Spanner Chapter 18: White Riot in the Streets (Revised)

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Chaos Angel Spanner — Book 1: Rock City Blues
Chapter 18: White Riot in the Streets (Revised)

Suddenly, the Corporate rulers of Cascadia find themselves confronted with the desperate poor rioting for food. But then amoral Corporate youth, starting with a certain high-school fight club, decide to take advantage by having themselves a looting party. Then ethnic gangsters decide they want to loot them, and fight club battles engulf the city. COPCO tries to suppress the fights. The National Guard tries to suppress the fights. The price of the Cascadia Public Management Corporation stock goes down. And the Fearsome Foursome try to overthrow each other...

And Spanner encourages them.

Table of Contents:

1. Steal from the Poor, Give to the Rich (September 19, 2011)
2. Fight Club City Smashers (September 20, 2011)
3. Rage Against the People (September 21, 2011)
4. All State Lockdown (September 22, 2011)
5. Knife in the Back (September 23, 2011)
6. Chaos out of Order (September 24, 2011)

As the plot was already imploding at this point in the first draft (which is why I neither finished nor posted Chapters 22 and 23), I’ve decided to write an entirely new chapter under the old name. Parts of the old chapter have been relocated to Chapters 19-21, where they now fit better. And so most of the original introduction is now inaccurate. However, three of the Project Notebook scenarios listed below (the Moral Enforcer attack in 18.4, the introduction of the Moravec Plan in 18.5, and the continuing chess game, none of which made it into the original chapter) are now restored.

The reckoning is getting closer. Hope and Karen take their proper place in the heart of the action. (Requiring, of course, that I retcon them back into earlier chapters. But not now...) The villains show their power, yet pull their punches; right now they intend to intimidate, not exterminate. And at last, Bart Green and his Valiant Team throw their Team Challenge out to Team Bremelo [a scene now in Chapter 20].

The time is coming closer. The day of reckoning approaches for Governor Brinkman, Admiral Fleer, Mayor Everson, and Police Chief Becket. They control all the guns, thanks to the Neo-Confederate police of gun control. But the amorphous opposition have weapons of their own, weapons that do not kill, yet destroy. Weapons like popular discontent and the Law of Plausible Deniability. And, as Shira and Jennifer explain, the Old Confederacy was a lost cause because of the ruling slavelord élite’s contempt for the masses led them to lose it to the capitalist-led North. If there’s any ideal that’s pie-in-the-sky, it’s Synarchy [secretive oligarchic dictatorship worshipped as the Ideal].

Scenarios from the Project Notebooks of the early ’00s: the redneck gang attack, Shira’s Go-Yo, the Team Challenge (now in its final form) [but now in Chapter 20], Shira's duel with Bart [ditto], her continuing chess game with Dr. Becket, and the Moravec Plan.

The disaster is snowballing. The horror unfolds, but you can’t avert your eyes..

To get some of the background behind this chapter, this blog post (not mine) will give you a quick introduction.

Chapter 19 →

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Copyright © 2011 Dennis Jernberg. Some rights reserved.

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