Chaos Angel Spanner — Chapter 20: Stand or Fall
Part 3: Temporary Autonomous Zone (Final Revision)
Part 3: Temporary Autonomous Zone (Final Revision)
and those left out now rush in: Stylers, Rockers, Ravers, Neo-Wavers, Future Primitives; misfits, outcasts, gays, geeks, pagans, from any school and no school, in uniform and in costume, mundanes yet not mundane, all swarming into the vacuum created when spectators, broadcasters, and losing fighters left as the fireworks continue to go off overhead.
The roadies and the stage crew drive the platforms out onto the ruined field, switch on the sound cancellers, set up the subwoofers, test the holographic projectors, test the sound system; Alex shoos the play-by-play crew out of the announcer’s box, then has cousins and hackers bring in the turntables and sound equipment and box after box packed with sleeved vinyl discs, transforming the announcer’s box into the DJ booth of Alex Plus, mad mixologist of the New Rave, too impatient to resist the temptation to spin her first record like a basketball on her index finger.
A rented truck drives its cargo into the service entrance; fighters, hackers, and anarchists offload and uncrate several dozen boxes filled with little blue ecstasy pills and LSD blotter sheets specially formulated by the Krewe on the tightest schedule and unpolluted by Syndicate adulterants for unearned profit and which they would have destroyed as fast as possible had Team Bremelo lost the Challenge. Another truck offloads bottles of water, then leaves to fetch more.
Subculture kids and underground radicals mix and network with the Student Unions of three dozen schools and the still celebrating Bangor students howling and beating drums and blowing horns and vuvuzelas while more continue to come in until the lines shrink from blocks to nothing. When the last of the newcomers are in, Nick gives the word, and security pull the gates shut so no one more can come in. The projectors switch on and fill the air above the stadium with 3D MilkDrop visualizations made extra shimmery by the hard-falling rain. Sparks stops at the arresting sight of the new Tournament Leader in beret, gloves, boots and nothing else on smooth cinnamon skin covered in raindrops sparkling and shimmering like those mischievous green eyes, too gorgeous and sexy a woman and too damn young... “If this is no mere Team Challenge victory celebration, what is it?”
“T.A.Z.”
“Uh, what’s that stand for?”
“Here’s another thing for your education: establish a state of full anarchy in one place for a limited time, and you create what we anarchists call a ‘temporary autonomous zone.’” She hands her beret and gloves to him. “Here, pocket that.”
“What about—” She walks away seductively swinging her voluptuous bare hips. “Uh-oh...” She tosses a blue pill up in the air and into her mouth, catches rain water in her mouth to wash down the E, turns her head to wink at him, and slips into the arms of her equally nude nameless girl, no barrier remaining between the rain and their bare skin but the mud. “What the—”
“Binary system,” says the girl with the violet eyes. Those beautiful eyes twinkle with knowing, and she winks. The lovers disappear into the crowd
and suddenly he realizes the real reason for their presence at the coming of King Patriot and why the girl who until then bore the name Leila Shelley was wearing as a pendant a power crystal keyed to her, and that even though there are no Party leaders present he will see exactly what killed the King. Binary system...
