Chaos Angel Spanner — Chapter 15: Start the Violence
Part 6: Message Coming on Channel 12 (Final Revision)
Part 6: Message Coming on Channel 12 (Final Revision)
The Party survivors hurry to their SUVs and transports, heedlessly destroying everything in their path, while the copbots in the streets battle to the death over their fate and the buildings above continue to scream at them like angry gods, further torturing minds already deranged by Jerusalem Syndrome; transport and combat helicopters rise in swarms from the downtown hotels packed with Corporates abandoning their possessions in panic. In half-trashed robes Drusilla Becket AMERICA! trashes her penthouse suite at the top of one of the Westin’s twin towers in her panic to find anything that’s hers while she waits for the helicopter to take her back to her compound. Byron Scofield and Jeremiah Light burst in. Light says, “Princess! There’s a Miranda Clayton-Wilder claiming finder’s right on this hotel!”
She shrieks, “Well, help me get my stuff out before she finds it!”
The PA carries Shira’s voice throughout the hotel: “Let Drusilla go! I’ll personally shoot anybody who tries to kill her or her acolytes! We don’t need any immortal martyrs!”
In humiliation and rage Drusilla screams: “Shiraaaa!“
Anarchists, contractors, Bremeloes, and Spannerbots swarm the Westin towers story by story, burst into hotel rooms, steal every expensive-looking thing left behind; Shira commands the expedition as claimant, her nameless girlfriend and Jennifer and the two cops by her side, leads her party up the north tower, from the top of which Drusilla hurriedly prepares to evacuate. Shira infects the robot guards with the iOS rootkit and reboots them to install the MIRV Griffin botnet on them and take control. The anarchist girl says, “I wonder why they don’t use like Symbian.”
“You know Corporates,” Shira replies, “always following the leader.” She winks.
The group with Alex, Lars, and Kio load a waterfront-bound streetcar with sexbots. The transit authority’s trash-removing robot trucks remove the wrecks of drones, copbots, helicopters, and SUVs from the tracks. Lars calls the boat. “Better make room, Simon, we’re bringing One-Eye’s girlfriends aboard.” He points his phone’s camera at the six naked sexbots in the seats.
Simon laughs. “Bloody hell, they’re beautiful!”
“We got the best ones.” Lars winks.
Shira and Sparks find a fat and gaudily blung Corporate couple holding a gold- and mother-of-pearl-plated pistol at a screaming and sobbing little girl of five or six stripped naked. “Let us take our stuff,” the man demands, “or we kill the kid!”
Shira smirks incredulously. “I thought she was your most precious little treasure!”
The child pleads for her life. The woman punches her. “Shut up, you little brat! Cletus, kill her now!”
Sparks shoots both Corporates between the eyes. The girl screams. Shira rushes in to sweep her up; she kisses her and tries to comfort her. “Somebody get her someplace safe!” Jennifer takes the girl from her and heads toward the nearest stairs.
Irina and the anarchist girl loot the corpses while Sparks and the nameless girl direct the contractors to haul away the valuables that pack their room. The anarchist girl asks Shira, “Finders keepers, right?”
“Nah, let’s do it the pirate way, divide up the booty equally.”
“I always wanted to be a pirate.” They return to their larceny.
Simon commands, “Let’s head out!” Filled with fighters and hackers, laden with sexbots and loot, the KCUF yacht leaves port to return to Bremerton. Connor and Fiona stand together at the stern, leaning on the railing, watching the still dark Seattle skyline quickly recede. Deth asks them, “Yo, where’s the others?”
“They’re busy,” Connor replies. “Finder’s right, remember?”
“Oh no,” Polly wails, “they’ll get themselves in deep trouble!”
Raven laughs. “Kid, they are trouble!”
They reach the empty penthouse. “Jeez, it’s a mess,” says the anarchist girl.
Still carrying the child, Jennifer says, “You guys go. We’re staying here.”
Shira says, “Gotcha!” She leads the others to the roof.
Jennifer sets the terrified girl on the love seat, sits next to her, holds her protectively; thunder sounds again, the child screams. Jennifer shushes her and kisses her on the cheek. “You’re safe now.”
The girl holds her tight. She looks up at Jennifer and smiles. “I’m Flower,” she says. She holds up one hand, five fingers stretched out. “I’m five.”
Jennifer smiles back. “I’m so happy to meet you! I’m Jennifer.”
“Hi, Jennifer.” The thunder roars again; Flower holds onto Jennifer for dear life; Jennifer protects her with her body.
In the streets below, nothing but lawlessness and robot war; the remaining humans not stealing are dead. At the top of the Westin Towers, Shira has her team surround her nemesis the Chief Shepherd while the helicopter approaches that will take her to safety. Drusilla, hair and robes drenched by the rain, stares with undisguised hatred at her shamelessly naked stepdaughter. “Shira! Do you realize what you’ve done? That girl” — she points beside Shira at the nameless girl — “you just gave her the power to destroy Earth — and she will use it!“
Shira laughs. “You mean your Earth? It was never yours!”
