by Alec Birri
‘Wanting to preserve a way of life does not make you a Nazi.’
‘It does when it involves building a wall through Bavaria and denying all Muslims north of it the vote – the sooner every fascist has taken the pill, the better. Thank goodness Juan found a way to settle the world and its differences.’
Emil sat. ‘Am I the only one who can see the unsettling in that?’
‘Don’t start, Emil. You know why it has to happen.’
Her husband tutted before resigning. He sighed. ‘Funny how demonised the right has become. Hitler’s legacy, I suppose.’
‘Don’t forget the imperialists that started World War One before that. If you want to know why politics has been shifting left ever since look no further.’
Emil raised an eyebrow. ‘Funny how Hitler was a left-wing fascist.’
Maria didn’t respond.
‘There’s got to be a downside to the left’s seemingly permanent occupation of the moral high ground. It can’t just be a case of left-wing good, right-wing bad. But then everything seems to be black and white these days, and I’m not just talking about racism – the sexes had their political colours nailed to the mast a long time ago. You can’t pick up a newspaper without reading of some poor woman suffering at the hands of a man – everything from rape to the glass ceiling.’
Maria stopped knitting and looked at him. ‘Name me one woman who has started a war?’
Emil didn’t hesitate. ‘Margaret Thatcher.’
Maria didn’t need to think twice, either. ‘Hmmm. A right-wing prime minister kicking a right-wing general out of the Falkland Islands. Once again, I rest my case.’
Emil grimaced. ‘Islas Malvinas.’ He turned back to the view. ‘They’ll have a new prime minister next week.’
‘Hmmm?’
‘The UK. There’s a general election – assuming the population can break itself away from the inter-thing long enough to mark a ballot paper. I don’t know why they’re bothering. Juan’s plans for the world aside, British politics is as stunted as that communist dyke who put him behind bars.’
‘Xenophobia, homophobia and ableism in one breath. Is there no end to my husband’s talents? Sure you don’t want to throw in some sexism for good measure?’ Maria put down her knitting. ‘Seriously, Emil, you must never merge – you’d be in prison before you know it.’
‘Don’t worry. I won’t.’ He paused before adding, ‘Not that it would matter.’
Maria regarded him with obvious concern. ‘What is it?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I know you better than your own mother – God rest her soul – tell me what’s playing on your mind.’
Emil sat back down on the bed and looked at the floor. ‘You’ve been so worried about Juan, I didn’t want to bother you with it.’
‘Bother me? With what?’ Maria got up and sat next to him. ‘Tell me!’
He stared ahead. ‘Gomez has been arrested.’
‘Gomez? Your old boss? On what charge?’
‘War crimes, of course.’
‘War crimes? But the commission granted him an amnesty.’
Emil stood up again, and paced. ‘It means nothing, Maria. The passage of time began weakening that from day one.’
‘What will happen to him?’
‘Ten years if he’s lucky.’
‘Ten years? But he has to be in his nineties!’
‘Age means nothing when it comes to justice.’ Emil stopped pacing. ‘Or should I say, “revenge”.’
Maria let out a sigh. ‘Well, I can’t say I’m too surprised. Even if half of what they say is true, then it’s been a long time coming.’
‘It’s the way things were done in those days, Maria. He’s being judged by today’s standards – not those of 1970s Argentina.’
Maria stood up. ‘Murder is murder and justice is justice no matter how many decades have passed between!’ She narrowed her view of him. ‘You’re hiding something.’ She grabbed his arm. ‘Don’t tell me you’re a murderer too?!’
Emil shook his head. ‘No, Maria. One of the people in this relationship revealed everything about themselves a long time ago.’ The look on his wife’s face told Emil the comment both relieved and annoyed her. ‘But it doesn’t matter if I did or didn’t kill anyone. I was his deputy, and to some, that’s enough.’
Maria relaxed and encouraged her husband to do the same. ‘Darling, the commission isn’t stupid. It can tell the difference between a monster and a victim of circumstance.’
