Another Shaastra 2009 entry. This was the for the 'conventional' SF short story writing contest and had a 3000 word limit, but the topics were provided once more. This one's about a world where the government has made laughter illegal.
Humanity had a revelation. Or at least the tiny portion of humanity that controlled the rest of humanity did. Humour, the government loudly proclaimed, was the root of all evil. The justification offered for this very serious statement was quite simple. Humour cannot exist by itself; it feeds on Sentiment and leaves it hurt and wounded. Or to put it another way, every joke needs a butt. As a government spokesman once said,
“Why do wars happen? People are angry, and so they fight. Why do people get angry? They are angry because they are offended, and they are offended because their sentiments are hurt.”
This is where the government spokesman gleefully introduced the damning role of humour by pointing out that it is most likely someone’s idea of a joke that starts a war. Similar arguments, with the help of several solemn computer scientists and logicians, reduced child trafficking, drug abuse and serial killings to applications of humour. Having inarguably established the role of humour in humanity’s decadence, the aforementioned government set out to eradicate it. And here they hit their first roadblock – how do you identify humour? A group of solemn looking psychologists locked themselves in a room for a week, and came up with the answer: laughter. Laughter is the physical manifestation of humour and can be detected; anything that can be detected can be eliminated. Engineers and biologists were hired in droves to work on a laughter detector that would be cheap, effective and unobtrusive. Mathematically speaking, numbers always work, and out of all the collective effort arose the Rideometer. A term like Laugh-o-meter, for instance, was discarded as being too frivolous, and not really indicative of the profound task it was meant to accomplish. Latin was found to be a suitably serious etymological source, and hence the name.
Incidentally, the perplexed few who managed to appreciate the humour in this theory were promptly removed to a safe place where they would be unlikely to hurt themselves and the rest of society. The opposing political party, in what might have been the first such incident in history, found themselves in total agreement with the idea, and actually undertook campaigns supporting the incumbents.
The Rideometer was soon installed in nearly every public place in the country. It is believed that in the two centuries that passed since its invention, it had successfully “eliminated any concerns about overpopulation”, as taken verbatim from a stubbornly invariant government propaganda leaflet. Unofficial figures put the number of disappeared at over two billion. The remaining people were naturally averse to humour, and as generations passed, began to lose the biological ability to recognize a joke. Laughter came to be considered an infectious disease, the sort that could lead to entire cities being quarantined. Tickling, people observed, led to laughter, and this was entirely unacceptable. A vaccine was promptly invented that gave people immunity to being tickled.
The best of medicines, however, cannot kill every single germ, and so was the case with the Rideometer. There was a pocket of the capital city Kilmar that survived all purges. Perhaps the government felt that this crime ridden, gang infested corner of the planet did not have any humour to be expunged. Or maybe the government did not wish to pick a fight with the sort of people that believed a bazooka should be given to every three year old. Either way, if someone had to be born who would go on to change the way the country was run, it would have to be here in the Underbelly.
No one would have thought that this young man of twenty two would be that person, just by taking in his appearance. He was like any other youth in the Underbelly, tall and built like an ox. There was perhaps one thing which would have given him away, if anyone had been able to recognize its significance: the laughter lines around his eyes that made him look prematurely old. As it was, the only thing that came of it was the occasional volley of juvenile taunts targeting his grandfatherly looks. This didn’t really bother him any more. What did bother him was the fact that he hated most things in the world. He disliked the way people beat up each other if they couldn’t agree on each other’s favourite colours. He despised the way people dragged themselves to work everyday, heavy in the foot, and returned home, if anything even more tired and weary. Was everyone a machine? He often dreamed of leaving the Underbelly and plying his trade in the city.
Karman, as this young man was known, forcefully interrupted his musings and tried to concentrate on the forge in front of him. He worked in the largest of the Underbelly’s numerous weapons factories as an apprentice blacksmith. His was a coveted job, as his master often reminded him, but this prestige was something he just could not feel.
“Are you slacking off again, Karman?”
It was the master, a man who never did any actual work it seemed. However, he had a million eyes, Karman felt, which he used to keep watch over the young apprentices.
“This is not working you know. It is only my friendship with your father that’s keeping you here. If it was up to me, I would thrash the laziness out of you with one of those poker irons. It is worthless little scoundrels like you that I fear will destroy the Underbelly.” He paused to wipe the spittle that had collected at the sides of his mouth.
