“Attention! Attention!” That stentorian announcement cut through the Euroglais that babbled in Sharon Hazlett’s headphones. “Security Drill. Plan B3/791/XG6. All staff members below the rank of Administrator will evacuate the building. Immediately!”
        Sharon was a secretary/grade C3 employed in Brussels (the capital city of Brave Little Belgium), at the huge Berlaymont 31/2, aka the Madhouse building. She took off the headphones, trying not to snag them in her long, strawberry-blonde hair. “Ouch!”
        Trying to assuage the familiar pain, Sharon automatically read off what she had just keyed: “The total amount agreed upon was 8.5 thousand million Euros from the EIB’s own resources. The EU’s offer . . .”
         Snap out of it! came the imperative thought-form. Sharon stood up to her full tall-and-willowy height. She did a quick twirl–“Whee!”–and left the office. “Time’s a wasting. Now where did I get that one from?”
    
Sharon took justifiable pride in her academic CV and general knowledge. After all, she had reached this El Dorado/Rainbow’s End/ European Commission via highly competitive examinations and interviews. Many people aspired, but those who were chosen comprised a tiny percentage of those hopefuls who tried for European Union (EU, for short) employment, and failed. There were usually no second chances.
         “Everybody tells me that I should feel privileged for being a Eurocrat.” She frowned, making a slight ‘V’ mark on her otherwise smooth forehead. “And so I bloody well do!”
         Sharon didn’t bother re-reading her Handy Guide to Plan B3/791/XG6. She already knew it by mind, if not by heart. During the past few weeks, Plan B3 etc., had been implemented frequently. Sometimes it was restricted to staff members of Administrator rank and above. Sometimes, as now, only junior personnel took part in the fake Exodus.
        The Security Drill announcement was made over and over again: in robotic English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Danish, Hungarian, Irish, Latvian, Finnish, and many other languages. “I wonder if it’s the new Euroglot computer they’ve just installed on the twenty-third floor. The whole twenty-third floor.”
    
Sharon sidled her way into the conga line of Other Ranks that was wending its orderly way towards the nearest down staircase. The lifts had been deactivated, for the duration. There was little conversation above the whisper level, and no one moved faster than the standard EU walking pace. “Dignity, always dignity.”
        For the next too-many minutes, Sharon avoided watching the dandruffy male head directly in front of her. She gazed fixedly at the left-hand wall. It was unrelievedly blank, painted a ‘restful’ pea green. EU scientists had done considerable research on human colour senses.
        Then she saw right into the office of Herr Otto Irgendwaz. The portly chef d’unite was lying supine upon what looked like a psychiatrist’s couch, but with some differences. Talk about being the worse for drink, she thought. Yet another liquid lunch-hour. Lowenbräu uber alles.
I don’t know how he gets aw—
        Sharon’s censorious reverie was interrupted when her part of the impromptu procession finally reached the staircase. Once the initial jostling had settled back into the customary slow march, she found herself thinking about the present geopolitical potpourri.
    
The European Union had emerged from the fin de siècle Yahoo Years in fine fettle—united, prosperous, and able to run roughshod over all competitors. Every country in the Mighty Continent^TM had now joined this commodious community: Switzerland, Turkey, the Balkan and Balkan states, Russia (up to the Urals), Israel, etc. Apart from anything else, it made necessary a fortnight-long Eurovision Song Contest final. For convenience, however, the blue flag showed only twelve yellow-state signifying stars.
        Johan Galtung’s seminal 1973 book, The European Community (as it was then called): A Superpower in the Making, had long since been overtaken by the events it predicted. Unlike many other writers on this vexing subject, Galtung took adequate time to explain basic facts, pose work-out political problems, and—above all—to think. The American point of view was well-put in The United States of Europe (2004), by T. R. Reid.
    
Multilingual wall-stickers proclaiming EUROPE IS ROOM ENOUGH reminded Sharon that the EU was more protectionist than ever. Many outsider nations, from the U.S.A. and Brazil, to Russia (beyond the Urals) and China, took umbrage at Europe’s new-found strength. Some of them, driven by economic desperation, had even applied to join.  Turning it into the Elongated Union? she wondered. But the EU powers-that-were, remained adamant in their opposition to any further member-state expansion (except for the largely unmanned Eurobases on the Moon, Mars, and some of the
Jovian satellites).  Now the twin piques of economic disadvantage and political envy had turned the Rest of the World against Fortress Europa.
        Galtung had written: “Today the European Community is on the way up. {But, in the furious future} each point of interference will constitute an argument for military strength, for internal security, for a European posture towards the East, for the possibility of rapid action in the South. And as the repressive machinery grows, so will the counter waves.”
         