‘Tell that to the office clerk at Auschwitz.’ Maria appeared confused so Emil explained. ‘He received a similar pardon, along with thousands of other Nazis deemed not to have blood on their hands at the end of the war. But guess what? Anyone not dying of old age beforehand still ended their days imprisoned as war criminals. The irony was that if he hadn’t been such a high-profile campaigner against fascism, he probably wouldn’t have been arrested in the first place. No, Maria. It’s not justice; it’s revenge. Nothing more, nothing less.’
Emil went back to the window. ‘And now the right can be arrested just for thinking the unacceptable, I wonder how far the left is prepared to go to settle the score?’ He looked at the people going about their business in the street below. ‘That’s the trouble with having permanent occupation of the moral high ground – sooner or later, someone is going to build an ivory tower on it.’
Chapter Eight
Alex baulked at the suggestion. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘We’re not saying you shouldn’t make the speech, Ms Salib, but given the nature of the audience, our advice is not to deliver it in person.’
Alex took a breath from the cylinder before manoeuvring closer to her advisors. ‘Call yourselves women? You’re a disgrace to the sisterhood.’ She looked at Sunita. ‘Get me someone with balls, and I don’t mean a man.’
‘You’ll still be on a big screen, Al. The impact will be the same.’
Alex growled at Sunita. ‘You too, eh?’ She turned away from the three of them.
Sunita indicated for the advisors to leave, before beckoning her pet. The Capuchin leapt onto a shoulder and they both stared at Alex.
‘The threat’s serious, Al.’
‘And so is the system designed to protect us from it. If you think I’m going to gift a few pathetic neo-Nazis with the propaganda victory of my absence, then they and you can think again.’
‘We can only stop those who choose to merge or connect to the internet.’ Sunita moved to where she could be seen. ‘And now the media has got wind of how the police are managing to arrest so many, the fascists are avoiding both.’
Alex turned her wheelchair away again. ‘Europe has invoked the same emergency powers as us, Suni – anyone refusing to take the pill or merge is arrested.’
‘But they need to be found first, and that’s having to be done the old-fashioned way.’ She moved back in front of Alex and put a hand on the wheelchair. ‘There could be hundreds of them out there.’
Alex pushed on the control. The wheels slipped against the tiles, and the chair stayed put. She glared at both Sunita and her pet. ‘So?’
‘So, you can’t ignore your name on a list.’ Sunita let go, and the wheelchair took off in the direction of the VIP lounge’s entrance.
Alex looked out onto the rest of Munich’s airport. ‘If every politician chose the easy way out whenever their name appeared on a so-called hitlist, we would have fallen under the jackboot a long time ago, and anyway, every speaker’s name is on it.’
Sunita caught up. ‘But not every speaker is being targeted by fascist and Islamic terrorists. You’ll be the only person on that stage with enemies from both sides.’
Alex took what she needed from the tank and peered into the distance. ‘Suni, we’ve been through it a million t
imes. Saving the world is not without risk and if the new Sunita no longer has the stomach of the old one, then now is the time to tell me.’
A black dot appeared above the horizon.
‘Al, you know my loyalty to you is not in doubt and my commitment to the cause just as strong, but a ceremony recognising the official status of the Caliphate is perhaps not the best place to reveal what we have planned – our election manifesto is controversial enough.’ She crouched to Alex’s level. ‘Forget the terrorist threat, deliver that speech in person and there’s a good chance you’ll be killed in the rush to see who can get to you first.’
The black dot turned into an aircraft. Alex took another breath from her oxygen mix while staring at it. She concurred with the analysis – up to a point.
‘I agree what I have to say will upset most of those present and regardless of who’s had the treatment, but it will be dealt with. If that means a sea of bodies writhing in abdominal agony or security staff with batons doing the same job traditionally, then so be it. Nothing must be allowed to halt the spread of democracy.’
