Anarchemy: The Crypto-Contagion

By Richard W. Custer

The Agendaneers are responsible for this apocalypse…

Schematoria and Perturbatory are where they send you for re-education.

-And Anarchemy is the universal language of dissention adopted in response to this catastrophe by the wasteland's survivors...

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9788868857448

Book preview

-ANARCHEMY-

Chapter Index

Chapter One ; The Motherland

Chapter Two ; Escape from Fram Sam 'bispo

Chapter Three ; D.C. - The Motherland

Chapter Four ; Puppets of a Grand Design

Chapter Five ; Pendragon Station

Chapter Six ; Fort Machiavelli

Chapter Seven ; New Whirled Order

Chapter Eight ; The D.S.M. VII Opportunity

Chapter Nine ; Super-State

Chapter Ten ; Anarchemy

Chapter Eleven ; The Authority

Chapter Twelve ; The Power Compels You!

Chapter Thirteen ; Kryptos Mission-Critical Supplies

Chapter Fourteen ; Of Moonbeams and Dinosaurs {- Kr's Mi's Cr's & Su's of the Edu-Tron View -}

Chapter Fifteen ; Escalation

Chapter Sixteen ; The Agendaneers

-ANARCHEMY-

Chapter One

The Motherland

Ann Bannon had been an executive at a Public Relations Firm pitching infrastructure and the electrical grid's repair for some of the Corporate Governance Committee's Congressional representatives that stood to benefit from the franchise rights licensing agreements that this infrastructure program would give rise to, when the disaster struck.

Since the arrival of the crypto-contagion, Ann had spent most of her time pitching the 'Promised World' concept on her radio show; or the introduction of a public channeling service for a new breed of corporate gods that were so powerful that they had actually contemplated the value of extrusion product placement in the Earth's recovery, -were one forced to consider only the talking-points that had been made available to Ann, when considering the objectives of these new world gods...

-And it was easy to pitch 'the Promise' from inside a Government Bunker just outside of Annapolis, Maryland when one hadn't yet run out of potato chips or beer... Which was most-probably why the 'regulator' concept had next received some air on Ann's brightly-lit reader board.

The Board had only stipulated that the message had to be simple and specifically not identify their bunker's location; -otherwise, Ann and friends had received the green light to pitch remorse and revolution as they pleased over the bunker's 150 megawatt parabolic radio tower- the only functional two-way capable radio station with a high-profile diffraction angle, or window, to the West Coast left on Earth.

-They would have to settle on controlling the United States for the moment; but anything would become possible as soon as they began receiving the fast-packet data from the NSA listening posts in Asia, Europe, South America and the Middle-East necessary to evaluate their opportunity on the global dominion front...

Consequently, Ann's having been earmarked as the golden-tongued Presidential Candidate 'in search of a flock to lead' had been an especially satisfying vanity pitch and would-be benefits package for her years of service to the brave men and women of the D.C. Metro area when the Board had made its final amendments to the radio show's True World agenda.

-And she had convinced herself that she was going to make her emotional satisfaction with this nomination clear to all just as soon as the Board's Congressional appointee's arrived at the bunker; which was temporarily separated from the 'secret subway' courtesy of a cave-in. Under normal circumstances, the Congressional Transportation Network would have whisked Ann's patrons to Annapolis in under Twenty Minutes on a very bad day or, alternately, moved the Board's Congresspeople to an Air Force Base located in Virginia for evacuation to Bermuda or some other protectorate of the Motherland; the Motherland being what the Congresspeople involved in the 'administration' like to call England.

-But many days had, thereafter, passed without the arrival of any hopeful news from the secret subway or the Air Force Base; and nerves had begun to get a bit frazzled with the escalating prospect of Ann's bunker having become the last remaining bastion of the U.S. Government's, once vast, array of subterranean or otherwise obscured executive recovery centers; like the infamous Nancy Todd Ford Theater in Los Angeles.

-But whatever might have befallen the corporate staffers of the U.S. Government had remained hidden from their view, despite their facility having been outfitted with the latest versions of the government's Fractionated and Pan-Lingual Array technologies by way of a 'special promulgation' of the Board's 'Hush' Administration wonk more than six years earlier.