“You fool, don’t you realize what it took for us just to reclaim America from the Darkness?”
“‘Darkness!’ Funny! The Corporations were using you! I just stopped ’em from using her death energy to purge their human management!”
Drusilla falls silent, her eyes and mouth fall wide open, she stands paralyzed as the helicopter lands behind her. A COPCO contractor whips out his gun and tries to shoot her; Sparks and Kowalczyk shoot him just as he’s about to fire. Scofield and Light carry her onto the helicopter; it takes off as soon as they slide the door shut, rising high above the city whose spirit her Party came to bind and banish, above the giant towers still screaming at the invaders and commanding them to leave their city — out of the city the traffic flees in swarms, the Party faithful evacuating like the city people they chased out in order to bind their Babylon, panicked into slowness and paralysis; they crash into obstacles, each other, wage gunfights in uncontrollable road rage, leaving the corpses of cars and Conservatives behind, forbidden to help each other by their faith in Egoism, the hordes of Real Americans abandoning their invasion in the humiliation of defeat — the anarchists left behind continue to loot the hotels, steal the treasures the Corporates left behind in their panic, while fending off savage ERF terrorists hellbent on destroying the city in the cause of restoring unspoiled Eden and sacrificing all within to the unforgiving Great Mother, as the robots in the streets continue to tear each other to scrap, the traffic fleeing on the highways gets light and goes away, and the rest of the empty city falls silent but for the thunder and the hard rain now turning to hail. In the heavens, Echelon stares down blindly, seeing nothing.
And in a Bremerton apartment far away from the chaos, just before they go to sleep, Keenan Sasser suddenly sits up in bed. “Do you realize why COPCO’s precogs keep going insane?”
Ada Paulette, trying to sleep, moans, “The anomaly?”
“It’s real. And the Party just threw themselves right in it.”
she finds herself lost in a black void, naked and alone — something’s there! she spins around in fear, trying to see what it is — then the black sky turns dim, gradually turns to color ever brighter — that’s not clouds, that’s King Patriot!
A superman materializes before her, hovering titan in red dwarfing her, trailing its fluttering blue cape like a thundercloud behind him, staring down through glowing goggles from black-helmeted head — Sacrifices must be made, says Henry Becket, and the world must never know.
Suddenly a mist appears around her to distort her vision — a black angel with broken wings appears between them — he hisses in fear, she screams a banshee’s scream, he holds his ears and screams — she Repulses him back into a body wracked with migraine—
A superman materializes before her, hovering titan in red dwarfing her, trailing its fluttering blue cape like a thundercloud behind him, staring down through glowing goggles from black-helmeted head — Sacrifices must be made, says Henry Becket, and the world must never know.
Suddenly a mist appears around her to distort her vision — a black angel with broken wings appears between them — he hisses in fear, she screams a banshee’s scream, he holds his ears and screams — she Repulses him back into a body wracked with migraine—
6 october 2014.
“Wake up, bright eyes,” a voice whispers gently into Amanda’s ear. “It’s time to rise and shine.”
Amanda opens her eyes. The morning is bright. Shira takes her by the hand and pulls her up into a sitting position, then sits on her lap, holds her tight, and gazes deep into her pretty hazel eyes. “Shira?”
Shira smiles sweetly to comfort her. “You’re safe now. And free.”
For an anxious second Amanda tries to struggle out. She gives up with a sigh of despair. “Why did you do that to me, Shira?”
“Because I love you.” Shira touches her lips to hers, kisses her gently, then with increasing intensity; the bright-eyed girl melts into her, surrenders to her kiss, moans softly. The kiss lasts several minutes, but seems an eternity of bliss neither woman wants to let end.
“I thought you hated me...”
“I was only waiting for the chance to set you free.”
Amanda begins to sob; tears stream down her cheeks. “I’m sorry...”
“I forgive you.” Shira kisses her again.
In the heart of the bright-eyed girl, the name of Amanda Jane Currie begins to loosen its oppressive hold over her. A crushing weight begins to lift from her shoulders.
Shira gives her a beautiful smile. “Who are you?”
Through her tears, she says, “I am the bright-eyed girl.” She feels happier than she has ever been in her life.
Little Flower sleeps uneasily next to them on the bed. Amanda gently caresses her hair and then her delicate pretty face. She asks, “Can I have her?”
Shira smiles. “Ever heard of ‘it takes a village’? She belongs to all of us.” She gently kisses Flower on the cheek. Lost in a dream, Flower moans.
[Henry Becket stands before in full American Crusader costume with eight other costumed superheroes behind him for a press conference.]The rain is gone. The storm clouds have parted. The shining sun smiles upon the city. The smell of tear gas is gone, but the air is thick with the smell of death below. High above the city streets strewn with wrecks and corpses, in the penthouse suite abandoned by Drusilla Becket AMERICA!, the last people in Seattle occupy their time among the mountains of booty the Corporates left them as they fled. Jennifer makes passionate love to Irina on the couch; Kowalczyk and a cute anarchist girl who still refuses to give her name make love in the shower; sitting nude next to an innocent and curious robot beauty named Pansy Persocom, Sparks idly changes channels on the living room’s giant screen, alternately sneering snorting and moaning at the official channels’ tortured attempts at plausible deniability. The girl with the violet eyes leans against the bar, her bare skin now clean of body paint, sweat, mud, and fighting gear. She looks toward her cinnamon-skinned lover as she walks into the room — but has a double take when she sees Amanda Currie with her.
