Wherever Kylian disappeared to several minutes ago, he eventually calmed down and returned to sit with Luc. An uneasy, unspoken truce seemed to be agreed upon by the two men since they could now sit with each other while not speaking to each other. Instead, they both stared at Viviane and the twins Anaelle and Marielle chatting away. The three girls appeared to be in their own world, happy and ignorant of anything happening around them.

After a while, Kylian looked over at Luc and noticed a red armband around the sleeve of Luc’s uniform. STS uniforms were black in color or perhaps they were just very dark grey. Whatever the exact shade, the red armband against a black sleeve was noticeable. Kylian searched his memory banks, but could not remember seeing this red armband last time he saw Luc. He was sure he would have remembered it. Curiosity got the better of Kylian, so he broke the silent peace with Luc to ask him about it.

“So, Luc. I noticed the red armband today.”

“Oh yeah, Bouche-bay…” Luc caught himself before he could finish. Kylian gave Luc the evil-eye.

“Alright! Take it easy!” implored Luc. “Sorry about that. Force of habit, you know. Anyway, the red armband is because I voted earlier today.”

“Oh? I thought only members of the Ruling Party could vote for the country’s leaders for the next ten years.”

“Yeah, you’re not wrong. All active duty military are automatically members of the Ruling Party.”

“I didn’t know that! Where I grew up, there wasn’t much of a military presence and I never followed the politics. Just didn’t see a need to since, you know, everything we needed, the government just took care of it for us. Education, healthcare, security, we never had to worry about it.”

“Yeah, well I guess they figure that since we lay our lives on the line to protect you civilians, we should have a say in who our leaders are. You ordinary civilians can’t vote and the government likes to keep it that way.”

“Is that why you joined the STS?” asked Kylian.

“I enlisted because the UEN needs people to counteract the CoC and all enemies who oppose us in the world,” answered Luc.

“You mean, the ‘Coalition of Countries’? I thought they were just a group of backwater nations that couldn’t possibly harm us. They have no advanced technology whatsoever. We’re so far ahead of them as a nation, no one, especially the Coalition, should be able to threaten us.”

“Yeah, that’s what you’ve been told since elementary school.”

Now Kylian was confused. “Isn’t that the truth?”

“Mostly, but it’s complicated. Listen, since the Ruling Party controls all the media, they only let you know what they think you should know. News from beyond our borders is suppressed by the government, so you don’t get a full picture of what’s happening in the world.”

Kylian was already confused, but now he became suspicious of Luc, too. “But you do?” he asked Luc.

“No, I don’t neither, but being in the military, I hear the stories and the rumors and I’ve done duty where I’ve been to parts of the CoC.”

Kylian, still suspicious, became more interested. “Really? Like what?”

“Look, what I’m about to tell you is all rumors, so it may not be the exact truth, OK?” Luc said in a hushed voice so that no one could eavesdrop on their conversation.

“Continue,” said Kylain interested in hearing these half-truths.

“It’s true that the CoC is made up of a loose alliance of all the other nations of the world and that they are backwater countries that have no technology compared to what we have here in the UEN. They’re mostly poor countries which live on agricultural, mining or labor-intensive manufacturing economies. Unlike us who live in the UEN where it’s modern, high-tech and the country is mostly wealthy and our citizens highly educated.

“So the world is split into two groups, the technology haves, which are us, and the technology have-nots which is everyone else.

“Where we live, the UEN, is governed by a single party, the ‘Ruling Party’ as we call it. Its main power comes from a Central Committee which renews itself with new leaders every ten years. Only members of the Ruling Party can vote to elect the new leaders.

“However, the CoC is filled with member nations which operate under different forms of government. Some are known as ‘kingdoms’ in which ONE person gets to rule over everyone else and when he dies, his oldest son or daughter gets to be the next absolute ruler. And this has gone on for who knows how many generations.”

That sounded weird to Kylian. How could just one person have ALL the power he wondered. It was downright primitive. “Sounds barbaric!” he exclaimed.

“You think that’s bad?” continued Luc. “Some countries are like the ‘kingdom’ but every so often, competing families fight bloody civil wars over who gets to be absolute ruler. These are called ‘dictatorships.”

“Why, that’s absolutely uncivilized!” Kylian did not like the thought of all that killing required to determine the next leader of a country.

“That’s not all,” continued Luc. He had more rumors to tell. “There’s at least one country in the CoC which operates under what’s called a ‘democracy’.”

“Democracy?” Kylian spoke the word out loud just to try it out for himself.

“Yeah, that’s sort of like what we do here in the UEN where we vote for our leaders, except that everybody gets to vote, even ordinary civilians like yourself.”

This was all too much for Kylian. It was all so confusing! “Everyone?” asked Kylian. “That doesn’t sound wise. What if not everyone is smart enough to make an educated choice? What if a lot of people don’t care about the issues they’re voting on? What if people are too busy to properly weigh the pros and cons to come to a logical conclusion?” Kylian’s head started to spin.

“Exactly!” agreed Luc. “It’d be chaos, I tell ya! Anyway, not only does everyone get to vote, even the dumb citizens, but they have more than one Ruling Party and they all compete with each other to see who can get their way.”

“More than one Ruling Party? How does that work?” asked an exasperated Kylian. “How do they share power in the decision making? If one Ruling Party disagrees with the other ones, nothing would get done!”

“Like I said, I don’t know if what I’ve heard is the complete truth, but that’s what I’ve been told and from what little I’ve seen myself.”

Kylian could not wrap his head around the idea of democracy. “I prefer the system we have where a group of dedicated professionals lead us and where they decide what’s best for everyone as a whole.”

“Yeah, me too. Weird isn’t it to hear what happens outside of the UEN, huh?” pondered Luc.

Kylian thought about what he had heard for a bit and then made a provocative observation. “Maybe it’s because the UEN is a single party government run by professionals why we were able to develop advanced technology faster than everyone else and why we became the only superpower in the world today?”

That last question of Kylian’s was a rhetorical one. As such, it needed not to be answered.