Hausa Blue Synopsis
​
Alternative Cyberpunk
​
Mysterious messengers are eager to tell us about a parallel Earth in the form of a story. Dipa, the young dress-makers daughter, paces up and down her cell in the Tower of London as former queens are wont to do. She doesn’t know why the charge of treason has been dropped, why the guards are not beating her any more, or why they have changed their uniforms. All she knows is that there is a New Management in the British Empire that she ruled over before she was found out.
​
The Empire has been commanded by a royal family whose African, Indian and British branches have encompassed a third of the globe since the Discord of 1814. But when Dipa’s older brother, Kaushik, who is now a Deputy in a Transitional Council, discovers that was her who sparked his revolution, she finds out that it’s chaos out there now.
​
If she is going to be released into this new society, she must tell him how a good girl like her washed her face and hands before she went to meet the woman who would embroil her in a life of lies and very well-dressed debauchery.
​
As Dipa confesses/boasts of the extravagance and decadence of the Aristoi class she was so willing to join, we learn about the Lady Aditi Egremont-Cooch-Bahar, rich, beautiful and from one of the most influential families in the Empire who is undisputed queen of the Yangans, the ‘it-girls’ of this world.
​
Aditi is clever too, but has played one too many japes and escaped with the rightful heir and the person who holds the fate of the future in her head. She is on the other side of the world in the land of some of her forefathers. She has a sort of plan to turn the tide of the revolution back in her favour, all she needs is the right equipment to fix her servant.
​
The dark dressed man is on her side but doesn’t know where she is. He knows he is working at the behest of All America, but is not in a position to complain. So, he watches and waits with painful knees for the opportunity to destabilise the new regime.
​
What no-one sees is that none of them are the heroes or heroines of the story. The heroes are ex-Empire-soldiers, Ian and Iris who are busy with plans of their own. They are looking for Iris’ sister, and in searching, will uncover Aditi’s ruthless scheme to enslave another lookalike to the queen and with her, the empire.
​
The threads of all their lives come together in spectacular fashion when the Bengal Lancers, and a Brigade from the Infantry taking time-out from a wedding, get involved. They foil Aditi’s plot, but not Aditi, who escapes.
​
Dipa is freed to find out who she will be now, the revolution is more secure but not resolved, and we still don’t know who the messengers are.
​
Read a few pages here
​
​
​