Motif · Book 5, The Butcher's Masquerade

The lawsuits

What Quasar does with Carl's entertainment value: a fifty-fifty read on a suit over private messages already in the courts, an injunction against the hunters' outside help, an attorney who needs a court order to send each message, a suit to stop the Syndicate preserving cocker spaniels, and courts that stop nearly every crawl-related case. Lawsuits follow the brambles and fail; the Syndicate Council rules nobody may sue the AI, which spawns suits against the council.

Segment appearances

• Chapter 1 — The vice principal's office
• Chapter 15 — The kids' menu
• Chapter 21 — CrawlCon
• Chapter 39 — Prepotente Town Number Four
• Chapter 41 — The Society for the Eradication of Cocker Spaniels
• Chapter 53 — Iota
• Chapter 59 — The sheriffs of the wild west
• Chapter 60 — The raids
• Chapter 77 — The mask

Progression

The four lubricants (ch. 3); subsection 674 (ch. 13); a 150-million-credit problem (ch. 15); the injunction (ch. 21); a suit over cocker spaniels (ch. 41); a frozen court (ch. 59); nobody may sue the AI (ch. 60).