Chaos Angel Spanner — Chapter 23: Black Panic in the Suites
Part 2: Spanner Q&A
Part 2: Spanner Q&A
3 november 2014.
Bangor squats. Jennifer transmits the contents of Arvid’s SD card to KCUF. Deth Pussy gives the signal, and Anonymous seize control over the airwaves. Simon Sez initiates the piratecast. Into her phone, Shira speaks.
Spanner:Pioneer Square. As soon as the camdrones fly away distracted, a red Mustang skids in, and Charlie and Desiree get out. Desiree grabs Leila and pulls her into the back seat. Charlie decides not to use her channel-changing ability and just zaps the monitor instead; Brinkman’s face explodes. After Desiree locks Oliver Thorwald’s head and shovel into the trunk, the sisters slam into the car and squeal out.
Do not adjust your TV set. We have full control. This is a special presentation about J. Walter Brinkman, alleged Governor of Cascadia. Witness the true source of his power.
[Brinkman raping a beautiful boy. The child is his son Arthur, the future Arvid Shield, and this is the crimelord’s start of darkness. Women beaten, children beaten, children molested. A child sex slave ring: Brinkman, Becket, Tremayne, Fleer — the Fearsome Foursome at the height of their power, untouchable even by God’s angels of wrath.]
These were shot by his ex-wife, Drusilla Becket. The threat of her wrath controls him. Without her, he and his Fearsome Foursome are nothing.
[Brinkman shifts unstably between man and werewolf. The man is tall, slender, flowing-bearded, almost pretty like his son; the wolf, a giant fearsome beast that tears human victims with his hands and fangs. Blood flies, flows, bathes him, blinds the camera.]
Why does he control you? Is he man or monster? You fear him.
technosphere. Forums and social networks overload with reposts and comments. Blogs and broadcasts ask, who is Walter Brinkman really, and is he even human? The faithful support him with absolute faith and blame the liberals, the hackers, the media, Congress. Others, heedless of potential consequences, scream for his blood.
Spanner holds a press conference via MyTube VideoChat. Instead of the usual eight-bit cartoon avatar, a man in the black jacket and motorcycle helmet sits in a chair on a soundstage. Even before he speaks, official reporters start calling it the Spanner Q&A. “Ladies and gentlemen of the lamestream media,” he announces, “I am now taking questions.”
First up is Amanda Currie’s replacement at ESPNBC News, yet another interchangeable conservative blonde. “Why do you have it in for Governor Brinkman?”
Spanner replies, “Want the list? It’s so long, the whole thing would DDoS this conference. We showed you only a small sampling of his crimes. That he always gets away with them speaks libraries about your revolution.”
Commotion and shock. A fat male reporter with an angry red face demands, “Why are you a terrorist?”
“When did you last beat your wife?”
“I asked you a question, damn it!”
“I asked the same question. Next!”
A redheaded female reporter asks, “Is it true that you and Rebel Styles are the same person?”
“Even if we were sock puppets of the same human, the Law says we’re not the same person. Are Batman and Catwoman the same?”
“I guess not. But aren’t ‘human being’ and ‘person’ the same thing?”
“The Law says all corporations are persons but some humans aren’t. Go check your law books. Next?”
Another blond female reporter: “You’re wrong about your precious anarchy, Mr Spanner. If there’s no rulers, who will keep the people under control?”
“The question you should really be asking is, who keeps the rulers under control? How do you justify controlling the people when the rulers themselves are out of control? How do they think they can control the people when they can’t control themselves? You saw the Brinkman tapes. Next!”
A male reporter with a bad haircut shouts, “What the hell do you think we are, terrorist?”
“You people are loudmouth propagandists for the current régime, that’s what you are. But you probably mean, what do I think of your bosses. They know what they are: the élite vanguard of the revolution, the chosen ones with the divine right to make everybody else’s decisions for them in the name of the one true morality, which by definition is superior to all the other one true moralities foisted on us by all those lesser revolutionary élites. Those revolutionary vanguards are inferior because their revolutions all failed.
“Problem is, you’ve got the exact same problem that destroyed all those inferior revolutions. It’s called ‘the sanction of the victim.’ Your revolution, like all those lesser ones, assumes that all you need to keep the unwashed rabble in line is your mission from God and a big stick. You don’t care that you make your slaves hate you every time you whip ’em. You sowed the wind, and sooner or later a Spartacus or a Nat Turner comes to unleash the whirlwind. I only popped the cork. The people are taking matters into their own hands.”
