Thursday, September 29, 2016
Monday, September 26, 2016
Next update Moskau (Alternative History Thriller) by G. Zotov - Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Benito Pizza
The top floor of Viking TV
THE BUILDING WAS RATHER OLD, from 1957, with
plaster peeling from its corners. Its entrance was barricaded by massive
concrete blocks. Behind them, surrounded by piled-up sand bags, the German
Phoenix zonderkommando unit hunched up over their machine guns. The motors of
armored vehicles were growling in the back yard. Sniper teams kept watch on the
roof: guerrilla units had repeatedly attacked the Ministry of Propaganda and
Public Education. The twenty floors of this concrete behemoth housed state
television, radio stations, a dozen newspaper offices, a souvenir shop and the
pretentious Thule restaurant. The corridors inside seemed to snake every which
way. That and the eight elevators each leading to a particular department made
losing one's way extremely easy.
The TV channel took up the five upper floors, the best
and most sought-after ones. In order to get inside, any visitor had to show his
or her ausweis to the security guards
behind their bulletproof glass, then walk through a turnstile. From there, Viking
TV workers were in charge of the visitors. To get in, you had to first press
your hand to the scanner next to the sliding doors.
Opposite the elevators, a banner under the ceiling
quoted Dr. Joseph Goebbels:
We always tell the
truth. Well, almost.
In accordance with the Moskau Reichstag directive, the
television received 20% of the budget: same as the army. And they were worth
it. The Triumvirate leaders had had plenty of opportunity to convince
themselves that television could be much more effective than tanks and
missiles. Throughout human history, even the strongest of armies had had
trouble suppressing mass uprisings. But the TV screen allowed a much harsher
mind control than any amount of street patrols. TV officers' ranks began at
Scharführer; even their junior correspondents enjoyed the equivalent of
Generals' salaries and free luxury food parcels. Their equipment made their
colleagues worm with envy: all those excellent cameras, expensive cars and
high-speed Shogunet.
The marble lobby featured the bronze bust of Hans
Ulrich Rudel with his illustrious bald patch: the first man in space who'd
raised the Reich's flag on the Moon in 1952. His international fame, endless
autograph-signing sessions and half-naked female fans who besieged the
astronaut even on restroom trips had made quick work of Rudel's career. He'd
drunk himself into an early retirement within a year and a half, a record time.
He'd been grounded and transferred to a boring but cushy job as the head of
Berlin TV.
Hans Ulrich had zealously attacked his new job which
became a pleasant surprise for his superiors. He joined the Adolf Temperance
Society and didn't sleep nights coming up with new ideas for talk shows,
planning quiz games, and working on new stories for popular soap operas like The Woman of My Dreams. It was he who'd
turned the entertainment TV into the proverbial kraken entangling the minds of
billions of Aryans. A 1965 law demanded that every citizen of the Reich swore
an oath to watch at least three hours of TV daily. Factory workers began
installing special timers on all new televisions they produced. A number of
laws had been canceled since then... but this one was still in force.
"Achtung!
Newstime in ten minutes! Everybody get ready!"
Sergei glanced at his watch. He still had time before
rapping out the latest news, grinning inanely into the camera. That was
peanuts. Now the briefing at the TV Direktor's office in half an hour, that was
a dirrefent story. All news broadcasts were pre-recorded in conveyor-belt
fashion. The anchors had a list of prompts to choose from, lying in a special
recess on their desk: "a temporary drawback", "decrease in
radiation levels", "economic growth" and "the relative
growth of the reichsmark against the yen". The list had a special set of
phrases adapted to incidents of Schwarzkopf attacks: "needless
cruelty", "civilian casualties" and "terrorism has no
future".
The camera with a silhouette of Rudel on its side
pointed at Sergei.
They may say what
they want but Hans Ulrich is a genius, Sergei thought,
mechanically touching his Versace tie. Much
smarter than Goebbels. The Nazis didn't sleep nights trying to come up with the
very best ways to promote their propaganda but achieved only the opposite:
everyone was sick and tired of politics. And this alcoholic astronaut has come
up with the simplest thing: if you want to control the human brain, you need to
soften it up first. When all you watch is a sequence of inane entertainment
played out to mindless laugh tracks, you don't think. You don't have to choose,
only to react, like Pavlov's dog. Give him a beer and switch the TV to Tonight
with Marlene Dietrich - and you're free
to press his buttons.
Sergei wasn't afraid to admit (mentally at least) his
dislike of the Triumvirate. He considered himself an intellectual; he used the
Shogunet to read banned books online; he even left cautious anonymous comments
supporting the Schwarzkopfs' activities. In all honesty, so did most of Viking
TV workers. Passing a bottle of schnapps around after work, the journalists
would curse the "invaders" political and economic dominance with the
strongest of expressions. Once back in the office, however, they condemned
"guerrilla terrorists" with a double zeal.