“I never asked you to stop work to listen to me. Get back to work, and watch that barrel. The way you are making it, anyone who uses it is only going to blow himself up.”
This rant in itself was nothing new, but Karman was feeling particularly disconsolate today. Before he could let better sense stop him, he retorted – ‘Why don’t you do some work for a change, Honourable Master? You sit there and become fatter by the day.”
The Weaponsmaster said nothing. He stood up, extracted a poker from the fireplace and walked over to him. “I’ve had enough of your insolence. Consider this a friendly warning.” And he branded Karman on the cheek with the red hot iron.
Karman ran till his legs began to feel like slabs of rock, and further. But the pain did not go away. He went back to his favourite place in the Underbelly, a little cave in a hilly region near the border. He wept for some time, and then contemplated a rather novel feeling that seemed to be washing over him in waves. He felt capable of murder. While this seems like status quo for the Underbelly, Karman had always been passive to the point where he preferred sitting alone in a dark room to going hunting with the other men. Now, he found himself plotting numerous methods of revenge, all of which ended with a gruesome death for the Weaponsmaster. The feeling eventually passed and another emotion took hold of him; one that seemed cruelly out of context. He felt like laughing. Usually he would stuff one fist into his mouth to stop it, a lesson painfully learnt from innumerable childhood beatings, but this time he let go. He laughed till his stomach complained, and laughed so loud that startled birds in nearby trees flew away to find quieter housing. The cave rumbled back a growled response as the sound travelled full circle through the stone, but he still didn’t stop. When he finally did, he wiped involuntary tears from the corners of his eyes, and realized that somewhere amidst the racket, he had actually made a decision. He would leave the Underbelly, for good or worse.
The border, as the name suggested, separated the Underbelly controlled regions from the rest of the city. Perhaps in the past it had bustled with activity, with both sides trying to sneak spies to the other. Today, it was a barren, desolate place, overgrown with shrubbery and barely passable at all. One sentry was all that each side maintained, in a weak nod to their once vigorous enmity. Karman knew the area close to the border quite well; he never passed up an opportunity to come here and soak in the sheer beauty of uninterrupted silence. He knew where the Underbelly sentry would be, and also knew that he slept sixteen hours a day. As he crept towards the barebones shack where the unfortunate sentry dozed, he realized that he had timed his visit right. Even from a distance of twenty feet he could hear the snores. He crossed the rampant undergrowth quickly, eager to put some distance between him and a potential pursuit.
Presently he noticed a thinning in the greenery. This could only indicate that he had reached the government controlled side of the border. He slowed, and eventually stopped to crouch behind a largish rock. He had caught sight of what could only be the sentry’s shack, though the smooth black stone and blinking lights near the doorway suggested something entirely otherworldly. The building was slightly lower down the slope to him, and through the window, he could see the silhouette of a sleeping man. This fact cheered him up immensely; some things really are universal! He made his way slowly towards the shack, having established that there was no other route. Just when everything seemed to be going well, something happened that reiterated his faith in a humorous God.
As he neared the shack, the lights near the doorway began to blink and change patterns rapidly. This must have been some kind of an alarm, as clatters and bangs from within indicated that the sentry had woken up. Karman froze, hoping the alarm, which unlike the ones back in the Underbelly did not seem to rely on an ear-shattering din to do its job, would quiet down by itself. It did not work, and when Karman heard the sound of the doorway hissing open, he realized that he had left it too late. He was in the open and had nowhere to go. The sentry, who was just as fat and timid as his counterpart on the other side of the border, looked thoroughly shocked to see another human being, and made valiant attempts to extract a weapon from its wall casing. He managed it after some frenzied grappling, and before Karman could stop playing the rabbit caught in the headlights, had hefted it and fired it.
A pleasantly surprised (and unhurt) Karman opened his eyes after a few seconds only to see the sentry writhing in pain on the ground in front of him. He had accidentally shot himself! Karman was so relieved at his incredible stroke of luck that he burst out laughing. The hitherto quiet alarm took offence to this act and promptly raised the ear shattering din he had expected all along. The blinking lights, he noticed belatedly, were part of a bigger machine, a machine that his love for history put a name to. The Rideometer. He unfroze and began to sprint down the path away from the shack. Only seconds later, a group of veiled men and women had surrounded him and wrestled him to the ground. As he contemplated the number of ways he would be tortured by these people (whose presently hidden faces were uniformly replaced by that of the Weaponsmaster), he caught snippets of their whispered conversation.
