MEETING HALL, BUCKINGHAM PALACE, LONDON
“B efore I resume the video, I have to remind you of what the circus was about,” the Queen said, and Dr. Tom was listening eagerly. “What I want to remind you about is something they used to call the Invisible Plague.”
A few squeals escaped the crowd. From Tom too. He had heard about the Invisible Plague before but thought it was only a myth. He stared back at the invitation card in his hand and read the list of guests again, breathing heavily. This couldn’t be.
“Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, when I lived in Wonderland, things were crazy,” the Queen explained. “Crazy but beautiful in a nonsensical way. The power of imagination Lewis Carroll had gifted us with had no boundaries. Animals and flowers talked. Endless parties where we threw teacups at each other—and loved it. And more. At some point, most of us could materialize their own thoughts into reality.”
The crowd sighed.
“But then the hallucinations began, and things got weirder when that Alice girl entered our world, criticizing our mad ways of living. But who was she to understand the beauty of bonkers and borgroves of Wonderland?” the Queen said. “Let’s not go into what damage she caused, and let’s focus on the rabbit hole she created, the one that broke the borders between Wonderland and the silly human world.”
Tom fidgeted in his seat. Didn’t she say she was going to explain what the Invisible Plague was? He was curious.
“Humans began coming into our world, one by one,” the Queen said. “And thus, we crossed over to their world, too. Suddenly, we found ourselves in a world we didn’t belong to. A world of humans in the 19th century in London. Unlike the madly colorful Wonderland, their world was a place of war, poverty, and Victorian darkness.”
The Queen stopped and ate a few of her favorite peanuts.
“Of course, humans’ greatest weakness had always been their fear. In particular, the fear of others. They feared anything that was different from them so much that they had the audacity to kill it, exterminate it right away, and call it their enemy. To them, Wonderlanders were the maddest of the mad. At this time in history, insanity had not been medically explained yet, nor was it socially acceptable. Humans were as ignorant as those who, of this world, call autistic children retarded. Humans were the worst creatures the universe created.”
Tom’s perception of the Queen had been that of a total lunatic who longed for nothing but the obedience of others—like the flamingo in the asylum. Not that his perception of her had changed drastically now, but she wasn’t as shallow as he’d thought. She actually had a story to tell. One that was going to blow his mind. He listened tentatively.
“So humans didn’t just call us mad then,” the Queen said. “They thought of us as a plague. And our plague, or disease, was an invisible one that affected our brains and had no well-known cure. Thus, the Invisible Plague.”
Tom let out a sigh. Now his suspicion about the names of the people on the list was confirmed. Each and every one of them had been mad once. True, most of them were of notable prestige in their countries—senators, mayors, and even people who worked in the White House and the British Parliament.
How the government hired people who were once mad always boggled his mind.
Tom was sitting among more than two hundred mad lunatics from all over the world. Rich. Famous. Powerful lunatics.
“Now, you understand why I have summoned you to this meeting,” the Queen said. “We’re all the same, whether we were Wonderlanders once or just labeled mad in this world.” Her gaze intensified. “And you know what humans do to those of the Invisible Plague. You know what happens to you when you’re called mad in this world.”
Tom scratched his head. What was she talking about?
“I’m not talking about asylums and straitjackets,” the Queen said. “I’m talking about the atrocities humans committed against those who needed help instead of being called ‘mentally retarded.’ I am talking about what humans have done to the likes of us in the past. I’m talking about the...”
She raised her hands in the air, and with them, the crowd stood up. The mad crowd from all over the world, saying the same words in unison as if it were a ritual: “You’re talking about what happened to us in the circus.”