By that time, the corncrake Security Drill announcement had been replaced with more EUphonious Muzak (something not too unlike Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik). It was

 oppressively soothing . . . soothing . . .
soothing . . .
        Sharon couldn’t take the threat of an air-strike from some nation-or-nations all that seriously. There’s been talk about a new Eurobuster secret weapon in development at Caltech. Smart bombs, quantum psychics, designer drugs, stuff like that. But then, there’s always talk about everything.
        She was worried, however, about the nuclear-powered central heating system that had recently been built into the improved Berlaymont. Radiation hazard signs plastered the stairwell to the underground reactor, despite assurances from Official Experts that leaks and/or meltdowns only happened in last-century movies like The China Syndrome.
        What was that terrible place in the old Soviet Union called? Sharon thought, as she fought against the soporific Muzak, with limited success. Ah, yes—Chernobyl. Atomic pile-up. A fallout over some two-headed chickens. Near Kiev.  But wasn’t it only a novel, by some Polish writer called Frederik?
    
In the foolishness of time, Sharon’s group joined the main congregation on the rez-de-chausée. Everyone faced the wide-open front doors, which were flanked by Atomium-and-Sun-emblemed EU Security Guards. They always look like robots to me. For all I know, they might even be robots.
        They put Sharon in mind of the real Atomium, a 103-metre high structure built in the shape of a crystalline atom for the 1958 World Trade Fair held in Brussels. This huge stressed-metal ‘molecule’ was now the mobile headquarters of Europol; it stalked the land like a Martian Fighting Machine from The War of the Worlds.
        Plan B3/791/XG6 was then completed with typical EU efficiency. Once outside the Berlaymont 31/2, Sharon watched with a fair degree of puzzlement as Administrator types from the Council, Parliament, and other nearby establishments filed into the building. “More robots?” she asked herself, irreverently.
   
There was a nip in the spring air that seemed almost electrical. Sharon ended up milling about with countless middle/lower EUers and sundry civilians on the far side of Rond-Point Schuman. Nobody spoke, except to themselves. They were all being herded even further away from the Berlaymont 31/2 by Belgian military policemen, GATTling guns held at the ready.
        “When things calm down, I’ll grab a bite to eat,” Sharon promised herself. Even more cheerfully: “And drink! Let me see, now. Maureen O’Hara’s? The Brendan Behan. Or that new place—The Split Crow? They’ve got Ma Caffrey’s Dragon Breath ale, on tap.”
        She gave a great deal of thought to the problem. Until—
    
Metallic clacks and dull thuds drew her errant attention back to the Berlaymont 31/2. The new black security blinds, all of them, had closed simultaneously. One, two, three explosions went off, renting the no longer still air. A thick dust cloud swirled upwards from pulverized paving stones. There was an insubstantial, opalescent haze immediately surrounding the now windowless structure.
        A suitably eerie silence fell over the entire Europolitan area. It was so profound that Sharon could hear the workings of her genuine imitation Timex wristwatch: Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick—  
    
Before the next tock could be heard, the Berlaymont 31/2 gave one last gigantic shudder and took off. Up, up, up into the mild grey yonder. Unoffending clouds were pushed roughly aside to make way for this literal skyscraper. There was only the most faint of shock waves, but the onlookers suffered more than a thousand psychic traumas.
         “Plan B3/791/XG6,” said the seemingly numbed Sharon Hazlett. “All those renovations… Euroglot computer… nuclear-powered central heating system…weird couches.” Then: “What else could possibly happen?”
        She didn’t have long to wait. Boom-bang-a-bang! sounded the first–but not the last—hyper-spatial neutron bomb. And the lights went out, all over Common Europe.
    
        In this Euroverse, the Long Night had fallen, the shadows deepening over a populace that would never know another EU Directive. But elsewhere, the Yellow Stars and the light of Union lingered; and along the path it once had followed, Euromanity would one day live again.
                                                                        NN
    
                       About the Author
     
        Graham Andrews was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, but has lived in Belgium since 1982.  His science fiction novel, Darkness Audible, was published by the Excalibur Press of London in 1991.  He has had short stories, articles and book reviews in such publications as the Belfast Telegraph, the Brussels Bulletin, The Guardian, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Interzone, Foundation, Locus and others. 
        In 1981, he won the Aisling Gheal (“Bright Vision”) Award of the Irish Science Fiction Association for his short story, “The Para-Present.”  His prize-winning one-act play, “the Man Who Meet His Maker,” was published in 2004.
        He is now a regular contributor of science fiction author obituaries to The Times of London (Algis Budrys, Thomas M. Disch, etc.)  Among his most recent publications is an article celebrating the bicentenary of Edgar Allan Poe for the January 2009 issue of Book and Magazine Collector.           This is Graham’s second piece in Calliope. His first, “Morning Shows the Day,” appeared in Issue 113 (May/June 2006).
  
                               Copyright © Graham Andrews