"I don't know what to do anymore," Sergei's
fellow anchor Vasily Kolpakov, the Political Department's Sturmführer, had admitted to him
ruefully once. "I think I've developed a reflex. I take my seat, I see the
camera and my mouth just opens and starts to speak. I can't help it. The moment
I see the Führer's portrait on the wall, I can't stop myself."
Every TV worker had a similar set of excuses comprised
of clichés similar to those they had to use on air, "I need to feed my
family", "Somebody else will take my place" and "At least
we have some stability under the Krauts".
The sound of female laughter made him startle.
A manicured finger gave him a flick on the nose.
"Serge darling, what's this for a beak? Did your parents lose a bet with
God?"
Sergei forced a smile. Having swayed her hips one last
time, Masha the makeup lady disappeared round the corner of the corridor.
Wretched bitch! Saying something like that in front of everybody! Someone was
bound to put two and two together. Then it would start all over again: visits
from the SS Race and Settlement Office: 'How did you manage to get past us with
that kind of schnozzle?' Again he'd have to submit his family tree, pass blood
tests and undergo phrenological control. He'd have to grease their palms once
again, too, because they were bound to discover that his maternal great-grandfather
was half-Armenian. Being a non-Aryan wasn't just bad form: it was plain
uncomfortable. To get any job these days, you needed a certificate from the
Race Office.
Sergei knew quite a few people who had sunk all the
way to the gutter, living in one of the Arbeitslagers
- barracks for forced migrant labor employed for the Reichskommissariat's
needs. The statute of Moskau forbade all Aryans to do menial work like sewage
cleaning, railtrack laying or even the selling of fruit at village markets. A
special agreement with the Nippon koku allowed the importation of millions of
Chinese slaves who didn't cost anything and worked 24/7 for a bowl of rice.
This was the kind of life awaiting all non-Aryans.
Sergei shuddered.
Oh, no. He'd rather become a brothel supervisor.
Anything but the arbeitslager.
He switched on the mike. The countdown had already
begun on the plasma screen. Three, two, one...
"Dear Damen
und Herren, welcome back to Viking TV! Let me begin with our headlines. The
Reich's cities are being consumed by a wave of renaming. The citizens of Veliky
Novgorod demand their metropolis be returned its 9th century Swedish name of
Holmgard. This event is supposed to coincide with the building of the temple of
Loki - the Scandinavian god of fire - in the city's main square. Yesterday the
population of Krasnoyarsk sent a petition to the ruler of the Nippon koku,
asking his official permission to be called City of Fragrant Chrysanthemums. A
sushi festival held for the Reich tourists by the new Shichō - that's Mayor to
the rest of us - of Uradziosutoku has been a resounding success. The guests
received balls of rice topped with slices of grayling, dogfish and omul[i].
Abdullo von Zimmerblut, the Führer of the Reichskommissariat Turkestan,
finished Friday prayers in the Ashgabat mosque by issuing a statement
threatening the pig farms of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine with airstrikes.
Meanwhile in the Crimea, Prussian colonists have celebrated the beginning of
the holiday season with fireworks, simultaneously tripling their rent for the
holiday makers. Apparently, this is how they start every summer season which is
why last year tourists chose to ignore this traditional holiday destination.
The new Oberkommandant of Moskau has pronounced traffic jams part of our
national heritage, officially refusing to do anything about them. In Hollywood,
Japanese producers have begun shooting Episode 57 of their blockbuster
Godzilla. This time the giant sea monster is about to head off to Greenland to
destroy an Eskimo village, the last place it hasn't yet been to. Stay with us!
After the commercial break, my colleague Fräulein Irina Nosov will continue
with tonight's news."
A commercial began, showing a very happy, very fat
housewife in a frilly dress who looked like a native of Bavaria, Russland and
Ukraine all rolled into one.
"When I make my wurstsalat," she chirped,
"I always use Eva Braun, the only mayonnaise which offers my food the
taste of the Reich's victories. Low radiation levels, only the best artificial
coloring, and lots of safe anti-cholesterol additives. Eva Braun: the eggs that
taste like those your Wehrmacht granddad stole from the poor old village
lady!"
It was followed back-to-back by an ad for the Benito
pizza chain. Its cooks had topped international rankings with their "Duce
pizza": tomatoes, mozzarella and a cooked carrot fashioned as Pinocchio's
nose. In Moskau, pizza and sushi were in close competition. The ad was nothing
new: shots of steaming pastry and deliciously runny cheese followed by the
promise of a twenty-minute delivery time.
