A New Faith: Part 2: Chapter 28
Emily was right. The deal she had described came to fruition in less than a week. The draconian condition that was forced on the UN was to be kept secret from everyone, though. No one except a small number of relevant staff members at the UN were aware of it and they all had to sign extremely stringent non-disclosure agreements. The contractual documents were never shared with the public at large. But Rachel, Ben, and Emily knew. They couldn’t do anything with that knowledge but sit helplessly on the sidelines as the contract was approved by the UN.
A major event was organized at the UN HQ where the deal would be announced to the entire world with great fanfare. The heads of states of dozens of countries planned to attend it in person including the President of the US. Maya’s task-force consisting of the numerous working groups were told to finalize their plans within a month so that construction could begin right away.
A major detail that changed during that month was that instead of just one large City, there would be three cities. One per Nordic country. The location of the City at the intersection of the borders of the three countries didn’t seem as viable as some other sites. None of the three countries wanted to volunteer to take on the full responsibility and so the compromise that emerged was that there would be three smaller cities instead of one large city.
Another compromise was made about the size of the cities. The three Nordic countries had left unsaid the actual number of refugees that they were willing to accept. The statement made by Camille at the press conference where she had stipulated 25 million refugees had been used as the ad hoc number upon which the UN staff had been basing its planning on. But when the 25 million-strong City became three cities, the two smaller Nordic countries panicked. If that 25-million refugee population was divided equally among all three countries then the refugee cities in their countries would end up having a larger population than their entire country. This was just not going to fly with the nativists in those countries. They threatened another round of violent protests. Trying to divide the 25 million by proportion of the three countries meant that the largest Nordic country would do the heavy-lifting in terms of infrastructure. Again, this was not acceptable to that country.
This was all petty bickering. But that was how politics usually played out. Finally, they settled on each city being large enough to accommodate about 3 million people. This was much smaller than what Camille had stipulated. Still, they decided to go ahead with it because the clock was ticking and Camille was afraid that if they delayed too much then the entire deal would fall apart and the next summer was only a few months away. Almost everyone around the world was afraid what new catastrophes that summer was going to bring about.
On the day of the event, Rachel’s boss was hanging out with the White House entourage and had somehow managed to get himself on the stage standing right next to the US President. He saw Rachel in the audience and shamelessly mimed the act that he had proposed to Rachel when he caught her eye. He smirked lasciviously as he saw her turn red with fury. Later, when he was walking past her after the ceremony, he leaned in and said that if only she had accepted his proposal he would have gotten the US to pay for the City instead of the investors who had imposed that horrible condition on the deal.
The construction of the three cities began immediately. In parallel, the selection and transportation of the refugees who would populate the three cities started in earnest. Both these tasks took the better part of three years. By the third anniversary of the global heat wave tragedy, the UN was able to declare that the three cities were settled.
Fortunately, no additional major tragedies took place during the interim years. The La Nina had something to do with that. There was, unfortunately, no dearth of smaller catastrophes that continued to ratchet up the overall count of fatalities all across the world.
At least, though, the UN could assert that while they may not have been able to do much to mitigate the changing climate over the past four decades, they had gotten a major initiative successfully launched to adapt to the rapidly changing climate. For the moment, they could catch their breath. Their work was not done, at all, as the likes of Camille reminded them almost every single day. A tiny fraction of people who had been in harm’s way were moved to a safer location. There was still no plan to save the vast majority that remained stuck in the maw of deadly climate-fueled disasters.