Sunday, April 14, 2013

Spanner Chapter 22: There Is No Law (Final Revision)

Chapter 21

Chaos Angel Spanner — Book 1: Rock City Blues
Chapter 22: There Is No Law (Final Revision)

Bangor High School has been all but destroyed by its own leaders. The Seattle Public Education Corporation is collapsing. Its chairman is dead. The anti-bullying rally that Peace Committee leader and devout pacifist Karen Kubota transforms into a districtwide student strike against SPEC, quickly joined by the teachers whose Guild rules forbid them to strike.

But rebellious lovers Shira, Jennifer, and the girl with the violet eyes know what even the Student Union and the dissident rank-and-file teachers don’t: this is no mere strike against a predatory corporation, but the beginning of the Populist revolution against the aristocratic Conservative Revolution and everything it stands for — including its eugenics-oriented moralism. Their love, they realize, is itself a weapon against the System. Shira’s sister Desiree joins their love revolution, abandons her superhero costume, takes her own nameless daughter as her lover, and does battle with both her mother and mortal enemy Drusilla and the entire privatized COPCO police force — just as its Syndicate moles go to war within the company, in effect repealing the Law. The girl with the violet eyes duels her unwanted Corporate suitor Oliver on live television, Lord Richard Becket, the World Patriarch himself, is drawn in, Spanner makes his spectacular return in unexpected form...

And the strike of students and teachers against SPEC balloons into a full-blown general strike.

The time of reckoning has come at last.

Table of Contents:
  1. Interlude 13: This Is Not America (April 5, 2013)
  2. Teenage Resistance (October 14, 2011, Final Revision 4/8/13)
  3. Lovecrime Conspiracy (October 15, 2011, Final Revision 4/9/13)
  4. Fight the Power (October 16, 2011, Final Revision 4/10/13)
  5. Massive Retaliation (October 17, 2011, Final Revision 4/11/13)
  6. Total Police Breakdown (October 18, 2011, Final Revision 4/12/13)
  7. The Naked Killers (October 19, 2011, Final Revision 4/13/13)
The Intro ends: Chaos theory states that perfect foreknowledge of the development of a system is impossible, and that the slightest change in one variable changes the future of the system completely... In the Fourth Revision, I have made so many changes and additions to the Second and Third Revisions that the new Chapter 22 is almost unrecognizable from the R2 original. The general plan may be the same, but the specific outcome is different. I have also integrated the stylistic experiments of the R4 Interludes directly into the text of the main story.

Heavily revised and edited, with many old scenes and threads deleted and new ones added, to fit Final Revision continuity and provide a cliffhanger ending that leads into Chapter 23. Original Revision 2 section titles: “Contradiction Is Truth” (22.1), “Working for the Crackdown” (22.2), “Brinkmanship” (22.3), “Bring the Hammer Down” (22.4), “The Spanner Show” (22.5), “The Naked Killer” (singular; 22.6). There is no Third Revision version; the ending is new to the Fourth Revision.

Because the First Revision version was never completed nor posted, the original introduction is that to the Second Revision and there are no R2 (or R3) revision notes. The R2 introduction:
The first edition of Spanner Book 1 never got this far. Why? I left these two final chapters half in outline, that’s why. The plot had collapsed by this point; such things tend to happen in a first draft. Now, for the first time ever, exclusively for the second edition, I bring you Chapter 22.

Principal Principal and Vice Principal Falconer are dead. So are Admiral and Mrs Fleer, leaving the Fleer sisters orphaned. Bart Green is a cripple; Team Valiant has been destroyed. Spanner has exposed Mayor Pete Ross and Shepherd Luke Everson as complete and utter fools. Their failure to violently suppress the peaceful protest at Bremerton High School now allows the demonstrations to spread to every single junior high, high, and technical school in the Metropolitan Seattle School District, and from there to every single metropolitan school district in the State of Cascadia. At long last, the Populist majority have thrown their puppet oppressors, the Fearsome Foursome, the long dreaded Public Challenge, and they have two big demands: a free election, and the end of Tournament. The Law, needless to say, responds with lawlessness.

As the crisis snowballs, Team Bremelo race to save Karen from a hitman, the Wrecking Krewe initiate a full-scale Anonymous strike on AT&T and the FCC, the remnants of Valiant and Pretty Teams plot their revenge, Shira flies one last delivery, and Leila takes advantage of the chaos to put an end to the arranged marriage her hated grandfather, the leader of the Foursome, forced her into — with a final Challenge of her own, which only one can survive! And at long last, Spanner makes his first public appearance since the TrumpCity disaster on Revolution Day!
Chapter 23

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Copyright © 2013 Dennis Jernberg. Some rights reserved.
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