A balding older male reporter: “The people don’t know nothin’! Somebody’s gotta keep those little ingrates in line, somebody who knows how to rule!”
“The so-called art of ruling is really the art of beating people up. You people see ’em only as tools and treat ’em as such. Now they see how you treat ’em. The slaves have decided to shake off the yoke and blow the plantation. So you decide to throw those perfidious monkeys away and replace ’em with robots, because robots always obey. Robots pose no — as the Governor himself likes to put it — ‘threat from below.’ Next!”
Another blond female reporter asks, “Why do you hate America?”
“Broken record, broken record, broken record — next!”
One of Litton’s public relations acolytes shakes his fist. “You’re lying, terrorist! We always had the people’s best interest in mind!”
“You serve man. Of course. With hollandaise sauce and a side order of caviar. Well, guess what? Tournament is coming to an end, people. It’s the championship match, and there can only be one champion. It’s a duel to the death. Who’s gonna win, Jesus America or the Euro-American people? I know your bosses’ Plan. I know it all too well. You’re gonna have to kill all those treacherous little monkey people, all seven billion of ’em, right down to the last one. And then you’ll upload yourselves and leave the future to the robots. Hell of a Plan, people.”
A régime lawyer who is not Marshall Brinkman threatens, “You’ve seen what we can do. You don’t stand a chance against us!”
“I’m watching what you’re doing right now. But do you think you can beat the masses back into submission even when they think you’re out to kill ’em all and they’re fighting desperately just to survive you? Do you think you can stuff the angry genie back in the bottle you stuffed him in? Some of you deny there’s any such thing as the Law of Evolution. Your entire system assumes there’s no Law of Entropy either. Your denialism will prove fatal. Look outside. What do you see? Entropy, that’s what. Your machine has worn down. It’s lost all its fuel. It’s falling apart, and yet you deny it. Plausibly, of course. I’d tell you to look at what’s really going on, but you’ve already plucked out your eyes.
“That’s it! I’ve said everything. Goodbye, and good riddance!”
Spanner’s signal goes out, leaving an army of reporters, flacks, and officials frustrated.
Thorwald property. Los Punkz took over as soon as they saw Leila hold Oliver Thorwald’s severed head on camera. Now they hold their Day of the Dead sacrifices one day late. Steroid-maddened pit bulls rip each other to shreds in sacrifice to Satan and the Aztec death gods. Soon El Anticristo will cut the hearts out of captive COPCO agents.
Suddenly a firebomb hits the dogfight arena’s stands. Thorwald kludged it up from scrap wood and never bothered to maintain it; he felt he had more important things to do, like assassinate dissidents and murder pretty women to sell their eggs for profit. The stands go up in flames like a pile of dry straw, killing dozens of screaming gangsters.
Anticristo orders a lieutenant to give him binoculars. Through them he sees Geordie Skeever about to fire another round from his bazooka. He orders his surviving minions to take their AKs and attack the Skeever Gang. Another round hits the arena, sending burning shards all over the property.
Eddie Evil giggles. “That’ll teach those fuckin’ Spics to steal our property!”
“I thought it was Ollie’s turf they was squattin’,” says Geordie.
“Well, we’re stealin’ it from them!” Eddie lets out an evil-clown laugh.
As Anticristo leaves the place behind, his Spics grab their weapons and mount their warcycles. Toward their Honky assailants they ride. The Skeevers launch their rockets.
ABCNN:Bremerton boardwalk. Shira ends the video streaming on her phone and repockets it. “That’ll keep ’em busy for a while,”
We have just received breaking news of a gang shootout in the far western Seattle suburb of Bangor...
Mimi asks, “Will the rich people see us differently from the gangsters now?”
“Sorry, but that’s not how the Corporate mind works. All they’re capable of seeing is threats to their wealth from below. Their response is always the same: panic and lash out at anything that moves.”
Polly asks, “Why can’t they settle down and be reasonable like normal people?”
“Because their egos have become so identified with their wealth and power,” answers Jennifer, “that they are no longer capable of reason. Any psychologist recognizes the signs immediately.”
Colette directs them to take a good look at the armed Navy personnel remaining in their positions and not attacking the strikers. “Anybody care to explain this?”
“They could be Christians who never converted to Americanism, or they could come from union families back in poor Southern or Midwestern regions, or they could be just plain sympathetic, or they blame Fleer. Wild guesses, but it could be any of those, or something else.”