When the last light disappears over the clouds, the final sound check begins. The KCUF sound crew test the amplifiers and speakers; once again no errors, so Alex improvise an ambient tune on her laptop and spin the sound around the field; so far, so good. If this were Bremerton, Bainbridge, or Central Kitsap, the video crew would keep the light show low, barely above the field, for the same reason they brought the sound cancellers; but since Bangor High is in the middle of a wasteland of warehouses and strip malls, they can do what they need to give the illusion of dancing light filling the whole sky. The pyrotechnicians launch the last of the fireworks above the stadium. The holoprojectors turn their light low. The only bright lights left are the klieg lights rimming the dancer-packed stands and the scoreboards still celebrating Team Bremelo’s victory with the new team scream-gem logo and the words “VICTORY: TEAM BREMELO” animating and alternating until dawn comes and the revellers leave and the music stops
that begins with a tribal howl, soon accompanied by African drums and then taiko drums and joined by the drummers on the field, and finally the booming backbeat comes in and all begin to dance, fighters students dancers drummers Ravers Wavers Stylers Rockers and all the tribes now gathered here turning the turf from sod to mud and destroying the stadium field on which Bart Green and his football team will play no more games, getting their clothes so heavy with rain and mud they start to tear and have to come off, passing around the E and washing it down Shira’s way, as the sound field and sound cancellers and holoprojectors create the situational reality bubble emerging out of Shira’s passionate heart in which she creates what she calls her temporary autonomous zone, a place with no authority, no leaders, no merciless infallible Law, free from Synarchists and Syndicates and substitutionist vanguards, only the equality of the dancers
as they dance themselves into an altered state reinforced by pounding beats and swirling psychedelic lights and the E kicking in right now, right on time for the girl with the violet eyes and her lover the cinnamon girl who worships her weave and navigate through the mud-covered dancing throng, across the field, wending through paths that emerge and close and morph into new paths leading elsewhere till they reach the central platform and join the drummers and hornblowers still in school and band uniform, glowstick-waving Stylers in their costumes advertising the many flamboyant rival tribes, passing through the drenched dancers on the platform and skipping climbing up to the highest level where Rob Fiona Kio Colette two New Ravers three drummers four Stylers and Shira’s nameless niece in Ayla’s frilly gothloli cosplay dress dance together to dance at one with them and let the rain falling through the cavernous cathedral of swirling light wash the mud off their bare bodies until as the music shifts from tribal
The Eye sees everything from the heavens above. Echelon’s Landsat spies have resolution not allowed to commercial cameras. It sees every single one of the dancers. It sees every single raindrop and dust speck on their bodies.to techno like an adrenaline shot injected into by every body into itself blending mixing with the E in their blood driving them to more frenzied dancing dervish dizzy into an altered state and the cinnamon girl and her girl with violet eyes intuit now is the time
Echelon summons the killsat. Its particle beam created to destroy nuclear missiles is powerful enough to destroy the Pentagon itself. The killsat moves into place. It activates its firing sequence. It prepares to explode the nuclear fuel. It aims directly into the stadium, onto the head of Shira Thomas. Fire from heaven shall be the Crusader’s revenge.
they slip off the platform to their special place below to kiss violently and caress with inflamed passion and pleasure each other till they can stand it no more then sit together double lotus to make love in full view of all to join everybody with them into a special conspiracy of sweet sweet transgression
that collaborates with the pounding shamanic beat and hallucinatory aurora to create an atmosphere of pure love within the small confined space of Dictel Stadium where the rain comes down cool not like warehouse raves raining hot stale sweat from the ceilings of cramped buildings but cool sweet water come down from the sky above to wash the mud and sweat off bare bodies hot with sweat and steam, the E transmuting the intense passion shared by the team leader and her nameless lover into pure love essence that spreads like a benevolent virus and infects everyone in the stadium and spreading outside to Dictel Park and the Syndicate warehouses
not hearing the sonic pulse through the great wall of sound cancellers (the litigation-mad neighbours notice nothing, hearing only cars and dogs and the occasional cat-versus-cat confrontation while the dance goes on, oblivious even of the need every winning school fight club has to has to have its victory party) separating the music from the outside world to create a separate reality within
where the music and dancing and drugs create a consciousness field that all are convinced they can touch and breathe and hear, altering the consciousness of all it touches through the tactile medium of sound and align all senses into perfect synesthesia as if aligned by the mind fusion created by the erotic frenzy at the epicenter of an energy vortex transmuting bodies into mind and minds into body and all fused into one shared overmind united by the beat propelling the dancers’ bodies and the memory bursts into the nameless girl’s fading mind that she has experienced this fusion before, the perfect fusion of two separate bodies powered by pure passion whenever she and Shira push each other beyond themselves to become one, but this time not the love of two but of many, e pluribus unum made real and true in the perfect union of living flesh created by the fusion dance of not just two bodies but thirty thousand and Jennifer’s voice says see, I told you so and her mind shows her the pattern and for the first time she feels in her heart what she means and not they when she speaks of socialism and right on cue
the bodies dancing around them feel the oppression of rain- and mud-soaked clothes and strip climb burst out of their straitjackets liberate their bodies expose them to the rain cooling the overheated bodies and brains dancing in collective frenzy and exhausted bodies gain their second wind along with the two beautiful young women making love at the center of the storm generating a shared pleasure so intense it feels like torture and sustaining it as long as they can making the quantum leap to each higher and more unbearable level of pleasure in common cause of the destruction of their individual minds and the unification of all the bodies dancing around them with them in unity with each other taking pleasure in each other’s presence and the touch of their skin as the adrenaline injection serves its purpose and techno gives way
bangor jail. A Hummer in the black-silver-white Bangor High colors crashes into the lobby, and out stumbles panicked athletic director Terry Mobley. His brother, COPCO district chief Anson Mobley, slaps him three times. “What the hell do you think you’re doing!”to deep house, beautiful soulful and achingly romantic, a soundtrack for the field of love energy building to high intensity and already absorbing overwhelmed and exhausted minds into the ecstasy of the dance, a few already giving in to the urge to make love to whoever they’re with regardless of rank, gender, color, tribe, even close family relationship, the rest carried away by the effects of E and adrenaline and the pounding beat, building the energy
“G-g-girls!”
