Take one Futurismic alumnus (Chris Nakashima-Brown), one bona-fide science fiction legend (Bruce Sterling), and one grim meathook future in the United Kingdom, as monarchy, politics and altermodern culture smash together in the wake of economic collapse…

I don’t think I’ve ever been so proud to be publishing a story as I am of this one. It’s going to blow your mind, I promise. Now, read.

WINDSOR EXECUTIVE SOLUTIONS

by Chris Nakashima-Brown and Bruce Sterling

10 June 2026

JEKYLL Look, I can’t get you off the hook with these 140-character txt-msgs.

JACKAL Colonel Falstaff suspects I am press.  Since I failed that beltbomb test, well you know what

JACKAL you know what these devils will do to me!  Where would that leave you, Dr. Almighty Blogger?

JACKAL Leaking satellite shots of Prince Harry’s field maneuvers.  You call that “the news”?

JEKYLL No, my mercenary friend,  I do not.  So tell me what Falstaff wants.  Drugs, women, grain, petrol, lingerie?

JACKAL Save me, Jekyll.  You do owe me.

JEKYLL He’s very fond of beer, your Colonel?  I have thirty barrels of Nigerian Sorghum Stout.  Ready to move at your word.

JACKAL Falstaff wants a hot feed of the flesh of the Queen of England. Private and exclusive.  Falstaff is American.  You know how they are about royalty.

JEKYLL You lot are the Canterbury altar boys of our national death cult.

JACKAL I need fresh royal footage straightaway.

JEKYLL Her Royal Highness is very, very far from any glamour shots.

JACKAL Yes, THEY KNOW ALL THAT here!   This is the Royal Martyrs Corps!  Every cutthroat in the Prince’s camp is a walking corpse.

JEKYLL The Queen Is Dead.

JACKAL Don’t say wicked things.  Just help me.  Do it now.

JEKYLL Can you send me fresh Kolly pix?  Our Prince and his hot doxy pop-star. Half-naked in camou.

JACKAL Stick to your war-porn, Jekyll.  You don’t want to mess about with Kolly.

JEKYLL Bodyguard surveillance footage, whatever you have.  Fetish bandoliers.  Suicide belt and garters.

JACKAL I’d rather kill myself.

JEKYLL Atrocity exhibitions.  The Royal Gun Moll.   A good lot of pent-up male demand there.

JACKAL You will never understand modernity.

JEKYLL Let me see what I can find to help you.

JACKAL Hurry

–

JEKYLL So I have a new 256k snippet that shows HRH visibly ‘breathing’.  No soundtrack though. Looks rather waxy.

JEKYLL Like artificial skin. But I assure you this clip was not doctored.  Here’s the link.

JACKAL Okay, got it thx.  How fresh is this?

JEKYLL Very.  I suborned a hospice nurse. She pressed her cam on the frosty glass, cut-and-paste, thumbdrive, sneakernet.

JACKAL Brilliant.  Life must be lux for you in the royal crypt. Bandwidth, power, hot bath, meals 3x/day.

JEKYLL Get over yourself. We are an ugly crew of paranoid ghouls up here.

JACKAL Down here it’s rum, sodomy and the lash.   Drugs, guns, mosquitoes and venereal mutations.

JEKYLL That royal waxwork is Britain’s last totem of social cohesion.

JACKAL You should write yourself another popular bestseller, ‘Dr Jekyll.’

JEKYLL I could write this tragedy like bloody Shakespeare, but find me newspaper, magazine, ink, paper.  All I have is this smartphone.

JACKAL THEY ARE COMING FOR ME Kthxbye

***

JANE’S ADDICTIONS

From our analysts to friends and followers of Jane’s Information Nexus

Happy Birthday Your Undead Highness

by (name withheld)

21 April 2026

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.

The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Emir of Dubai make unlikely allies. But since someone’s hand must pull the royal plug, why not some helpful, understanding pagan? They can pay, and they can pardon.

