Wonderland functions because of the emotions drained from the oysters. They're the major focus of the land, the production creating jobs and professions, the effects keeping them in high demand among the citizens, and their value setting them as a form of currency.
In few words, they are the economy.
The focus is on the positive emotions, though, isn't it? Those emotions created under the Queen's orders - they're what the people want.
At least, those people who don't know what a thrill the more negative emotions can bring to a person.
Fear. Arrogance. Rage. These are only a few of the human emotions drained and manufactured in what's known as the Underground Casino.
The UC isn't literally underground, but it might as well be, considering how high up the rest of the city's action takes place. It's merely a few warehouses above the ground. No one who cares for the Queen is ever spotted this far down, which is exactly why the UC is planted in such a place.
The facility runs very much like the one run by the Queen does. Oysters are obtained, usually by cutting their crates from the Scarab once it's above the sea. Their crates are fetched from the water and the occupants taken back to the UC. Instead of being spritzed into a stupor, they are given stimulants to enhance their emotions. Special rooms, sometimes entire neighboring warehouses, are used to make the oyster experience a certain emotion and to extract it.
Snakes or spiders may fill a pit that a human is thrown into, for example, to induce fear and desperation. Oysters may be starved and then placed at a banquet table filled with food to create gluttony and greed.
The Seven Deadly Sins are of great worth in the Underground market.
My name is Calder Ellison. The Underground Casino is in my control.
It began when a trio of escaped Oysters entered the Queen's Casino of their own accord. Somehow, they got in undetected. When they found the other Oysters locked in place and sedated, they became frantic. The rogues woke the sedated as best as they could. The Oysters, when the daze left them, were startled. They were afraid. They were defiant.
The trio was detained, and the Oysters sedated again. But the rebels' act was not without result. A stream of strange Emotions had been produced. The scientists didn't know where to direct these new Emotions. One scientist, Craig Ellison, collected them. In their own little vials, strange-colored liquids rested in Ellison's quarters. For many hours, he only sat and stared at them.
They needed to be named, realized Ellison. And he could only name them if he knew what they were.
So he began testing. Through the night, the only time he had to himself, he would place the tiniest drop of each liquid onto his tongue. The sensations were not in the least bit pleasant, but he didn't stop. Ellison's greatest weakness, he knew, was the desire to know more.
Eventually, Ellison realized why he could not place the Emotions together with a name. He was not from the Oyster's world. He did not know these Emotions the way they did.
Smuggling an Oyster from the Casino wasn't difficult. He merely neglected to spritz one, a man who believed he was named Ben (or was it Roger?), with the sedation elixir. When the Oyster spoke in the middle of a game of Black Jack, he was brought to Ellison, who sedated him and locked him in a utility closet.
Ben (as Ellison told the Oyster his name was, as the Oyster kept changing his mind) was awake enough by the end of the day to be led back to Ellison's quarters. He was given a drop of Emotion, which promptly confused him.
"What is it?" Ellison urged. "What do you feel?"
Ben looked around wildly and with wide eyes. He ran his fingers through his curly hair and his breathing became rapid. "Where am I? Who are you? Where are my shoes? What's happening?"
Ellison, never having seen such behavior before, slapped the man across the face. "See here! Settle down. What are you feeling?"
"I'm confused!" Ben cried loudly. "And I don't know where I am! Wouldn't you be confused too?"
Confusion. Ellison scribbled on the vial of dirt-colored liquid. "Very good."
"Good? What's so good about it? This is awful!" Ellison cut him off by placing a drop of grey into Ben's mouth.
Ben's expression crumpled, and the corners of his mouth turned downward. He squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them again tears began streaming down his face.
"This is awful," Ben repeated. "God, I've lost everything, haven't I? I feel like I have. I'll never get out of here, wherever 'here' is. It's all over, isn't it?" His head fell into his hands and he sobbed.
Ellison thought back to a book he had read on negative Emotions. He had never witnessed them, but this one was easily recognizable. "Are you… despairing?"
Pitifully, Ben took in a short, shaky breath. "I," he choked out. "I suppose I am."
"Brilliant!" Ellison's penned Despair onto the vial, and he moved on to one with a deep red liquid.
This one's effect was not as instantaneous as the first two. For a few moments Ben wiped at his face and his eyes, but stopped suddenly. His face was dark when he looked up at Ellison.
"This is your fault. I know it is!" Ben stood up and slammed a fist against the wall.
"Quiet!"
"Don't tell me to be quiet!" Whirling around, Ben took a swing at Ellison, who hit him in the leg with his chair. Ben stumbled and cursed, but regained his footing. "I hate raging! Anger never helped anyone, but I feel like I don't have a choice!"
Making a mental note of this, Ellison lunged at Ben with a bottle of sedation elixir. He sprayed the man's face with it and cringed at the loud bang Ben made when he hit the floor. Ellison returned to the table where the vials were set up and labeled the deep red one with Rage.
The testing continued. Ben was driven mad by the constant, sometimes violent, mood swings. Ellison disposed of him, but no one has ever figured out how.
Armed with a massive amount of new information, Ellison was faced with the question of what to do with it. He found himself wandering the lower, scarcely occupied levels of the city. Most of the buildings down there were doing nothing but holding up everything above it. The only people Ellison met in his wanderings were either homeless or mad. On occasion, they were both. Ellison quickly took up the habit of carrying a knife with him.
Eventually Ellison realized that he always ended up at the same abandoned building. It may have been the large, faded red doors that made it stand out from the rest of the warehouses. From the sidewalk, it looked like it could have been a book store. Book stands were still set up as window displays and stray, blank pages gathered around them.
It was a peculiar place, decided Ellison when he wandered outside one very early morning. It had indeed been a book store, but the shelves were in no particular organized manner. The wall shelves were strangely separated. One three-foot shelf may be two inches from the ground, with a six-foot shelf up a few inches and to the right. The next one would be at an angle and to the left a few inches. Instead of typical aisle shelves, there were carousels - seven-foot spinning, circular stacks of shelves.
Ellison was enticed by these oddities.
There was an adjoining two-story warehouse that was entirely empty. It was one huge, bare space that practically begged Ellison to put it to good use.
First came the construction. Ellison smuggled unused parts out of the Queen's Casino and began building his own machine for draining and collecting Emotions. It took only a few months to complete the first, fully-functioning machine that Ellison tested on another Oyster, one he called Ronald.
The machine did well to extract some intense fear and dread from Ronald. It also did an extraordinary job of burning off all his skin in three minutes. Modifications were made, Oysters were used as test subjects, and these Oysters fried, melted, or combusted.
When Ellison perfected his machine, and Oyster 176 was not physically harmed in any way, he officially decided what he would do with his creation.
A new economy would form at his fingertips, one he would control. It would be a completely underground operation, never to reach the queen's ears. In his most extreme fantasy, Ellison saw his line of Emotions overruling the Queen's.
.