Spanner Chapter 17: Power, Corruption, and Lies (Revised)

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Chaos Angel Spanner — Book 1: Rock City Blues
Chapter 17: Power, Corruption, and Lies (Revised)

Spanner and the Rat Bastard escalate their media war. The Slasher Hunters start taking rewards for capturing pedos with pull. A special delivery gives Shira an extra special weapon to use against the Fearsome Foursome, a weapon contained entirely on a single flash memory card. Debbie’s mother, a celebrity Shepherd of Jesus America, uses the school to perform Ex-Gay Faith Therapy on some of its students; but Shira crashes it and chaos ensues. Shocking revelations begin to fly. The Foursome, intent on avenging the dead King of Texas, go one step too far. And Nicole, last seen in Chapter 5, returns — she used to be a pacifist, but now she’s pissed...

The shocking events of Chapter 15 couldn’t have been enough. The revolutionary élite haven’t just been hurt; they’ve been offended. They cannot tolerate the actions of a mystery man and a teenage girl determined to provoke the Enemy — i.e., the people — against their dictatorship. But a nation that defines wealth as virtue and corruption as salvation must eventually face down the people its rulers step on. The conflict snowballs, and the reckoning is at hand...

Table of Contents:

1. No God but Mammon (September 12, 2011)
2. Hunting Bigger Prey (September 13, 2011, revised 9/14)
3. The Nuclear Option (September 14, 2011)
4. The Faither You Heal, The Booster You Die (September 15, 2011)
5. The Rape Tapes (September 16, 2011)
6. We Officially Deny (September 17, 2011)
7. Interlude 10: Memo from Wesley (September 18, 2011)

There’s a lot more changes from the first draft than in previous chapters, all of it added to lead the plot into the climactic Chapters 22 and 23 (unfinished in the first draft and therefore never posted). Among the revisions, the term “Neo-Confederate” has been replaced with “Conservative Revolutionary” to reinforce the “neo-Jacobin” angle. There are many, many new scenes. This is the point in the first edition when I started skimping on introductions...

The Neo-Confederate reaction against the upcoming election in Cascadia is getting increasingly violent and hysterical. It’ll only get more so once people start learning what’s behind the Confederate dictatorship in the first place. Cynics like to call it the “Golden Rule” — no, not that one. The one that states: “He that hath the gold, maketh the rules.” I’ll get deeper into this subject in later chapters. But always keep in mind that in Spanner, nothing is what it seems.

Scenarios from the Project Notebooks of the early ’00s: the school assembly and the Big Baddd incident.

I’m running out of “liner notes” right now, so I’m putting part of the story onto the main page this time.

The third act of this play has begun. Now it’s time for Shira to start dropping bombs.

Chapter 18

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Copyright © 2011 Dennis Jernberg. Some rights reserved.