The radical wing of Plaid Cymru killed the Prince of Wales when Charles was eighty. The Welsh separatists also bombed the Imperial College, where the Queen was once stored. But after the terrible vengeance of ‘Windsor Executive Solutions’ — which made Cardiff a crater and called that ‘peace’ — Plaid Cymru is urban legend.

Our NATO alliance with the United States offers us airstrikes on demand.  Brussels offers us mussels and Tintin cartoons. The United Nations is beyond any use to anyone.  And Prince William, after his doomed attempt to live like a human being, suffered a complete mental breakdown.

So Windsor Executive Solutions are — we must conclude — the final solution.

The Black Prince will strike, because his people demand it.  His global guerrilla army is the only entity capable of mounting a coup. ‘Blackwater Prince Harry’ must annihilate his frozen grandmother and resuscitate the failed state.

Jane’s paying subscribers will recall that Harry — the mercenary veteran of endless global microwars —  redefined his efforts within Britain as ‘domestic security consultancy.’  His commandos savaged entire city blocks through video surveillance and airborne robot assaults.

Harry’s press spokesman is ‘Lord Falstaff’: an exiled American — fat, boozy, bizarrely charismatic, carousing across the ruins of the Middle East.   Falstaff’s drawling provocations crackle over pirate feeds at every cornershop.  Each time the Prince’s acolytes shoot an elected official, Falstaff immortalizes it.

The cowed Establishment emits a deafening silence.

‘Public opinion,’ the artifact of a vanished public order, has ceased to exist.  There are no reporters, and there are no chattering classes.   Falstaff hunts and kills the lonely bloggers hunched over their laptops.

Blinded by the light of fiber optics, we descended into darkness.  By the time we realized the depth of the abyss, we were too low and weak to escape.

Harry’s drunken bandits are modern cult heroes, worship-figures.  The pogroms of the Blackwater Prince go unquestioned by anyone.  In today’s Internetherworld, ‘fact,’ reality,’ and the ‘official story,’ have vanished in a cabinet of monstrosities.  Beset on all sides by collapse, bereft of the mass consent once engineered by mass media,  we breathe legends, rumors, folk-tales, pop-songs, and terror.

We at Janes therefore conclude that Windsor Executive Solutions, inevitably mutating from multinational corporation, to Praetorian Guard, to a hungry mob, must devour the frozen flesh of Queen Elizabeth.

***

NUMEDIA LANDSCAPE by YRNEED2NO!

The Royal scientists plug their neural imaging machines into Our Dear Queen’s dormant brain, empowering Pyjama Kingdom to watch Her dreaming!

People, these red-hot royal brain scans cannot stay private! The Prime Minister hid these pix from the publicnet. But info wants 2b leeky, and three whole years of the Queen’s Naked Brainy Dreams are yours NOW for free download!

CLIK HERE for the internal surrealism of  ***HRH QEIIz*** inchoate aristocratic semiotics!

MOST WATCHED / MOST POPULAR / HOTTEST

• Ballet of the Atomic Mushroom Clouds with bare-chested boudoir Mountbattens
• The Ballroom Blitz of living statues! the Burghers of Calais morph to Fab 4, Cromwell frugs with Scottish Mary, and Lord Admiral Nelson throes the one-arm bonez
• re-colorized recolonized Battles of Britain
• Ultra-soft paparazzi Diana romance-porn!
• Scots Nazis — in black leather kilts!
• IRA abduction scenarios and mujahideen royal hostage videos
• the brazen Daughters of Banksy!

***

<allvids.co.uk>

Kolly: My Harryz Gotta Gun

© 2026 Sakthipriyah Venkatapathy

<Send Harryz Gotta Gun Vidclip to Your Fone>

Da Furies is my Muze
World on fire
Killz my bluez
Jet turbines
my jazz trumpets
n Harryz gun
Iz my groovez

Lundun!
Turn her off

JACKAL I know you are here in her audience, Jekyll.

JEKYLL Yes, in mufti.  Look how posh Kolly is!  Our South Asian princess in military dress uniform.