The closing shot showed an actor impersonating Benito
Mussolini, with bulging eyes and a tightly pursed mouth.
"Benito pizza!" he shook his fist at the
camera. "Immortal like the Reich!"
Irina began reading the news, her voice ringing with
enthusiasm. She'd only been working for a couple of months. Normally, new
workers gave it their all.
Funny people, these
Italians, Sergei thought. They
make even a dictatorship look like a circus show. While all we have is the
labored drama and haughty airs. Why is our regime even trying to fight the
Resistance when it's perfectly clear that the Forest Brotherhood can't be
defeated? Why can't they admit that every empire needs an enemy, otherwise it
reduces itself to a street sausage vendor? The kind of affairs happening in the
1940s! Those were the days! Bolshies, Semitic plutocrats, Wall Street
tycoons... We consciously decided to stop blaming the Semites while they had
always been humanity's perfect scape goat. As were the Bolshies - another dream
trademark. So convenient to blame our problems on.
The news edition was over. Sergei scooped his papers
up from the desk. The weather forecast began.
"Have you got your radiation meters on?" the
slim, tall blonde weather girl asked cheerfully. "Well, you shouldn't
have! Today we expect radiation levels to drop considerably. It might have
something to do with the activation of two new sarcophagi around the nuclear
power stations in Voronezh and Kostroma. The temperature is ninety degrees
which is quite normal for December. Enjoy the sun!"
Between the global
warming and radiation leaks, Sergei thought, the inhabitants of Moskau wouldn't know what to do with snow if it
jumped on them. What kinds of times are these? We wear shorts in December; air
conditioners sell like hot cakes. The Reich's plant breeders promise everyone
to start banana plantations. That would officially make us what we've been for
quite some time: a run-of-the-mill banana republic.
He heard footsteps and rose. Two officers in gray
business suits were walking toward him, followed by the news Oberst, pale and
buttoning up his suit jacket as he walked.
"Sergei Kolychev?" one of the strangers
asked, a seven-foot giant.
He nodded, feeling his insides turn to ice. The Gestapo. Did that mean they already
could read human thoughts?
"We need to ask you a question concerning one of
your ex-colleagues."
Sergei was confronted with a small picture. A pencil
sketch.
Thursday, September 22, 2016
Check out new chapter 6 - Moskau (Alternate History) by George Zotov
Chapter Six
The Angel
The Richard Wagner pedestrian zone, #22/7
THE GEHEIME STAATSPOLIZEI (Gestapo) Special
Isolation Facility was situated at the very end of Wagner lane - or Arbat, as
die-hard Moskauers still called the little pedestrian street. On the outside it
was a two-story book shop. Its sign read Spirit's Delight - a name admittedly
more befitting an alcohol store.
Inside its spacious premises flooded with light,
sleepy and bored salesgirls helped the few shoppers to choose the Reich's
newest literary masterpieces. In the shop windows, the latest bestsellers were
gathering dust: the coloring book The
Childhood of the Führer and a how-to book from Leni Riefenstahl, How to Make it as a Movie Star. Few people bought books these days
- most downloaded them for free from the Shogunet. Mein Kampf had been in the public domain since 1944 anyway. All
other books had to pass a meticulous integrity check by the Ministry of
Propaganda and Public Education.
The Gestapo's electronic department had their hands
full with the Shogunet, blocking those of its sections which allowed users to
upload illegal translations of banned authors like Jack London or Hemingway,
and especially the dreaded Leo Tolstoy: an anti-war extremist whose books could
earn you two months in the cooler. Not that it helped. The numbers of illegal
download links to the works by the likes of Tolstoy and Margaret Mitchell
mushroomed by the hour.
In order to make
readers buy the book, you need to ban it first, Pavel thought,
forcing open the glass door embossed with an emblematic eagle. Prohibition is the best promotion.
A salesgirl in an SS Bewerber uniform flashed him a
professional smile. "Welcome to our shop, mein Herr. How can I help you?"
Pavel cast a wary look around. Actually, there was no
need for it. The shop wasn't too popular: its prices of almost a thousand
reichsmark per title would scare anyone off. Only a frail old man standing with
his back to him shuffled from one foot to the other in the back next to a
thriller stand, studying a volume of Stephanie Meyer. Pavel remembered the
authoress' name: she'd recently been commended by the Neuer York gauleiter
himself for her series of spy thrillers Abwehr
Vs NKVD.
Pavel leaned toward the Bewerber girl until he almost
touched her lips. "My number is seven eight nine five double-two one
six," he mouthed.
Still smiling (Pavel had the impression that the smile
was painted on her face giving her the semblance of a shop window mannequin),
the girl punched the number into her cash register. Its screen lit up, offering
Pavel's number, Gestapo rank and clearance level. The girl clicked her heels
softly as she pressed an electronic card into his hand.
