The Electric Church: A Noir Pulp for a Fascist Future

Avery Cates is one of the oldest people in the System of Federated Nations. The pulp novel, The Electric Church, takes place in a unified world that rules with a tyrannical police force and an uber-rich upper caste. Avery Cates has lived in this world for twenty-seven years and the only reason he's still alive is because he's willing to kill for money but not without just cause. He always had a sense of morality and a hatred for the one-world-government he resides in. Avery longs for the days when assassination squads fought for a cause, a cause mostly being against the System of Federated Nations.

Ironically, a just cause lands on Avery's lap when he is approached by the head of the international police force, the SSF internal affairs. He is kidnapped by SSF officers for an accidental assignation of a cop and is offered an ultimatum.

The job: assassination.

The employer: Richard Marin, head of SSF internal affairs.

The payoff: fortune enough to keep a dozen peasants fed for the rest of their lives.

The target: Dennis Squalor, holy founder of the Electric Church, the only church that can guarantee immortality. This is made possibly through Dennis Squalor's technology by transporting the human brain into a cybernetic avatar, known as a monk. These monks are then sent out into the world to preach the word of the Mulqer Codex, the church's holy doctrine. Though the monks preach peace, they take in new recruits by force, harvesting those in poverty so that the church can have another human brain to run an avatar, regulated and programmed by inhibitors that prohibit any acts of free will. If nothing is done, the Electric Church will rule the world.

That's why the System of Federated Nations needs Avery Cates. There is no evidence to condone a raid against the Electric Church, so Richard Marin is hiring criminals to infiltrate the facility in order bring Dennis Squalor into his sights.