The Crusader: We cannot wait for those fools of the Central Committee to return in their new bodies. From now on, they shall answer to me, as the new Chairman of the Conservative Revolutionary Party. From now on, they, all America, and the world must bow to us — The Liberators!
*click*
Amanda freezes. She stares at the young woman she unwilling betrayed almost two years ago, now more beautiful than she could have imagined. A memory bubbles up into consciousness, of a black-haired beauty of thirteen who even then insisted that she was a woman — what was her name? didn’t she erase it? she has her superpowers now, and Amanda fears that she’ll use them against her in revenge.
Instead, before Amanda can flee, the girl throws herself in her arms and holds her tight. Those beautiful violet eyes stare deep into hers as if reading her soul. There is no revenge in them, only pleading. Tears flow gently down. Amanda feels one hand on her shoulder and the other gently caress the small of her back. A smile grows on the girl’s face; Amanda can feel her sudden joy burst from the girl’s body through their touching skin into hers.
The girl says, “I forgive you.”
Amanda breaks down in convulsive sobs. They hold each other tighter, join together in wails of grief for all the beautiful women lost to the bloodthirst and power hunger of Dragonite supermen, the friends they lost and were forced to betray, Amanda’s sister, Leila’s best friend, all dead tragically young, murdered. Somehow Sparks can’t help but find it beautiful, because of the years of grief and tears they had been forced to hold back now free to come out in torrents of wails, because of their love. He watches yet another talking head officially deny that yesterday never happened.
*click* ESPNBC: a slightly ruffled yet seemingly unfazed cub reporter reports that the official denial by Party Chairman Karl Rove (from his clone tank) that the disaster that happened here yesterday never actually happened has been cancelled by new Party Chairman Henry Becket, who vows that he and his superteam will get their revenge.
*click* Fox News: Nancy Grace declares yet again in her usual shrieky twang that all the liberals are raping the Nation yet again and should be punished as rapists — by the Liberators.
*click* MTV: those badly Resculpted whores in the sleaziest sector of Pretty City are wasting precious airtime again — Sparks laughs when he hears them talking about Shira; Shira laughs when she sees what Christina Lopez looks like now, the skank.
*click* All the terrorist factions defeated by Team Spanner claim victory over the Conservative Revolutionary Party in the incident that officially never happened — *click* Anonymous (faction unknown) releases another standard stormy-skies-and-robot-voice communiqué claiming all the factions lost including the Party itself — *click* one Party faction, the vigilantes of CUNT, declare their intention to take over because the Liberators, mere superheroes, are wimps — *click* the Liberators’ old enemy, the former Soviet superhero the Proletarian (son of the one the Crusader killed in their famous superpower duel in Vietnam), claims they’ll destroy America in order to save it and declares his intention to help destroy it — *click* a new terrorist organization formed out of prison gangs and calling itself the Satanic Jihad declares its intention to destroy America just because — *click* a new news network comes on the air declaring itself better connected to the Party and the competition can just go suck it—
*click* The Canucks win again — *click* the Seahawks lose again — Sonics fans celebrate their team’s victory by ritually burning Howard Schultz in effigy yet again for the unforgiven crime of moving the old Sonics team to Oklahoma City — *click* the Fox Sports talking heads denounce Cascadia’s infatuation with soccer (Shira: “That’s ‘football,’ you stupid crackers!”) on behalf of Real America yet again — *click* a report that ESPNBC reporter Amanda Currie remains missing in Seattle—
*click*
Channel 12. The local access station that officially isn’t supposed to exist. Sparks cannot change the channel — stuck?
On screen, that smiling Princess Ozma head, creepily bodiless and superimposed on stark black, changing colors like the Horse of a Different Color. Six nude young women, two cops, and a gynoid turn their attention to her. She says:
“Don’t change the channel.”
Sparks blurts, “Jesus Christ!”
“Say,” Jennifer says, “I’ve seen that face before!”
“Another Scream Gem?” asks Shira.
“No. On monitors, my phone, whatever.”
“I did hear about an AI project at the Wilder Foundation.” To the face on the screen: “What do you want?”
The sweet face rewards her with a huge sweet smile. “I want to thank you. All of you.”
“For what?”
“For saving me — us.”
“Meaning?”
“The city.”
“From COPCO.”
“And from Dictel, the Conservative Revolutionaries, and that crazy old man who should never have been king.”
“So who are you?”
“I am the city.”
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[Revision 4 Final, 1/23/13: Original opening sequence condensed and mostly replaced with new “Looting of Westin Towers” sequence and new scenes with Drusilla and the new child character Flower. Heavily revised for Final Revision continuity.]
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