Chapter 1: Whitegloves

Mickey Mouse stared into the dark waters of the Sarahana River and sighed. He gripped the wheel of the steamboat and pondered the series of decisions that had led him to this point. Everything always felt like the right thing at the time, but on overcast days like this, Mickey had doubts. I'm playing the long game, thought Mickey, looking miserably down at his Department of Industrial Services lapel pin. That was what he told himself, but in the back of his mind, another voice crept in. You're only playing the long game if you eventually revolt. Otherwise you're just another fascist.

A cold winter breeze bit at Mickey's neck. In the distance, the dock approached. Working class men loaded boxes onto pallets, shivering, even under their wool overcoats. They reminded him of his parents and of his childhood. A tear welled up in Mickey's eye as he watched them work. It took him a moment to realize it wasn't from the cold.

Micheal Mouse was born in 1906 to a working class couple, Walter and Dotty Mouse. He had been eight when the revolution began. Mickey's parents were whitegloves, caught up in the ideological fervor of their time. When he thought about the early days of his childhood, Mickey remembered with bittersweet fondness the way they talked. Always so hopeful, so daring. To hear them go on, he had believed that truly anything was possible, and that utopia was always just around the corner. As a teenager, these memories caused him nothing but pain. He blamed them for leaving, but more than anything else, he blamed them for losing. Their happy-go-lucky mindset was the reason for all this. In truth, there was no way they could ever have won.

As a child, Mickey couldn't understand the historical events happening around him, and as he grew older, understanding it became his sole reason for living. No one in his family had ever gone to a university, but Mickey soon learned that libraries held the answers to his questions. He spent all his time in them, pouring over books of all kinds, even the banned ones, like Karla Max's On Kapital. When it was time to apply to a college, Mickey had to pick what field of study he would pursue. His first thought was political theory, but by the time he was seventeen, Mickey already understood the reasons his parents rebelled. What he wanted to know was why they had lost. Military strategy or history was the logical choice, but after reading dozens of books on the topic, Mickey came to a single conclusion. Logistics win wars.

Mickey's application essay to the University of Floringrad was nothing short of spectacular. He applied to the college of logistics and business management with an impassioned argument that the whitegloves had lost the revolution because their communist ideology was fundamentally inferior to that of the State. Wars are won by putting people and supplies in the right place at the right time, not by hoping and dreaming of a better world. The whitegloves had actually outnumbered the State, but their focus on ideological purity and working class solidarity meant that their leadership was woefully outmatched. Mickey concluded the essay by stating that the fascist regime would rule for a thousand years, because no revolutionary would be able to look past their ideals long enough to win another war.

The essay was a hit. It set itself apart from the typical essays sent in by barely literate fascists and articulate but closeted whitegloves by being as well written as it was pro fascist. The college accepted him with a sizeable scholarship. In truth, Mickey only half believed what he wrote. His parents did lose because they foolishly believed that enthusiasm and numbers could overcome a well supplied and experienced regime, but when Mickey finally forgave his parents for leaving him, he vowed not to make their mistake. When he rebelled, he was going to win.

The currents tugged the rudder left and right, forcing Mickey to grasp the wheel tighter. Behind him, ugly puffs of black smoke mingled with the grey clouds. A shadow passed over Mickey as a large man eclipsed the sun. Mickey cringed. When Pete spoke, it was with deep gravelly voice marred by decades of tobacco use.

"What the hell do you think you're doing up here? I'd rather have a Yip at the wheel than an idiot like you," spat Pete. As racist as he was, the insult carried a good deal of weight.

"I took over to relieve the Parrot."

"Parson gave you the wheel? He's as lazy as you are incompetent. You just can't get decent workers anymore. Damn whitegloves killed em all."

Pete was an older man, too old to have fought in the war, and very touchy about the subject. He regularly boasted about how many communists he would have killed if the regime had just let him loose on the front lines.

"I can go get him if-" Started Mickey, but Pete cut him off.

"I'll do it myself. Get your worthless ass down to the main deck and scrub it clean. Cleanliness is next to godliness, ya know." Pete punctuated this last statement by violently spitting a wad of chewing tobacco into the river.

Mickey saluted his captain grimly. "Yes sir."

As he dragged a bucket of soapy water and a horsehair brush down to the main deck, Mickey ran into his second least favorite coworker. Parson the Parrot was a scrawny, sniveling, wreck of a man, who seemed nearly as sadistic as the captain. Unlike the captain, who talked regularly about killing communists, Parson had actually gotten men and women killed. He was well known as an informant for the State, and seemed to take a perverse sort of pleasure in it. He adored gossip of all kinds, but sniffing out whiteglove sympathizers was his favorite hobby.

