I wrote this piece as a world-building exercise for a work-in-progress—a speculative fiction project in which an outside intelligence studies Earth from afar, categorizing the planet’s political systems during its age of crisis. What began as a fictional exercise quickly took on a sharper edge. It was supposed to be a background document for myself, a tool to help shape the political backdrop of the story I’m building. But as I wrote, it became impossible to ignore how closely this fictional taxonomy mirrors the present-day world . We still hear terms like “First World” and “Third World”—phrases rooted in Cold War alliances and economic shorthand—but those categories no longer describe the world we live in. Democratic erosion, climate collapse, plutocracy, expansionism, and systemic violence have reshaped the global order. The old labels simply don’t fit anymore. This piece is still technically fiction—but I’m sharing it here because it feels increasingly difficult to call it ...