A brief trek back through time.
When humans first began negotiations with the Convention of Sophonts, two problems arose: the problem of legal representation, and the problem of names.
The Convention, consisting as it does of creatures with wildly different physiology and communication apparatus, cannot call species by the name they call themselves. If it did, there would be dozens of species all called "squelch" or "buzz." Instead, it is the policy of the Convention to translate the name of a species' governing body. One of the Convention's founding species was united under The Regulation of Quotidian Affairs, and another by the Tensor Equations Describing Relational Manifolds. Thus, the "Quotidians" and the "Tensors." So, what would humans call themselves?
No, not "Ones of the Humus," we've already got one of those (a kind of annelid worm). And of course we already have a "Members of the Populus," (eusocial rotifers). The word "Person" itself came via Latin from the Etruscan word for "mask," possibly from Ancient Greek "that-which-is-toward-the-face."1 But it was thought on Earth that using this derivation would be too Euro-centric. Alright then, what was the name of humanity's species-wide government?
Oh dear.
No, the Convention would not welcome ambassadors from the European Union, the United States, or any other scruffy polity that could only scratch together the consensus of a mere continent-full of citizens. According to Convention policy, a species could send the representative of only a single organization. Said organization to be able to legitimately claim to represent the interests of more than half of the population of the species in question. Exceptions for symbiotes and hive-mind to be made on a case-by-case basis.
The only choice turned out to be the United Nations. All the UN had to do was pretend to represent most of the humans on their version of Earth, and all the humans had to do was pretend to respect the UN.
Thus the official name "Nationals" was given to humans. This "nation" describes a way that humans have of thinking themselves around the limits placed on them by kin-selection and reciprocity. If I'm not related to you and I don't owe you anything, why should I give a damn? This is a problem common to the many unfortunate species who cannot naturally clone themselves. The solution of "nationality" is to pretend that one is part of an enormous family, united by some combination of shared ancestry, common custom, and language. Legal and financial incentives may be bolted on to this emotional core, and it helps to have a shared enemy to hate.
The "nation" is not a concept unique to humans, of course, and it is not the only large-scale social structure that this species has evolved. But the Convention had to call the new member species something. There already was a species called "the Unity" (a very interesting collection of bryozoans), but anyway.
Speaking of nations. Two powerful ones at the time of the Swiss Signal were called "America" and "China." Neither even qualified as a "nation" under the above definition, but setting that problem aside, they were bitter enemies. Each blamed the other for interfering with its ambitions, and things might have gotten very ugly had the Convention not made contact.
News of this event broke when Koen was flying between Rotterdam and Buenos Aires, and so it might be said that he picked the absolute worst time in recent history to emigrate out of the America-led "West." When he boarded the plane, relations between West and everybody else were at their nadir because, by the time Koen landed, humanity knew it was not alone, and things were improving.
They had to. A vast, powerful, and wealthy The Other loomed over the horizon, vast, powerful, and wealthier than worlds. Politicians in every human government froze mid-missile-bombardment. They swallowed, grinned, and shook hands with the desperate eyes of brawling children interrupted by the arrival of an adult. Golly gee, we were just playing. Honest.
Meanwhile, furious calculations were made. China and India each represented a little less than a fifth of the species. The United States, European Union, and British Commonwealth could, with a little paperwork, make a similar claim. Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Brazil, and Bangladesh probably weren't going to agree to united with any of the above.
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Thus it was that China and West found the spirit of compromise, trust, and fellow-feeling in their hearts. The UN Security Council suddenly found itself with permanent seats for India and China. Politicians, still grinning and now sweating quite a lot, did their best not to set off any red flags in the Convention. Famine? What famine? The Collapse of Russia? A folk festival. We do it every year. And those refugees were just about to join the labor force, we swear.
Of course, governments everywhere immediately started campaigns to increase their population, hoping to grab a bigger percentage of the human total. This was a terrible idea is more ways than one, but the problems it were still thirty years off, and the nonhumans promised they'd help reverse climate change.
Anyway.
Koen knew how to support himself abroad. He had long ago learned to make friends by cooking for people. The trick worked in Buenos Aires, and three months later it worked in Brasília, where he bribed immigration officials with stamppot. From there, Koen made it into the residences of wealthy Brazilian politicians, then ambassadors, and finally the Chinese ambassador.
He was supposed to help the man's son get into a good biotech university, but it turned out Koen's English was the reason he'd gotten the job. His employers kept wanting him to "help the boy acclimatize to British food." Koen liked cooking, so he watched some videos and did what he could.
Koen only gradually realized that he was preparing the children of defectors. There was fashion for defectors, after China had re-opened its borders but before it had made people want to stay within them. Only Chinese state security could slow the exodus, and Koen didn't come from a country that tripped their algorithms.
Koen decided he was fine with that. He was happy to go with the flow. Until he met Laura. It went like this.
Koen had made tea for his employer's very important guest: the next ambassador to Brazil. He was washing dishes when the summons arrived, given by a white-faced maid.
Koen bowed himself into the drawing room, doing his best Jeeves impression, and found himself being scowled at by a woman younger than he was.
"Your scones," she had said in an excellent Scottish accent, "are inauthentic."
Laura represented a needle-pointed insult and she knew it. Her boss, the rapidly-rising Mr. Li, suspected that the current Ambassador to Brazil planned to defect. Rather than alert state security, Li had flown early to this posting and reached out. How delightful to make your acquaintance. We really must meet and talk before your posting ends. Really. We must.
But no, Mr. Li was far too busy to watch a traitor sweat in person. He would send his twenty-something assistant instead.
Laura played her role well. She had been sitting with Koen's boss for only ten minutes, and had already sharply criticized his personal habits, philosophy, and taste. Fermented, cream-tainted tea was served. Did the would-be-defector think he could impress her? It should be milk, not cream, in a pot so that the dairy would only be added in the case that the guest did not prefer lemon, which Laura did. She bit into a scone. And this fat cookie? Where were the currents? The crumb wasn't properly flaky. Who in this house had lived for years in Scotland? Not the chef, she was certain. Bring the impostor out now.
Koen had a lot of practice thinking in a way that kept his heart-rate low. He didn't mind his work being so aggressively critiqued. How could he learn to make good scones unless someone told him what was wrong with his current recipe? In the diatribe that followed he took copious notes. Currents = very important. More butter. Fold dough. Research how to clot cream.
"Where are you actually from?" Laura demanded.
"Holland," said Koen. "Rotterdam."
"You lied to your employer?"
"No, he just sort of assumed that I was from the UK because of my accent," Koen said. "He asked me to make tea for him every day and I did it."
"Idiot," Laura turned to the cringing capitalist with the air of a torturer about to administer a light slap. "Do you think Westerners are all the same? Is Europe just one big country to you? 'British' and 'Dutch' are totally different. Perhaps you'll one day be given the opportunity to learn that firsthand. But not any time soon." She stood, leaving the scone unfinished. Koen determined to do better.
His boss burbled thank yous.
"We'll be in touch," Laura told Koen, and left.
It was a good speech, and Laura was proud of it. Later, however, when she related this story later to her boss, Mr. Li heard 'Dutch' but thought 'Danish.'
"Oh," he said, "that is exiting! Laura, tell this Westerner to come work for me and my wife. Ask him if he can make my home…" he pursed his lips around the word, "hygge."
Laura smiled and tried not to think, idiot.
1Etruscan 𐌘𐌄𐌓𐌔𐌖 (φersu, "mask") and Greek πρόσωπον (prósōpon, "mask").