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Colonel Lamprey sat at the head of the table in his conference room located in the heart of the National Security Organization's HQ. With him are eight members of other security organizations and two highly placed civilians. The colonel smokes when he is nervous. Right now he had a camel dangling loosely from his lips, hands resting on his knees, eyes darting furtively from one panel member to the other. They have been sitting at the table for the past 12 hours trying to figure out what to do with the protesters who are now massing up outside the Supergene Hotel, where the leaders of the one hundred and fifty one member states of the Earth Trade Alliance, will start their annual convention in a little over 8 hours from now. It was 0300 hours.

Earlier in the day a directive had arrived at the colonels's table instructing him to make this the last time protesters will put up appearance at any ETA convention. The directive was signed by Jim Craper the Head of Government. The latter's concern had to do with terrorists who might use the protesters as an excuse to launch attacks on the visiting foreign leaders.

These conventions have been an annual affair for more than thirty years now. Ten years ago, an insider smuggled out the real final communique of the convention at the time and circulated it on the internet. The communique it seems, did not have anything concrete on it. Instead, it showed how virtually every leader was at variance with another. Most of that meeting lasted on average three hours per day, over the four days that it took place. The rest of the event was spent by leaders partying and generally avoiding one another. No agreements were discussed, let alone ratified. In short the smuggled communique seems to indicate that this whole event was a total waste of the tax payers money. The contents of the communique gave birth to the Earth Tasking Alliance, an organization of 10 people who decided to put up appearance at every Earth Trade Alliance meeting henceforth, with the intent to remind the leaders what the purpose of their convention was, by staging peaceful protests in front of the Hotel Supergene for the duration of the convention. Within five years their number had risen to over five hundred. This was when the Government of Xanadu Republic where the events took place every year began to take notice.

This particular year was different however. The Government of Xanadu was aiding the government of Isfahan to suppress a terrorist war led by the Al

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