by Mainak Dhar
If anybody found it ironic that trucks captured from Red Guards killed in battle were being to transport these gestures of goodwill from the Central Committee, they kept their opinion to themselves. All the crates were brought into a field near the Council building and a huge crowd had gathered in no time, jostling to see what they contained.
Up until now, Arjun had been silent, but now he pulled Arun and Alice aside. Arun bristled a bit at having to share decision making with Alice, but a sideways glance from Arjun shut him up.
'Arun, let me and my men inspect all the crates thoroughly. Only when we are sure that they are safe should we let people get at them. Also, the last thing we need is a stampede, so get these people home and tell them that we'll sort through what's been sent and get back to them tomorrow.'
Arun agreed and the orders were soon passed out, and most of Wonderland spent that night in eager anticipation of what they would find in the crates the next morning.
***
'Alice, I am requesting you to help us. All we need is a small sign from you. We have more than a dozen old combat aircraft almost operational and every day we are bleeding the Red Guards dry. Our battle for liberation got a second life thanks to you and your struggle in the Deadland, but now the Red Guard propaganda says you have surrendered. They are dropping leaflets saying that Wonderland has accepted the Central Committee's terms. Just issue a statement saying it isn't so.'
'General Konrath, please give me some time to think things over.'
Alice was seething with frustration and anger at her helplessness. The American General was not asking for much, but Alice knew that having accepted Arun as the leader of Wonderland and having decided to play along with the treaty, she could not even do that much.
Vince said from beside her, 'Alice, it would be easy. There was a webcam on board the helicopter we captured. Danish and I could rig it up and we could upload your message to one of the American servers.'
Danish slammed his fist onto the desk in frustration. 'We could, but then Arun would go crazy. He comes here every day supposedly to twiddle with the radio, but I know he’s keeping tabs on what we do.'
Alice was looking at the screen.
'It's not just Arun and what he may think. The Central Committee would certainly see this as an act of war, and they would react.'
Danish looked up at her. 'Alice, since when you have been worried about what the Central Committee may or may not think?'
Alice walked out, a bitter tinge to her voice as she replied, 'I was always happy to fight to the end. But I had people I could count on, people I knew would fight by my side. How does one fight to free people who have come to like the comfort of slavery?'
***
Chen was sitting in his office, which had been shifted to the warehouse, and which he now shared with Li. He hated her stench, but then he had not been given any option in the matter. The one saving grace was that Li was usually out training most of the day, at the firing range or practicing close combat with her Biters. Their presence at the base was still secret, and when he went back to the cafeteria in the main building for meals he would get questioning glances from his young conscripts – questions he could not answer. Hu had expressly forbidden him from revealing the real identity of Li and her Biters. The official line, which Chen parroted, was that they were a secret Special Operations unit flown in from the Mainland. He knew he would have got many uncomfortable questions had the peace treaty not been announced. At least there was to be no more fighting in this accursed war. Chen had no idea what Hu and his masters in the Central Committee were planning, but he just hoped that he could go back home and no longer have to stain his hands with the blood of innocents; both his young men and the civilians of Wonderland.
He saw a video conference call incoming on his tablet. It was Hu.
'Greetings, Comrade General. Our token of goodwill has reached the people of Wonderland. When the time is right, I will have another shipment for them.'
Chen was a career soldier, and understood the cut and thrust of combat, but he had no idea what political machinations lay behind Hu's latest moves.
'Comrade Commissar, dare I ask what we plan to do after that and what the orders for my men are in terms of combat readiness?'
He could see Hu smile and share a glance with someone off camera. No doubt some political officers were on hand to judge if Chen's revolutionary fervor was intact or not.
'Comrade General, we are still very much at war. The people's revolution cannot be sustained as long as counter-revolutionary forces spread the lie of democracy in savage places like Wonderland. The false idea of democracy died in the flames of The Rising. Our people need to know that there is only way to assure stability and progress, and that is for us to join together under the benevolent guidance of the Central Committee.’
Chen's eyes were glazing over. A year ago, he might have been more tolerant of such propaganda, no doubt uttered for the benefit of the political officer watching Hu, but months of torture and ‘re-education' in the camp had left Chen with little patience for such platitudes. Hu looked at him, a new hard glint in his eyes.
'Comrade General, do you remember our own history and how we were so addicted to opium that we did not see the occupiers for who they really were? The people of Wonderland will learn a similar lesson, but it will be too late for them to do much about it.'
***
The opening of the crates attracted thousands of people, and Arun triumphantly stood on stage displaying what had been sent as if this were yet another vindication of his decision. Alice was accompanied by Arjun and Satish, their contempt scarcely disguised on their faces.
Each crate had two lines stenciled on its side in large red letters:
'For our brothers and sisters in Wonderland.’
'Made in China.'