"You can collect your books over there," she
pointed at a door at the end of the corridor. "Please don't forget to give
our worker your discount code. Thank you for shopping with us! Danke schön!"
He used the card to open the door, then locked it
again behind him. Inside the narrow room was an elevator booth. Pavel pressed
the single button on its control panel. The elevator moved downwards, heading
toward the cellar.
They were already expecting him. A hungover overweight
Volksdeutsche checked his ID, rearranged his own SS hat with an emblem of the
medical corps, then made a phone call. A soldier in a black uniform took Pavel
out of the room and along a concrete corridor dimly lit by a row of red light
bulbs.
All the mental hospitals in Moskau had long been closed
(as had they been in all other reichskommissariats); all the medical personnel
had been dismissed. If someone happened to lose their marbles, they were sent
directly to the isolation block. Once its doctors were finished with the
patient, he was deported to Africa.
The isolation block's commandant looked bored in his
office. He was sitting under an emblem of the Reich with its swastika
thoroughly blotted out, concealed under several coats of plaster at the center
of an oak wreath.
The commandant nodded to Pavel. He didn't bother to
rise, only flung a file across the desk toward him.
"All the paperwork and the pictures are inside.
You wanna speak to him? No idea how you're gonna do it. Two of the researchers
are basically vegetables. They don't react to anything. We use an IV drip to
feed them. The third one is a bit better but... he won't speak to anyone.
Sometimes at night he screams his head off. We have to inject him with downers
by the bucketful."
"It's all right," Pavel said with a small
smile. "He'll talk to me, don't you worry. I'm taking the file. Give me
his cell number and don't bother with an escort. It's a personal
conversation," he fell silent, peering at one of the pictures.
"I just hope you squeeze him for whatever you
want to know," the commandant deftly swatted a fly on the table. "Go
ahead, bitte schön. You have all the
time you need."
The isolation cell lived up to his expectations.
Twelve by twelve feet, it was padded with soft white felt to make sure the
patient didn't break his head when having a fit. A light bulb and a
surveillance camera under the ceiling completed the setting. The camera's red
eye went out the moment Pavel entered the room. They weren't filming the visit.
The patient in the room paid no heed to him. He was
small and disheveled, with tousled ginger hair. Good for him. Carrot tops
didn't have to dye their hair to pass for Aryans. The man was sitting on his
cot mouthing something and rocking from side to side. Impressive. Well, let's
do it.
"Hi there," Pavel said gently while cracking
a folding chair open. He stood so that the light from the bulb fell onto his
face.
The patient's gaze shifted toward him. He burst out
coughing. "You... you... you... how is it possible... you're...
you're-"
"Dead," Pavel finished the man's thought for
him. "True, it happens sometimes. But, by Thor's hammer, it can't prevent
us from talking, can it?"
Beads of sweat erupted over the man's brow. He was
shivering, feeling around himself blindly as if the padded wall could part and
swallow him.
"I'll only be a minute," Pavel assured him.
"And I'll leave straight away, I promise. You understand you have no
choice, don't you? Tell me the truth... and it'll be over quickly."
The man gave a robotic nod. Pavel sat down.
"It was horrendous," the man whispered
frantically.
"You managed to get a glimpse of it," Pavel
reminded him. "Just tell me: what
did you see?"
"I saw what can't be," the lunatic burst out
coughing. "I thought I was hallucinating. But it was real! I touched it... it... was so real. The portal it came from is closed now, isn't it?
You've locked us up to make sure we don't speak... but it won't be long before
everybody knows... Don't you understand what's coming? We're all going to
dissolve like melting snow. It's
coming for us."
The prisoner spoke hotly and feverishly. Pavel was
calm: an observer might have thought that he was bored by the man's story. He
even sighed a couple of times, glancing at his trendy Swiss watch: a
limited-edition Apel with the picture of Horst Wessel on the lid.
"I got it," he finally said. "Did you
manage to work out what had caused it?"
The lunatic fell silent for a while, mouthing
something. "A fiery figure. A flash. I went blind in one eye. Blinding
light. It's an angel."
Pavel wasn't surprised. What else did he expect a
madman to discuss, quantum physics? The main thing was to keep him talking.
Pavel nodded, his whole body projecting his interest.
"Keep going."
"The moment we entered the impact zone, it walked right past us. We saw it. Unbearably bright.
The heat! Hermann's brains got cooked and leaked out through his nose. And
then... it disappeared. I saw it
clearly. It's about to swallow us.
We'll all be fragmented."
"Do you remember its face? The angel's? Think you
can draw it for me?"
