After the Truth (Book Two)

Six

Even though it has been six years since that meeting with the head of state and his advisor, I still worry about it. I stood at a at a busy border crossing this morning and I felt responsible for all the people I saw. Why do I worry? Against his friend's advice the head of state listened to me. He made what some historians are calling the most courageous decision in the last two hundred years.

The day after our meeting the head of state came to me alone and asked me to tell him the Word. I pointed out I had signed a document stating that I would not communicate the Word whilst in his country. He had come prepared. He had a copy of the agreement and pointed out the clause explicitly stating I could communicate the Word if asked by the head of state. I asked if he had planned this when he gave me sanctuary in his country.

'Not exactly,' he told me. 'But more and more I knew it was inevitable I would one day learn the Word. Putting this clause in your agreement gave me some control. It made me feel I had a choice, should I want it. I wondered: could learning the Word be some sort of positive example for the country? I have thought deeply on our conversation last night. Your idea is far beyond what I had dreamed. But I can see no other future for any of us that has any hope.'

His lifelong friend did not follow his new ideal. The advisor, like all the rest of the cabinet, resigned when they heard the head of state formally put his proposal to them. Some declared he had become insane when he told them he had learnt the Word from me. His advisor friend exclaimed I had somehow brainwashed him.

The head of state was a great orator and, like many ideas, words eventually won the way forward with a new cabinet and the wider population. The head of state was honest with his public and told them right from the beginning what he proposed, and why. He challenged anyone to come up with another way to stop the decay. The battle lines were drawn as a referendum of the entire population was held. The ex-advisor was the figurehead of the ferocious opposition.

Astounding the rest of the planet, when the referendum results were announced, the proposal to publicly disseminate the Word was carried, by a seventy-three percent majority.

A date and time were set for Broadcast Day. On that day the Word would simultaneously be transmitted on all television and radio stations. It would also be printed on the front page of every newspaper and news website.

In the months before the declared date, those who opposed the idea were given all the assistance possible to find asylum in other countries. In the past, twenty seven percent of a national population leaving a country would have been a refugee crisis on a scale almost unheard of. However, in these cataclysmic times we live in, the global population has been so devastated by the Plague that many countries were willing to accept, indeed desperately needed, the 'refugees from the truth' as they became known.

'Ethnic cleansing,' was shouted by many world leaders. The fact no divisions were based on race, creed, skin colour or religion was lost in the hysterical arguments that boiled in the final days before the Word was due to be broadcast.

On Broadcast Day, an eerie lull fell across the nation. The streets were not empty, but people walked around quietly and tentatively. Millions of people were adjusting to the fact they, and those all around them now had to tell the truth, all the time.

People didn't quite know what to say to each other.

Publicly and privately, over the following weeks there was a lot of cleansing of previous lies. Some didn't make it, but nowhere near the numbers feared.

Of that time, the saddest and most ludicrous spectacle I have seen occurred outside my own front door. A group of 'Truth Deniers' had come into the country a few days before Broadcast Day. They had discovered where I lived and several thousand took up camp outside my home. There were the usual taunts of me be mad and scare mongering. I was called the greatest fraud in human history.

There had been some concern for my security, since as part of the head of states declaration of learning the Word, we knew he would have to be truthful about my presence in the country. Fortunately, police personnel were able to stop the deniers entering my house.

When the announcement was made the Truth Deniers all listened to the Word. They laughed as they learnt it. There was almost a party atmosphere. People drank and danced and continued laughing as they mocked the supposed effect of the Word. Then a group of half a dozen self-declared leaders stood up on a makeshift stage and collectively, still laughing, they told an obvious lie.

Five dropped dead immediately. The party stopped. Laughter turned to crying and screaming. Five hundred and twenty died in the next hour. Eight hundred over the next four weeks. Of the rest, their original countries refused to let them back to their homes. They were, after all, infected.

What of the one person on the stage that day who did not die instantly? Later, when trying to return to his home country, he admitted he doubted his denying and didn't listen when the Word was broadcast. He was still refused entry. After all, since he admitted not knowing the Word, the authorities couldn't trust he was telling the truth.

For the rest of the country, the death rate dropped significantly from what it had been before Broadcast Day.

Most importantly, and it started as a trickle but soon turned into a torrent, there was an influx of people from foreign lands wanting to enter this country. For those that knew the Word, there was now a place with a whole society prepared to support their 'infection'.

A new country is growing. Built on nothing but the truth.

Everyone is welcomed, no matter their country of origin, religion, race or financial circumstance. The only criterion for entering is that, at the border, the Word is told to them.

And so I was at the border earlier today, at one of the busiest crossings. I stood near the door to one of the waiting rooms where every immigrant is taken and told the Word. Inside, a border official presents each person with the final choice of whether they want to hear the Word or not.

It surprises me, but there are people who have not heard the Word who try to get in, stating they already know it. Early on, when the influx first began to grow, there were several instances of people thinking they would be able to just walk into the country, pretending they knew the Word when they did not. As with so many dishonest people, they thought this might give them an advantage over those forced to tell the truth. When the border official declared speaking the Word was compulsory and promptly did so, many panicked. Some then lied they didn't really think they would need to know the Word to cross the border.

When the deaths from this sort of incident started to climb, a statutory five-minute warning was introduced to allow the immigrant to fully grasp what was about to happen. To speed up the immigration process, those that know the Word simply tell it straight away to the border official.

In the last few years there has been a new sort of immigrant growing. Those that do not yet know the Word, but want to learn it as the feel the truth is so important. A lot of them are the young and have grown up during the time of the Plague. A deep chill always courses through me when I think of the death they have experienced as part of their childhoods. What is supposed to be a time of innocence has been a time of global devastation. However, I take pride seeing so many of the new generation wanting to avoid the mistakes of their supposedly wiser seniors.

My Samuel is one such young person and it was he who I eagerly awaited this morning at the border.

When he emerged from that waiting room and hugged me for the first time in almost twenty years, I am not ashamed to admit I did not hold back my tears of joy and two decades of loss.

He is here with me now, in my house by the lake, which the head of state has bequeathed to me and my family. Samuel has slept this afternoon, tired from his long journey, but I can hear him stirring and I plan to take him out for dinner tonight. There is a restaurant further down the lake shore that I love.

One evening will not be enough to talk over twenty years, but then there is tomorrow, and beyond.

For the first time I look forward to the future with hope, not hopelessness.