When the first crate was opened, Arun took out what seemed to be a bunch of plastic toys. Brightly colored cars, stuffed animals, and dolls in frilly dresses. Alice could hear gasps in the audience and more than one child demanded to take a closer look. Growing up in the Deadland, Alice had never really had the luxury of toys, but had heard about how children before The Rising had played with them. Seeing these bright new toys made her think of all she had missed and would never really have. Even in the relative stability of Wonderland, the best any family had managed was to fashion its own crude toys from scavenged items. For the parents of the children gathered in front of the stage, many of whom had wished they could give their children a real child’s life instead of one filled with death and violence, there was no mistaking the excitement in their eyes and voices.
The buzz of excitement was renewed when the second crate was opened. Inside were fresh clean clothes, a blackboard and chalk for the school, plates and cutlery, and finally a huge supply of canned meat and food that Arun declared would form the new menu at McDonald's. At one stroke, Wonderland had regained many of the comforts that most of its inhabitants had almost forgotten.
The last crate contained the biggest prize of all: a large, slim screen.
'It's a TV,’ whispered Satish.
Alice had never seen a TV before, and Arun read out some instructions that came with the TV, saying that there would be a daily broadcast for the people of Wonderland in the evening.
That evening, almost all of Wonderland gathered in front of the large TV, and there were squeals of delight as the programming began. There was a children's cartoon, something about a mouse Alice had never heard of, and then something that Satish called a rerun of an old soap opera, which to Alice merely seemed to be overweight and painted women flirting with men. But to the gathered crowd it seemed to be a miracle. For more than fifteen years none of them had watched TV, and they sat glued to it, including the ten minute capsule after the soap opera that consisted of propaganda from the Central Committee about how the ‘people's revolution' was restoring prosperity and civilization.
The next day, Alice and Edwards were strolling down the main stre
et, watching people queue up outside McDonald's for a taste of the canned meat, when they spied two young boys fighting over a plastic car. Edwards shook his head sadly.
'We never learn. Once more we sell our ideals for cheap plastic toys.'
***
SEVEN
The following days fell into a predictable routine. Most people at Wonderland would line up at McDonald’s for lunch and dinner, and soon Arun found himself having to ration the stocks that had been sent. The people of Wonderland wore better clothes than they had in years and when one of the crates was found to contain bottles of shampoo and bars of soap, a small riot had almost erupted to divide up the spoils. Alice was riding her bike by the school and she saw a group of children walk by, all freshly scrubbed, wearing bright clean clothes and carrying new toys. She remembered her own childhood spent hiding and fighting in the Deadland, taking a bath once in a week, and wearing the same clothes until they wore out. She stopped to see the laughing children and wondered if Arun had been right after all. The Central Committee was certainly not demanding that people be sent to work in labor camps and so far they had made no aggressive moves towards the borders of Wonderland. Was peace with the Mainland indeed possible?
While Arun and his supporters reveled in their newfound comforts, Alice found herself totally out of place in this new world. The only life she had known had been one of fighting to survive. With no war to fight, how did warriors fit back into a society that had passed them by?
Arjun was hardly happy with the way Arun had compromised with the Central Committee, but he was too busy maintaining order within Wonderland. New clothes, toys and the TV meant that people had more things to covet and fight over. Satish sat brooding in the Looking Glass with Danish most of the time. He, like Alice, had defined himself by the war he had been fighting, and now he was just as out of place as her. Many of his men had wives and families in Wonderland and quickly lapsed into civilian life, but Satish stayed at the Looking Glass, his soldier’s instinct telling him that this peace was to be ephemeral.
Meanwhile, Vince and Edwards were plotting in their own unique ways.
Vince had taken to spending most of his time tinkering with the captured helicopter, which he guarded jealously. Alice rode by the airfield, hoping to find someone to talk to. Vince was loading the helicopter up with cans of fuel.
‘Hi, Vince. What are you doing?’
Vince wiped the sweat from his brow.
‘Alice, there’s a war on, and if the people of Wonderland are going to ignore it, then I may as well try and get to America and join up with our forces there.’
‘How on earth will you get there? It’s the other side of the world.’
Vince tapped inside the cockpit. There was a small computer, its screen covered in numbers and letters.
‘This bird has a pretty good navigational system and a computer that uses old GPS co-ordinates. Wait until General Konrath and the others find out that some of the old GPS satellites are still operational. We could sure use some of that technology.’
Alice looked back at Vince blankly; she had no idea what he was talking about.
Vince explained, ‘I’ve run the calculations. This bird can fly about 3000 kilometers one way on its internal fuel and the external tanks if I fly slow and easy. If I carry some extra fuel with me, I may be able to stretch that by five hundred kilometers or more. I’ll have to stop along the way since I can’t fly that long non-stop, but I could feasibly reach Thailand or Israel in a couple of days, depending on the direction I fly. Given that the Middle East is still stewing in its radioactive juices, my best bet may be to fly east.’
He took out a map he had found in the cockpit and showed it to Alice. It was the first time Alice had seen a map of the world and she was both fascinated by both the world’s vastness, and the tiny insignificance of their minute patch of land.
