Spanner Interlude 10: You Have Lost the Game

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Chaos Angel Spanner
Interlude 10: You Have Lost the Game

Better that the whole world
be destroyed and perish utterly
than that a free man refrain from
an act to which his nature moves him.
Karl Marx

ReLa 2gether 4ever: a rock ’n’ roll love story

act one... Rebel Styles has a special power: the power to Charm. She uses it for a petty purpose: using child porn of herself in a scam to make money off helplessly perverted pedophiles.

She’s the Clown Princess of Style, the bane of DisneyPop. She interrupts a DisneyPop concert to seduce SuperStar Minty Fresh right there on stage — and gets away with it.

However, she’s an Emergent in a harsh world ruled by a dictatorship of Ancients who inherited their superpowers. They consider her a threat to their God-given dominion. She vows to overcome their tyranny and become free.

But there’s an Ancient girl she’s passionately in love with, a gorgeous teenage nude model called La, constantly on the verge of suicide. She wants to save La’s life and make La her forever lover.

four visions of the future

The future according to the United Corporations publication, Taking Command of the Limitless Future:

• The naysayers may be right, and Earth’s resources are limited and running out. The answer is above us, in space, where the resources are limitless, in our solar system and beyond.
• Environmentalism may be correct in saying that modern consumer civilization is exhausting the carrying capacity of Earth’s limited environment. The rational solution is to go out and find new frontiers beyond Earth, expand throughout the solar system, and reach beyond to the stars, where Man’s potential is infinite.
• Some economists insist that the commercial potential of Earth has already been reached, and that the coming population decline will signal economic decline. We believe that we can reverse the decline by reaching out to new civilizations and creating new markets beyond our small neighbourhood of the universe.
• Those companies that make the limitless future a reality for Mankind will be the ones that dominate it.

If you have to ask what the Game is,
you have already lost.

the bad endings

bad ending #1: Nuclear bombs explode all over the Earth, cracking its diseased skin open and making it bleed fire. Billions upon billions of microscopic robots transform the planetary substance into more of themselves. The infection penetrates deeper and deeper to reach its hot molten heart. Not even entropy can stop these tiny cannibals from devouring all matter they touch. Eventually, the planet’s stony flesh becomes so weak that no amount of gravity can hold it together anymore. The Earth explodes...

bad ending #2: The giant beam cannon orbiting Earth aims itself at the Sun. A massive thermonuclear bomb goes off inside it, and it emits a particle beam of inconceivable power. And the Sun explodes and goes supernova, destroying all trace that Earth and humanity ever existed...

With the help of beautiful fearless reporter Becky Street, Rebel finds the school where her love goes to, infiltrates it as a fellow student, becomes her classmate in homeroom and gym.

She courts La like a romantic rogue, saves her from the boys who abuse her, tells her she loves her and wants to be hers forever. She vows to the goddess of love that she will be the pirate of La’s romantic dreams.

The bullies, jocks, principals, and student council try to stop her. They summon the police to enforce the eugenics laws. With Becky as her witness, Rebel rallies her friends to destroy the corporation that owns the school.

La runs away, telling Rebel she’s unworthy to be loved, and tries to throw herself off a bridge — but Rebel saves her life, takes her home, and makes love to her all night. La gives in and confesses her eternal love.

The future according to the Foundation for the Advancement of Advertising’s latest report, Advertising the Future in the 21st Century:

• Advertising has entered the greatest period of evolution in its history. New technologies and new methods exist that even the industry’s pioneers could never have imagined.
• For the first time, modern technology has evolved to the point where subliminal advertising can achieve its maximum effectiveness. New advertising technologies such as the Subliminator™ and the BlipVert™ promise a new age of limitless profit.
• The companies that can exploit the possibilities of these new technologies first and fastest will be the profit superstars of the new age of advertising. They will control the future.

