Spanner Chapter 20: Things Fall Apart

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Chaos Angel Spanner — Book 1: Rock City Blues
Chapter 20: Things Fall Apart

The Fearsome Foursome are starting to fall apart. This only makes them angrier than before, and they lash out even more wildly. But Shira, Spanner, the KCUF News Team, and the Wrecking Krewe know where their weakness are, and hit them harder and harder. Leila finally provokes school Tournament champion Bart into losing all control and throwing the Challenge that Team Bremelo has expected all along, the two high-school fight clubs battle their way to disaster, and the School Arc races toward its cataclysmic conclusion next chapter...

Table of Contents:

1. Game Over Man (October 1, 2011)
2. Simple Matter of Planning (October 2, 2011)
3. Broadcast Crime (October 3, 2011)
4. Scandal Wars (October 4, 2011)
5. The Team Challenge (October 5, 2011)
6. Temporary Autonomous Zone (October 6, 2011)

The original title was “Working for the Crackdown” (now the name of Part 22.2). Like Chapter 18 (but with more holdovers from the first draft), the new chapter is completely different. Even so, here’s the original introduction:

You’d probably expect from the title to find a traitor in Team Spanner. Except for one thing: with all the surveillance tech the government’s overusing, is there even a need for traitors and spies anymore? Besides, Jennifer can spot a spy whenever she takes her glasses off, and Shira can Charm them into betraying the agency that sent them. In this chapter, then, the major villains take the spotlight. And then they try to hog it at each other’s expense.

Meanwhile, the Hackers of Reality continue their assault on the media system from the safety of the Darknet. Desiree takes on the role of point man. Shira manipulates from the shadows, and then tells everybody that (and whom) she’s manipulating. Karen earns her martyr cred at the villains’s expense. Team Spanner argue over how to spring her.

We find out that some of the villains are actually human, some despite themselves. Others, of course, are increasingly, or completely, inhuman. The Cartel’s “Moravec Plan” will explain what Ariel calls the “gods of power” in the seemingly materialist terms the Corporates understand.

Scenarios from the Project Notebooks of the early ’00s: exactly none. New characters introduced from the ’90s Notebooks: Option.

The battle now kicks into high gear. Expect casualties.

Chapter 21 →

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Copyright © 2011 Dennis Jernberg. Some rights reserved.