Hello, welcome to a special edition of BBC’s Current Affairs.  Today is Tuesday, September 6^th, 2050.  I am Maria Akiloye, coming to you live from the Wits Linder auditorium in Johannesburg, South Africa. We are here to commemorate the remarkable milestone of 10 consecutive years of world peace.

The Council for Planetary Affairs (or CPA), which replaced the United Nations a while ago, has done a magnificent job of organizing the gala. Over 200,000 children, women and men have descended here in the last few days; this is the party of the century! I have covered many events in the past 30 years, and I can tell you with great confidence, this feels markedly different than the United Nations summits of the early part of the century. There are no metal detectors, bomb-sniffing dogs or helicopters hovering above. To tell you the truth, it feels more like a large farmer’s market, than a somber event that one would have expected.

For one thing, people are talking to each other, as though they are old friends catching up after a long time apart. Here I see an old Chinese lady talking in Mandarin to a Spanish boy, who responds in his native Catalan; and they understand each other perfectly, laughing at each other’s jokes! That’s because of clever technology that helps people to mingle. For example, I can talk in my mother tongue, English, and a Russian farmer sitting across from me would hear it in real-time in Russian. The CPA has worked very hard to make this a true marketplace for ideas, and it sure does feel that way. There are thousands of beanie bags, mats, sofas and pillows scattered all over the place, and it actually looks like a college dorm. I hear laughter, music and children’s giggles everywhere. For a meeting celebrating peace and happiness, there is plenty of that to go around here. 

A United Nations meeting in the year 2016 looked very different: staid and very formal. A national representative, like the president or the prime minister, read a printed statement, which translators translated into the various languages. The meetings were tense, tempers exploded, and every humanitarian resolution was mired in political overtones and ultimately ended in vetoes. It’s very ironical that the national borders had to disappear for this sea change to happen. Now let me tell you about the stage where the speakers will be seated.

The stage is the size of 10 basketball courts. A hologram of the earth, beamed live from the International Space Station, hovers in the middle of the stage. The global surface temperature, shown in large green numbers, reads a healthy 57.5 degrees Fahrenheit. That temperature, which essentially shows the cessation of global warming, is a somber reminder of the incredible struggles we endured to get here; all that death and destruction.

There are 7 empty wooden chairs on the stage, awaiting the founding members of the CPA. I see a few of them; Manahal Khan, Gumnam Singh and Vlad Popov; mingling in the crowd. They shake hands, share laughs, and are taking their time coming to the stage. Their exploits have made them household names and people hold them in very high regard.

“They are one of us,” an old man from the northern territories exclaimed when I asked him what made the CPA so well-liked the world over.

Tej Singh, the reclusive chief of the CPA, is expected to arrive very soon.  Not much is known about him. He does not talk to the press, and no one has seen him in the last 3 years as he vested all his energy into this summit. The media frenzy started as soon as it was announced that Tej would deliver the keynote address. Rumors are rampant that he has a major announcement planned. 

As I mentioned before, there are 7 founding members attending the gala today. The 7th chair will remain empty. The disappearance of one of the founding members, Robert Bischoff, is still shrouded in mystery. We are hopeful that Tej will shed some light on what happened to Robert, and how they developed the Karmic technology that changed the world. It promises to be one interesting and exciting story. Stay tuned.