‘Vince, even if you make it to this place called Bangkok, your home in America is still far away across the ocean. How will you get there?’
Vince put away the map and grumbled. ‘I’m still working on it, but I am not going to sit around here and become a slave to the Central Committee all over again.’
Alice’s next stop was the Looking Glass. Danish and Satish had stepped out for a breath of fresh air and she found Edwards inside. He was furiously tapping away on the keyboard. When he heard Alice enter, he quickly turned around to see who was there.
‘Thank God, it’s just you.’
‘What are you doing, Doctor?’
Edwards pointed to the screen, on which he had written a seemingly incomprehensible sequence of letters. On the table in front of him was a crumpled and dirty piece of paper that he seemed to be copying the letters from.
‘I don’t know if I will ever get back to America or not, but I don’t need to be there physically to share some of what I’ve learnt. As Danish would have told you, we’re restoring many of the old servers there and many websites have cropped up. Many of them are being used to pass messages between the resistance forces there, but I found that at least a couple of my old colleagues are still alive and well. I had written down some of the things I had learnt about the structure of the virus in the Central Committee’s labs and am posting on a message board one of my old colleagues in America had visited.’
‘Doctor, could they make a cure or vaccine with that information?’
Edwards shook his head.
‘No, they would not be able to do that with this alone. To do that they would need a real blood sample, but at least all this knowledge will not be lost.’
He pressed a key and sat back.
‘Well, that’s gone now. What news of Wonderland?’
Alice sat down. ‘I don’t know how to describe it. People seem happier than I’ve ever seen them. They’ve got better food, cleaner clothes, the children have real toys to play with and they watch that box every night that seems to bring them such pleasure. Maybe I’m the one who is wrong. All I knew is fighting and distrust. Maybe I am the one who needs to change.’
Edwards smiled as he looked at Alice. Fierce Biter Queen or not, she was at her core still a young girl trying to figure out which was the right path to take.
‘Alice, you don’t need to change at all. I’ve seen the world torn apart once before when it looked like we had everything we needed to be happy. The point is that the more people have, the more they crave. That greed is what led us to ruin once before, and I’m afraid that Arun and the others never learnt that lesson.’
Alice asked the next question with a bit of hesitation, not wanting to seem totally ignorant.
‘Doctor, this TV they watch so much – I don’t see what’s so interesting about watching some videos of people pretending to be what they aren’t.’
Edwards laughed, his wrinkles creasing across his face.
‘My dear, you have a way of perceiving things well beyond your age. The sad reality is that what they consider entertainment on TV is like a drug that dulls their ability to see the real world outside. The world where a bloody war still rages.’
Danish and Arjun entered the Looking Glass. Both looked quite agitated.
‘Alice, we need to get to the Council building now. Arun’s called a cabinet meeting and we need to be there as soon as we can.’
‘What’s going on?’
Arjun looked at Edwards.
‘Doctor, it seems the Central Committee has sent a new message. They gave Arun a tablet, so he gets their postings directly, but we can see what they’re saying here in the Looking Glass. Bring up their Intranet.’
When Edwards brought up the screen, they all read the announcement with a growing sense of dread.
The Central Committee had requested that the government of Wonderland cease all communications with the counter-revolutionaries in the American Deadland as such actions were detrimental to the creation of a peaceful people’s revolution and would come in the way of further fraternal relations between the people of Wonderland and the Mainla
nd.
Edwards whispered, ‘Maybe they saw my posting.’
Arjun pretended to be throwing up, and Alice smiled.
‘Arjun, it’s the standard ridiculous propaganda they throw out.’
Danish just stood there, a grim expression on his face.
‘Alice, I think Arun intends to do as they say.’
***
'You cannot let them control the Looking Glass!'
Alice had never seen Danish this angry before. His cheeks had turned red and his breathing was jagged. Worried about the old man's health, Alice gently took his hand and asked him to sit down. As much as she shared Danish's sentiments, she knew that this was an argument they had little chance of winning. Over the months, the earlier flood of visitors to the Looking Glass had dried to a trickle. When the threat of imminent Red Guard attacks had reduced, people had almost inevitably started focusing on domestic squabbles and issues within Wonderland instead of worrying about a war that seemed distant. If anything, support for the Looking Glass would have gone down over the last few days. As Edwards had whispered to Alice, people would much rather watch inane soap operas than bother about the unpleasant realities of faraway wars.
Arun had himself spent a lot of time in the Looking Glass, and Alice knew that he was fond of Danish, so he was trying his best to placate the old man instead of forcing a decision.
'Danish, they do not want us to shut it down. We are still free to see the Intranet from the Mainland and we can continue to use our internal radio transmissions. All they ask is that we not have any contact with the Americans and that their technicians will come over to install some firewalls.'
Danish spat on the ground.
'Arun, listen to yourself! Today they are trying to control what we see; tomorrow they will try and control what we think. Soon we will become their puppets. They could not win this war through arms, but now they will conquer us with their cheap toys, clothes and cosmetics.'