“What about girls?”
“They were naked, and very pretty, and they ruined our Tournament!”
“What? How?”
“Thomas, Blair, and Shelley destroyed Team Valiant!”
The Chief goes pale. He turns to the Imperial Flag, whips out a legionary salute, pulls his hand to his heart: “Oh Jesus America forgive us...”
copco seattle. Admiral Currie interrupts Chief Mobley’s videocall to Jack Becket. “Reynard, what the hell—”
The ever-enthusiastic Admiral won’t let him speak either. “Come on, Johnny, have faith! Don’t you know God gifted America alone with the secret of victory? Air power!”
Annabel Lecter bets the COPCO agents the Tech Knights will prevail. Having no such faith, the agents raise him double each.
naval base bangor. A large flight of Predators blots out the sky above Commander Will Becket. He frowns. The Tech Knights have fallen into her trap. “Currie, you fool...”
Shira and the nameless girl feed on as their erotic frenzy builds to its most unbearable point and they activate their powers but delay the mindlink until the last possible moment to wring maximum pleasure out of their physical torment while it lasts
watched by the crew in the booth: Alex Plus spinning the vinyl, extracting and replacing, her mix driven by a vague plan but really by Patternist intuition: Nick, Deth Pussy, Evil The Cat, El Kabong doing a dance of their own before a stack of Kinects to control the auroras and particle fields in the sky over the stadium: Charlie, Desiree, and Melody flying nude in the sky outside, having already burned off their clothes in the electric air, generating a light show of their own and trailing contrails of pulsing light in changing colors: Simon Remington watching in awe the success of their attempt to recreate the long-lost, long-suppressed parties he remembers from the long-extinct rave underground that escaped out of Ibiza at the death of the New Wave until the System declared war and Seattle unleashed its revenge under the name grunge (Ric Thomas interview: “We were ‘grunge’ before ‘grunge’ ever existed”) and the name of Rebel Mudlark was still magical; he looks at Alex and sighs, like mother like daughter, she inherited the touch: James Tiberius Sparks, prodigal heir to the System itself now helping the Rocker underground fight against it, once blackmailed by a spectacular teenage slut who proclaimed herself his owner, now full participant in her world watching her make crazed rocket-fuelled yet Tantric-spiritual love to her rebel princess down below, a princess no longer a princess who threw away her name along with her tiara and now proudly bears no name at all:
two beautiful passionate lesbian lovers making love in total frenzy chanting the names and mantras of esoteric Tibetan goddesses one of whom dark-skinned partner is a living likeness, sharing sweet erotic torture, sweet hurt to their faltering consciousnesses, as long as they can, building their pleasure to extremes beyond which consciousness cannot survive, while
around them the gathered tribes dance their unity into dervish ecstasy, physical pleasure transmuting into spiritual bliss, building up an energy field within the power-created boundaries of the temporary autonomous zone that overwhelms their individual minds, melts their petty tribal Ego illusions into nothing, opens their minds up to the universe and to their radical sameness, injecting energy like turbo rocket fuel into the hypercharged bodies making love so furiously at their center as house music fades into hypnotic trance until
at last their two minds can bear no more and collapse into the all-absorbing sea of ecstasy — the lovers mindlink — their souls fuse into a single superbeing — they lose their identity their consciousness merges with the mass of dancing humanity — their powers combine into one — and the binary system forms
What is this? The spysat camera image of the stadium is fading. The resolution is fuzzing out and pixelizing. Dictel Stadium has disappeared!to project a new reality into the rolling rocking arena fusing reality distortion with Repulsion to create a universe apart from the world of Man that sends its avenging angels overhead the angels of death (Simon: “What the hell?” Sparks: “Attack drones?” Deth: “Ha! Sore losers.”) into the valley of death the jaws of victory the temporary autonomous zone
Shira Thomas, that Steve Jobs-level Charmer, somehow has amplified her reality distortion field to such a degree of extreme power that Minovsky dissipation renders any beam weapon useless. The firing sequence ceases.