The aircraft lowered its landing gear.
‘That’s the other thing I’m worried about.’
Alex looked at her partner. ‘What?’
Sunita appeared uncomfortable. ‘I hate to have to tell you this, but the whole purpose of you being here is to witness the spread of democracy. I detest Savage as much as you do but there’s no denying what his treatment has led to.’
‘What are you talking about? Brainwashing the Pope and other religious leaders into renouncing their faiths in favour of just the one nonsense has got nothing to do with democracy. You seem to be regarding the red pill as more than just a cure for the world’s medical conditions.’ A sharp turn of the wheelchair knocked both Sunita and her monkey to the floor. It scampered over to help her up, but Sunita chose to stay where she was. An extended use of the cylinder gave Sunita the chance to improve on her choice of words. She swallowed before saying them.
‘Al. Up until six months ago, not a day went by without someone somewhere in the Middle East being killed for their beliefs. Do you know how many have died since?’ Alex didn’t bother answering. ‘None. Nada. No one. Not one single Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, Hindu, Jew – you name it – has died because they worshipped in a way someone else objected to.’ Sunita got to her feet and the Capuchin jumped back onto her shoulder. ‘You can’t ignore the power of that.’
The aircraft landed.
Alex unglued her lips from the tube and closed her eyes. The drug helped calm her annoyance at Sunita as much as it did the pain. ‘May I remind you the price of that utopia, Suni – the enforced “curing” of LGBTQs and the continued enslavement of women, children and other vulnerable groups an Islamic society apparently needs to function.’ She opened her eyes and looked at her partner. ‘How long do you think it will be before you and I are forced to think the same way? You’re lucky to have had the treatment when you did – before artificial intelligence got involved with it. I dread to think what you would be doing now – not standing by my side, that’s for sure.’ She closed her eyes again. ‘Swapping one religious hypocrisy for another is as unnatural as one of Savage’s sick experiments. I warned you not to fall for his propaganda, and that’s exactly what you’re doing.’ Alex stared at Sunita – feeding her pet a grape. ‘And you wonder why I’ve never had the treatment.’
The aircraft vacated the runway and turned towards them.
‘I’m not saying we shouldn’t continue to fight for the rights of the needy and vulnerable, Al. But Islam is fast becoming the world’s only religion, and we must acknowledge the positives as well as the negatives of that.’
The aircraft drew near. Alex had to raise her voice above the sound of the approaching engines.
‘And what about the nations that either don’t believe in a god or won’t allow belief to dictate their way of life? What about China, Russia and the sabre-rattling Americans? Do you really think they’re going to sit idly by while a fourth superpower establishes itself on their doorsteps?’
The aircraft came to a stop and its engines shut down. An elevator descended from the belly of the fuselage, and both women looked at the burqas, hijabs and thawbs stepping from it.
‘That will be them,’ said Sunita. ‘We had better go and say hello.’
The doors to the concourse slid open and the women passed through. Sunita’s Capuchin sprang from her arms, scampered over to the group, and leapt onto the shoulders of a young girl who squealed in both surprise and delight at the attention. The man next to her grinned. The women caught up and he dropped the smile. The man then fell to his knees – as did the rest of the party.
They had bowed their heads too, and the gesture confused Sunita. The monkey was no less puzzled and put a hand under the young girl’s chin as if to lift it. She looked up.
‘Hi – my name’s Sunita. You must be Isra – Alex’s sister.’
Alex responded in kind to her half-sibling’s smile before glaring at their father.
Chapter Nine
Kalten studied the map. ‘How does this change the invasion plans?’
The general unrolled a transparency. Blue arrows indicated where the troops were expected to land. ‘In practical terms, it changes nothing. Details of the exercises were made public months ago, but we can forget turning them into an operation to liberate Europe – not now the invaders are being welcomed as family.’
Both men bit their bottom lips. The President turned to Homeland Security. ‘What about our new “family”?’