“Is he actually from the other side?”
“Oh my god, if people start crossing over, we actually have a chance.”
“Yeah, those guys are supposed to hate the government.”
“Wait, we are getting ahead of ourselves, maybe this is a spy.”
“He’s listening to us!”
At this point something hard and heavy made contact with the side of his head and Karman lost consciousness before he could wrap his head around the unexpected things he had heard.
When we woke up, he found himself in a large comfortable room, warmly ensconced in a luxurious blanket. He rolled over, and observed that he was on a bed that seemed big enough to hold at least one fifteen foot giant, or five normal humans. His head still throbbed painfully, and his groping fingers soon identified a pebble sized lump on the back of his head. Further contemplation was interrupted by a cool female voice.
“Welcome, person from the other side.”
Karman swivelled around to stare into the part of the room that was shrouded in darkness. Apparently there had been someone there all along. A woman stepped out from the shadows, looking grim and morbid. She was rather short and petite, and dressed like a soldier, with her numerous pockets bulging with exotic weaponry.
“You know, you are the first person to cross over that we have managed to capture. Those government agents always beat us to it. You are extremely lucky to land up here.” Noticing Karman’s suspicious expression, she assured him seriously, “Don’t worry, we won’t hurt you. Sorry about that lump on your head, we can’t be too careful you know.” She looked into the shadowy region she had recently vacated, as if expecting a wild animal to leap out.
“It was the fact that you did not have the vaccination marks on your forearm that convinced us. Anyway, welcome to our group, and as soon as you are ready, tell me, for we have plenty of work for you.” Karman had no idea who they were and why they wanted him to work for them. He compressed all the doubts assailing him into one admirably concise question – “Who are you?”
At this, the woman nodded to herself grimly, as if expecting that question. “Thank you for asking. That was the final test you know… if you had not asked the question, my guards would have shot you immediately.”
She said her name was Risa and that she was the head of a small group of rebels. Karman listened to her ramble about how life was so bad under the government, and how they were all so unhappy. At this point he interrupted, feeling a little bit perplexed. “But what exactly is your problem? All you’ve said is that you are unhappy.”
Risa dithered for a bit about ‘poor ambience’ and ‘misdirected focus’ before finally admitting that they had no idea. Pre-empting questions about the pointlessness of their existence, Risa added, “We are comfortable with each other, that’s all. And we hate the government.”
As Karman quickly became accustomed to the ways of the rebels, he discovered many more things about them. For instance, he realized that the term ‘rebels’ was a bit of an exaggeration for the pathetic bunch of anti-social misfits that they actually were. They had never actually engaged the government in any sort of warfare, and when Karman inquired about casualties, they actually shirked away from him as though he’d said something distasteful. More importantly, however, Karman began to see that the rebels were a lot like him, even if they had no idea about it. Many things he heard Risa, and the others say, he’d said to himself before. They disliked the violence that teemed all around them. They hated the drudgery that their daily life had become. They missed the lighter side of life – the sports, the laughter and all the fun things in the world. As they had never experienced any other way of life, they became gloomy and frustrated.
Karman soon found himself a job. He had never thought of himself as a teacher, but now, as he often privately congratulated himself, he was the best humour theorist the world had seen. He gathered to himself groups of adoring kids and explained the finer points of wit, and the subtleties of sarcasm.
“One form of humour is all about connections. You laugh when someone uses his/her imagination to link obscure things. Free your mind, forget everything your parents have told you about the world, and you might just understand.” He narrated them a joke, a personal favourite about an ant and a foolish elephant. To his delight, a few of the kids actually laughed. Emboldened by success, his battered and bruised knack for wittiness recovered quickly.
The children were then taught how to make fun of other people, an act that resulted in quite a few thrashings before the adults gradually got used to it. He also taught them the fine art of slapstick humour. Boys and girls were forced to contort their faces and bodies in spectacular ways in an attempt to elicit laughter. The unfortunate ones were also made to slip on banana peels, swim in pools of muck and have their pyjamas ripped off by their impish friends. One day, when one of the kids commented on how he looked like a prospective thief who had tried to sneak down the chimney, only to find that the fireplace had been lit; he realized that his methods were working. The kid had of course been referring to the ugly burn marks on his face.