And Ann's discussions with the Board relating to her programming had run along ever-darker tangents for some time, thereafter, as their discussions contemplated actual recovery theories and what might have even been occasionally responsible solutions to the emerging dilemmas with an unusual aplomb; -some having dared to speculate that the inconvenient difficulties caused by these circumstances might have actually been caused by the arrival of the schismatic 'true black' scenario that many had feared the arrival of for some time.

-And the 'true black' scenario had been a popular subject for some time thereafter; it's tenets involving the arrival of a disaster so profound that the ever-divisive legions of the Congressional Caesars; also known as the 'seizures' in certain circles, could no longer function given their unilaterally antiquated ideals and highly-advanced ages. Under the 'true black' scenario, the Corporate Governance Committee's ever-entrenched Congressional membership would need to be replaced on a unilateral basis; making Ann's new role as a Presidential Candidate the determining factor within this consequential matter's resolution.

-But the timbre of Ann's show; which normally had a relatively upbeat theme, had assuredly changed for the worse by the end of the first week, despite this.

Ann had cause to remain optimistic, though; and chose to berate and cajole these 'true black' concepts on society's behalf, rather than despair, given that the corporate congresspeople would be required to perform one final act of selfless devotion on behalf of the citizens of the United States and uphold her election to the Office of the Presidency before they took their final naps.

-After all, 'True Black', in official governmental terms, was just the moniker du jour for a pan-governmental communications blackout that would not be repaired prior to the treacherous nature or unsettling gravity of some undefined circumstance being mitigated by the military; and the military couldn't possibly repair the form of disarray that existed following the introduction of the bizarre and badly-mutated plant species that had, seemingly, arrived overnight and immediately laid waste to both the recently-planted crops and indigenous species of the East Coast from Florida to Massachusetts with a simple communique, now could they?

It wasn't quite the promised world just yet, to be certain; but the U.S hadn't had this many undocumented workers voluntarily expatriate themselves from these hallowed shores of purple majesty since the British had distributed smallpox-contaminated blankets to the poor, and that was a good thing, wasn't it?

Hell, some were fairly certain that this was the first act of God that had been witnessed since the black death had secured Europe from further expansions of the Church; -and it had taken four entire centuries for that fateful cataclysm to run its course.

-More uncertain was our fair Country's fate as the military finally returned with their other than Board-Certified plan to recall America's naval assets to strategic locations around the North American Continent and initiate an evacuation to Oz; their thinking on this matter apparently having been centered around the capacity of the government to parlay its, still convertible, or useful, currency into the creation of a temporary homeland where the survivors could rely on having friendly locals about and a local government that wouldn't mind having a bit of extra American firepower available if things continued to deteriorate.

-Which was when the Corporate Governance Committee made its final public effort to secure all of the territories of the United States against annexation by what was then being called the 'Mexada Faction'; a leaderless and largely theoretical group of immigrant-thugs that might spread out from Mexico to Canada and lay claim to the Motherland if a sufficient percentage of the population was forced to repatriate themselves.

And this had been deemed the appropriate juncture for the introduction of the concepts that would later become known as 'The Motherland' to the American People.

The Corporate Governance Committee had been forced to immediately recall most of the U.S. Military Forces from the wars that were being waged abroad following the crypto-contagion outbreak; -and this monolithic shift in strategic dispositions simply wouldn't be completed within the time-frame required to curtail the destructive social processes that undermined authority systems.

Consequently, as the public raced for Coastal Ports to await the arrival of the fleet, the remaining strategists of the Country's 'Re-Constitution' Party, the Corporate Governance Committee's competitors in the Trusted Network industry, had decided to go Irish on the rocky shores of Maine and had set themselves to the task of recovering America's nuclear weapons before the reservation system claimed autonomous status for itself and started negotiating over the sovereign rights that the rogue factions of foreign nations, such as the 3,000,000 Sikhs that the CIA had moved to Alaska in the early 1980's, would enjoy as the protectors of what the Irish Maine now callously referred to as the Motherland's 'forbidden zone' -or whatever might remain of the United States and not remain a protectorate of the Commonwealth, following this disaster.

And Ann couldn't have written the articles of her competitor's demise better herself.

As supportive of the Motherland's creation was evidence of a more profoundly-disturbing set of mutations and secondary characteristics expressing themselves on a variety of aquatic species within the same span of days; or towards the beginning of the second week of the outbreak.

