Chasing Imagination

Casper

Somewhere deep into her contemplation, Amy fell asleep; something which I was glad of. I did as I had promised, perched on the edge of the bed, not even close to being tired myself. I didn’t once let go of her hand. I knew how it felt to be alone and vulnerable, and I wasn’t going to let her feel it even for a moment.

She woke up sometime close to midday, and, skipping breakfast altogether, we went to get lunch. After that, we went to one of the common rooms. It was reasonably busy, but at least that meant that, if we wanted to talk, we were less likely to be overheard.

I could see that she wanted to talk. Every time she looked at me she did it with a certain amount of wistfulness, and I could see unasked questions behind her eyes. Reading people was, after all, one of my biggest strengths.

We sat down, and I was quiet, allowing her space to pose her question.

‘Can you tell me about the Marauders, Casper?’ she asked.

I had to admit; it was not what I was expecting.

‘The Marauders?’ I repeated. I had felt sure that she was going to mention last night and say something unexpectedly deep about shooting policemen and assumption versus imagination.

‘Yeah, I mean, they’re your enemies, aren’t they?’ she said. ‘Our enemies.’ I saw the hasty addition of the word ‘our.’ I knew how she was feeling. ‘And yet, they’re not IR or Shadow Police or anything, so what are they? It’s not like the government to have ever told us.’
It was a fair question.

‘True,’ I agreed. ‘Well, to put it simply, the Marauders started off as what the Shadow Police are now: thugs and criminals. But the government wanted those thugs and criminals to work for them. And many of the Marauders agreed, but some chose not to. And gradually, the Marauders became a far more intelligent group. To be honest, we probably shouldn’t even call them Marauders anymore, because that’s not what they are—the continental European names; Soulless, Masked Ones, Dream-Killers; they’re all much more appropriate titles for the group. But ‘Marauders’ has always stuck for us.

‘Basically, this new, reformed group of Marauders have a very unique outlook on life. They sometimes refer to themselves as ‘the Machine.’ They believe that the whole world, and every living creature that resides upon it, is one great machine that continues chugging along for millions of years. And they think that every person, or animal, or even plant, is part of keeping the machine working, like electrons in a circuit—you’ve studied physics, right?

‘They like to call themselves a religious group, though, and their beliefs contradict those of the government, so the government don’t like them. The government like them more than they like the Dreamers, though, so there have been co-operations in the past. You see, the Marauders don’t have a problem with little things like individuality, or even imagination itself to some extent—that’s another reason why the government don’t like them. They don’t mind unusual clothes, or giving themselves imaginative nicknames or anything, because those things apparently are ‘insignificant.’

‘What they do have a problem with is dreams. They think that a person who dreams; who wants or tries to change anything about their life, is messing up the delicate workings of the machine and pulling it out of synch. Therefore, they think that person is destroying things—that’s why, in their opinion, the world was in such a dreadful state before the Revolution—wars, global warming, running out of resources, poverty. In the opinions of the Marauders, all of that was because so many people were trying to do different things with their lives and follow their ambitions, and were upsetting the machine’s delicate balance. So they make it their job to round up, capture and kill Dreamers so as to restore the working of the machine. That’s why the government turn a blind eye to things like their eccentric dress sense—they believe that the job they’re doing of hunting us down outweighs any of the inconveniences of what they wear and what they call themselves and stuff. Do you understand?’

‘Yeah, I think so,’ Amy said. She looked focused. ‘So, they’re more on the government’s side than ours, but they are really their own team in this war.’

‘Pretty much,’ I agreed. ‘I mean, the government will allow them to wear weird clothes and things, as long as they keep a low profile. If they end up making news headlines, or if members of the public report seeing people walking around in masks and cloaks and sometimes even top hats, then they’re all in big trouble, and they often end up getting sent to prison. Occasionally, one will end up in the Institution for those sorts of things—after all, giving oneself a nickname and wearing a Venetian mask counts as imagination, doesn’t it?’

She gave me a blank look, and I realised she probably didn’t know what a Venetian mask was—or a top hat, for that matter, but that was hardly the most important thing right now.

‘So who joins the Marauders?’ she asked. ‘I mean, I’d only vaguely heard the word before I joined the Dreamers, and I didn’t actually know what they were.’

‘It tends to be a smaller business,’ I said. ‘There are far less Marauders than Dreamers in the world. Like I say, the government won’t allow them to advertise or to receive any publicity. They don’t even like the public knowing that they exist, and certainly don’t want people knowing about the ‘machine’ theory and their weird clothes and their religious beliefs. But there are always some people who find out about them, just the same as some people, like you, find out about the Dreamers. And then sometimes the Marauders go out and target people who they believe to be appropriate members. Again, the Dreamers do that too.’

‘So they’re not just thugs and criminals and dream-haters,’ Amy confirmed. ‘Because that’s what I always thought.’

‘No, they’re not,’ I said. ‘They used to be, until the Shadow Police became a properly big organisation. Now, a lot of them are very intelligent. Not all of them; they always like to bring in people to do their dirty work, so there will always be quite a few strong yet brainless members to go pick off Dreamers and scare people, but the ones right at the top are the ones who, in the olden days, might have been philosopher or scientist types.’

‘Really?’ she asked. This was evidently news to her. ‘So, why is Matt organising a raid on a Marauder base next week?’

Her eyes clouded with sudden apologies as she realised she had just stumbled upon my least favourite topic.

‘Sorry,’ she muttered, looking away. ‘I just wondered.’

‘That’s fine,’ I assured her. ‘I don’t mind talking about it like this. Basically, ever since the Revolution, the Dreamers and the Marauders have been locked in an underground war.’

Her mouth opened. ‘War? I had no idea!’

‘Of course you didn’t,’ I said bitterly, my resentment aimed at the government. ‘After all, why should the public know anything?’ I challenged sarcastically. ‘But it’s been going on. They want to kill, capture and get information from us. We want to do the same to them. So a raid is often used to scare them into not coming for us, gathering information on anything and everything, finding out their latest plans and any advances they may have in weaponry, and possibly shooting a few or bringing them back here as hostages.’

‘I take it when you say shooting you’re not talking about stun guns,’ she muttered, looking afraid.

‘This is war Amy,’ I said. ‘It isn’t pretty.’

I had never said a truer sentence in my life.