Outside Context Problem: Book 02 - Under Foot

by Christopher Nuttall

  “This is absolute nonsense!”

  Karen kept her face blank as Daisy threw her copy of the underground newspaper onto her desk. She’d heard a reporter joke once that said that a newspaper could only be said to be a success when its enemies read it over breakfast, even before writing pages of bile and angry rebuttals. If that was the true measure of success, then Committees of Correspondence had succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of newspaper editors. Its worst enemy was reading it in her office!

  “They’re completely defying the ban on publishing anything without clearing it through my office,” Daisy continued, her voice furious. “Can’t we do anything to stop them?”

  Karen decided that it was a rhetorical question and said nothing. The story in question was damaging, but hardly as embarrassing as other stories that had appeared in the newspaper, or on the Internet. It seemed that a group of Order Policemen had been captured by the local resistance, stripped naked and left tied up for recovery. They might not have been found in time to save their lives if someone hadn’t phoned in a tip to their headquarters, which had sent out a rapid reaction force to investigate. They’d discovered the poor policemen in terrible shape. By accident or design, they’d been left on the verge of hypothermia and certain death. The story was already all over the country and had been rapidly embroidered to include ant hills, honey-coated policemen and itching powder. The version in the underground newspaper was, as far as she knew, fairly accurate. It was also fairly tame.

  “They’re making fun of us,” Daisy snapped. Karen suspected she would have been happier if the Order Police had been attacked and brutally slaughtered. She could have had her press corps turn them into innocent victims of aggression, or some other comforting lie. It might even have worked. People would have felt sorry for the dead, but not for humiliated fools and idiots. According to the underground newspaper, every member of the Order Police force had been sleeping when the resistance force had attacked and tied them all. What had they been thinking? “What can we do to bury this story?”

  Karen winced inwardly. Daisy actually wanted an answer this time. “We ignore it,” she suggested, finally. It helped that media relations had never been one of her interests. Her handful of exposures to reporters had taught her that they could never be trusted, even slightly. They took a person’s life and turned it into a travesty in order to sell newspapers, or market television channels, or even for fun. “The story cannot be improved, so leave it alone. We won’t even bother with a denial. Let them think that the story is so worthless that we can’t be bothered denying that it ever happened.”

  “I suppose that that would work,” Daisy said, reluctantly. “Have you heard from the teams assigned to tracking down the source of this…piece of toilet paper?”

  Karen shook her head. “They’re using a combination of the internet and handheld deliveries to distribute it,” she said. “A handful of distributors were picked up, but when they were interrogated, it turned out that they knew nothing about who was actually writing the articles, or compiling them together. They were just street kids out to earn a few candy bars, not hardened resistance fighters.”

  “Damn it,” Daisy swore. “Why the hell are they disobeying orders?”

  Karen could have answered that question, but she held her peace. Daisy had moved from position to position where she was required to manage, not to actually know anything about the nuts and bolts of her position. She’d had a talent for maximising profit and public exposure and she’d used that to benefit herself as well as her current employers. She couldn’t see the difference between herself and the company – the state was her, in her own mind. She might have made an excellent manager, but she knew very little about people.

  The aliens had rounded up thousands of people and told them to work for them, or else, with the twin examples of the detention camps and the Walking Dead to keep everyone in line. Some of the collaborators truly believed that the aliens were building a paradise on Earth and were willing to do anything for them; others were reluctant servants and only worked for them because there was no other choice. They could hardly be expected to give their all when all it would get them was a death sentence from the resistance. Some of them had been named and shamed in the Committees of Correspondence. Others knew that their time would come eventually.

  And then there were the people outside the alien government. They didn’t regard the alien government, even under the former Vice President, as being legitimate. They had barely recognised the Federal Government as being legitimate. The more extreme ones had stocked up on guns and ammunition, convinced that the Feds were coming to impose jackbooted tyranny on the entire United States. They were the ones who promoted talk radio, internet freedom, gun rights and keeping the Federal Government as limited as possible. They certainly didn’t feel any particular urge to follow the alien government wherever it led. They would hardly follow Daisy’s orders unless they thought that they were in their own best interests.

  But Daisy couldn’t comprehend that. To her, all of her employees were there to do her bidding and be rewarded for it. They could think for themselves, provided they thought of her and her wishes first; truly independent thinking was for her and her alone. The idea that some of them might defy her was alien. The idea that men and women would risk their lives, jobs and freedom to strike back meant nothing to her, for it didn’t exist in her mindset. It didn’t matter that she represented a government that was rapidly becoming loathed by the entire country, or that she had the aliens backing her up. She couldn’t compel obedience from the entire country.

  “They are not yet convinced that ultimate victory is certain,” she said, finally. The problem was that far too many people knew that the official line was nonsense. They might see the endless news broadcasts – all cleared by Daisy personally – and the stream of old movies and soap operas as nothing more than an attempt to distract the population from the truth. The official broadcasts somehow never included the men and women forced from their homes, or taken away by the Order Police, or the massive refugee camps in almost every state. “You need to convince them that the new government is working in their interests.”