JEKYLL Quite smart.  Though that bomb belt does seem a bit severe.

JACKAL Kolly took the Royal image-handlers hostage.  Palace coup against the American advisors.

JEKYLL Right, Jane’s anticipated that.

JACKAL Kolly is not like you imagine.

JEKYLL Those Fezcore moves she does.  Like Scheherezade break-dancing for Shiva.

JACKAL She’s the Juggernaut of our Black Prince. His favorite Weapon of Mass Distraction.

JEKYLL Hot Valkyrie Vindaloo.

Hongkong!
Dig dat aqua tomb

Melbourne!
I luv yr porn

Jakarta!
Can’t you make it harder?

JACKAL .

JEKYLL Talk to me.  All-Access backstage pass? Where’s my footage?

JACKAL I crashed her dressing room, to flip you some vid.

JEKYLL That’s the spirit! Initiative.

JACKAL Old woman chasing Kolly in there.  Big wig, eyeliner, safety pins, plastic trash bags. I forget her name.

JEKYLL Her!?  Bright young thing in the fashion world since 1977.  Queen of punk never dead!

There’s a house on a street
In a crazy part of Lagos
It’s a crib with pet hyenas
Eating meat off Fabergé huevos
Its got wardogs for boytoys
And razorwire for doilyz

We pimped out the choppers
And painted all the drones
We’re cracking all our poppers
And we wearing dead mens bones

JACKAL Here is what happened, I just shot all this myself.

JEKYLL Jesus, Buddha, Krishna and Mohammed

We’re painting up our our faces
And shaving Ivan’s dome
So when this posse lights its engines
Better sneek from yer home

Cape Town!
Run for high ground

Delhi!
Therez a bomb in my belly

Harare!
You like my voodoo crazy

JEKYLL Surely you doctored this footage

JACKAL The fashionista disrespected our Black Prince

JACKAL Kolly wasn’t having any of that

JACKAL pulled a Gurkha knife out of her Prada boot

JACKAL just cut her throat right in front of all of us

JEKYLL No way.

JACKAL She chopped the head off.  Put it in her bloody gym bag.  A very nice Stella McCartney bag.

JEKYLL There is no way that truly happened in reality

JACKAL It did happen, I swear it did, we all saw Kolly do that, and nobody said one word

Riding shotgun in the cockpit
Through the world that’s a stage
Babyface Mars drives the crosshairs
Over the city of Bellona
There’s a party in the streets
Stops me from turning my page
And when he launches his hot rocket
All I can do is moan uh

JEKYLL Lord, she’s even prettier up close without the lens filters.

JEKYLL I don’t see any bloodstains on that combat couture.

JACKAL Her handlers wiped her down with first-aid tissues.

JEKYLL She looks so pure and serene.   The High Priestess of Weird

JACKAL Kolly always looks like that when she’s channelling her groove.

JEKYLL She’s like something out of a Webster revenge drama.

My Muze is on fire
Cathode rayz draw my cask
My netz feed my peeps
And the idea is my mask
Crooked figures ones and zeroes
Make imaginary heroes
You’ll stop playing poffy high score
When he kicks the hinge off your door

JEKYLL The Blackwater Prince knows about this? He approves her actions?

JACKAL He KNOWS about it?  This is his consort, his sole confidant.  She’s the girl he tells about his mother!

Da Furyz is my Muze
World on fire
Killz my bluez
Jet turbines
my jazz trumpets
n Harryz gun
Is the newz

JEKYLL I can’t make out those lyrics she’s screaming

JACKAL Do you know how to read graffiti tags?

JEKYLL Is there some reason one should learn to do that?

JACKAL Guv, you are too stupid to live.

***

REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS ASSISTANCE

15 Aug 2026

Honored sir,

First, I must solicit your strictest confidence in this matter.  I am Guyman Exeter Mugu, the personal accountant to HRH The Prince Harry, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Windsor Executive Solutions Ltd.

