Secretary-General Immanuel Hansen held a press conference at Luna this week to address a situation the UN had, until now, largely declined to comment on: the buildup of Dominium Hominis pilgrims at UNS Canteloupe, now serving as a makeshift orbital colony station in Pluto space after the vessel’s long-undecided routing was finally resolved toward the outer system. What began as speculation following the Boreas Station arrivals last year has become, per Hansen’s own figures, a considerably larger situation than the twenty-nine individuals that story covered.
Twelve Ships, Eighty-Nine People, Weeks of Waiting
Roughly twelve vessels — ranging from ordinary passenger transports to cargo haulers carrying little beyond people and provisions — have converged on Canteloupe’s docking bay over the preceding weeks, collectively carrying 89 individuals identifying as Dominium Hominis pilgrims. Hansen confirmed more are believed to be en route, with no official count available for how many additional ships or people that figure may eventually include. Several of the twelve have reportedly been holding position at Canteloupe for a couple of weeks already, awaiting a UN response that, before this week, had not been given.
“They came anyway,” Hansen said, when asked why the UN had not turned the ships away outright. “You can debate whether that was wise of them. It happened. We now have a station’s worth of people who are not going anywhere, and the question in front of us was never whether to acknowledge that. It was what to do about it.”
A Date, and Conditions
Hansen stated that the site remains under active investigation and that no unsupervised access will be granted before March 2140. On March 2nd, per a recommendation from CAI, pilgrims present at Canteloupe will be permitted to visit the subsurface facility — in organized groups, accompanied at all times by UNSF personnel, under conditions the Secretary-General’s office has not yet published in full.
“This is not an open door,” Hansen said. “It is a scheduled, supervised, revocable arrangement. Anyone who treats it as anything else — anyone who attempts to bypass supervision, anyone who goes further than what they’re escorted to — will face consequences up to and including imprisonment. That is not a threat. That is the condition under which this happens at all.”
Delisted
In the same conference, Hansen confirmed what Carmen Andrija’s 2137 petition had been formally requesting: Dominium Hominis will be removed from the UN’s list of designated extremist and terrorist organizations, a designation the group has carried since the 2105 raid on its Luna base.
“I’ve watched what this organization has done — and more to the point, what it hasn’t done — for two years now,” Hansen said. “Unarmed arrivals. Full disclosure of intent. No incidents, at Boreas or here. At a certain point continuing to call something a terrorist organization because of what it used to be, rather than what it currently is, stops being caution and starts being dishonesty. I think what we’re watching is a movement that has functionally become a religion. It’s entitled to the same freedom of expression and faith as any other."
"It Belongs to Mankind”
Hansen reaffirmed the position first raised publicly by Dr. George Vesper in 2134: that xenosites and everything recovered from them belong to humanity collectively, not to whichever government or company reaches them first. He went further than Vesper had been willing to on the record, floating a timeline — “perhaps as early as 2148” — for converting the Pluto site into a public museum, and confirming that the Office for Colonial Development is now actively planning permanent surface structures and habitation at Pluto itself, with Canteloupe’s current improvised role as an orbital station treated as the first step of that effort rather than a temporary fix.
”With Us, or Against Us”
The conference’s sharpest moment came unprompted, when Hansen addressed — without naming specific individuals or organizations — what he called “the loud minority who’ve decided CAI itself is the enemy here.”
“You’re entitled to your opinion of CAI. You’re entitled to dislike a recommendation, dislike an outcome, dislike the fact that a system suggested the terms under which people get to visit a site their government is responsible for. What you are not entitled to is treating that disagreement as license to act against this organization, or against the people carrying out its decisions. I’ll say this plainly: you are either with us, or you are against us. That is not a rhetorical distinction. It has consequences, and those consequences have not historically gone well for people on the wrong side of it. So I’ll say this once, generously: come forward, comply, be part of the process — while that’s still the easiest way through this.”
What This Desk Is Watching
Hansen’s closing remarks drew immediate informal criticism from figures associated with the Article Four Coalition, though none would speak on the record before publication. One Luna University source, granted anonymity, characterized the “with us or against us” framing as “the kind of line that reads fine in a transcript and terribly in hindsight,” and noted that CAI’s recommendation was doing a considerable amount of unexamined work in a policy announcement otherwise framed around openness and religious freedom. Whether that tension — expanding rights for one group while sharpening the line against another — becomes a defining feature of the Hansen administration, or a one-time rhetorical flourish, is not yet answerable from this conference alone.
This desk has requested the full text of the March 2nd access conditions from the Secretary-General’s office and will publish them on receipt.