She was having a great time selling the oil that
Wendy was synthesising; we told people that we'd found a huge untapped
oilfield under the island.

At the celebratory banquet, the first course was, of course, duck soup. I
don't think anyone except a few of us knew why. After the dessert, (which was
cheese with animal crackers) we let off loads of fireworks. The climax to the
firework display was when Wendy shot up into the air trailing a cloud of
sparks, and then there was the most ear-shattering explosion, high over the
island. We felt that we'd celebrated our first anniversary in an approriate
way.

But then things started to come unglued.