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Same planet, slightly more absurd headlines.
Borders, treaties, elections and climate — extrapolated a few years past the point of comfort.
8 stories
A treaty drafting exercise imagines national frontiers defined by a moving physical feature rather than a fixed line. The lawyers involved describe the concept as elegant, workable and profoundly unpopular.
A medium-term budget projection for a small coastal town would make processing capacity its most reliable export. The mayor's spreadsheet has a line for beds per night and no line for what the town will be called afterwards.
A planning scenario for a monitoring mandate with no troops would replace patrols with sensor masts, drones and analysts several time zones away. The village in the mandate area would keep the protection and lose the gate.
A draft internal circular would schedule sessions, interpretation and mandates against contributions actually received. It is four pages long, contains no complaint, and would change more than most reform proposals.
A model occupational profile written against a future treaty on autonomous weapons would turn meaningful human control into shift work, paid by the hour. The first dispute would not be about ethics. It would be about what the shift is liable for.
A continuity framework drafted for a low-lying state treats the loss of its territory as an operational problem with legal annexes. The registry, the pensions and the vote would survive. The ground would not.
A model climate-mobility treaty would give the citizens of a sinking state a fixed number of permanent places each year in a larger neighbour, drawn at random. Everything else about a family's future would be scheduled around the draw.
A customs modernisation model circulating between trade ministries would attach an emissions history to every crate that crosses a border. The inspector would still check the goods. A file, checked somewhere else, would decide whether they go on.
MISTAKE
One email a week. The future, before it files a press release.
Worst case: you laugh. Best case: we predicted the future.