As his agent, I am seeking your urgent assistance with an important business transaction necessary to fund the Prince’s imminent British coup d’etat.  Were information about this proposal to be revealed by you to any third parties, I could not assure your safety, so I implore you not to share this message with anyone.

We are seeking the release of funds held in a trust account in the Royal Bank of Liechtenstein.  These funds formerly belonged to the provincial government of Baluchistan, established prior to the devastation of that region during the Indo-Pakistani conflict and its subsequent evacuation.  A sum of 40,000,000 Pounds Sterling was promised as payment to Windsor Executive Solutions for its provision of security and tactical services in the period leading up to that conflict.

While the government and the territory it governed no longer exist, the funds remain, and are the lawful property of Windsor Executive Solutions and its sole stockholder, His Royal Highness.

By virtue of my position as the financial manager of an enterprise that has been unjustly placed on the banned persons list by the governments of Europe, I am unable to fulfill my duties as treasurer and secure a proper transmission of the funds to an account under our control.  That will require a trusted third party to act as intermediary, and your name was brought to my attention by members of the royal household who know and esteem you.

To facilitate this transfer, you need only deposit the sum of £5,000 into a joint account which we will establish with the Governor’s Bank of Malta.  Once that account has been funded and verified, we will be able to remit the correspondent funds within seven days, and will trust you to withdraw £10,000,000 as your commission.

Please note that, barring any indiscretions on your part, this transaction is 100% safe.  To participate, please reply with your account information and identification qualifications at my secure electronic address of 214:13:172:007.

We are looking forward to doing business with you, and if all is successful as we know it shall be, hosting you here for dinner with HRH and his executive team during your next trip to Nigeria.

Very truly yours,

Dr. Guyman Exeter Mugu, M.B.A., D. Phil.

***

8 Sept 2026

12:37 am

JEKYLL Dearest Editrix, I need urgent help

JANE I’m sleeping.  And not alone.  Ping me in the morrow.

JEKYLL This can’t wait.

JANE One never knows who might be transcribing.  Can we use the dead-drop?

JEKYLL Bespoke goon haunting lobby of my flat.

JEKYLL Also black cab parked outside, two large passengers, lights out.

JANE Well you bloody fool you knew you should never have posted that.

JEKYLL A bottle of bad Jerez sherry while trolling for warporn in the wee hours.  My tactical mistake.

JANE Send me your server logs.  Lay low and get off the network.  I will try to cover.

JEKYLL I was so close to getting in with them, proper, live and in person.  Now I wonder if I can leave this room alive.

JANE They’re not fucking Posh and Becks.  And you’re not Jeffrey Archer.  Stop lying to yourself.

JEKYLL They are the future, you know.

JANE There’s no future in England’s dreaming.

JEKYLL Oh Christ, the power just went out.  I’m on battery and public wireless.

JANE The power is always dodgy now.  Before you scamper, send me your linkcodes.

JEKYLL The link

***

Control Room Log
BBC Web One
10 Sep 26
11:53 GMT

Streetcam 723: Demonstration approaching Grosvenor Gardens and the Palace from Victoria St. Large crowd. Wide pan. Estimated 14,312 citizens in frame.

Control: That’s a bloody crowd alright.  Screaming the prince’s name and spitting up beer and throwing bricks at the cops.

Screen Three: They’re lined up all the way to Hammersmith, says the feed.

Control: Two, zoom those Beefeaters. Bearskin hats and Tazers. Nice combination. Can you get me some local sound?

Screen Two: Right, how’s that then?

<Sound: Roar of angry crowd. Police over megaphone. Horses on cobblestone. Helicopters in near distance. Bricks bouncing off riot shields.  Crack of metal batons.>

Screen Two: Glad I’m not out there. There’s going to be gas. They’re loading.

Control: Yes, well, if they don’t get this under control right quick, they will be searching for bits of Her Royal Corpseness in black auction sites.

Screen One: Black Harry could get this sorted.  He’d machine-gun the lot of these chavs. ‘No people, no problems.’

Control: That’s the problem with you Tory Anarcho-Royalists, you never think in terms of class struggle! Harry sent this mob!  They’re doing his dirty work.