Memories from his previous life slowly faded for Karman, but for one person – the Weaponsmaster, the man who had permanently disfigured him. One night, in the middle of one of his usual nightmares about the same man, something unusual happened. He imagined the Weaponsmaster laughing. This notion was so ridiculous that he awoke with a start and laughed till his sides hurt. During the next couple of days, Karman waxed lyrical on the joys of exaggeration. He suggested that the kids try and imagine their least favourite members of the government doing impossible things. The obese law minister, one kid proudly claimed, had just attempted a spectacular pirouette and landed flat on his backside. To Karman’s delight, this technique seemed to work on the adults to a certain extent. He vividly recalled the day he caught Risa in splits, having attempted to imagine the prime minister choke on a fish bone while trying to laugh. But Karman discovered the best technique of them all, last. Laughter, he realized was contagious, and therefore the best way to make people laugh is to make them see other people laugh. With this observation, the most humourless of the adults gave in.
Several months passed this way, and when Karman finally felt that he had done all he could, he approached Risa with a plan.
“I think I know how to topple the government.” Risa, who had been sipping some kind of tasteless fluid, nearly choked on it. With as much dignity as she could mutter, what with tears streaming from her eyes and a spluttering voice, she asked “What do you mean?”
Karman explained how he had long since come to the conclusion that you could not fight the government on their own terms, bazookas, hand grenades and all. The rebels had to use the one thing the government could not stand: humour.
“You don’t have to kill the leaders to topple the government, you know. You just have to discredit them.” Risa nodded noncommittally, not really following. Karman clarified himself, once more employing his unique talent for briefness.
“You have to make them laugh.”
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It would either be the finest hour for the rebels, or their most miserable. Karman had insisted that they not immediately carry out their plan. They had bided their time and chosen the day when they would be able to inflict maximum damage. It was the only time of the year when the entire Council of Ministers appeared together to address the public. It was the Annual Solemnity Day.
Karman took in the imposing monolith that the Auditorium was. Built with the same ubiquitous black granite as the rest of the city, it towered over it, looking like an immense Eye that never blinked. It was rumoured that it could seat the entire population of the city if needed. Today, it was needed. Karman who had seated himself in the first tier of seats squinted into the higher levels, privately amused by the rows and rows of glum looking people. That would change soon, he told himself. A minister was speaking about the purpose of existence, and how it was our duty to do our duty with the utmost seriousness. As the words began to blur into an indistinguishable whine, Karman was rudely awoken by Risa, who was sitting beside him.
“The Prime Minister’s speech is nearly done. Get ready.”
The Prime Minister finished his long winded polemic and opened the session for questions. Karman stood up and his hard earned first row seating (it was nearest to the dais) paid off rich dividends. The Prime Minister pointed one flabby finger, motioning him to continue.
“I would like to thank you, sir for opening our eyes and letting us see what humanity is truly about. I believe that if we are not serious about the things we do, we do not deserve to live at all. Thank you once more.” The Prime Minister tried hard not to visibly preen and managed to arrange his features into a TV-friendly grimace.
“I would like to seek your blessings so that I can imbibe some of your purposefulness into my worthless life.” The Prime Minister started at this statement and looked rather foolishly towards the assembled Council members for guidance. The Council for its part looked appropriately stony, and the Prime Minister had to make the decision for himself.
“All right, you can approach the dais, but you only get a moment. But the government always approves of righteous citizens, remember that.”
Karman approached slowly, looking around at the many Rideometers that surrounded the platform. He thought grimly that he had never felt less likely to burst out laughing. This was it, two months of planning had gone into this, and it was up to him now. As he started to climb the stairs, he deliberately tripped and flailed around wildly, trying to regain his balance. The rebels swung into action. A bucketful of carefully manufactured slime was flung from one of the upper tiers, and Karman fell smack into it. As Karman attempted to get up, his trousers ripped. A couple of titters broke out from the crowd, and while the Council looked thoroughly shocked, none of them relented just yet. It was the children’s turn now.
The rebel children burst out laughing. The Auditorium shook with the sound and the Rideometers went berserk. The adults looked stunned at the sudden turn of events, and hesitated. This momentary pause was enough for laughter to work its magic. Soon every kid in the auditorium was rolling around on the floor; quite a few adults joined in too. The sentries looked lost – they just did not have the firepower to shoot down half the city.
