POLICE MAKE DEALS WITH GANGSTERS. THEY DO NOT MAKE DEALS WITH REVOLUTIONARIES BECAUSE THERE IS NO DEAL TO BE MADE.
The P.L.O.T. was spreading. Graffiti appeared everywhere. The People's Liberation of Time started with a slogan saturation program in order to establish a few aims & ambitions. "Time is more important than money." "Don't spunk time up the wall." "Be everywhere at once." "Stay alive. No 9 to 5!" "Be a freak. No 7 day week!" "Fuck the weekend! Go out all the time!" "Reclaim your freedom of movement." "There are no clocks in heaven but there are clocks everywhere in hell!" "No deadlines." "Don't clock-in!" "Clock out forever!" Manifestos were left on buses, trains, in cab offices & in cafés.
THE PEOPLE'S LIBERATION OF TIME BELIEVE IN THE FOLLOWING....
It was this last idea that caused the most chaos. Jerry had picked a particular point in history within a specific dimension where he knew these would be popular concepts. He was also aware of the likelihood that these concepts would bleed through to other dimensions.
Very soon P.L.O.T. meetings were spreading across the country. Seven out of ten decent underground bands were championing its cause. There hadn't been this level of consensus amongst sub-culture since the Acid House movement of the late eighties & early nineties. There hadn't been as much panic amongst the authorities since the advent of Punk Rock.
One corporation after another bit the dust as their employees downed tools over the slightest thing. Bartering quickly replaced credit cards as the favourite means of securing a decent meal a day & the means to heat your property. Money had already got scarce by 2010 & now it was 2012 faith in pension schemes, insurance policies & private medical health care had disappeared entirely. The public had realised its power back in 2011 when car insurance had become so exorbitant that people started ignoring the need for it. If you had an accident you sorted it out with the other party in a responsible manner that resisted the need for a third party or institution to set the parameters. The queues for magistrates courts over non-payment of car insurance became longer than those over non-payment of Poll Tax in the late nineteen eighties. The trend spread across Europe & then hit the USA. That's when Jerry decided to move. He & Una had been treading water for nearly five years.... waiting for the hunters of Prince Rupert's killers to lose interest. Every time the cops had tried to fit someone up for it Jerry sent a card to say he hadn't been caught yet. The police forces in seven different countries had lost a good deal of credibility when it was found how much they were prepared to lie in order to appear successful. Jerry & Una had predicted this response & had used their continued freedom as a way of humiliating the enforcers of international law. They made sure that they were never proven to be connected to The P.L.O.T. because they didn't want anybody to be perceived as its leadership. The concept of leadership was regarded as an anathema to the values of the movement.
There were no demonstrations or strikes. All the police experience & training resulting from two hundred years of class struggle became obsolete. The tactics of "Direct Action" that had been so popular towards the end of the twentieth century had now become the paradigm for any kind of dissent. A new form of music evolved to court The P.L.O.T. "Switch" music became the dominant sound of the second decade of the twenty first century. It involved bands & Djs switching from one form of music to another from bar to bar or from verse to verse. Clothing courted this trend.
Advocates cut jackets in half & sowed half of one jacket to a half from a completely different style. Some divided their coats into four & others created patchwork tableaus that startled the society at large. Trousers, skirts & dresses were similarly adapted & the concept of everything in a state of flux reigned supreme.
The last shackles of twentieth century conformity were being broken.
Haircuts were divided between two separate styles on any one head. There was no age precedent for any of this. If a band or Dj were going to incorporate modern Jazz, Drum & Bass, Chamber Music, Sixteenth Century Avant guard & Punk Rock into one three minute tune then the appeal stretched across all ages & cultural groups. Band names became interesting again.....
"John Dee's Goat Priests of Bedlam," "The Rasta Girl Gabba Blues Revue,"
"The Sex Cannons of Elvis Praetorius," "The What?" "Plantaginet Punk Posse" & "The Profane Ululation Barber Shop Quartet" were all examples. Perhaps the most mysterious & talked-about act was "Deep Fix 2". Their VR trip "New World's Fair Reprise" became the most popular down-load out of all those made available by the fast-growing number of Pirate TV stations both accessible through broadband internet & satellite dishes. Jerry was, of course, the guitarist & main vocalist in this enigmatic team of Psychedelic Renaissance men & women. They were also closely linked with the resurgence of "The Angry Brigade" who quickly became the military wing of The P.L.O.T.
Not all Switch Music was merely a hybrid of what had gone before. A lot of faster modes of playing became fashionable & whereas the guitar dominated much the sixties & seventies & the bass dominated much of the nineties the theramin now dominated the second decade of the twenty first century.