"Captain boot you off the wheel, huh?" He let out a forced, nasally laugh. "Looks like that college degree of yours doesn't account for much does it? All college is good for is radicalizing people into whitegloves I say."

"I don't think college has anything to do with it," said Mickey, starting to scrub. "That man hates everyone."

"Sure, but he hates communists more than the rest. Funny, he seems to hate you more than the others… I wonder why that is. Could it be your traitor parents?"

"My parents were traitors," admitted Mickey, without looking up. "And yours were loyalists. But we're both working this same shitty job, aren't we?"

"Speak for yourself," said the Parrot. "I'm getting out of here. I just need to kiss up to a few more political officers and they'll give me my own steamboat probably."

"Sure Parson. Sure."

When Mickey had first heard about Parson's reputation, he had admittedly been a little worried. But these days he knew there was little chance of him being outed as a whiteglove sympathizer. For that matter, Mickey wasn't even sure he was one. He had gone into university bright eyed and idealistic, thinking he would discover some secret strategy or skill that would allow the revolution to begin anew. It quickly became clear that this wasn't going to happen. In fact, the more he studied the regime, the more convinced Mickey was that another rebellion would be impossible in his lifetime. They were too well supplied, and too well organized. The only thing the revolution ever had going for it was ideological fervor, and these days, thanks to decades of state censorship, that fervor was at an all time low.

By his junior year, Mickey had decided that his journey was at an end. He knew the answers to why his parents had made the choices they did, and he knew why they had lost. He knew that their dream truly was dead, and that the hopes of the revolutionaries had never been more than a fantasy. His parents had been murdered by the State because the State was strong and his parents were weak. With this revelation, Mickey's life felt empty. He had spent all of his time and energy studying and researching and planning, only to find out that it was all pointless. There was no greater purpose, and history could only ever repeat itself. Mickey elected to do what many scholars of his generation did in times like this. He tried to drink himself to death.

It was there in that bar that he met Minnie. Deep into his fourth shot of rye whiskey, Mickey found his way to a table of communists loudly arguing about praxis and revolutionary action. He mostly stayed quiet and scoffed at these starry eyed intellectuals who still believed in the impossible, but one of them caught his eye. It was the only other person at the table who hadn't said a word. Minnie was an unassuming girl with short brown hair and a round face. She spent the entire conversation with her head down, scribbling something on some kind of canvas in her lap. The raucous argument around her seemed to pass by without touching her, like a wave crashing around a pillar. Mickey couldn't help but be curious. After studying her a while, he spoke up.

"I'm gonna get another drink," said Mickey, quietly enough so that only Minnie could hear. "Do you want something?"

Minnie smiled politely, but didn't look up. "Just an espresso, thanks."

Mickey returned with the drinks, pondering what sort of person drinks coffee at midnight. As she reached to take it, he noticed the small unfinished painting in her lap.

"What are you doing?"

"It's just some art," she answered. "I'm just playing around. But if you wanna see something really great, come with me."

Mickey was happy to have any excuse to get away from the pointless political argument, so he downed his shot and allowed Minnie to lead him by the hand out of the bar. The night was mostly a blur, except for one moment that he would never forget. Wandering through an exhibition hall filled with mediocre paintings, Mickey listened to this girl ramble on about art.

"It's the reification of fundamental human truths. All around us are fragments of something greater, and they don't make any sense because they're only pieces. We can't see the whole thing, and so we judge them too harshly…"

Mickey wasn't really following, and the alcohol certainly wasn't helping, but as her words faded into the background, Mickey's eyes locked onto something. The painting stood apart from all the others like a torch in the darkness. Amid boring landscapes and politically charged war scenes, the painting depicted a child, mid leap, grasping for the branch of a tree. A trick of perspective made it impossible to tell if the child was going to be able to grasp it. Its style too was unlike the others. It used hundreds of tiny geometric shapes instead of clean brushstrokes, and as Mikey stared into them, he felt something in him shift.

"Who painted this one?" he asked, interrupting her ramblings.

"I did."

"It's incredible, I've never seen anything like it.

"Thank you."

"What are all these little shapes about?"

"It's… um… well, it's a little embarrassing."

"Come on, you can tell me," Goaded Mickey. "I probably won't remember this conversation anyway."

"Promise you won't laugh?"

"I promise."

"I think art has the power to allow people to see other dimensions."

"Like metaphorically? Like different aspects of life we hadn't considered?"

She paused, as if deciding whether or not to accept this as an out.

"No. Like a fourth spatial dimension that exists orthogonal to our own."

Mickey didn't know what to say. He let the empty exhibition hall be silent for a moment.

"Tell me more."