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Alice heard the sound of some voices. Sheopened her eyes to find a few peoplestanding around her. They were dressed in astrange sort of silvery dress and weremuttering amongst themselves as they lookedat her with dull and placid eyes. Who arethese people, she wondered. She rose to her

feet and looked around.

She was shocked to realise that the ground onwhich she stood was silvery in colour and seemed tobe made out of rays of light. Around her, beams oflight in myriad hues, appearing as thin strands ofwire, were going round and round. What kind ofsci-fi jungle is this? How did I get here? I amsupposed to be at my school, studying with manyother students. Suddenly she remembered about herbody dissolving into smoke and getting sucked intothe Internet.

Oh goodness! Am Ireally trapped inside theInternet? she askedherself. She lookedat the teemingcrowd of peoplewho werestanding aroundher and said,Where am I?She hoped thatsomeonewould say thatshe was in thereal world andgive a justifiableexplanation for thestrangesurroundings.

In Cyberland, answered a girl, who looked likeRachna. In fact, she was Rachna; she and Alicewere classmates and best friends at school. She toowas trapped in the Internet. Rachna, you too arehere! Alice said with awe.

Rachna sounded extremely desolate when shesaid, You are right, I am here. So is practicallyeveryone from school and from many other schoolsaround the world. These words inspired Alice tohave a harder look at the faces that she could seearound her. Suddenly she could recognise many ofher schoolmates. Ashish was here, so was Nadira,Meena, Ranjan, Rakesh, Anu, Swati, Rinki, Pinki the whole crowd was here. Did you and everyoneelse too dissolve into smoke and get pulled into thewebsite? Alice asked.

Yeah, thats the way I was trapped. And all the

other boys and girls who are here were alsosimilarly trapped, Rachna said moving her otherhand in a half-circle indicating everyone who stoodthere.

What kind of dress is this that you are wearing?It looks strange.

Everyone is wearing similar a dress to mine,including you. Havent you noticed that?

Alice looked down and saw that she too wasdraped in a silvery dress. She

brushed her hands acrossher dress, which felt

amazingly soft anddelicate, like thepetals of a floweror the rays ofsunlight. Howlong have you

been here?she asked.Who

knows? Incyberspace, time

does not move atthe same pace as

in the real world. Itmay be a few

thousand yearssince we came here

or it may be only one or two seconds.A few thousand years! Alice gasped. If it is afew thousand years since we have been here, thenmy parents would be dead by now. How will I get tomeet them?

Well thats the way it is! Rachna replied simply.You will get used to your new situation soonenough, just like everyone else.

Alice looked at others, everybody seemeddespondent.

Isnt there any way for us to get out of the

cyberspace and return to the real world? askedAlice.Dont even think about it. If the Emperor of the

Internet or his Lackey learn that you plan to escape,they will delete you.

Delete me? What is that?At this question Alice noted a shudder pass

through the whole group standing around them, noone made any attempt to answer her question, noone except Rachna. She said, To be deleted incyberspace is something that is equivalent to death

The Emperor of the Internet.

By Anoop Verma

Womans Era G October (First) 2011Womans Era G October (First) 2011

Alice in Cyberland

Long Story Part-2

Ohgoodness!WhatamI doing today?

Ohgoodness!Whatishappeningto me?

This is the officialwebsiteof therulers

of cyberland

Hurry! Click now!There is not a moment tolose! Theclockis ticking!

Whatareyou waiting forgirl?Goaheadand click.

The story so farAlice reaches school and finds everything topy-turvy

no classmates, not even the principal. Looks as if amonster had smashed everything. Then she is tempted toclick a website, and her body starts melting and turninginto smoke.

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were doing. She had never ever imagined that itwould be possible to hold a ray of light and bend itand push it as if it were an ordinary electrical wire,but here she was doing just that along with manyothers. Cyberworld is a different ball game from thereal world. How strange it is that we can hold raysof light, she muttered by herself.

Dont talk, Rachna said in muted tones. If theEmperor of the Internet and his Lackey find us talking

we will be punished severely.Where are they? Alice asked, paying no heedto Rachnas advice of keeping quiet.

Towards the right, she whispered. Now forgoodness sake keep quiet.

