Joe's trip is without further incident, except for a blown tire in the middle of nowhere which a friendly police officer helps him change. Also, unsure what's going on now that the New York resistance cell got raided, he searches the truck and finds what he is actually transporting: a film reel marked "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy".
I've just started to watch the Amazon series The Man In The High Castle. It is based on the 1962 novel of the same name written by Philip K. Dick, and it takes place in an alternate reality in which the Axis powers won World War II. Germany developed the atomic bomb first and used it, resulting in the surrender of the Allied forces. In the first episode of the series, it is now 1962, and North America has been occupied and partitioned: the Japanese Pacific States and the Greater Nazi Reich. In between these two parts is a buffer zone roughly defined by the mountain range of the Rockies, which is seen as neutral and lawless. Adolf Hitler is still alive, though he is stricken with Parkinson's disease and in poor health. It is not expected that he will live much longer. In the opening scenes we are introduced to Joe Blake, a 27 year old who is joining the Resistance, a group of rebels who are quietly working against their occupiers in the Greater Nazi Reich. He tells the leader of his resistance cell that his father is a veteran of the War and speaks often of life in a free America, making Joe want to fight for that again. He is given the task of driving a truck full of coffee makers from New York into the buffer zone... he is not told why. As he drives away in the truck, the Nazi police raid the resistance cell, killing all except the leader, who is taken away for "questioning". Joe's trip is without further incident, except for a blown tire in the middle of nowhere which a friendly police officer helps him change. Also, unsure what's going on now that the New York resistance cell got raided, he searches the truck and finds what he is actually transporting: a film reel marked "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy". On the other coast- in San Francisco- we meet Juliana Crain, a young woman living in the Japanese Pacific States. She has completely adapted to life in this society and greatly admires the Japanese culture. Her mother, however, is not so accepting because her husband- Juliana's father- was killed in the war. She has since remarried and Juliana has a younger half-sister named Trudy. She also has a boyfriend named Frank Frink who must keep his parentage a secret because one of his grandparents was Jewish. If this is found out, the Japanese would extradite him to the G.N.R. where he will be killed. On her way home one night, Juliana is surprised when Trudy runs up to her on the street, because she thought her sister was away working at a new job. Trudy thrusts a bag into Juliana's hands, whispering that it contains a "way out". She then runs off, and Juliana realizes that Trudy is being pursued by the Japanese military police. She tries to follow and this results in her seeing Trudy being shot down in the street. Grief stricken and in shock, Juliana slips away before the police see her and returns home. There she opens the bag and finds a film reel in a canister which is labelled "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy". Juliana drags a movie projector out of her closet and puts the reel on it. She watches it over and over again; it shows scenes from an alternate end to W.W. II, one we are more familiar with: the Allies win. Frank arrives and she shows him the reel, telling him what happened. He recognizes it as the work of a mysterious figure referred to as "The Man In the High Castle". Freaked out, he insists that Juliana must take it to the police the next morning and tell them that Trudy gave it to her, because getting caught with one of these underground reels can result in execution. She reluctantly agrees, but also finds a bus ticket in Trudy's bag to a destination in the buffer zone- Canon City, Colorado. The ticket has the name of a diner on the back. The following morning after Frank goes to work, Juliana packs a bag and heads for the bus station, taking the movie reel with her. As a precaution, she has put it in a film canister marked "Popeye" and put the Popeye reel in the underground reel's canister. She passes herself off as Trudy and boards the bus to the buffer zone using her sister's ticket. The bus trip is a long one, and during it, a woman changes seats and sits beside her. She is friendly and chatters non-stop to Juliana about the buffer zone until exhausted, Juliana dozes off. When she awakens, she finds that the bus has made a brief stop, and her bag containing her clothes, money, and the film canister is gone as is the woman, who has gotten off the bus and is getting into a car. Juliana runs up the aisle of the bus planning to give chase, but as she reaches the front the bus doors close and the bus driver tells her that she'll have to wait for the next stop to get out. Fortunately, the canister marked "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy" actually had the Popeye reel in it and that is what the woman stole. Juliana still has the original reel secreted away. When the bus finally gets to Canon City, Juliana enters the Sunrise Diner, unsure if her sister was supposed to meet someone there or not. She orders a meal and eats it hungrily, then confesses to the proprietor that she can't pay her bill because her wallet was stolen. Understandably, he's not pleased. As he demands payment, Joe steps up to the counter and pays the bill for her. This is the town where he was headed as well. Juliana is grateful but wary, and she tries to find out without actually asking if he was supposed to meet anyone at the diner. Apparently he was not, but he does have to make a phone call to get further instructions about the shipment he's transporting. He goes to a payphone to make the call, but instead of to a resistance contact, it's to the Nazi officer who led the raid on the cell and presided over the interrogation- and beating death- of the resistance leader. Joe tells the Nazi that he has arrived, and the officer replies that his father will be proud. While all of this is going on, there is also change in the wind in the political establishment as well. On the surface, the Germans and the Japanese are friends and allies, and the upcoming visit of the Japanese Crown Prince and his wife to the G.N.R. is meant to demonstrate their bond. Underneath, however, the relationship is fraught with tension and the two groups despise each other. Hitler has kept the alliance in place but as his health fails, his two likely successors- Himmler and Goebbels- are jockeying for position. The sentiment in Germany has been growing that dividing the territories won in the war with the Japanese was a mistake, and the Germans will likely back whichever leader who will promise world domination. One of the Japanese ambassadors has a source in the German government who tells him that plans are in the works to, once Hitler is dead, drop a hydrogen bomb in the Japanese Pacific States and force Japan's capitulation.
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