The prisoner snatched the notebook from him and began
drawing in broad, sharp pencil strokes: a face framed by long hair, an aquiline
nose, thin lips.
He can draw, that's
for sure, Pavel thought. That's
life for you. Why do we have to push pencils in the office for a pittance
instead of developing our God-given skills? Having said that, where did I see
art in Moskau? The Reich needs minimalism and clear-cut lines,
Schwarzenegger-type beefcake heroes - no unwanted subtleties. If you want fine
art of ikebana and calligraphy, you need to go to Tokyo.
The lunatic raised his head from the paper. His eyes
were tearful. "It was so real that I could sense it breathe. It breathed
fire."
Pavel adjusted his e-funk and took several pictures of
the drawing from different angles. He sent the images off, then asked a few
more questions but didn't find out anything new. The madman's mind was going in
circles: he kept seeing the flashes of fire going through the air, his dying
colleagues, and the fiery angel.
Having wasted another ten minutes, Pavel rose from his
chair. He knew exactly where it had happened. But now that he'd heard the
story, he wasn't looking forward to seeing its horror for himself. He'd better
concentrate on finding some protection from the trigger agent. It didn't seem
to enjoy unwanted company.
He reached into his shirt pocket for the pill.
"Here, take this. It might make you feel better."
The lunatic exploded in laughter. He knew.
"Excellent! All this time I've been waiting for it... Finally! Valkyries,
come to me!"
The folded chair in hand, Pavel walked back up the
corridor while the walls of the isolation block shuddered with the lunatic's
laughter.
Pavel's e-funk vibrated. He opened the message and
chuckled.
Come now. I know
who it is.
Behind his back, the laughter broke off.
... The Japanese by the bookstand watched Pavel leave,
his gaze indifferent. He turned back to the shelves and resumed his perusing of
Stephanie Meyer's new release.
Support the author, be the first who pre-order the book on Amazon.
If you buy the book, you help the author translation another one book.
Saturday, September 17, 2016
Saturday, September 3, 2016
Alternative History - Chapter #5 Moskau by G. Zotov
Chapter Five. Daifuku
Hindenburg
Lane, next to the Berlin store
“You’re
pale. Look at your face, it’s drawn. You’ve got dark circles around your eyes.
Would you like a glass of wine?”
Oh
no, lady, thank you very much. I don’t drink wine, anyway. Definitely not after
what happened earlier today. My whole body is aching like hell. It’s as if they
took me apart, limb by mechanical limb, then handed my body parts over to a
drunken plumber to reassemble and wrangled some horses over me before throwing
me into the path of an Eicher tractor. You wouldn’t want to feel what I’m
feeling, girl, that’s for sure.
I
blink. “Thanks. Odin’s priests are obliged to celebrate a monthly Vegetarian
Day to remember the Führer. So today it’s cabbage patties and Karlsbad mineral
water for me.”
She
sniffs, then makes a show of helping herself to a slice of turkey. The
Schwarzkopfs zealously stick to their diet which is supposed to reflect their
convictions. They avoid pork (without even considering the fact that we have
Muslims serving in the Idel Ural Legion and the Croatian SS Kama Division),
they don’t drink beer (even though the production of Rhine vineyards isn’t
limited to grape juice) and ignore sausages, even veal ones. And in view of the
Führer’s vegetarian practices, some of the die-hard Schwarzkopfs even refuse
vegetable foods. If they eat salad, they make sure it has meat in it: and not
the sophisticated Alpine wurstsalat,
but an obnoxious local dish which Russlanders call Olivier although the appellation Titanic might have been more apt: a pile of chopped veg and chicken
hugging each other in terror as they drown in a sea of mayo.
The
bubbles in the water tickle my tongue as I gulp it down. My tablemate has
chosen a rather revealing dinner attire: a hugging purple dress with a deep
décolleté exposing almost all of her braless cleavage. Her nipples are so stiff
they almost pierce the fabric. She must be cold in this airconned room.
Poor
girl. Hasn’t she had enough of her own games?
The
Schwarzkopfs measure everything with their own yardstick. They think that every
priest is dying to have sex, dreaming about it in his wet dreams, closing his
hands around his... well, his blanket. Especially if the priest is a Catholic
of an Orthodox monk. But I am one of the Waidelottes:
the ruling caste of Viking priests (also known as the Legend Keepers). I can have a harem of twenty if I want to. Only
Aryan women, unfortunately: the Moskau Priest Council has allowed the servants
of Odin, Loki and Thor to take wives, provided they’re natural blondes. Which
is a problem to a degree, of course.
But
marriage aside, a Waidelotte can
sleep with who the hell he wants to.
“Some
of humanity's most abominable murderers were known for their sentimentality,”
she says, sinking her teeth into the turkey as if it were the Führer himself.