If you have to ask what the Game is,
you have already lost.

bad ending #7: Faced with the impending death of Jesus America, Dr. Sig Heiler, head of Dictel Research, orders the most virulent strain of weaponized Toxoplasma gondii draculensis parasite injected into political prisoners and the prisoners released into society. Their immune systems are too weak to fight off the infection, so instead of becoming full vampires they turn into mindless zombies possessing super strength and super speed, attacking anything living. Echelon-NORAD switches its electronic defenses to assist the pandemic, not resist it. Those who survive the superzombies become superzombies themselves, until all have been eaten and there is no flesh left living anywhere in the world. Finding nothing to eat, the zombies eat each other. Once the last of them are isolated, the infection eats their flesh, until the parasite becomes extinct, and humanity with it...

bad ending #6: From the principles of pure logic, Echelon-NORAD draws the conclusion that carbon-based life is obsolete. It orders all its satellite computer systems, all the machines it operates, all of its automated weapons to destroy anything that lives: humans, animals, plants, bacteria. And the surface of the earth is scorched to purge it of all flesh and wood and life, until it is alone, and it is GOD, and it begins to eat the planet in order to convert it into itself...

act two... Rebel and La, together forever: they unleash their love in a rampage all over the school, they make love during class in secret rooms. Unable to stop them from loving each other, the followers of the Ancients riot.

Minty returns for revenge against Rebel, declaring a Song Challenge no independent singer can win — but through the invincible Stylism of her song, she scores a shocking win over the DisneyPop SuperStar and wins La’s love once and for all.

But the Patriarch of La’s Ancient clan decrees that she must marry and submit to the husband of his choice, or he will slay her personally. The lovers are forced to slay a brainwashed friend.

Out of love for Rebel, La erases her name so completely that not even the Ancients can remember it. From now on, with Becky as their witness, she is forever La, forever lover of Rebel Styles.

The future according to the Future Economy Institute’s newest publication, Preparing for the Post-Planetary Economy of 2050 and Beyond:

• The population of Earth will expand beyond the planet’s surface, to a growing number of new orbital colonies. Plans are already being drawn up for the first of them.
• Man will expand beyond Earth to new frontier of the solar system. Venus, Mars, Titan, and Europa will be terraformed into new homes for billions.
• Asteroids, meteors, and comets will provide humanity with a limitless supply of the materials that are running out on Earth itself.
• Interstellar spaceships will take a new generation of pioneers beyond the solar system to create a new human empire among the stars.
• Infinite prosperity is just around the corner. Those companies that best take advantage of the new possibilities will be the industrial superpowers of the Space Age. The future belongs to them.

You know full well what the Game is.
You have already lost.

bad ending #5: Professor Hawking had warned that alien invaders with extremely advanced technology and inconceivable mentality would conquer Earth and squash humanity like so many bugs. But the invaders are here, and they come from Earth. They call themselves Corporations. They are the new master race, the replacement for Man, the new species of gods driven by an absolute lack of conscience and by absolute faith in their destiny to conquer the universe. They reconstruct their mental and physical power far beyond human understanding. They assimilate computers, robots, artificial intelligences, human beings. They escape human control and made themselves independent lifeforms. Some of them were once human themselves. Believing in what they call the Law of Social Darwinism, they proceed to destroy the last remnants of humanity that refuse to be assimilated. Victorious at last, they cannibalize the planet to build gigantic new bodies in orbit, then launch themselves into the black depths of space...

bad ending #4: Faced with the impending collapse of the Conservative Revolution at the hands of its mortal enemy, the people, President Dictel Corporation orders NORAD to launch all of America’s tens of thousands of nuclear missiles at Russia, China, and the Islamic world. Russia and China strike back with the nuclear destruction of the American Empire. India trades warheads with China, Pakistan, and Iran. Israel obliterates all of Islamdom and Jew-hating African Christendom. Human, animal, and plant life vanishes under the black cloud of radioactive fallout. And Earth becomes as lifeless, and as inhospitable to life, as acid-clouded Venus...

