A novel set in the far future and
After the End written by
Gasbarro.
Mayor Calvin runs Jasper City with a (
religious) iron fist. A man known as Citizen 71 has a problem with this, and hatches a secret plan to get rid of the current establishment. He also manages to convince his family to help him.
There's just one problem: Citizen 71 is a wanted man. The newly promoted right hand man to Mayor Calvin, is specifically tasked with bringing him and his family down. Raising a family in hiding while plotting your opressors' demise, it seems, do not help keep one's sanity in check.
Meanwhile, that right hand man Citizen A-17 is determined to show his loyalty to the Mayor and his ability to do his new job well. But while he investigates, he starts to have doubts as to whether he's doing the right thing. Between an iron-fisted dictator and a terrorist who's slowly slipping into insanity, it's tough to decide which side is really doing the right thing.
This work has examples of:
- Action Prologue
- After the End
- And I Must Scream: A-17's daughter is quickly headed in this direction, her illness getting so bad that she can't leave her bed and the slightest movements cause severe injury.
- Apocalypse How: There is implied to have been a Class 2 catastrophe before the story starts.
- Big Bad: Mayor Calvin is set up as this.
- Big Lipped Alligator Moment: There is a scene in which The Mayor and A-17 are enjoying a pleasant, patriotic festival in the middle of a terrorist's death threats and overall crapsack setting. The Mayor justifies this by saying that A-17 needs a moment of relaxation.
- Big Screwed-Up Family
- Black and Gray Morality: At the start, the Mayor seems to be the king of puppy kickers, making 71 look good by comparison. Then 71's refusal to reveal the details of his plan casts some doubt on him. And when you look into the history between 71 and the Mayor, things get even muddier.
- Black And Black Morality
- Cain and Abel
- Character Alignment: From the start, 71 appears to be Chaotic Good, A-17 Lawful Good, and Mayor Calvin Lawful Evil.
- Character Development: A-17 goes from Black Shirt to seriously considering a way to overthrow his boss to his boss' errand boy, just as Mayor Calvin wanted. 71 turns from outcast political rival to batshit crazy. The yet unwritten Prequel will show this character development in more detail.
- Crapsack World
- Desert Punk
- Designated Hero: 71.
- Deuteragonist: A-17.
- Driven to Madness: 71.
- Fantastic Ghetto: Robot Town, for the Machines. Though the segregation was at least partly consensual, given the dramatic culture differences.
- Fantastic Racism: Against the Machine Citizens, robots who have been given rights as official citizens. Many people, even Mechanics in the government, yearn for a time when robots were not equals.
- Fantastic Slur: From the above, the very word "Robot" has become a slur.
- Hobos: The entire Phoenix family. In fact, it's how they got together in the first place.
- Ill Girl: A-17's daughter is bedridden throughout the story due to a not yet understood disease that leaves her bones incredibly brittle.
- La Résistance
- Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Cynthia/Citizen 83.
- May-December Romance: Citizen 83 is 25. Citizen 71 is in his 40s.
- My Own Private "I Do": 71 finds out that his new love is pregnant, so he arranges a quick "ceremony" on top of a building with little more than an exchange of vows and a prayer.
- Omnicidal Maniac: 71. Though he doesn't go through with it.
- Order Versus Chaos
- Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Definitely falls on the side of cynicism.
- The Dragon: A-17 is this to Mayor Calvin.
- The Paragon Always Rebels: Part of the backstory between Mayor Calvin and Citizen 71.
- The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized
- The Revolution Will Not Be Villified: At least from 71's perspective.
- Two Lines, No Waiting: With a few scattered deviations, the story mostly alternates between Citizens 71 and A-17.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Justified in that this is a far future setting, but it's somewhere in the American Midwest.
- Villain with Good Publicity
- You Are Number Six: Most of the characters have their names replaced with numbers. There are two reasons for this: Criminals are given numbers only, while government employees also have a letter to show their rank.
- Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters
