“What did you make of that, Vladimir?”

The questioner was Michael. Michael was five foot eight with carrot red hair and freckles. He originated in Dublin but his parents had emigrated to the US when he was ten and his voice still carried a trace of accent. Michael was a geneticist who if he bothered to vote voted Democrat and had been a trans boy since before coming to the States. It was widely known he was trans but none had ever heard his dead name.

They were in a large group of mixed STEM academics who refused to answer to anything but their proper names and didn’t answer questions like, ‘You don’t mind if I call you Mike do you?’ When forced to reply they usually replied by saying something like, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you were talking me, Cinderella, because my name is Michael.’ That was of course if the questioner were male. They substituted a name like Arnold if the questioner were female.

The group of over a hundred were close friends despite containing members of all races, religions, politics, sex and sexuality. They were aged twenty-two to seventy-one and were not only highly intelligent they were highly articulate and the go to group for the media when they wanted an explanation of a STEM matter that actually made enough sense to them to be able to impart it to their viewers, listeners and readers. They were all notorious sticklers for accuracy and politeness, and it was known if any reported them incorrectly none of the group, known informally as ‘the NGO think tank’, would ever talk to that person again. Bureaucrats and politicians at all levels disliked them because they were incorruptible and often the truth was inconvenient.

The lecture they had just listened to had taken all afternoon with a coffee break in the middle and concerned the recent US resumption of an extensive space program which had as it’s goal the discovery of suitable planets, other Earths, which would be able to accept colonists when the huge transport craft had been designed, developed and built.

Vladimir was a five foot two, half native American reared by his mother on a reservation in Arizona whose long dead father was Russian. He was a sociologist with a wife and five children who refused to vote because in his opinion there was little difference between Republicans and Democrats as far as their effect on the ordinary citizen was concerned. “I’m not sure, Michael. How about you Jennifer?”

Jennifer was a six foot four, black, lesbian, Jewess who usually voted Republican and hailed from California. She was a solid state physicist. “It’s terrifying. The idea of whole planets to be ecologically trashed rather than a continent, and subject to the nonsense that the populace of the US has been subject to as a result of the inadequacies of the so called wisdom of the founding fathers fills me with horror. Doubtless like here the opportunity to create a truly wonderful and egalitarian society will be sacrificed on the alter of corporate greed. What do you think, William?”

William was a six foot one, white skinned blond. He was a molecular biologist from New Jersey and was a fourth generation American whose roots lay in Norway. He was an atheist who considered all religion to be fantasy and usually voted Democrat. “It’ll not be that bad, Jennifer. The system has its own limitations and like everything else contains the seeds of its own ultimate destruction. Ordinary people won’t even be considered for places on the transports. There will be no blacks, first peoples, Latinos, Muslims, Jews, Catholics, Irish, LGBT+, or any other minority for the Wasps to enslave or exploit. You have to remember the original founders were not reasonable people, most were political dissidents and religious heretics in the eyes of their European societies. They had to leave or face the consequences of what were considered to be their unreasonable beliefs and behaviours. Many of them were extremists and our society was set up by them. The cults are their philosophical direct descendants. The transports will have a disproportionate number of Wasps, and of course the political classes like the Trumps and Clintons will be assured of their opportunities to exploit the resources of any new worlds. The like of us who tell them what they don’t want to hear won’t have a chance, so I doubt very much that they’ll consider that they’ll have to empty their own shit buckets before they arrive.”