where the dancers shed all tribal allegiances and prejudices along with their clothes and inhibitions: Lefty Lucy directing Stylers and Ravers and Rockers to shed their clothes and paint each other with mud in intricate and whimsical patterns until they surrender to the rain and wash the impromptu body paint all off and just touch bare sensitive hot and cold skins together in transtribal unity: the Peace Committee dancing together with their beloved Karen healing at a distance (where she vividly dreams their dance) and ecstatic at the realization of her dream of people united dancing in peace and love, dancing away the darkness: Jennifer joining her cousins Clover, Courtney, and Schuyler, spotting their cousins so astonished to be here, Dorian, Charmian, and Julian, caught up in a world they have never experienced, hugged and kissed and stripped naked by these cousins initiating them into a new reality: Lorelei pulling Lorine into her arms and making her feel comfortable and okay to love another woman and kissing her deeply while the rest of the GSA dance down on the field in the mud with the gathered fused tribes: Mimi, Trishie, and Ruthie pulling Debbie into their circle and love-bombing her and forgiving her and each other and themselves for the friend they lost: Debbie so dizzy in culture shock so intense looks at the artificial aurora above and decides she’s dreaming awake and resigns herself to this hallucinatory trip: and the younger crew from the Beit al-Qahwah mixing with Arisa and Brandi and the four Tachibana sisters adoring their adorable too-shy boy cousin Seika: Akane and Daisy giving up and surrendering to the urge to make love right then and there fusing their hearts and bodies into one knowing that after this they will never be apart again: a nameless child dancing her friend’s dress into shreds in front of her and not caring because the moment is all and the friend is there naked tearing it off and her nameless mother smiles with pleasure as she dances nude with her nameless friends and Sylvia and Elsie and the school librarians and the girl’s sister who creates a light show of her own among the Geiss particle fields and Twisted Pixel auroras: the sisters’ mothers, sisters themselves and married to each other, letting their magnetic-levitation powers throw them anywhere and everywhere within this pocket universe as they make passionate love in mid-air within
the fusion of a Charmer’s reality distortion field and a Shield’s Repulse field into the binary system separating them from the cold world beyond the stadium and bringing them together and fusing them into a single wave of particles on the field and the platforms like the Geiss particles dancing in the holographic aurora above them and among them while in the sky above the temporary autonomous zone
the angels of vengeance lose control of themselves, lose all knowledge of the dancers’ existence within the reality distortion field, perform a twisted dance with each other touching and kissing and colliding to produce their own fireworks show above (Simon: “What the fuck?” Sparks: “They’re going haywire?” Deth: “Ha! Sore losers!”) adding their micronovae to the swirling particle fields and hallucinatory holographic aurora and then flying away until they
bangor jail. Panic all around. The Mobley brothers hear explosions all around them. They can hear the Skeever brothers mock them as agents bring them in. The Mobleys stare at each other. Anson kicks a hole in his desk.vanish from the stadium airspace glowing and shimmering with holoprojected aurora like four-dimensional shared hallucinations within the temporary autonomous zone where all Law and all memory of it fades away till there is no law and no need for any for the beat is in control
copco seattle. Gleeful agents mock a moaning Lecter as they divide their winnings. Admiral Currie refuses to call back. Jack Becket stares grimly at the fuzzy satellite image of the Bangor High area and silently speculates that this is what killed his grandfather.
naval base bangor. Admiral Currie is only temporarily miffed. He smells a Challenge. “So the enemy’s got clever countermeasures, doesn’t it. Well, I’ll show those uppity bitches the true power of America yet! I’m optimistic, I’ve still got faith, and I’m ready and rarin’ to fight! Yeah!”
Out in the storm, Will Becket laughs.