“Your darling leader was a vegetarian, he loved dogs and even doted on other
people’s children... while hating their parents. This is ridiculous! The whole
of Europe is being governed by a ghost! While the authorities pretend this is
exactly how it should be.”
Aha,
that’s what she’s driving at. Actually, I have to agree. At the end of the
Twenty-Year War the Reichskommissariats unanimously decreed that the Führer was
to remain the Reich’s supreme leader despite his tragic death. Which meant that
officially he was feasting with the fallen Einherjar
in Valhalla instead of drinking blood in the underground caves of Hel's, the
goddess of the dead. Which in turn also meant, according to the Priests Council
memo, that its members could enter a state of trance in order to contact the
Führer in Asgard and transmit his orders back to us. The Führer’s decrees were
printed in Gothic font with a nice-looking facsimile signature. This state of
affairs suited every Reichskommissariat's Triumvirate perfectly: while
presenting no threat to their own position in power, it provided them with a
convenient front person whenever things went awry. And what better scapegoat
than a nominal deadman ruler?
“What’s
wrong with that?” I reply in a deliberately bored voice, transporting a piece
of a cabbage patty to my mouth. “The Führer’s only been in Valhalla what, a few
decades? Your Jesus has been absent for two thousand years and no one has seen
him since, apart from a couple of nutters. This doesn’t seem to baffle you,
does it? You’re quite happy to accept that he runs the Universe from atop his
cloud, even though there’s no documented evidence proving that Yeshua the
Nazarene did exist, apart from Flavius’ Antiquities
of the Jews. And although he does mention him being sentenced to death,
neither contemporary chronicles nor Pontius Pilate’s personal diaries mention
his execution, let alone his supposed resurrection. Besides, how sure are you
we can trust Flavius in this sensitive matter? He was a Jew, wasn’t he? Sorry
for mentioning Jews at the table...”
I
bite my tongue. Shit. I overdid it, didn’t I?
The
girl hurls her fork at the daifuku plate. The clinking of steel against bone
china sounds like a funeral bell to my ears. Great gods, Odin and Thor, save
me! Now all hell will break loose.
“Have
you ever asked yourself what happened to the Jews and Roma? Where are they all
gone?”
Aha,
so that’s what she’s driving at. Predictably so. “Gone to Africa on a Crystal
Train,” I reply impassively. “As if you don’t know. Open any primary school
textbook, and that’s what it says. A perfectly legal deportation, voted
unanimously by the Reichstag and supported by leading cultural figures. When
Africa received the status of a self-governing colony, the whole of the “black
continent”, with the exception of Ethiopia, Morocco, Egypt and the South
African Union, was fenced off by a concrete wall surrounded by mine fields and
wound with barbed wire. All the government workers were evacuated and all
troops withdrawn. From then on, the Africans had to fend for themselves. I
don’t think that the Crystal Train passengers had it easy. Africa has neither
the Shogunet nor television. The streets of its ravaged cities are the theater
of clan wars. Starvation, epidemics, all sorts of new viruses. Still,
deportation is more humane than extermination, isn’t it?”
Her
face breaks out in crimson spots. “They were killed,” she enunciates. “The
Jews. The Roma. The Yaoi. The drug addicts. Even the mentally ill. Why are
there no mental hospitals anywhere? Why is psychiatry an illegal business, like
tobacco dealing? When someone becomes schizophrenic, their families hide them
from the authorities as they've been doing since the 1940s. Society has no
place for the useless — or yes, this is one lesson we did learn from the
Germans! The Yaoi, the Yuri[i], the
schizophrenics — you’re right, they’re not executed openly anymore. You deport
them to Africa through your control posts in the concrete wall. How’s that
different from execution? There’re still some surviving eyewitnesses confirming
the existence of wartime camps where millions of people were gassed and
incinerated like rats. Ever heard about Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald,
Dachau? The monstrous factories that ground their way through tons of human
bones every day? Here in Russland the Nazis used to burn people alive by the
villageload; they had special gas wagons to dispose of hostages. Half of us
were doomed to extermination, the other half were meant to become agricultural
slaves for the Krauts’ colonists.”
“There’s
no evidence of this,” I hurry to point out. “It’s nothing but rumors.”
The
dinner is ruined. She has a tendency to do that.
“Yeah,
sure,” she says with a bitter chuckle. “It’s bad form mentioning it these days.
We may be a dictatorship but all dictators would like to seem hard on the
outside and soft on the inside. A bit like a banana. The Triumvirate will never
admit that the Führer was going to turn half the planet’s population into
garden fertilizer. Did you know that they performed a total archive purge
already in the 1970s? Concentration camps paperwork as well as the SS and
Gestapo archives were shredded in papierwolfs,
camp ovens were converted into bakeries and gas chambers into shower rooms.
