King of All I Survey-Chapter 166: Preparing to Address the Congress of the Republic

The process went as well as could be expected, the first batch of prisoners took 18 minutes to clear the building to make room for the next. Joe, always optimizing, however, was able to bring in a smaller contingent from the next group before the room was completely emptied. As the first group of prisoners made their way into the corridor, their colleagues already lined up along the walls to greet them erupted into cheers. Shouts of "Slava Ukraini! Heroiam slava!" Rang out over and over again, as former prisoners made their way down the corridor, shepherded along by more of our paramilitaries to make sure the way was clear for the rest.

As we passed four thousand men returned, Joe informed me by telepathy that he had interrupted all communications from the affected sites, so that now word of the repatriation could be spread to other facilities, until we had everyone back. Furthermore, he was interrupting closed circuit cameras, so the prisoners could not be seen simply disappearing from their confines. Each prison facility was entirely cleared in one fell swoop, so there wasn’t even a chance for a reaction inside a single building, before everyone was safely removed by LITV. Therefore, Joe did not need to take any Russian prison guards prisoner to prevent them from harming the prisoners in the middle of the mass escape.

Knowing Russian leadership, however, I suspected they might have been better off if we had captured them. Finally, the last of the technicians were returned to at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Unfortunately, the Russians had killed 1235 of them, mostly during interrogations after their removal. Joe prepared a formal list of their names, dates of death, and circumstances of the deaths and sent it to President Dovzhenko. He would send private letters of condolence to each family affected. Universal Earth Concord would arrange pensions for each family and details of this would be included in Dovzhenko’s letters. When circumstances permitted, he promised, he would meet with them personally to thank them for the bravery and heroism of each man or woman who volunteered to remain at Zaporizhzhia to ensure its safety during and after the Russian take-over. Their heroism had almost certainly prevented a meltdown and widespread release of highly radioactive isotopes into the surrounding countryside. The Russian invaders could not possibly have run the facility or overseen a safe shutdown of the reactors, or ongoing maintenance to prevent catastrophe.

My next focus for repatriation would be the millions of Ukrainian citizens who had bee forcibly relocated to scattered regions within Russia (or prisons if their initial screening showed them to have deep loyalty to Ukraine). Over four million people had been forcibly removed from Ukraine as part of Russian President Maxim Volkov’s effort to remake captured Ukrainian territory into a Russian loyalist majority. He had even taken over 420,000 Ukrainian children away from their homeland and placed them in schools in Russia designed to instill loyalty to Russia and erase their Ukrainian heritage. The International Criminal Court had already issued an arrest warrant for the Russian President for this crime, even without a referral from the UN Security Council. If my plan for tomorrow’s meeting of the Security Council failed, I hadn’t yet decided whether I would use this as justification to arrest him.

Based on Joe’s assessment that we likely could not rehabilitate him to a state where he no longer posed an ongoing threat to others, I had resolved that if and when we did decide to place him under arrest for war crimes, the UEC would deliver him to the Hague for trial on this warrant and any others for which they could make a case. That would relieve us of the need to hold him for the remainder of his natural life, and to disclose the location of his prison to the world at large.

The magnitude of his crimes and his thirst for power at any cost, were difficult for me to comprehend. The workings of a mind that could conceive and execute such plans were more alien to me than any of the extraterrestrials I had met thus far.

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The celebrations ran well into the night, I spent several hours greeting the returned prisoners and thanking them for their dedication to the safety of Zaporizhzhia. There were many, many more cries of "Slava Ukraini! Heroiam slava!" which translates as something like ’Glory to Ukraine!’ shouted by one group and another answering ’Glory to the heroes.’

Finally, I confessed my fatigue and returned to the office I had commandeered as my quarters. Instead of sleep, however, I had a little over an hour to prepare for my speech before the Guatemalan Congress to make the case for joining the Universal Earth Concord.

I used forty minutes of that time to sleep. Not just regular sleep, but the deep, artificially enhanced restorative sleep that was only possible with Joe directly shutting down parts of my brain, while stimulating others. He could achieve the same effects as five hours of sleep in forty minutes with his active orchestration of brain activity. It wasn’t as much sleep as I needed, but it was enough to keep me alert and functioning at my best for the appearance before the Guatemalan Congress.

He also used direct memory implant learning to teach me the names and faces of every member of the Congress, as well as the regions they represented, their political parties, policy leanings, and any statements they had made about our activities in eradicating the drug cartels and the proposal of the Universal Earth Concord.

My appearance was orchestrated as an opening speech by me, then subjecting me to questions from any member of Congress who cared to ask one, with whatever follow-up questions or comments that member might have after my initial answer. It was slated for all day, with an additional day if necessary. On the one hand, I was confident I could make a good case for Guatemala to vote in favor of joining the UEC as its first official member. On the other hand, I was not looking forward to spending a day or more as the focus of every congressperson’s public grandstanding. The entire affair was being televised by numerous Guatemalan news agencies and more than a few from other countries around the world. Notably, Colombia and Mexico sent multiple news agencies to carry it live, since it was expected they would both be next in line to become members. Indeed, I had already made the offer to the Mexican President, with a public appeal to pressure acceptance.

The results of Guatemalan vote and my performance would have a huge impact on other nations joining in the near future. We decided that Maria Isabel Flores and Susana Bailey would accompany me and sit beside me during the whole ordeal. Maria Isabel, of course, was referred to in some circles in Guatemala as Santa Maribel. I hoped her reputation and widespread public acclaim would help to temper any personal attacks that members might think of making during the hearing. She was fully prepared to interrupt with righteous indignation if circumstances warranted.

Susana, of course, was my mother, though nobody knew that. I had no doubts she would jump in if anyone launched an attack on my character or motivations. At least I hoped she would. Maybe I should have had Joe coach her the way he had coached Maribel.

Oh well. The die was cast. We used LITV transport to arrive in the city at one of our nearby offices, then had a car deliver us to the Congressional Palace. We arrived early and were escorted to a waiting room while the Congress went through the official announcement of the consideration of the Universal Earth Concord proposal, then a listing of the rules of order for the questioning the day’s witness including a reminder from the President of the Congress to maintain a level decorum and dignity befitting the Congress.

When that was done, there was the formal announcement of the bill being considered: whether Guatemala would accept the Universal Earth Concord proposal to become a member state, abiding by the rules of the Concord, and supplying the first member of the United Earth Concord Advisory Council with a two year tenure to be extended indefinitely until there were more than twenty-one member states at which time the twenty one positions would be rotated among all member states. They used the same summary of the main points of the UEC that we had presented to the Mexican people on our news broadcast, and indicated that reports showed massive public support for the Concord in Mexico, who would likely adopt it quite soon.

Then, it was my turn. I was announced as a material witness for the matter at hand, Chariman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer of the Universal Earth Concord, and also as author of the Universal Earth Concord which surprised me a little. Susana, Maribel, and I were escorted to a the main hall, and seated at a table facing the 160 members of the of the Congress of the Republic.

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