This cycle had started with the arrival of a school of mutated aquatic mammals that might have once been manatee's, but now appeared to be evidencing the secondary characteristics of some ancestral form of octopus or shark, dependent upon which school of Manatees an unfortunate Floridian's happened to be visited by.

This event cycle had been good for two entire days of broadcasts.

Less useful to Ann's cause had been the activities of a group of high-rollers in Reno; a group of undisclosed composition that had decided to roll the dice in support of the Irish Maine and attempted to secure the local military bases in hopes of securing a strategic zone of operations from which the U.S. Government could re-institute the use of air-enforced mandates capable of controlling the riots; or such that a state of martial law might, once again, exist within Nevada and fall under the jurisdiction of the Reno Sheriff's Department.

If this hadn't been an appeal for survivors to stay of the cheeky variety, Ann might have been able to parlay more support for the Motherland concept of this clever public relations ploy, but patience still had its virtues, -and the Irish Maine's coy recovery effort had, somewhat predictably, backfired on its sponsors within a span of two days despite their concept's sales pitch having had several very-meritable features.

For example, the Irish had argued that Reno had the Sparks Mint and plenty of empty condominiums available for use as refuge centers for the willing; also making public the fact that the deserts had been largely spared from the devastation. In the midst of the devastation occurring on the East Coast, this had been the next best thing to divine providence for the survivors; many of whom had begun the process of leap-frogging their way towards Reno by way of any vehicle with fuel left in it.

-And the plan might have actually worked for the Irish, had their sponsors actually been in a position to offer the Trinity Project's nuclear weapon sites and the Los Alamos National Laboratories the protection of something called the Area-51 Marauder Force; and the Dulce Maximum Security Research Facility that actually ran all of these programs not been converted into the Dulce Tri-State Correctional Facility following the rise to power of the Corporate Governance Committee during the Hush administration.

The L.V. Faction, as Ann Bannon's radio show had referred to this organization, had apparently settled on the strategic annexation of Coronado A.F.B. as their primary goal thereafter, -and had accomplished little more than the distribution of leaflets which stated that Reno' doors were open for business in support of their cause. -Though, truth be told, the busty broad with her arms spread wide on this leaflet's cover had acted as the perfect concealment for Nevada's initiation of a novel civilian-soldier training camp's use.

What they hadn't disclosed in the pamphlets was the fact that these camps were being used to prepare the citizenry that were actually left in the U.S. following the evacuations to OZ; or those that could coyly claim protected status for having been the victims of identity-theft rings which had eliminated their ability to produce meaningful identification and left them with third-world status in their own Country; otherwise known as the militia that was being outfitted by the Nevada Prison Authority...

Ann had figured that this was a better solution than saying that the work camps were being instituted for purposes of preparing the dregs of society for a, clearly imminent, invasion of hookers and drug addicts that had not been able to evacuate for their failure to meet the minimum venereal disease requirement of the Evacuation Board; but the Corporate Governance Committee had thought this situation more valuable as an affirmation of their own cause, and had strictly forbidden Ann's use of even casual references to the problems being faced in Nevada.

-And for the first time in years, the Corporate Governance Committee was not out of touch with reality, as the State Police Force membership that remained had been forced to button-down the Interstates shortly after the final wave of newbies arrived in Reno; sealing off the I-5 corridor around Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle from use with thick Iron barricades capable of isolating these major Port Cities from any further exposure to the contagion while the West Coast's Ports were being used for the exodus to Oz.

The Irish Maine had not given up its push for status or left the management of the recovery effort to the Corporate Governance Committee just yet, however; next having decided that the control of the U.S. Nuclear Submarine Fleet would be their priority; a determination that had coincided with the very belated realization that every Nuclear Power Plant and Hydro-Electric Plant in the United States had decided to go offline at the same moment.

In point of fact, this occurrence and phenomenon had managed to occur across the entire Planet at the same moment; and had occurred almost immediately after the arrival of the crypto-contagion, -all but irrefutably establishing that the Irish Maine's leadership were actually inside an East-Coast bunker and just as bereft of communications capacity as the rest of the Planet... -But this hadn't stopped them from making matters worse...

While not much of a surprise to the Corporate Governance Committee following the long string of disappointments that they had been forced to suffer through over the course of the previous two week period, the devastating psychological impact of the Irish Maine's subsequent realization that the entire U.S. Submarine Fleet had suffered a catastrophic loss of power plant function was not without its benefits.