Karman lay on the ground, covered in slime and sopping wet. He had his torn pants to thank for an uncomfortable breeze that played around his legs. His simulated fall had turned out to be slightly less simulated than he intended, and a sharp pain knifed through his calves. Groaning, he stood up, and watched, as time itself seemed to come to a standstill, the Prime Minister crack an unwilling smile.
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“Why do wars happen? People are angry, and so they fight. Why do people get angry? They are angry because they are offended, and they are offended because their sentiments are hurt.”
This is where the government spokesman gleefully introduced the damning role of humour by pointing out that it is most likely someone’s idea of a joke that starts a war. Similar arguments, with the help of several solemn computer scientists and logicians, reduced child trafficking, drug abuse and serial killings to applications of humour. Having inarguably established the role of humour in humanity’s decadence, the aforementioned government set out to eradicate it. And here they hit their first roadblock – how do you identify humour? A group of solemn looking psychologists locked themselves in a room for a week, and came up with the answer: laughter. Laughter is the physical manifestation of humour and can be detected; anything that can be detected can be eliminated. Engineers and biologists were hired in droves to work on a laughter detector that would be cheap, effective and unobtrusive. Mathematically speaking, numbers always work, and out of all the collective effort arose the Rideometer. A term like Laugh-o-meter, for instance, was discarded as being too frivolous, and not really indicative of the profound task it was meant to accomplish. Latin was found to be a suitably serious etymological source, and hence the name.
Incidentally, the perplexed few who managed to appreciate the humour in this theory were promptly removed to a safe place where they would be unlikely to hurt themselves and the rest of society. The opposing political party, in what might have been the first such incident in history, found themselves in total agreement with the idea, and actually undertook campaigns supporting the incumbents.
The Rideometer was soon installed in nearly every public place in the country. It is believed that in the two centuries that passed since its invention, it had successfully “eliminated any concerns about overpopulation”, as taken verbatim from a stubbornly invariant government propaganda leaflet. Unofficial figures put the number of disappeared at over two billion. The remaining people were naturally averse to humour, and as generations passed, began to lose the biological ability to recognize a joke. Laughter came to be considered an infectious disease, the sort that could lead to entire cities being quarantined. Tickling, people observed, led to laughter, and this was entirely unacceptable. A vaccine was promptly invented that gave people immunity to being tickled.
The best of medicines, however, cannot kill every single germ, and so was the case with the Rideometer. There was a pocket of the capital city Kilmar that survived all purges. Perhaps the government felt that this crime ridden, gang infested corner of the planet did not have any humour to be expunged. Or maybe the government did not wish to pick a fight with the sort of people that believed a bazooka should be given to every three year old. Either way, if someone had to be born who would go on to change the way the country was run, it would have to be here in the Underbelly.
No one would have thought that this young man of twenty two would be that person, just by taking in his appearance. He was like any other youth in the Underbelly, tall and built like an ox. There was perhaps one thing which would have given him away, if anyone had been able to recognize its significance: the laughter lines around his eyes that made him look prematurely old. As it was, the only thing that came of it was the occasional volley of juvenile taunts targeting his grandfatherly looks. This didn’t really bother him any more. What did bother him was the fact that he hated most things in the world. He disliked the way people beat up each other if they couldn’t agree on each other’s favourite colours. He despised the way people dragged themselves to work everyday, heavy in the foot, and returned home, if anything even more tired and weary. Was everyone a machine? He often dreamed of leaving the Underbelly and plying his trade in the city.
Karman, as this young man was known, forcefully interrupted his musings and tried to concentrate on the forge in front of him. He worked in the largest of the Underbelly’s numerous weapons factories as an apprentice blacksmith. His was a coveted job, as his master often reminded him, but this prestige was something he just could not feel.
“Are you slacking off again, Karman?”
It was the master, a man who never did any actual work it seemed. However, he had a million eyes, Karman felt, which he used to keep watch over the young apprentices.
“This is not working you know. It is only my friendship with your father that’s keeping you here. If it was up to me, I would thrash the laziness out of you with one of those poker irons. It is worthless little scoundrels like you that I fear will destroy the Underbelly.” He paused to wipe the spittle that had collected at the sides of his mouth.
“I never asked you to stop work to listen to me. Get back to work, and watch that barrel. The way you are making it, anyone who uses it is only going to blow himself up.”
This rant in itself was nothing new, but Karman was feeling particularly disconsolate today. Before he could let better sense stop him, he retorted – ‘Why don’t you do some work for a change, Honourable Master? You sit there and become fatter by the day.”