Alice looked in the direction that Rachna hadpointed and saw a tall guy, heavily muscledand with a face like a gorilla the same

gorilla whose image Alice had seen on the websiteof Rulers of the Cyberland dressed in a goldendress and carrying what looked like whip made outof rays of light in his hand. So this is how theEmperor of he Internet looks, Alice thought. Iwonder if the Lackey also looks like him. Soon, shenoticed the Lackey, who was a short boy dressed insilvery clothes and wearing on his head a conical

cap, which made him look like a circus clown. Theywere moving among the workers toiling around thepyramid, glaring at them and every once in a whilethey struck someone with the whip and barkedexhortations and threats like, Faster, faster slave,cyberspace is not a place to laze, or, If you dontget going, idler, you will be deleted, or Toil, toil,toil, and if you dont, you will lose your miserabledigital existence.

To her immense amazement, Alice realised thatthe Emperors face bore an uncannyresemblance to that of Mr Surindra Khanna and

the Lackey was definitely Bipin, the school bullywhom each and every decent boy or girl loved tohate. She wanted to give that information to Rachna,but decided to do that later, as she did not want toget her into trouble by making her talk just now.How did they become the Emperor of the Internetand Lackey? she wondered.

The realisation had already dawned on her thatthe key to freedom from this trap in the cyberspacemust lie with the Emperor and the Lackey. She had tolearn about their secrets in order to defeat their evilintentions and win freedom for herself and herfriends.

Womans Era G October (First) 2011Womans Era G October (First) 2011

in the real world. Remember how we used to deletefiles that were not needed from our computer whenwe were in the real world? Now, we are nothingmore than files ourselves a few bytes ofinformation, so to say and the Emperor of theInternet and his Lackey delete those that they dontlike or dont need.

But how can I and you and all these people bejust a few bytes of information? asked Alice with

consternation. We are individuals, human beings.That is no longer true, said Rachna in a matterof fact manner. Now, we are nothing more than afew bytes of information.

But I can think, I can feel myself, Alice saidvehemently, eager to prove to everyone else and toherself that she was a human being, who couldnever be deleted like any ordinary file in thecomputer.

We can think and we can feel because we havebeen programmed to do so. But the truth is that ourbodies do not exist, we are all nothing more than afew bytes of information stored in some remoteserver of cyberspace. The clothes that we arewearing, the silvery ground on which we stand, theflashing beams of light going hither and thither they are all bytes of information. We are in the veryheart of the Internet.

The harsh reality finally dawned on Alice andshe realised what her actual situation was.Who the hell is this so called Emperor of the

Internet? she uttered furiously.The Emperor of the Internet is the one who

controls us; all of us have to obey his orders, dowhat he says. He is making us work on creatingsoftware systems which will reside in the heart tocyberspace and allow him to take controlof the whole Internet and eventuallythe entire human civilisation on thisplanet.

And his Lackey who ishe?

Lackey? He is justan evil assistant. Hehelps the Emperorof the Internet ingetting work outof us.

But surely, ifall of usunite, wecan beat theEmperor of theInternet and hisLackey, cant we?Alice asked

looking at everyone. There are so many of us, butonly two of them, the Emperor and his Lackey. Shehad expected at least some of those standing aroundher to come out in support, but no one did; fear andshock was easily palpable on all the faces. They aredefinitely a frightened lot, Alice told herself.

Unfortunately, we cannot beat the Emperor ofthe Internet and his Lackey, even if all of us unite,replied Rachna, her face dripping with melancholia.

They are too strong for us.Alice was not satisfied with this answer. Howstrong? she asked.

You remember how any virus, if it enters anycomputers hard disk, corrupts and destroys all thefiles stored there. There are so many files in anycomputers hard disk and still they are unable to doanything against a single virus. Its the same thingout here in cyberspace. The Emperor and his Lackeyare built of very potent virus codes and none of usare geared to fight them. They can destroy all of usin no time.

But Alice was not ready to give up so easily.There is a way to deal with every virus,however potent. I am sure if all of us put our

heads together we can deal with these two virusescalled the Emperor of the Internet and Lackey, and

free ourselves, she said boldly. Before she couldhear a response to her words of courage, someoneshouted, in a shrill terrified tone, They are here.

My goodness! They are here, the Emperor of theInternet and his Lackey! Rachna gasped, looking inone direction. Lets get down to work quickly ifthey find us wasting our time in chatting, there willbe hell to pay. Everybody rushed to a pyramidalstructure that stood nearby and was golden incolour, and quite immense, almost akin to a medium-sized hillock, and became busy.

But I dont know what work I have to do,Alice said quickly.

Just do what everyone else isdoing pull the rays of light

that you see around youand make them passthrough thispyramidalstructure, Rachnasaid, throwing herhands aroundfrantically to workon the rays oflight.

But in the endAlice had no

difficulty in imitatingwhat Rachna and others

We