Morningstar
by Mark Howard Jones

"Hope you've got something good for us tonight!"

The thing that looked like Triple Six heard the voice as the heavy side door of the club swung shut, closing off the daylight with a heavy bang.

The speaker was a smartly-dressed woman just stepping into middle age.

Evidently the owner, he thought, before remembering to observe the everyday
customs of the place, like speech.

"Oh yeah .... it'll be killer!!"

The woman smiled. "Good - it's been a bit limp in here lately on a Friday. The last guy was just boring!"

She walked over to him slowly. Her tight knee-length skirt seemed to give her some difficulty.

"Karen told you the drill, did she? You come to my office afterwards for payment."

Afterwards? He just nodded and smiled.

After the woman had disappeared into the club's dark interior, he sought out his reflection in the mirror near the door.

It took some concentration to make his image appear, but when it did its scruffy sharpness pleased him. He gave a grin of satisfaction. He had always been good at impersonating humans ... and snakes.

It was barely 10 minutes since he'd left the real Triple Six (or Luke Simpson, as it said on his birth certificate) slumped in the back of a supermarket delivery lorry, headed for Scotland.

The fool - one of his more minor employees - would spend the last hours of his life in a drugged paradise.

The fake Triple Six made an elaborate show of setting up his equipment and going through a sound check.

He'd trusted hundreds of thousands of these jobs to his lower orders but this one was far too special to be entrusted to anyone else.

The entirety of human history had led to this point.

Since he'd managed to genetically programme their kind with a poisoned apple, every step they danced in celebration brought him closer to his goal.

He was happy to pander to their hedonism, of course. In fact, he counted on it.

Why did they think they were so special?

Hadn't they ever noticed that no other animal danced in the same way as they did?

Some wit had once said that dancing was the perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire. If they believed it was all to do with sex then so much the better, he thought.

Once he'd finished his mock sound check, he sat to wait for the hot, active bodies to flow into the club.

He pitied them in a way but it was an emotion - a weakness - that he soon drove out of himself.

This race had only been toying with cybernetics for less than a century and even the minds of their greatest mathematicians would shatter in despair at the complexity of his system.

Tonight the final piece would be put in place. When one of the unwitting,   hormone-drenched bodies in this characterless barn moved in a certain way the last part of his programme would be complete.

None of them would realise what was happening or how great a contribution they would be making to history.

After every man, woman, child and animal on the planet had been converted into spiritual energy it would be recycled instantly.

There would be more than enough power to feed the aetheric engines of his legion of followers.

More than enough to storm the pallid, lazy ranks of his sworn enemy and ensure that Morningstar ruled in Heaven at last.

That complacent old fool was in for the shock of his eternal life!

As the club filled, he played the role of Triple Six to perfection. He'd picked up the DJ's mannerisms and memories in seconds before sending him on his way. Even his impersonation of the idiot's fake Jamaican patois was note perfect.

The music was just what the crowd wanted. He smiled at the right people and ignored the wrong ones.

Bored with playacting, his mind inevitably shifted to his impending triumph.

The design ... device ... programme was subtle, complex to the point of obscurity and millennia long. He was nothing if not patient.

If it were written on a single piece of paper, it would cover it so completely that to the untrained eye it would appear as a black sheet, with the occasional white speck
dotted here and there.

As his mind caressed its perfection, a shiver of ecstasy ran through him.

Although wary of celebrating prematurely, he did something that was against his own rules. He opened the mike and addressed the swaying tide of human flesh before him.

"I have all the best tunes ... "

As the hammering rhythm kicked back in, he scanned the crowded room carefully.

After a few seconds, he determined that the small dark-haired girl in the near corner would be the one to make the last move - she was the final trigger that would release an unimaginable rush of energy, enough to storm Heaven's elaborate defences.

The Great Deceiver licked his lips, trembling on the brink of something previously untasted.

He knew that if he were prey to common sexual desire, this is how it would feel.

Kari opened her eyes again, letting her body go into the swooping sound, the shudder of the beat, hammering home where it mattered.

There he was again. The boy with the spiked blonde hair and the gorgeous body.

He was with a friend but there was no girl in sight. He was going to be hers.

She could almost feel him inside her now.

She imagined him stretched on her bed, spent. But she wouldn't let him rest.

She began to sway towards him through the crowd. This was her best move.

Then his face and everything around him seemed to fade and shatter and melt all in the same instant.

The last instant.

©2002 Mark Howard Jones