Screen Four: The Black Bloc are jumping the barricades and rushing the hospital.

<Sound: Grenades.>

Control: Crap. That tear gas will ruin our picture. Let’s try to use that, One.

Screen One: How’s this angle?

Control: Nice electric crowd prods. Can we slomo?

<Sound: Nearby explosion.>

Control: Fuck! Did you…

Screen One: Cutting to streetcams 743 and 745. Look at the blood…

Screen Three: Get this. Get this.  Oh, Jesus, look out!

Control: Who is that?

Screen Three: Horseman ran right over my position!  Like a steeple jump.

Screen Three: Fucking warhorse wrapped in Kevlar. Knight in black armor.

Screen Three: That’s torn it, he broke my tripod.

Screen Two: I for one welcome our faceless Spetznaz ninja overlords.

Screen Three: This is tragic.  I can’t get a good shot.  Knights on horseback attacking shop windows on the Kings Road.  Smashing the glass with maces.  Big balls and chains.

Screen One: Look at that street kid, he’s fucking it up, spray paint or something.

Screen Two: Nice, I’m going close. Look at that stencil, still dripping. Death’s head with crown.  “King Harry.”

Control: Harry’s cut the scum of the earth in on his deal. This is no riot.  This is a revolution.

Screen One: That shop window has serious camera equipment.  Not this BBC-issue Chinese junk.  I want new gear!  I’m going.

Control: Come back here, Screen One.

Screen One: Fuck off, mate.  You are over.  Nobody’s watching your bollocks. This cannot be broadcast.

Control: This was engineered.  The royals smash everything, and the mob loots everything.  Everything is so over.

Screen Three: The crowd sees him now. Look, he took off his  helmet. That red hair, yes, it’s Harry!  In the flesh, live and in person!

Control: The Black Prince is a man of courage.  All his Afghan mates say so.

<Sound: Police barking orders against noise of the crowd.>

Control: Cyborg pirates forever, boys.  The cops can’t fight a King.  Why would they try?

<Sound: Crowd singing anthem. Unintelligible.>

Screen Three: They’re chanting his name. Streetcam 749, wide.

Control: Is that a polo mallet he’s carrying?

Screen One: (Laughs)

Screen Three: That’s a concussion sledge.  He’s helping the crowd loot the high street.

Screen One: The mob loves their King.  It’s law and order they can’t stand. I’m leaving.

Screen Three: Oh Jesus, not another one.

Control: That was a belt bomber.  Martyr Corps.

Screen Two: You shouldn’t have trusted One sir, he was always a wrong’un.

Control: Three, give me wide from 747. There. Watch him for me.

<Sound: Horses hoofs.  Boots on concrete. Multiple megaphone casts (unintelligible). Crowd, chants and screams.>

Control: Too grainy. Damn it. I can’t follow him. Get me some resolution!

Screen Three: He’s crushing them against the barricades.   Jesus, those royal guerrillas are doing full-body burns, they’re not human…  There’s another bomber.

Control: I know, I can see the hole.

Screen Two: Look, I’ve got Falstaff.  Playing the crowd with his Texas-sized megaphone. That crazy fat bastard.

Screen Three: The mob is storming the palace.  This is it!  This moment is what it’s all about!

Control: They can pull those outer gates down, but that’s a maximum-security facility.

<Sound: Automatic weapon fire, crowd screaming.>

Screen Two: Moving towards Belgravia.   The Prince’s goons are firing on the Queen’s Guard.  The Beefeaters are not returning fire… The loyalists are dying where they stand.

Control: Good God.

Screen Three: There went another martyr… Well, they’re all dying, poor bastards, but they’ll never die for any better reason than this.

<Sound: Jet engines, high power, flying low.>

Control: What is that, Two? Can you catch anything from above?

Screen Two: No, sir, all our cams are streetward. Wait. Big helicopter gunship. Looks like.

<Sound: Jet turbines, helicopter rotors, machine gun fire, screaming, mass chants.>

Control: He’s got the chopper firing on the crowd!