When you stick to the same lie year after year, people start to believe you.
That’s what Dr. Goebbels used to say. Latvian researchers from the
Reichskommissariat Ostland keep publishing those articles in the Völkischer Beobachter saying that all
labor camp prisoners were paid for their work; that they had brothels and movie
theaters, even football clubs, and that apparently Italian labor camp officials
even organized free pizza deliveries for their prisoners! And how are you going
to disprove it? All the ex-prisoners have been ordered to have their camp
number tattoos removed. This is their formula of success, courtesy of the Triumvirate:
you need to plunge people into the frenzy of consumption. Then you don’t have
to conquer them. Their mental abilities will atrophy naturally. Had the Führer
been a bit smarter, instead of invading Russland he could have built a chain of
Drakken Kaufhof malls complete with 3D theaters. When the human brain is only
used for entertaining, it just goes to mush.”
I
appear to enthusiastically munch on tasteless cabbage. Oh Hel, the Lady of the
Underworld! These Schwarzkopfs are such goody-two-shoes. So empathic and
sensitive they make you sick. Yeah right, shopping malls and movie theaters,
how awful, how brain-numbing. But had we still been living under martial-law
National Socialism with its ration cards, margarine for butter and saccharine
for sugar, they’d have been the first to scream their indignation about the
terrible Triumvirate starving people to death.
“Listen,
what’s the point in dragging a bunch of seventy-year-old skeletons out of the
closet?” I wash the cabbage down with some mineral water. “The Tatars in their
time steam-rolled over medieval Russia too, pillaging cities, turning churches
into stables and raping village women. You see any Russlanders losing any sleep
itching to avenge that genocide? How
about the French? Napoleon’s army burned down the cities of Vilno, Smolensk and
Moskau — and? The Russlanders absolutely love the French culture. Never mind
that Paris has been under the SS Fashion Department since 1940 in the tender
care of Oberführer Lagerfeld and his assistant Hugo Boss — still any lady worth
her smelling salts will gladly spend a month in a Gestapo cooler for a bottle
of French perfume. Even if you presumed, for the sake of argument, that by some
fantastical miracle Russland defeated Germany in the war, we’d still have already
been buddying up. We love our enemy and can’t stand our neighbor. Take the
Reichskommissariat Turkestan, for instance. Every time I see their legionnaires
in the street, I can’t help thinking, Are
these muttonheads Aryan too?”
The
girl is silent. She’s too busy arm-wrestling her stomach into submission. On
one hand, she’s dying for a daifuku. On the other, this is a political
discussion — as is our every dinner.
“Russland
is under foreign occupation,” she says, casting a sideways glance at the
dessert. “You’re not going to argue that, are you? We have a foreign state
emblem, foreign laws... and foreign rulers.”
There,
she’s already switched to the defensive. If I only could, I’d have smoked a
cigarette the way some men do after good sex. Unfortunately, Odin’s priests are
obliged to lead a healthy lifestyle.
“That’s
an easy one,” I finish off my cabbage patty. “As far as the emblem is
concerned, Russland used the Greek double-headed eagle for the last five
hundred years. It also had German laws for the last two hundred. The Royal
court positions were also German: Kammerherr,
Frauleina, Hofmeister... The names of Russian chancellors: Ostermann, Bühren,
Nesselrode, Stürmer... Might that mean that this so-called occupation has never
stopped? All right, so concentration camps did exist. But who might have
guarded them? In the Sobibor death camp they were Ukrainians. The
burgermeisters, the auxiliary police, the journalists producing newspapers, SS
volunteers, Gestapo interrogators — all of them were Russlanders wearing German
uniforms. And you know what Russlanders are like: the moment a foreigner hires
them, they’re quite prepared to hang themselves with zeal. The ten biggest
Russlandish cities now house Wehrmacht garrisons. Five hundred each! These
aren’t occupiers, these are toy soldiers. Ceremonial guards. True, we have
plenty of German bureaucrats and brass hats everywhere: in the army as well as
the police and civil ministries. But it was the same in the Keiser’s times! On
the other hand, Russlandish businessmen have bought up wholesale some of
Berlin’s most prestigious real estate. In 1984, Russisch became one of the
Reich’s official languages. Who occupied whom, may I ask?”
Without
saying a word, she springs to her feet. The daifuku remains untouched even
though I can see it's still calling her name. I already know what’s going to
happen next. First she’ll head for the bathroom to brush her teeth. Then she’ll
go back to bed. Her life is boring but rather safe, if I may say so.
The
bathroom door slams. Finally I can relax.