The Weaponsmaster said nothing. He stood up, extracted a poker from the fireplace and walked over to him. “I’ve had enough of your insolence. Consider this a friendly warning.” And he branded Karman on the cheek with the red hot iron.
Karman ran till his legs began to feel like slabs of rock, and further. But the pain did not go away. He went back to his favourite place in the Underbelly, a little cave in a hilly region near the border. He wept for some time, and then contemplated a rather novel feeling that seemed to be washing over him in waves. He felt capable of murder. While this seems like status quo for the Underbelly, Karman had always been passive to the point where he preferred sitting alone in a dark room to going hunting with the other men. Now, he found himself plotting numerous methods of revenge, all of which ended with a gruesome death for the Weaponsmaster. The feeling eventually passed and another emotion took hold of him; one that seemed cruelly out of context. He felt like laughing. Usually he would stuff one fist into his mouth to stop it, a lesson painfully learnt from innumerable childhood beatings, but this time he let go. He laughed till his stomach complained, and laughed so loud that startled birds in nearby trees flew away to find quieter housing. The cave rumbled back a growled response as the sound travelled full circle through the stone, but he still didn’t stop. When he finally did, he wiped involuntary tears from the corners of his eyes, and realized that somewhere amidst the racket, he had actually made a decision. He would leave the Underbelly, for good or worse.
The border, as the name suggested, separated the Underbelly controlled regions from the rest of the city. Perhaps in the past it had bustled with activity, with both sides trying to sneak spies to the other. Today, it was a barren, desolate place, overgrown with shrubbery and barely passable at all. One sentry was all that each side maintained, in a weak nod to their once vigorous enmity. Karman knew the area close to the border quite well; he never passed up an opportunity to come here and soak in the sheer beauty of uninterrupted silence. He knew where the Underbelly sentry would be, and also knew that he slept sixteen hours a day. As he crept towards the barebones shack where the unfortunate sentry dozed, he realized that he had timed his visit right. Even from a distance of twenty feet he could hear the snores. He crossed the rampant undergrowth quickly, eager to put some distance between him and a potential pursuit.
Presently he noticed a thinning in the greenery. This could only indicate that he had reached the government controlled side of the border. He slowed, and eventually stopped to crouch behind a largish rock. He had caught sight of what could only be the sentry’s shack, though the smooth black stone and blinking lights near the doorway suggested something entirely otherworldly. The building was slightly lower down the slope to him, and through the window, he could see the silhouette of a sleeping man. This fact cheered him up immensely; some things really are universal! He made his way slowly towards the shack, having established that there was no other route. Just when everything seemed to be going well, something happened that reiterated his faith in a humorous God.
As he neared the shack, the lights near the doorway began to blink and change patterns rapidly. This must have been some kind of an alarm, as clatters and bangs from within indicated that the sentry had woken up. Karman froze, hoping the alarm, which unlike the ones back in the Underbelly did not seem to rely on an ear-shattering din to do its job, would quiet down by itself. It did not work, and when Karman heard the sound of the doorway hissing open, he realized that he had left it too late. He was in the open and had nowhere to go. The sentry, who was just as fat and timid as his counterpart on the other side of the border, looked thoroughly shocked to see another human being, and made valiant attempts to extract a weapon from its wall casing. He managed it after some frenzied grappling, and before Karman could stop playing the rabbit caught in the headlights, had hefted it and fired it.
A pleasantly surprised (and unhurt) Karman opened his eyes after a few seconds only to see the sentry writhing in pain on the ground in front of him. He had accidentally shot himself! Karman was so relieved at his incredible stroke of luck that he burst out laughing. The hitherto quiet alarm took offence to this act and promptly raised the ear shattering din he had expected all along. The blinking lights, he noticed belatedly, were part of a bigger machine, a machine that his love for history put a name to. The Rideometer. He unfroze and began to sprint down the path away from the shack. Only seconds later, a group of veiled men and women had surrounded him and wrestled him to the ground. As he contemplated the number of ways he would be tortured by these people (whose presently hidden faces were uniformly replaced by that of the Weaponsmaster), he caught snippets of their whispered conversation.
“Is he actually from the other side?”
“Oh my god, if people start crossing over, we actually have a chance.”
“Yeah, those guys are supposed to hate the government.”
