Chapter 8

The Mock Crier

    George Orwell was contently sleeping on a blanket on the sand beside a beautiful sunny seashore.  He had seemed to be, before he fell asleep, in the process of writing something. Alix was no snoop but he couldn't help but see --for it was in large writing--that it was love poetry to whom Alix supposed was his girlfriend. 

   Then a rather tall and middle age man with a moustache strolled up.  He didn't seem to have any qualms about snooping through all of George's stuff.  Then he shook George who started to slowly awake from his pleasant dreams and said to George, "Up, lazy thing and take this young man to see the Town Crier and to hear his history.  I must go back and see after some disappearances that I have not ordered," and he walked, leaving Alix alone with George.

     George sat up and rubbed his eyes; then he and Alix watched the man until he was almost out of sight, but however far the man walked he seemed to never disappear; and another odd thing about him is that he seemed to have eyes in the back of his head and Alix never had a feeling of privacy with him in the picture.

     "Who was that?" Alix said to the now wide awake George. "Oh, sorry, that was rude. My name is Alix."
     "And my name is George and that man was my big brother.  He is a kind of busybody always budding his nose into my affairs.  Since mother and father died, he thinks that it is duty to be my father or something and take care of me.  But I rather be by myself: his help is more trouble than its worth."

    "I know what you mean."

    "And I mean what I say."

    "And I say what you mean."

    "O very well, we seem to be going in tight little circles."

    "That seems to be the usual thing here in One-World Land," commented Alix.

    "Yes, it is so."

    "Does your big brother really execute anybody?"

    "Oh, he never really executes anybody; you must be a somebody before he executes you--although he sometimes executes anybody just for the heck of it--and then you are nobody, but nobody calls it an execution, but rather a disappearance, and nobody ever orders one anyway because they never happen."

    Alix was a little perplexed and thought that George spoke a lot like the Red King, for as it happens, as Alix later found out, George had spent some time with friends of the Red King; that is perhaps why George knows a lot about the Red King's ways and sometimes talks in his opposite-think way.

    "I think that it is a good idea that you see the Mock Crier, as I call him. Well, come on," said George.

    "Everybody says 'Come on!" here," thought Alix as he slowly went after him. "I never was so ordered about in all my life, never!"

    They had not gone far before they saw what could be none other than the Town, or Mock, Crier.

    The Mock Crier stood on top of a rock holding a 'bullhorn' in his hand; behind him was a poster: it showed a man in a beard letting two birds out of the box who then proceeded to drop bombs of what looked like red gloop. The face of the man with the beard was overlaid with another picture displaying today's most wanted evil international criminal.  The previous picture must have been of that cagey island Red King who always liked to wear green and smoke cigars; they say he's in ill health these days.

    As Alix came nearer he could hear the Town Crier sighing as if his heart would break.  Alix pitied him deeply.

    "What is his sorrow?" Alix asked and George answered, "It's all his fancy, that; he really hasn't anything to be sorrowful about, you know!"

   "O, don't I!" objected the Town Crier,  "I sure have a heaping spoonful of trouble these days. O, what with all those Islamisists and Terrorists and Extremisists trying to blow us to kingdom come, one has hardly a safe corner these days to be safe in peaceful bliss. O, they are here, they are there, they are everywhere.  O woe is me. O woe is us.  I proclaim that it was never as bad as it is now."

   "O yes," rebutted George, "you certainly proclaimed it was worse before."

   "I never did," said the Crier.

   "Yes, you did. I remember it well," said George.

   "I don't remember it at all."

   "Well, don't you remember, not more then twenty years ago, that you said that our biggest enemies were the Red Russians and the Red Chinese and that they were here, there, everywhere, under every bush, ready to attack and destroy us and that the Islamisists were our very friends who would help us fight them."

   "I never said that. Never. The Chinese and the Russians are our friends and have always been our friends.  The Islamisists are our enemies and have always been, for as long as I remember, our deadliest of enemies."