When
I had come round, lying sprawled on the floor back in the Temple of Odin, I’d
immediately thought: what would have happened to her had I not come back? Every morning I replace her handcuffs for
a couple of sturdy thin chains allowing her to get to the bathroom. Her bedroom
has a small fridge containing everything she might need. But the bedroom door
is locked. She can’t escape. If I disappeared, she’d starve to death within a
month. I hadn’t thought about that. My mistake. I'll have to consider
installing a Zeitschaltuhr — a timer
— on the lock and set it for like twenty-four hours. There are also other
things I have to consider. I’ve been zoned out for two hours flat. I need to
look into a couple of things.
Firstly,
I need to find out where the goat is gone. And secondly, whatever has happened
to the statue of Rübezahl.
Textbook
No 1.
A
World Geography
The Reich Union, or the Third Reich of Greater
Germany.
Founded in 2004 after the end of the Twenty-Year War.
Technically represents a confederation of several Reichskommissariats: Ostland
(comprising Belorussia and the Baltics), Moskau (the European part of
Russland), Deutschland (Austria, Germany and the Governorate of Poland), the
Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Kuban and the zonderkommissariats of Chechnya
and Dagestan), Turkestan (Tajikistan, Turkmenia, Uzbekistan and Kirghizia), the
Ukraine (including the Russlandish cities of Kursk, Voronezh and Tsaritsyn (the
former Stalingrad)); Norway and the Netherlands, and Britain (excluding the
Republic of Scotland). Other “special territories” belonging to the Reich Union
include: Lake Baikal, the Crimea (inhabited by German colonists) and the
enclave of St. Petersburg.
The countries allied with the Third Reich:
Slovakia, the Italian Empire, the Independent State of
Croatia, Finland (including Karelia and Murmansk), Transylhungary, the Kingdom
of Romania (including Odessa and Bessarabia), the Southern French Protectorate
(with the capital in Vichy), The Federation of Spain and Portugal, and the
Kingdom of Bulgaria (including Greece). In 1951, Ataturk's Turkish Republic was
ceremoniously returned its old French colonies of Lebanon and Syria. It was
also gifted Armenia. Restored in 1964, the Baghdad Caliphate was comprised of Iraq
and the Maghreb sultanates, including Egypt and Morocco. The Free State of
India (also known as Azad Hind) is under the joint protection from the Reich
Union and the Nippon koku. Korea, the island of Formosa, Hawaii, Karafuto
island, the Kamchatka peninsula, the Siberian cities of Khabarovsk and
Vladivostok — now known under their Japanese names of Habarosito and
Uradziosutoku — as well as Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore all make an
integral part of Nippon koku. Technically, the Russlandish territories from
Kamchatka to the Urals are also within the Japanese area of interest but in
reality it is controlled by guerilla units of “forest brothers”. The Republic
of Far East (with its capital in the city of Chita) isn’t independent, being a
Japanese protectorate.
Japan’s satellite states are: Manchukuo, China,
Thailand, the Indonesian Emirate, the Vietnam Empire, Burma and the
Philippines. The Nippon koku also boasts a special territory of Australia which
bears the special status of “holiday colony” where rich Japanese come to unwind
on its seaside beaches. Australians have all been deported to Alaska.
The government of the United States of America signed
their capitulation on April 18 1956 in Los Angeles after the 2nd SS Division
Russland battled their way into the city. In 1958, the USA was divided into the
California Republic (a joint protectorate of the Reich and the Nippon koku),
the colonies of Neuer York, Boston, Washington and Florida (with a Japanese
governor), the Reichskommissariat of Texas and the “unclaimed territories of
the Wild West”: the anarchic uncontrolled ex-states of Alabama, Utah and
Kansas. Alaska makes up part of the Republic of the Far East as an autonomy
ruled by a Japanese daimyo. Canada has been dissolved: Quebec has been given to
Southern France, the north of the country is the property of Japan while the
rest of it is used to deport the Chinese.
Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and Chile form the German
Community of South America. Even before Wehrmacht troops entered these
countries in 1983, their capitals had been taken by armed Landwehr colonists.
Africa received the status of an autonomy. All the
racially inferior nations were deported there within the Chrystal Train
campaign. African borders were turned into three-mile “security zones”, its
waters separated by a twelve-mile “anti-pirate zone”. Having been conquered by
Italy in 1936, Abyssinia now has the status of an “overseas territory”, as does
Libya. The 1984 coup in the South African Union led to the Afrikaners deposing
corrupt pro-British politicians and recognizing the protection of Greater
Germany. Six months later, joint Japanese and German troops landed in the
Siberian city of Tyumen which is the official ending date for a world war that
had lasted forty-five years.
A World Geography. Approved
by the Moskau Ministry of Propaganda and Public Education
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