“We still can’t trust ’em.”
Shira says, “The probably don’t, either. Who knows who might have slipped ’em some moles.”
COPCO Seattle. Jack Becket demands of Shira, “Explain how you pulled that trick over at the Thorwald place.”
“Oh, you know, big gangster gets whacked by angry moll, his rivals get ambitious, they all arrive at the same time, they go to war. It’s ridiculously easy to manipulate these guys into shooting each other up. You oughta try it sometime. It could seriously cut down on the gang population.”
“Well, right now your little gang war scheme is distracting precious agents we need to stop your friends from stealing our well-deserved dollars!”
“Why would we want any of your funny money? We just want you rich boys to stop playing KGB on us. Haven’t you heard? The Cold War’s over.”
Agent 2468 screams, “The crusade against the evil of Communism can never end! It’s a supernatural struggle—” Annoyed, Shira sighs and cuts the signal.
Spanner:the strike. The emergency calls snowball in from COPCO central. In the urban ghettoes, in the most meth-ravaged, gang-ridden small towns, the Syndicates are going to war to settle old scores. The helicopters and strike teams leave the protest sites to try to put out the rumbles.
The Corporates are not like you and me. They’re hungry ghosts. Some of them aren’t even human. Some have corporations for bodies. Even if they are human, but don’t carry the Infection, they’re still vampires. They want to drink all your money, what little you have left. They cannot stop until they drink you dry.
These hungry ghosts called Corporates are incapable of reason. They’re like dragons hoarding golden treasures in their caves. Try to relieve them of their precious gold, and they’ll scorch you and then eat you. Deprive them of their regular diet of princesses, and they’re come to your castle to eat you and your knights. Try to reduce a Corporate’s wealth or power, and they&rsuqo;ll panic and respond with ultraviolence.
You defied them. They want only revenge. They are out to destroy you. Their mood is irrational rage. You have no choice but to fight them if you want to survive.
As soon as they leave, the crowds return. To the places the Corporate revengers chased them from, the strikers return to resume their protests. The enforcers have made them angry. They announce that their demand is now non-negotiable: CPMC must cave in, or else.
CPMC boardroom. “This madness has to end now!” shouts Brinkman. “Don’t they know our demands are final?”
Far less panicked, Litton says, “From what I’m hearing, so are theirs, otherwise there wouldn’t be a strike.”
“And what do you plan to do about it?”
“I say fire ’em all, give all their jobs to slaves and robots. When they find themselves starving to death, they’ll come running back to us, kissing our asses, begging us to hire ’em back for peanuts. If they don’t, they’ll turn terrorist. We can easily squash those.”
(Shira: Watch these Corporates not even consider the possibility that people could go into business for themselves.)
“Then what about this damn election they’re trying to pull on us?”
“Treat it as an opinion poll. If CPMC ain’t holding it, it’s not an election at all. Remember, Wally, you are the government. The rabble ain’t.”
“Well, then we’ll need to find some way to put the rabble back in their place.”
Shira’s apartment. “I wish we could take a break,” moans Wolveroach.
Shira asks, “Everything all set up for tomorrow?”
“Yep!” answer the three Cockroach Twins in unison.
“Okay, guys, get your rest. We start at 7 tomorrow morning.”
They run to the bathroom as fast as they can, then argue over who goes first. Shira asks Jennifer, “How’s our firewall been holding up so far?”
“Pretty good under the circumstances,” Jennifer answers. “It’s standing up to all the Russian, Chinese, and Iranian botnets. Tomorrow’s the big test, though. That’s when Echelon joins in. We expect some spam votes to get through, so we set up a filter to drop ’em as they come in. The Rat Bastard has a more sophisticated system, but I’ve managed to model it so that the vote system drops any Party votes that match the pattern. They try and cheat any other way, we’ll have to deal with it on the fly. Other than that, I think everything’s A-OK. You think you’ll be okay in Seattle tomorrow?”
“Me, yeah. The terrorists, not so much. Leila and I’ll be meeting Rob and the Hunters over there. Charlie’s driving. The pirate sound crews are setting up their disruptors as we speak. Other than that, we cross our fingers.”
Shira and Jennifer cross their right arms. Then they hug and kiss. “Good night, Shira.” “Good night, Jen.” Shira races to her bedroom and throws herself onto the bed beside sleeping Leila.
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