Ann had used her radio broadcast to showcase the Irish Maine's failures when tasked with the daunting task of recovering the Submarine Fleet, just as he had chosen to conclude his competitors' reign of revolution by documenting their failures when attempting to recover the Navy's Fleet of nuclear surface vessels from the hundreds of locations at which they had been forced to stop their progress towards the U.S. during their mid-Pacific and mid-Atlantic pushes.

-And when the Irish Maine's banter had finally died down a day or two later, the Corporate Governance Committee had converted on their opponent's failure to rapidly respond to the Navy's need for assistance by stating that it was the Corporate Governance Committee's obligation to cart the nation's strategic reserve of fuel oil to the Country's Ports under the auspices of an Official Mandate, -thereby obligating the Corporate Governance Committee's unrestricted use of every pre-nuclear age tug boat, fishing boat and freighter that the U.S. had at its disposal for the recovery effort- a strategic initiative that came with a plan to relocate large numbers of citizens to Alaska and Hawaii along with every remaining article of canned or dry-packaged food product that might be left on a West Coast warehouse's shelf.

This Corporate Governance Committee 'Executive' Order generated true bedlam, -and mayhem followed like bedlam's retarded brother through the streets of America; the prison population, which had been the first population to have their food supply rationed, having rioted following the conversion of every prison's guards into law enforcement agents and the subsequent elimination of any food deliveries to the prison system.

-But there was nothing more that could be done without any functioning public utilities or agricultural infrastructure; a dilemma that soon left the prison guards with vast number of social issues that they weren't trained to manage and little more than a strong inclination towards making the remaining population walk in small groups precisely one arm's length ahead of them whenever they shared a stretch of sidewalk as their only official disaster-management technique.

Not altogether surprisingly, the public had responded poorly to this treatment and to the beat-downs that they received after exhibiting such disobedient behavior.

Ann had responded to the arrival of this news with sarcasm; suggesting that the authorities in Nevada also introduce regulations to control the production of 'pruno' with the hope that this form of response to such injustices might permanently conclude the competitive Nevada recovery effort; but only the re-introduction of command and control authorities that distributed five pound blocks of cheese would have solved America's social problems at this juncture.

-And, having spent as much time tabulating their escape opportunity coefficient, as breathing, while in stir, it hadn't been long before the inmate population had escaped the clutches of these darkest of State and Federal Institutions for the good life to be found in the deserted wastelands of Utah, Colorado, Nevada, California and New Mexico; establishing themselves as the unofficial purveyors of used vehicles and weapons; or what came to be known as the Fringe's 'Scrappers'.

-And it was the Scrappers that had ultimately unleashed the true devastation that overran what little might have remained of the orderly society that so-enjoyed obeying the directives of corporate executives and paid spokesmodels that had come to represent America's televisionadoes in the grand old world.

Without any television programming becoming available courtesy of the, seemingly endless, power outage, the Scrappers had made quick work of whatever happened to occupy the American outback and then set their sights on the military bases as a potential source of working weapons and still-edible food supplies.

And by extending what little remained of the American fuel reserve by swapping-out their heavier vehicles for motorcycles and emptying every underground fuel tank to be found on a rural farm, the Scrappers had quickly reclaimed the mid-western States and inserted themselves as the authorities of the para-military establishments that the local constables and sheriffs had been unsuccessful at organizing into the society's ad hoc life support system.

What few food shipments that still occurred at that juncture had been abandoned; and the refuge-community of Reno had been annexed by the Scrappers shortly thereafter, -converting the streets of Reno into a lawless and desolate stretch of asphalt frequented only by the vagrants and man-whores that still had the chops to make-it on these much meaner streets of glitz and glamor that the former residents of Reno had once called home.

-And thus it was that the end of the world that had existed when we were children had arrived; the government that the Reno management community had counted upon for support having gone the way of the dinosaur in just two-weeks' time and only little more that a trail of breadcrumbs to the canned food supplies that every survivor had fashioned some design upon for the prison divisions as its only legacy.

Ann's first Official directive as The Motherland's Pro Tem Chief Executive involved the use of the citizens that had lined up outside of the National Guard outpost in hopes of getting a bowl of soup to clear a sufficient number of roads for the remaining police of the East Coast to escort the missing corporate executives to the safety of the Motherland's bunkers.

