Windsor Executive Solutions: Bruce Sterling and Chris Nakashima-Brown's transhuman monarch story

Gonzo post-cyberpunk writer Chris Nakashima-Brown and cyberpunk co-founder Bruce Sterling have teamed up to produce a marvellous and bizarre story for Futurismic. "Windsor Executive Solutions" tells the story of the last days of England, as the posthuman QE II lies in her life-support bunker and her loyalists make war on the anarcho-monarchists who would install her mercenary son in her place.

Popular celebrations break the general darkness for the 100th birthday of the world's first posthuman monarch. Queen Elizabeth II is not alive, nor is she dead. Suspended under glass in icy limbo, she awaits the inevitable. Heretics who question the Queen's 'divine right to persist' swing from the surveillance lamps over the burning cars.

Five long years since our Queen fell and could not rise. Elizabeth has joined the ranks of prominent women deemed too important to die. Britain has never come to proper terms with life-extension.

Our elite zombies have become the obverse of our working-class suicide cults. The flesh of young women explodes among us daily while centenarians dream on ice.

The last functional segment of Government is the propaganda wing of the Royal Household — now run mostly by Americans.

Meanwhile, hooligans raid immigrant neighborhoods after the pubs close, armed with assault rifles smuggled from Texas. Bobbies are genteel by day, death squads by night. Young upper class paramilitaries gather at posh wine-bars on 'Sloane Ranger' hunts for anarchists, crusties, and 'ugly people.'

The only viable tactical path is 'direct action' — to exorcise the royal ghost from her Westminster crypt. Yes, that means 'assassination' — in some strictly technical sense.

We forecast a techno-regicide. At Janes, it is our unpleasant business to assess the military odds of success.