“Wait, we are getting ahead of ourselves, maybe this is a spy.”
“He’s listening to us!”
At this point something hard and heavy made contact with the side of his head and Karman lost consciousness before he could wrap his head around the unexpected things he had heard.
When we woke up, he found himself in a large comfortable room, warmly ensconced in a luxurious blanket. He rolled over, and observed that he was on a bed that seemed big enough to hold at least one fifteen foot giant, or five normal humans. His head still throbbed painfully, and his groping fingers soon identified a pebble sized lump on the back of his head. Further contemplation was interrupted by a cool female voice.
“Welcome, person from the other side.”
Karman swivelled around to stare into the part of the room that was shrouded in darkness. Apparently there had been someone there all along. A woman stepped out from the shadows, looking grim and morbid. She was rather short and petite, and dressed like a soldier, with her numerous pockets bulging with exotic weaponry.
“You know, you are the first person to cross over that we have managed to capture. Those government agents always beat us to it. You are extremely lucky to land up here.” Noticing Karman’s suspicious expression, she assured him seriously, “Don’t worry, we won’t hurt you. Sorry about that lump on your head, we can’t be too careful you know.” She looked into the shadowy region she had recently vacated, as if expecting a wild animal to leap out.
“It was the fact that you did not have the vaccination marks on your forearm that convinced us. Anyway, welcome to our group, and as soon as you are ready, tell me, for we have plenty of work for you.” Karman had no idea who they were and why they wanted him to work for them. He compressed all the doubts assailing him into one admirably concise question – “Who are you?”
At this, the woman nodded to herself grimly, as if expecting that question. “Thank you for asking. That was the final test you know… if you had not asked the question, my guards would have shot you immediately.”
She said her name was Risa and that she was the head of a small group of rebels. Karman listened to her ramble about how life was so bad under the government, and how they were all so unhappy. At this point he interrupted, feeling a little bit perplexed. “But what exactly is your problem? All you’ve said is that you are unhappy.”
Risa dithered for a bit about ‘poor ambience’ and ‘misdirected focus’ before finally admitting that they had no idea. Pre-empting questions about the pointlessness of their existence, Risa added, “We are comfortable with each other, that’s all. And we hate the government.”
As Karman quickly became accustomed to the ways of the rebels, he discovered many more things about them. For instance, he realized that the term ‘rebels’ was a bit of an exaggeration for the pathetic bunch of anti-social misfits that they actually were. They had never actually engaged the government in any sort of warfare, and when Karman inquired about casualties, they actually shirked away from him as though he’d said something distasteful. More importantly, however, Karman began to see that the rebels were a lot like him, even if they had no idea about it. Many things he heard Risa, and the others say, he’d said to himself before. They disliked the violence that teemed all around them. They hated the drudgery that their daily life had become. They missed the lighter side of life – the sports, the laughter and all the fun things in the world. As they had never experienced any other way of life, they became gloomy and frustrated.
Karman soon found himself a job. He had never thought of himself as a teacher, but now, as he often privately congratulated himself, he was the best humour theorist the world had seen. He gathered to himself groups of adoring kids and explained the finer points of wit, and the subtleties of sarcasm.
“One form of humour is all about connections. You laugh when someone uses his/her imagination to link obscure things. Free your mind, forget everything your parents have told you about the world, and you might just understand.” He narrated them a joke, a personal favourite about an ant and a foolish elephant. To his delight, a few of the kids actually laughed. Emboldened by success, his battered and bruised knack for wittiness recovered quickly.
The children were then taught how to make fun of other people, an act that resulted in quite a few thrashings before the adults gradually got used to it. He also taught them the fine art of slapstick humour. Boys and girls were forced to contort their faces and bodies in spectacular ways in an attempt to elicit laughter. The unfortunate ones were also made to slip on banana peels, swim in pools of muck and have their pyjamas ripped off by their impish friends. One day, when one of the kids commented on how he looked like a prospective thief who had tried to sneak down the chimney, only to find that the fireplace had been lit; he realized that his methods were working. The kid had of course been referring to the ugly burn marks on his face.
Memories from his previous life slowly faded for Karman, but for one person – the Weaponsmaster, the man who had permanently disfigured him. One night, in the middle of one of his usual nightmares about the same man, something unusual happened. He imagined the Weaponsmaster laughing. This notion was so ridiculous that he awoke with a start and laughed till his sides hurt. During the next couple of days, Karman waxed lyrical on the joys of exaggeration. He suggested that the kids try and imagine their least favourite members of the government doing impossible things. The obese law minister, one kid proudly claimed, had just attempted a spectacular pirouette and landed flat on his backside. To Karman’s delight, this technique seemed to work on the adults to a certain extent. He vividly recalled the day he caught Risa in splits, having attempted to imagine the prime minister choke on a fish bone while trying to laugh. But Karman discovered the best technique of them all, last. Laughter, he realized was contagious, and therefore the best way to make people laugh is to make them see other people laugh. With this observation, the most humourless of the adults gave in.
Several months passed this way, and when Karman finally felt that he had done all he could, he approached Risa with a plan.
“I think I know how to topple the government.” Risa, who had been sipping some kind of tasteless fluid, nearly choked on it. With as much dignity as she could mutter, what with tears streaming from her eyes and a spluttering voice, she asked “What do you mean?”
Karman explained how he had long since come to the conclusion that you could not fight the government on their own terms, bazookas, hand grenades and all. The rebels had to use the one thing the government could not stand: humour.
“You don’t have to kill the leaders to topple the government, you know. You just have to discredit them.” Risa nodded noncommittally, not really following. Karman clarified himself, once more employing his unique talent for briefness.
“You have to make them laugh.”
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It would either be the finest hour for the rebels, or their most miserable. Karman had insisted that they not immediately carry out their plan. They had bided their time and chosen the day when they would be able to inflict maximum damage. It was the only time of the year when the entire Council of Ministers appeared together to address the public. It was the Annual Solemnity Day.
Karman took in the imposing monolith that the Auditorium was. Built with the same ubiquitous black granite as the rest of the city, it towered over it, looking like an immense Eye that never blinked. It was rumoured that it could seat the entire population of the city if needed. Today, it was needed. Karman who had seated himself in the first tier of seats squinted into the higher levels, privately amused by the rows and rows of glum looking people. That would change soon, he told himself. A minister was speaking about the purpose of existence, and how it was our duty to do our duty with the utmost seriousness. As the words began to blur into an indistinguishable whine, Karman was rudely awoken by Risa, who was sitting beside him.
“The Prime Minister’s speech is nearly done. Get ready.”
The Prime Minister finished his long winded polemic and opened the session for questions. Karman stood up and his hard earned first row seating (it was nearest to the dais) paid off rich dividends. The Prime Minister pointed one flabby finger, motioning him to continue.
“I would like to thank you, sir for opening our eyes and letting us see what humanity is truly about. I believe that if we are not serious about the things we do, we do not deserve to live at all. Thank you once more.” The Prime Minister tried hard not to visibly preen and managed to arrange his features into a TV-friendly grimace.
“I would like to seek your blessings so that I can imbibe some of your purposefulness into my worthless life.” The Prime Minister started at this statement and looked rather foolishly towards the assembled Council members for guidance. The Council for its part looked appropriately stony, and the Prime Minister had to make the decision for himself.
“All right, you can approach the dais, but you only get a moment. But the government always approves of righteous citizens, remember that.”
Karman approached slowly, looking around at the many Rideometers that surrounded the platform. He thought grimly that he had never felt less likely to burst out laughing. This was it, two months of planning had gone into this, and it was up to him now. As he started to climb the stairs, he deliberately tripped and flailed around wildly, trying to regain his balance. The rebels swung into action. A bucketful of carefully manufactured slime was flung from one of the upper tiers, and Karman fell smack into it. As Karman attempted to get up, his trousers ripped. A couple of titters broke out from the crowd, and while the Council looked thoroughly shocked, none of them relented just yet. It was the children’s turn now.
The rebel children burst out laughing. The Auditorium shook with the sound and the Rideometers went berserk. The adults looked stunned at the sudden turn of events, and hesitated. This momentary pause was enough for laughter to work its magic. Soon every kid in the auditorium was rolling around on the floor; quite a few adults joined in too. The sentries looked lost – they just did not have the firepower to shoot down half the city.
Karman lay on the ground, covered in slime and sopping wet. He had his torn pants to thank for an uncomfortable breeze that played around his legs. His simulated fall had turned out to be slightly less simulated than he intended, and a sharp pain knifed through his calves. Groaning, he stood up, and watched, as time itself seemed to come to a standstill, the Prime Minister crack an unwilling smile.
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