"The Applebee Rebellion"
A synopsis of the book by Steven Woodman


The story is told from the first person perspective of title character Dooly Applebee, an agent for the secret global organization with no name. On Dooly’s Earth all countries and governments have been brought together by the "global unity act" forming into a single political system, at the top of which is the "unified council." The organization itself is a law enforcement engine developed to maintain the power of this "council," which is comprised of a host of government officials who reign over the entire populace of this earth. However, the politics of this version of our own world are merely alluded to throughout, and not the main focus of the story.
The plot revolves around an intricate pattern of deceit which arises when agent Dooly, having been tried and found lacking, is placed on the organization’s "retirement plan." (When an employee of this most secret of companies is "retired" he, or she, is thrown into the most volatile of situations, cast into mission after mission without respite until they are killed in the line of duty. No one walks away.)
Dooly, realizing his situation, seeks out a small team of others within the company who are in the same predicament, and leads them headlong into rebellion. Sharp, Pogo, Leaf, and Trapper, are the strong willed men who assist him in his efforts, becoming first his soldiers, and later his friends.
During their first outing the team falls prey to a violent onslaught which leaves them in dire straights, with two men severely injured, and one dead. Sharp’s body is utterly destroyed, forcing the doctors who treat him to perform a full-body prosthesis, which makes him more machine than man. Leaf, having lost his right arm, is outfitted with a stronger, more sturdy, bionic replacement limb. Dooly and Trapper emerge from the tragedy intact, but Pogo is killed, his body incinerated in an explosion. By some twist of fate Pogo’s spirit lingers behind after his form is destroyed, trapped in the electronic world of the cybernet he becomes a powerful ally of the rebels, A supernatural intelligence capable of accessing any computer system, anywhere.
Working together they manage to topple the branch of operations from which they had fled, only to find that their very rebellion had been engineered by the individuals controlling the organization. By the subtle manipulations of the "Elite" (the highest ranking officials within the organization) Dooly and his band had been lead into their actions, for the purpose of pruning a rotted branch from the tree so that the remainder might thrive.
Forged into a strike team answerable only to the Elite, Dooly and his fellows are wielded as a weapon directed at the weaker branches of the organization. But the weapon has a double edge.
finding themselves trapped by the Elite’s strangling grasp to the point that it seems they can no longer make any move that has not been pre-ordained by their superiors, the need for rebellion becomes stronger still. Working from within, Dooly’s team begins to eliminate strategically integral components of the Elite’s hierarchy, forcing a final confrontation between themselves and the controlling powers of the world they live in.