  But that was another of her blind spots, Karen knew. She couldn’t understand the need to negotiate with those she considered inferior. She was good at negotiating with her equals or superiors, but inferiors existed to carry out her orders, nothing else. The idea of having to convince people that she was right, and that she was working for their best interests as well as her own…it made no sense to her. In her world, people worked like drones, while she was the Queen Bee.

  “The new government is working in their interests,” Daisy snapped, angrily. It was said. It was, as far as she was concerned, true. “We have to clamp down on filth like this” – she shook the Committees of Correspondence angrily – “and make sure that they are only told what we want them to know!”

  Karen silently gave her points for honesty as she carried on. “And now they know about the Arabs,” Daisy continued. “Why don’t they realise that there is no other choice?”

  “Because the American population, as a whole, dislikes Arabs,” Karen reminded her. “The Arabs are the enemy. The Arabs are fanatics who beat women for wearing makeup, treat everyone not like them as dirt or worse and fly jumbo jets into buildings to kill thousands of innocent Americans. The Arabs strap on suicide belts and kill American boys and girls who are actually trying to help them. The Arabs use oil to jerk us around. The Arabs…I don’t think there could have been a worse response if they’d decided to bring in the Chinese Army!”

  Daisy’s eyes met hers for a second. Karen wondered if she’d gone too far. She braced herself for a reprimand, or instant dismissal. Dismissal wouldn’t have been so bad, except the President would have been denied his window into what the enemy were planning. What if they decided she had to join the maids, or be converted into one of the Walking Dead? What if…?

  “That is beside the point,” Daisy said, f
inally. Karen felt herself shaking inwardly, as if she’d just been in combat and survived a near-miss. “The point is that our superiors have decreed that the Arabs are to be used and used they shall be. Our job is to ensure that the American population accepts their role in securing Chicago.”

  Good luck with that, Karen thought, coldly. The internet was ringing with resounding denunciations of the Arabs. Soldiers who had fought Arabs in the Gulf and Iraq Wars were telling everyone how useless Arab troops were and how easy it would be to defeat them. Others were pledging to head to Chicago to join the fight, or to launch attacks against alien bases in the rest of the country. Arab-Americans were swearing to take up arms and fight their former countrymen, claiming that they’d moved to America to get away from tyrants and religious fundamentalists. It didn’t matter what kind of positive spin Daisy tried to put on it. The aliens might have been better off if they’d simply nuked Chicago into radioactive rubble.

  “Get in touch with the producers,” Daisy ordered. “I want them to launch a series of programs exploring atrocities committed by the insurgents against the civil population. I want images of dead people, people clearly killed by human weapons, and testimonials from raped women. If you can’t get them in time, use actors and special effects. I want tearful widows and weeping children, the children of policemen who were killed just trying to do their duty. Make it clear that Chicago is beyond governance and needs to be reformed by main force.”

  “Yes, Director,” Karen said. It wouldn’t make any difference, no matter how many tear-jerking stories Daisy found, or had invented for the program. The alien government had spent its last reserves of goodwill a long time ago. The Hollywood producers had no trouble making up the facts if they couldn’t find real facts, or if the real facts said the exact opposite, but she doubted that anyone would believe it, even if they put the best-known actors to work on a movie depicting the events…

  An idea occurred to her and she smiled. “Why don’t we hire some famous actors to appear in movies explaining just what happened?” She said. “We could get them to play people caught up in Chicago and bill it as real life.”

  “An excellent idea,” Daisy said. “See to it.”

  Karen smiled. They’d get Shirley McCaw to play a rape victim – she was a famous actor with an average amount of talent, although no one ever looked past her breasts – and it would look realistic, too realistic. People would look, recognise the actor, and realise that it was all acting. The images the actors would produce would crowd out the real images, such as they were, and convoy the impression that they were all faked. It might give the propaganda department a black eye. Best of all, it couldn’t be blamed on her.

  “I will,” she promised. “Is there any other business?”

  “I’m due to address the reporting party this afternoon,” Daisy said. “I’ll hear a report from you afterwards. Later.”

  Karen walked out of Daisy’s office and somehow managed to get back to her apartment before collapsing. She hadn’t realised just how badly she’d been sweating, or just how close she’d come to stepping over the line. Daisy could have called in the Order Police and had her thrown into one of the detention camps, or into the brothel the Order Policemen used when they were off duty. She’d heard enough whispered horror stories to know that she’d be better off committing suicide than going in there as a prisoner. She’d just be another piece of meat.

  She thought, again, about simply fleeing the Green Zone. The President had told her that there was someone in Washington she could contact, but little else. Karen suspected she knew how they intended to get her out, if she decided to flee, yet it would put an end to her usefulness. How long could she remain in the Green Zone without going mad, or being discovered and taken off to become one of the Walking Dead?

  There was a tap on the door and she looked up to see one of the maids, Jessica. She gave Karen a wink and placed a copy of the underground newspaper on the table. Karen almost fainted, before realising that she was being sent a message. She wasn't alone after all. She picked up the newspaper, read it again, and then shredded it. Alone or not, keeping it was too much of a risk.