of the bodies liberated from dissolved mind and vanished Ego and now liberating themselves from the last bonds of fabric separating them from each other and the rain-drenched sky and their identities start to fade: Liz and Radica letting the music dance them naked into each other’s arms and their lips together, all memory of rivalry with each other, Deth Pussy, and Shira vanished: Dorian, Charmian, and Julian astonished to find themselves their pale bodies nude in front of each other and a crowd of strangers unconscious of their rank and accepting them as beautiful living bodies like themselves and living only to dance together: a girl with no name throwing the ruined dress from the platform and sweetly begging her companions to tear off their burdens as well and let the cool rain wash them clean: the school band members in ever less uniform still beating drums blowing horns no longer creating music but created by it: Rob and Fiona dancing in each other’s arms, their bare wet skin touching, wishing their nameless sister could join them, forgetting their own names too and that they are brother and sister or that it even matters as long as they are nude beautiful warm and trapped together in the love field: Eddie joining his dark body to Steve and Ken’s dance, pulling them away from Trishie and Ruthie, pulling them close and kissing them each in turn: Connor joins them all together, Fiona breaks away to join Mimi with Trishie and Ruthie in one embrace, and no one cares about the gender for they all join together in love
for each other and everyone here and all humanity and the whole world and no malice exists within this reality apart from the world, within their temporary autonomous zone where all rank vanishes with their clothes and all separate identity fades and fuses and in their delirium of spiritual experience they grow to understand through experience without words what Jennifer tried in vain to explain the name of socialism but
now it no longer matters because they have become one under the dark clouds sending their cooling rain to wash their sweat-drenched mud-covered bodies and cool their overheating brains as their mass dance unites them in one movement powered by the pounding beat and their collective nudity tells them they are all the same and worthy of each other’s love that they will take back into the world when they scatter in all directions when the rising sun commands an end to the rain and they bring their unity back into the System to undermine it, the System that tried and failed to stop them here and now, celebrating their victory over Tournament and Revolutionary Manhood and the two hegemonic gods of Corporatism and the bonds and gears of the System itself and the creation of the new world they are now building through the collective unity of their collective dance as meanwhile
the lovers in their erotic frenzy chanting mantras and pushing their love beyond all physical and spiritual limits cease to exist as separate entities and form a timespace strange attractor in eleven dimensions that draws the dervish mass in as the trance music attentuated by altered consciousness
Cold war in orbit: another killsat approaches. This one kills satellites. Echelon has attracted the attention of Prosperity Liberation Army cybersoldiers determined to prove the superiority of Chinese Corporatist Party (Holdings) Limited and establish the supremacy of the One True Race.loses intensity and gets ethereal as adrenaline, exhaustion, pure love, and E wear down all barriers until they flicker away and vanish and the pulsing swirling undulating mass of dancing humanity that fills the stadium merge into a single energy heating the rain into a thick glowing mist and lose their names as if they never needed them and share their consciousness and identity among the crowd
The Chinese killsat rams into the American one and blows up. The shockwave sends its victim headlong into the spysat. Echelon is not only disarmed, but blind over Cascadia, its eye and fist now so much space junk.
and it no longer matters that they have separate existence outside this temporary autonomous zone because now they dance together and the dance is a cosmic wave uniting their separate selves into one superself that needs no name no thought nothing but the bliss of their unity, and it no longer matters that they have separate physical forms for the dance is a wave of which they are but particles like the Geiss particle field swirling above within the hallucinatory aurora filling the stadium air and reflecting in shimmering prisms, each body itself covered in liquid prisms of shifting shape taking form and running down their skin washing the skin clean taking everything on it down to the ground, and it no longer matters that their skin is of different colors or imprinted with pictures and patterns or are of different shapes some beautiful some not or are claimed by different tribes some of them enemies outside or are attracted to the other gender or their own or the brilliance or dullness or pettiness of their minds or whether the souls they embody are awake or asleep though now they are awake together in common shared consciousness or whether the body is the tomb of the soul or the soul is generated by the body and exists only as part of it: nobody thinks about such things now because they have travelled far beyond thought to a realm beyond individuality in a deeper level of the reality as part of which they exist, the reality unfolded without of which they now partake of the deep folded essence that is the root of their common existence and their common humanity
evolving before their eyes and within their eyes and though they don’t know it some of them generate within themselves the seeds of future humanity while the ones in whom the seeds have already sprouted into psychic power and high consciousness fuse their separate powers beyond binary system — the scattered newtypes lose control and mindlink into a single consciousness that draws the giddy exhausted dancers into it — all reason collapses into the burning sea of consciousness — all identity fades away to nothing — all matter dissolves into liquid spirit — all consciousness merges with the all — all bodies fuse with the music into a single wave of motion—
and
FADE TO WHITE
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[Revision 4 Final, 3/26/13: Double-length installment expanded from 20.6 R2 and heavily modified for Fourth Revision continuity. All new scenes (the indented ones) are new. Also new: the experiment of sentences divided between paragraphs and the single sentence extending into 21.1, inspired by the poetic technique of “enjambment” dividing single sentences and/or phrases between lines.]
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