Global Standard Online
May 31, 2440
By Arjun Menon, Staff Columnist
Matthew Marmaduke says he is not coming to fix your problems.
In his first unscripted words about the upcoming “working tour” that will take him and a small youth delegation across four continents, the Freeholder of Missouri and High Lord of the V’ren was blunt. Speaking from the front seat of a car somewhere in central Missouri, he told viewers:
“I make no promises and am likely to tell you every day your local problems are not mine to fix.”
It is a sentence worth sitting with, especially if your city is one of the names now floated on consulate feeds and conference programs. Denver. Mexico City. Tokyo. Nairobi. London. Boston. Places where roads buckle, power cuts roll, teachers work two extra jobs and port workers sleep in containers they do not own.
If he is not coming to fix anything, many ask, then why come at all?
It is a fair question, and not only for those who have pinned their hopes on V’ren technology as a shortcut past their own governments.
Marmaduke’s official announcement, stripped of the unfortunate “Bridges and Barns” branding that briefly accompanied it, presents the tour as something more modest and more ambiguous. A month of “work, talks, and field visits” focused on food, power, water, and dignity. A chance to “listen, learn, and share what we have learned so far.” A small youth team, human and V’ren, invited to observe and report home through their own channels.
On paper, that is not a rescue mission. It is closer to a travelling seminar.
There are at least three ways to interpret this, and each says as much about us as it does about him.
The first is the cynical reading. A powerful man and his alien entourage are about to do what powerful people have always done: fly in, speak on panels, pose with children, and leave without signing anything that binds them. Under this view, Marmaduke’s refusal to promise local fixes is simply honesty about a familiar game. He secures his trade relationships and diplomatic alignments. Host cities get photographs and a small bump in hotel occupancy. Nothing structural changes.
The second is the angry reading. In a world where public hospitals stall for lack of spare parts while V’ren shuttles stitch the sky, anything short of direct intervention feels like an insult. If Missouri can feed its people and keep its lights on, why not Lagos, or Dhaka, or Boston’s crumbling outer districts. If the High Lord will not use his ships and memory cores to reroute history in our favor, why should we roll out the carpet when he arrives.
The third is the uncomfortable reading, which is that Marmaduke may simply be telling the truth about the limits of his mandate.
The legal and political structure that underpins his authority remains, for many, a blur of “Freehold this” and “Trust that.” Yet the key fact is simple. His power is contractual and territorial. The farms, safehouses, schools, and clinics that feature in glowing long form profiles exist because people in a defined region signed specific papers with specific obligations. The V’ren, likewise, accepted his role as High Lord in exchange for sanctuary, land, and a path toward self government.
No one else has done that. Not Manchester. Not Mexico City. Not Boston’s school board.
It is easier to demand that he “fix” a century of coastal neglect than to admit what that would imply: some version of handing him real authority, or at least sitting across from him and his lawyers to negotiate it. Few local elites appear ready for that conversation.
So what is left, if he will not be our electrician in chief.
Possibly something less satisfying and more necessary. A series of rooms where logistics professionals talk to each other across borders. Auditoriums where young people, both human and V’ren, compare notes on what “dignity” actually looks like in practice. Quiet side meetings where municipalities that already want help ask how Missouri built its grid and what it cost them politically to do so.
None of this will make for the dramatic before and after images social media craves. A road resurfaced is dull. A teacher paid on time is not cinematic. A port that simply works is a non-story.
It may be that the real value of Marmaduke’s tour, if it has any, lies in forcing the rest of us to decide what we actually want from him.
If we want a savior, we will be disappointed. If we want a contract, we will have to offer one. If all we want is a mirror held up to the gap between what works in Missouri and what collapses at home, then perhaps a man who tells us, in advance, that he will not fix everything is exactly the visitor we deserve.