  Smiling, she went back to work.

  ***

  Rumour had had it that the reporters were about to be addressed by the Vice President, but it was only the Director of Human Resources. Abigail wasn’t blind to the underlying implications. The Vice President of the United States was a powerful figure, even if he was normally about as useful as tits on a bull. If the aliens weren't showing him off at every opportunity, as well as using his network of contacts to try to bring the Republican Party Leadership under control, it suggested that something had gone wrong with the conversion process. He might be struggling to break free of his conditioning, or perhaps he was going slowly mad, torn between two worlds. She had wondered about trying to sneak in for a private interview, but she had a feeling that that kind of investigative journalism was discouraged. Two reporters had asked probing questions at the first press conference and they’d been escorted out and disappeared. No one knew what had happened to them, but everyone had drawn the right lesson.

  “As you know, Chicago is on the verge of falling into anarchy,” Daisy said. She would never have made a good public speaker. With her position, she didn’t have to be good. The reporters would have lapped up everything she said and painted it as the most important political speech since the Gettysburg Address. “We have prepared a force to enter the city, crush the terrorists, and restore law and order across the city.”

  There was a long pause. Everyone knew what she meant, yet no one dared ask any questions. They knew what would have happened to them if they had. “This force must be presented as favourably as possible to the world,” Daisy continued. “You have all been chosen to embed with the force to explain to the country exactly what is going on and why we embarked upon this course of action. This will be a great honour and you should all be proud to play your part.”

  A chance to have my boobs shot off, Abigail thought, coldly. She wasn't blind to those implications either. The aliens might have several motives in sending Arab troops into an American city. In her experience, whenever someone made a seemingly-stupid decision, it tended to have a hidden motive. The aliens were doing something very newsworthy and attempting to cover it up, yet the cover was so torn that it was barely there. Could it be…that they were trying to hide something else behind the assault on Chicago? If that was the case, then what?

  Daisy was speaking again and Abigail hastily dragged her attention back to her. “You will be invited to watch as the terrorists are taken away and placed in detention camps, allowing Chicago to return to being a flourishing city once again,” she said. “You will see the best we have in action, restoring order to the streets…”

  She droned on and on, repeating herself…or maybe just hammering the message home. Abigail was thoroughly sick of it even before one of the minders took over and started to lecture them on safety and making sure that everything they wrote passed inspection. She wasn't sure why they were even bothering. In Iraq, reporters had filed stories from the Green Zone – the first Green Zone – or even safer cities to the south, claiming all the while to be at the front lines. The media had almost cost America the war. Here, with the aliens dominating the entire country, they could make up stories to their heart’s content and who would question them?

  The bloggers, of course, she thought. They would write their own stories. The reliable ones were treated as more truthful than the official press, a trend that had been developing even before the invasion. In a sense, she was a blogger now herself. She smiled to herself and silently started to compose her next story for Committees of Correspondence. She’d be a good little girl and go where they told her to go and write what they told her to write – at least in the daytime. At night, she would write the real story and transmit it to the printers. The country would know what was really going on in Chicago. She looked back at the minder and smiled inwardly. H
e didn’t really have the imagination to be a good minder. He should have watched them all like hawks. Instead, he’d made passes and manipulated careers, ensuring that he was the most hated man on the press team…

  She smiled. She’d just had a nasty idea. A very nasty idea.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Mannington, Virginia, USA

  Day 138

  “They couldn’t free him from the conditioning?”

  “Apparently not,” the President said. The report, displayed prominently on the screen in front of him, was devastatingly clear. They’d taken the Walking Dead man captured nearby and subjected him to a series of tests in an underground hospital. The hospital had been built on the assumption that it would be helping to rebuild society after a nuclear war or a biological catastrophe, but there was nothing wrong with its facilities. The Walking Dead man had been tested thoroughly.

  He ran through the report. They’d been lucky, in a sense, because they had a medical record for the man before he’d become one of the Walking Dead. He’d been a Pentagon bureaucrat – absurdly, the President found that he wished he knew the man’s name – who had apparently volunteered to remain behind in Washington even after the Pentagon had been destroyed. His heroism had been betrayed and, after his capture, he’d been brainwashed. His final service to his country was to serve as a research subject. The President silently promised himself that his sacrifice would be remembered and ran through the remainder of the report.

  The Doctors had found nothing odd in his body, but when they’d examined his brain, they’d hit the jackpot. They’d found a small implant located in his brain, somehow exerting a baleful influence on his mental state. Tests had revealed that he’d lost nothing of his intelligence or knowledge; it had just been diverted towards alien ends and perhaps enhanced by their technology. The hospital’s psychologist – not a speciality the President normally had any time for – had concluded that the Walking Dead were insanely loyal to the aliens, fanatically convinced that they were always in the right. It suggested that they had all become utterly devoted servants. The President couldn’t fault the analysis, but the implications were disturbing. Humans spoke of their country, right or wrong; he’d certainly never considered betraying America. The Walking Dead might feel the same way about the aliens.