Screen Two: It’s firing *through* the crowd.  To knock out the palace walls. That thing’s a monster. One of those Afghan jobs.

Control: Central Asian airlift.  That air-to-ground missile made short work.  Smashed the face of the building in.   Can you see anything inside the Ice Palace?

Screen Two: Too much dust.  I can hear the people screaming, sir.

Screen Three: I see the Black Prince.  Riding his black horse.  Straight into the bay of that helicopter.

Control: Points for style.

***

BRING ME THE HEAD OF ELIZABETH REGINA

<Text redacted per the Official Secrets Act>

***

13 September 2026
17:27

JANE Col Falstaff fell on his own sword for HIS sake.  And Jekyll’s in the Orwell Pen.  Waterboard Room 101.

JACKAL They’re not the first, and far from the last. We have fresh means of supply now. ‘Clean Slate.’

JANE I have the codes you wanted. Are we on for the f2f meet?

JACKAL Change of plans. The boat is off. Go to the Portsmouth safehouse in the morning and wait there.

JANE Right. Your new people will be there?

JACKAL They will, but not when you arrive. Get offshore by noon latest and wait for us.

JANE I am packed for a weekender, assuming warm weather, hope correctly.

JACKAL Assume nothing.  From now on everything is very bloody different.

JACKAL And no metal.

JANE I haven’t any gun, friend.  Just what passes for a keyboard these days. I will take the first morning train and look for yr comrades.

JACKAL They will see YOU. You see them after trust is earned

JANE When will I meet HIM? Can I get just one small photo to post b4 leaving?

JACKAL NFW Look for Hyena-Man after dinnertime morrow and he will feed you

JACKAL They are watching you already.   Go now, we will try earlier pickup.

***

NUMEDIA LANDSCAPE by YRNEED2NO!

Hot new Kolly video!  Straight from the Royal Encampment in the heart of the darkest continent: Europe!

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Live chainmail sarees, animated batik, electronic henna, and a bone-chewing laughing hyena!  In the glorious fields of France!

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She is ‘Sharper than Occam!’  Keep it real: One King, One Ring, One Sceptre, One World.  Long Live the Lad!

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***

ORDER OF SERVICE

FUNERAL OF H.R.H. QUEEN ELIZABETH II

WESTMINSTER ABBEY

10 September 2026

<Page 7><Back><Next>

The Archbishop continues:

Therefore, awed in the merciful embrace of God, the gifts of our life-sustaining technologies building a bridge to the heavenly chalice of His mighty resurrection power and the life beyond life that sustains forever, we, the congregation here, those in the streets outside and the billions watching from the far corners of our fallen world, join one another and the hosts of heaven, to knit together these remaining fragments of the body of Elizabeth.

The Queen’s Own Highlanders Pipes of the Royal Regiment of Scotland will now perform Sir Edward Elgar’s recently rediscovered Panopticon Suite (1901).

The congregation then stands to sing the great Isaac Watts hymn O God, Our Help in Ages Past (1719).

Following the hymn, the Dean of Westminster says The Commendation:

Let us commend our fragmented Elizabeth to the mercy of God, our Maker and Unmaker, our Redeemer and Overlord.

Elizabeth, our companion in faith, we entrust you to God. Go forth from this world in the love of the Father, who created you; In the mercy of Jesus Christ, who died for you; In the power of the Holy Spirit, who strengthens you. At one with all the faithful Britons, living and departed, may you rest in peace and rise in glory, where grief and misery are banished and light and joy evermore abide. Amen.

The congregation stands as the cortege leaves the Abbey, while the choir sings extracts from Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the Orthodox Funeral Service, set to an organ arrangement of music by Farrokh Bulsara (Freddy Mercury), a medley-in-the-round including excerpts from ‘We Are the Champions’, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, and ‘Killer Queen’.

‘So I shall alway keep thy law; yea, forever and ever, and unto ages of ages.’

Allelulia!

ONE MINUTE OF SILENCE