Oddly, the Corporate Governance Committee's officers were nowhere to be found...

Chapter Two

Escape from Fram Sam 'bispo

"Bad luck", the Count had remarked following their less than spectacular crash-landing on the hard soil lying mere feet from the soft water of the San Francisco Bay.

"At least we know where we stand," his companion had chuckled in response; pointing a finger at the sign on the concertina wire that read Alcatraz Island; -perhaps establishing that neither Thompkins, nor Jethbilly, had actually escaped from the re-education camps that they had been forced to endure service within over the course of the past year, just yet.

"At least we're finally off Jerito," Thompkins had offered, in kind.

"-And the probe's sani-port was shattered during our crash-landing,"Jethbilly had pointed out; suggesting that this, too, supported a case for the presence of some form of divine sarcasm.

When they had last been on the Earth; or perhaps a year earlier, what had been thought of as being a Corporate Governance Committee C.G.I.-R.A.M.-Cloud avatar, but what they now knew to have been an actual alien Galactic Overseer named Ba'althezar, had just initiated a re-education program involving the Chinese society; and it appeared that his processes had also arrived across the rest of the planet over the year that had since passed if the only City viewable from the crash site was, indeed, San Francisco; and the generally arrant state of disarray could be called a reflection of the state of the entire Planet.

Little had remained of the Chinese society following this process, so their hopes had been somewhat dashed by this observation.

They had not been in a position to study the Overseers' project on the Earth from their location in space; and had no idea what had happened to the planet since their departure, but it was plain to see that a nuclear strike or the use of some sort of exo-brand of weapon system had largely obliterated the dreamworld that had once existed.

-But more important than this had been the fact that some asshole had stolen chunks of a Fram Racing Team billboard, signage from a Sam Walden store and part of the Welcome to San Luis Obispo sign to form a more timely piece of signage for what had once been the fair City of San Francisco; -and the new Welcome sign was located on Alcatraz, no less. It read 'Welcome to Fram Sam 'bispo".

We briefly argued about whether we should swap-out the Fram and Sam portions of this abomination, but the sani-port's being irreparably damaged and that being the only thing other than some engine parts that we might have recovered from the probe, we agreed that we might never again enjoy the luxury of being able to travel within a fully-stocked vending machine, as we had during our first off-world passage, again- and needed to begin the process of repairing our situation immediately. Furthermore, it didn't appear that our diet was about to improve by the looks of the highly-mutated critters that we could see from our elevated vantage point, and we were completely unarmed.

Jethbilly began scavenging through the wreckage immediately; pulling as many of the five- inch long pieces of fibercore transmission line out of the mini-consoles as he could, -then adding a stack of the sharpest pieces of the sani-port's porcelain debris to the pile.

The saucer was largely intact by the looks of it- the vessel having been built for just this sort of high stress impact; and having been well-designed, if our survival could be called an indicator, -but we would need something that might pass for paddles if we were going to use the saucer as a conveyance during our passage to the distant shore, given the probe's seemingly useless contents...

He and Thompkins had parted-out the probe's half-full first aid kit days earlier as an amusement; leaving little but some exo-tape remained of the contents, but Jethbilly figured that they could use the tape to secure a paddle to a stick if they had to and he set to looking around the probe's exterior for other useful materials. The saucer's lighting system was built around a single lumiglow fixture that could not be separated from its housing and this was the only thing left on the probe except for the cheap toolbox; which had been filled with advertisements for CODEMEN Past Life Review Services until they had begun using these as under-paper. Needless to say, the toolbox was now empty and so cheap that it probably wouldn't survive exposure to water, let alone function as a paddle.

Thompkins returned with a handful of clothing and other sundry supplies that he had managed to procure from a set of guard's lockers along with some philosophy involving our need to get off the Earth before Ba'althezar found them. As Count Vasodrac, Thompkins had enjoyed the company of Ba'althezar for a long week before being adjudged a threat to his own civilization and abandoned on a highly-unstable Coalition garbage dump planet called Valpecula.

Consequently, any planetary reunion was not likely to be a happy one for Thompkins, despite the poor state of affairs, and it was only a matter of time before the Overseers noticed their disappearance and sent out the probes to hunt them down.

Thompkins further asserted that we couldn't count on our exo-benefactors from Jerito to keep their mouths shut after the Ornamenturical products that we