   "I have it all here in black and white," and with this George Orwell took out an old and yellow copy of a newspaper called The Town Crier. "Here in black and white."

   "That paper is a fabrication; they can make anything these days with computer software."

   "Well, I remember reading these very articles back then."

   "One can't very well depend on one's memory, can one? You know how faulty it can be."

   "Well, if you can't depend on your memory and you can't depend on the printed word, then what the hek can you depend on?"

   "On us!  On all Town Criers, on all Country Criers and on all World Criers."

     And with that, that magic telescope appeared again before Alix and again he looked into it and there he saw town Criers from all over the land crying out their news to the whole world. The Mock Crier continued,   "For I have comrades all around the world who not only cry out the news but see it as well and report it to me."

    "And how can you trust them?"

    "And why shouldn't I trust them?"

    "Well, at the very least, you know how the news can be biased and slanted in favour of a certain view."

    "Whatever do you mean? I don't receive views. I receive the facts and I receive them from reputable town criers."

    "How do you know?"

    "They say so and they look so nice and affable." 

    "O how one can smile, and smile and be a villain."

    "I don't know what you're talking about."

    "O never mind. Let's change the subject. Where do these other Town Criers get their news?  Do they, for example, get their news from the White King and some of his White Knaves?"

   "O, certainly. We can most certainly trust them; they are the best criers of them all."

    "Yes," mocked George, "They put on the best song and dance show around."

   "I don't know what in the world you are talking about, George," said a perplexed and insulted Crier. At that time a sheet of paper with feet came running up and leapt into the Crier's hands. "Got to get back to work, fellas, for I have an urgent piece of news here to talk about that puts an entirely new and updated complexion to things,"  but to Alix it seemed like the same old message, not a piece of news, but a piece of olds, if you like. 

    George and Alix now walked off a bit where the Crier's cries were just a dull noise in the background.

    George said to Alix, "You want to hear about one of the White King's new song and dances; it's called 'Both Sides Get All Killed.' "

    "O, I like song and dance shows," exclaimed Alix, "How does it go?"

    "Well, "commenced George, "you first form into two sides anywhere in the land, it doesn't matter much where, along as you have your own knaves on both sides.  Then one side advances, it doesn't matter which, as long as you have your lobbers lob something nasty at the other side; advance two or three times, release your lobbers and retire in some order.  Then you lob your lobbers as far out to sea as you can and don't swim after them. Then turn a somersault on land and grab the knights from your own side and soon release these knights and lob them also out to sea and then somersault on land again and that's the first figure."

    "It seems like a very fine dance, for your lobbers and knights both get thrown out to sea.What does that mean?"

   "It means they disappear."

   "Oh," said Alix, "That's not very nice at all. Doesn't anyone ever realize what is going on?"

     George replied, "Yes, they sometimes do and they have their own song."  He commenced and sang it very slowly and sweetly.

'Won't you move a little quicker?'

Said the White King to a knight,

'There's that enemy close behind us,

And he moves with all his might.

See how angrily the lobbers

And the hurters all advance!

They are waiting by the quicksand--

Will you come and join the dance?

Will you, won't you, will you,

Won't you, will you join the dance?

You can really have no idea

How delightful it can be

When I take you up and chuck you,

With the lobbers, out to sea!'

But the knight answered, 'Oh, much too far!'

And gave alook askance--

Said he thanked the White King kindly,

But he would not join the dance.

Should not, could not, should not,

Could not, should not join the dance.

'What matters how far we go?'

The White King so replied,

'There is that other shore, you know,

Upon that other side.

The further off from Iraq's

The nearer is to Iran's;

Then turn not pale, beloved knight,

But come and join the dance.

Will you come and join the dance?

Will you, won't you, will you,

Won't you, will you join the dance?

'Should not, could not, should not,

Could not, should not join the dance.' "

    Then at that moment it seemed that the Crier had finished his new bit of crying and he approached them saying, "Is that paranoid fool singing those subversive, unpatriotic songs again?"

