Through the Killing Glass (13 page)

'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 street, 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.'

***

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 Mainland.

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.'

The audience
stirred.

Vince said,
'Arun, you know that the war rages in the American Deadland, a renewed struggle
inspired by your own actions in creating Wonderland. I have lived in the
Central Committee's labor camps and I can tell you that they see us as no more
than pawns and slave labor. Every concession we make towards them makes us
weaker in their eyes, and you know what they said about bullies, don't you?
They feed on weakness.'