The Secretary brought everyone up to date. ‘Nothing like as extensive, Mr President, but it is still a concern – the Bible Belt in particular. They seem to have turned overnight.’
Kalten peered at his advisors. ‘Anyone here no longer believe in our true lord and master?’
No one answered. The Chief of Staff spoke. ‘The red pill has been withdrawn as a precaution, sir, but we’re going to have to accept that the US has been significantly affected.’
Kalten’s body shook. ‘Infected, you mean.’ He slammed a fist into the middle of the map, breaking the collapsible table underneath. Kalten ground his teeth. ‘And to think we once thought communism was contagious.’ He backed away from the rubble and calmed. ‘How many?’
The CoS turned a page. ‘Two-hundred million so far – just under fifty per cent of the population.’
‘What’s being done to stop it?’
The CoS answered that too. ‘We’ve restricted the internet where we can, but there’s a risk of civil unrest if we deny access to the Interworld. And anyway, merging is enough for most people to communicate and although the range of that might be limited, it’s sufficient to find out what’s going on.’
‘Tell me about it – why do you think we’re having this meeting hundreds of feet below ground and as far from robots as possible?’ Kalten scanned the old Cold War operations room before striding over to a stack of chairs. He lifted the top one, blew away some dust and sat. The chair creaked under his bulk. ‘What I don’t understand is, why Islam? If the treatment is meant to give a person a better understanding of life, then why isn’t the world choosing Christianity instead? It’s by far and away the largest religion.’
The general approached. ‘Sir, you’ve always been aware of my concerns and, to me, there’s no doubt – Savage is and always has been in league with the Caliphate, and the red pill is nothing more than a Trojan horse.’ He made two fists. ‘That goddam limey has suckered us all in with its gifts and now the AI inside is free to wreak havoc.’ He drew himself up to his full height and stared ahead. ‘We must retaliate.’
The Secretary of State couldn’t move next to the general fast enough. ‘I agree we need to take action, Mr President, but I think we should take stock of what is actually happening first.’ Both men glowered at her. Sh
e cleared her throat. ‘Peace.’
Kalten snapped. ‘Peace? I haven’t built an army of supermen only for something as inconvenient as peace to stop me from using them. If there’s going to be peace in this world, I’m the one who’s going to be remembered for having brought it and by what’s been foretold – Armageddon.’ He glared at her. ‘Don’t you read your Bible?’
The Secretary of Homeland Security supported her colleague. ‘It’s the same here, Mr President. Theft, murder, rape, hate – anything and everything our law enforcement agencies battle every day has fallen dramatically. Either by new-found faith or people spending more of their time online in the Interworld.’
Kalten shook his head. ‘The nightmare’s worse than I thought.’
The Attorney General spoke. ‘There is perhaps another more unsettling concern.’ They all looked at him. ‘The Constitution.’
‘What about it?’ said Kalten.
‘It’s in danger of being torn up.’
Kalten got to his feet. ‘How?’
The AG looked at the men and women present. ‘If there were a Presidential Election tomorrow, you might not only lose it, but both Republican and Democrat parties stand a good chance of coming a distant second or third.’
Kalten’s laughter echoed round the post-war relic. ‘What are you talking about? Republicans and Democrats are as American as Mom’s apple pie.’
‘That’s true, sir, but polls suggest our converted citizens are likely to vote for the Green Party instead.’
‘The Greens?’ Kalten chuckled at that too. ‘The world might no longer be at each other’s throats, but you couldn’t ask for a better example of polar opposites. The status of women in Islam alone is enough to make them bitter enemies.’
The AG drew closer. ‘But their goal is identical – the end of capitalism. If you want to know why Savage’s red pill is making everyone choose Islam over Christianity, then that’s where I would look.’ He expanded on the disturbing scenario. ‘We would only need to be in the middle of a stock market crash on election day, and even the unconverted might give the Greens the opportunity they’ve always wanted.’