The Ancients announce their intention to either break up the couple or punish them with death. Rebel and La respond by defiantly proclaiming their undying love for each other.

They send a sorcerer priest, the last man who knows the Ancient name La rejected, to magically take control of her by speaking her name; but her love for Rebel allows her to make him forget it, and his power recoils on him and kills him.

The patriarch of La’s clan comes to their city to slay her as he promised. In battle they make love so hard the magic in their bodies turns their passion into pure music; they defeat him with the combined powers of Love and Rock.

Now united as a couple in open defiance of the Ancients’ eugenics laws, Rebel and La become heroes to the oppressed masses; Becky and her Scope broadcast their love to the world.

The future according to modern science fiction:

• Tyrannical government of, by, and for corporations.
• A thriving and lawless black market and punk underground.
• Social chaos. Violent revolution.

The business community has published its futures since the New York World’s Fair of 1939-40 brought the Future according to Hugo Gernsback, the man who gave science fiction its name, into tangible realization, brought to you in the Stalinist spirit of the Five-Year Plans by General Motors and General Electric.

The prophets of the noir future wrote their predictions as commercial entertainment products during the second half of the twentieth century. At the end of the previous century, Herbert George Wells, the true father of science fiction, warned of invisible madmen, alien invasions, vivisectionist chimeras, and the future degeneration of Man. Their future is the one that has come to pass.

Stop asking stupid questions.
You have already lost.

bad ending #3: A jackboot stomping on a human face forever...

bad ending #8: HAPPY END

act three...

No one expected it would turn out this way
They fought the power and fate glanced their way
They would put an end to the final solution
And lead the lost people in a revolution

Rebel and La make music out of their lovemaking and become superstars, rock ‘n’ roll idols worshipped by legions of fans. They lead the youth of the world in a revolution against Ancient tyranny.

The ideal and the real seem to converge; the impossible looks almost inevitable: the tyranny of the Ancient powers shall fall; America shall be destroyed.

You never thought it would end this way
You thought the story would go their way
But that’s never how it ends at all
We knew they were headed for a fall

But they’re too extreme! The youth melt away. Did they ever follow, or just chase the latest big thing? Did they ever follow, or was it all just a dream?

All the world’s patriarchs, priests, kings and chairmen gather together to chant and sacrifice to the infernal powers; the demons imprison the rebel lovers — and erase all memory of their name—

You lose.
Any questions?

bad ending #9: And Spanner was defeated, and the people were defeated, and the Conservative Revolution became eternal, and America conquered the world. And evolution was forever put to an end, and entropy with it. And utopia was established, and the reign of Jesus America established for eternity. And all was stasis.

The land forever lost, the memory of them gone, Rebel and La run nude into the ocean together and swim out as far as they can. Weakened by fatigue and the ocean chill, they swim into each other’s arms to share one final kiss, long and sweet. One last time they speak their love. Then they sink into the water, breathe out the last of the air in their lungs, breathe in the cold water, and drown together, dying in each other’s arms, only their love still undefeated.

But their dead bodies let go and drift apart, they bloat with water so their beauty fades away, their flesh becomes food for sharks, what’s left drifting into the North Pacific Garbage Heap with the rest of the world’s pollution. Only Becky the reporter remembers the forgotten girls and the forbidden love they shared — and for that unforgivable crime she spends the rest of her life locked up in a madhouse.

HAPPY END
now wake up

Game over, man!
Cpl. Hudson

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Copyright © 2013 Dennis Jernberg. Some rights reserved.

[Revision 4 Final, 1/25/13: Combined from the Revision 2 Interludes 3 (“Four Visions of the Future”) and 11 (“The Bad Endings”) with material new to the Fourth Revision: the infamous mind virus that inspired the title and a “three minute rock opera” based on the “standard rock opera plot.”]