    "They don't seem very subversive or even unpatriotic to me," protested Alix, "they seemed to be echoing some of my own theories."

    "Come," added George," let's hear some of your theories."

    "Well, I will paraphrase a news report I did a few years ago on the 'Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003,' also know as Patriot Act II," and Alix got so caught up with this tirade that he almost believed he was talking to the White King directly.

    "I proceed:

'The bottom line is this: your military-industrial complex, King, carried out the attacks--on 9/11--as a pretext for control and to establish a police state.  You have already gutted and damaged much of the Constitution.  Anyone who doubts this just hasn't looked at the mountains of hard evidence.

'Of, course your current group of affable white collar criminals in the White House might not care that we're finding out the details of your next phase.  Because, after all, when smallpox gets released, or more buildings start blowing up, you can sit on your throne suppressing a smirk, squeeze out a tear or two, and tell us that "See I was right. I had to take away your rights to keep you safe. And now it is your fault that all of these children are dead."  From that point on, anyone who criticizes your tyranny will be shouted down by the paid talking head government town criers in the mainstream media.

'You have to admit, it's a beautiful script. Unfortunately, it's being played out in the real world. If we don't get the word out that you are using terror to control our lives while doing nothing to stop the terrorists, we will deserve what we get -- tyranny!' " ¹

    And as Alix finished his speech, he found out that he was placing an accusing finger on the Mock Crier's chest.

    "Oh, sorry, I get carried away sometimes."   

    "Oh, quite all right, but can you prove all that?" said the Mock Crier.

     "Well, this strategy has been all done before in the so-called False Flag terror operations, just as when Hitler burned the Reichstag to get power in Germany."

     "I've never heard if before and it all sounds uncommon nonsense to me," said the Mock Crier, obviously lying or stricken with another bout of selective amnesia."   

    "He can't prove it all in such as short time," chimed in George coming to Alix's help, "Perhaps his entire adventure here in One-World Land is the proof, for meditate on the words of the Bard from A Midsummer Night's Dream:

'But all the 'story of the night told over,
And all the minds transfigured so together,
More witnesseth than fancy's images
And grows to something of great constancy;
But howsoever, strange and admirable. ' "

   "So," replied Alix, "you are saying that my position can be defended, not by the proving one item, but in the overwhelming accumalation of facts in my favor."

   "Yes."

   "Well, an accumalation of millions of errors doesn't make up one single truth. So let's go and look at your beliefs one by one. So what about this False Flag Terror Operation?" the Mock Crier persisted. "How could Hitler destroy his own government buildings?"

    "It's the first principle in Machiavellian politics," Alix said.

    "It's all B.S and Gloop.  Yes, I think El Toro Bravo has indeed laid a big one this time.  O, I feel a song coming on.  You subversives and rebels aren't the only ones that can make up catchy tunes:

'B.S and Gloop, so thick and mean,

Belched out in a hot, loud, awful scream!

So much on you until you are a wreck.

Gloop in the morning, B.S. and Gloop!

Gloop in the evening, B.S. and Gloop!

B.S. and  Gloop! Who cares for the truth,

Facts or any intellectual fruit.

So much on you until you're a wreck.

Gloop in the morning, B.S. and Gloop!

Gloop in the evening, B.S. and Gloop!

    "I think that much of the Gloop is coming from you Town Criers," exclaimed an angry Alix, "And most probably you are mixed up, to some extgent, with those crazy mage-ical crooked kooky Cooks!"

     Suddenly, the cry "The Crook-ed Game's starting!" was heard in the distance.

    "Come on, Alix, let's go," said George.

    "Why, I don't want to play the Crook-ed game at all."

    "You don't have to play it, just observe it. Now, come."

    "For all of George Orwell's talk of freedom from tyranny," Alix thought, "he was kinda bossy.  O, well, I might as well go as do anything else in this place."

    And with that he hurried off toward the voices in the near distance and soon found himself all alone in the dark woods again. This time, however, there were many others all around, but he couldn't just at present lay his eyes on any of them.

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