“Father,” said Cain. “Are you absolutely certain of what you are doing?”
“Never more so,” said the mad doctor. “Very soon I will know all there is to know.”
“Abel says that we should kill you, father,” said Cain. “What is your opinion of this?”
“Now in your opinion,” asked Norman, who was setting up a formidable array of fireworks to the rear of the rock concert stage, “should I start with the thunder flashes or the really big rockets?”
“Don’t ask me now,” said the lady in the straw hat. “Can’t you see I’m being taken from the rear by a medical student?”
As all students of the occult will know, concentration is everything. Unwavering concentration. The mind must be cleared of all extraneous thought. The pathway opens. The magician focuses totally upon the operation in progress. Numerous mental exercises have been formulated to perfect the technique. One is a visualization exercise. Close your eyes and picture an egg with a crown above it. You’ll get it for a moment, but then your mind will wander. Try again and again and slowly, slowly you will be able to hold it for two seconds, three, four, five. When you can hold it for five seconds, lie in bed next to your sleeping partner and do it. Your sleeping partner will jerk awake crying something about an egg. Try it, it works.
The Professor could hold the image of an egg with a crown above it for as long as he wished. He was an Ipsissimus, a master of the temple. A magus. He was totally focused.
Within his study the astral light glowed bright. Within the sacred circle the ancient stood reciting the first words of the ceremony.
“Ten o’clock,” said Jim, finishing his sixth double vodka.
“And bloody closing time,” said Sandy. “I’m off to join the PARTY!”
“We are the Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of Death,” howled the lead singer with all the considerable attributes through the microphone on stage. “And we have come for your daughters. Those we can’t screw, we eat.”
“It’s a great line that,” said the groundsman, backstage, to Norman. “But I suspect probably the only one he’s got.”
“This first number’s called ‘I Love You So Fucking Much I Could Eat Your Shit’.”
“Or perhaps not,” said the groundsman. “What exactly are you doing there, Norman?”
“Well,” said the scientific shopkeeper, “we want to go into the millennium with a big bang, don’t we? So I’ve cranked up the old de-entropizer here, to double the strength of whatever it de-entropizes. So once I’ve set off a firework, you stick the burnt out remains into the de-entropizer and it will produce a brand new one twice as powerful for the next setting-off.”
“No problems,” said the groundsman. “But just one question.”
“What’s that?”
“Would it be all right with you if I stuck my willy in your machine?”
Time moved forwards, as time generally does, and the countdown to the New Millennium became minutes rather than hours.
31
“No, Cain, no.” Dr Steven Malone stood in his basement laboratory at Kether House. All its horrors had been removed by the police months before, but new horrors now replaced them. “We have been arguing over this for hours. I should not be the one to die. I cannot be the one to die. For what I shall learn will affect all mankind.”
“What will you learn, father?” asked Cain.
“All, Cain, all.”
“No, father, that is the answer you have given before. No man can know all. All can never be known. Only God knows all.”
“I will know more than God,” said Dr Steven Malone. “For I will learn what makes God God. Of what God is composed.”
“And how could you possibly learn this?”
“From the DNA of God. The DNA which is THE BIG IDEA. The first thought. I will possess this and from it I will clone myself.”
“That’s a crock of shit,” said Abel.
“Hold your tongue, boy.”
“Boy? I am now the same age as you.”
“But you can grow no older.”
“This I know. But I do not know how I know this.”
“Because you do not know who you are.”
“Then tell us, father,” said Cain. “Tell us who we are.”
“You are the clones of Jesus Christ.”
“No.” Cain shook his golden head. “This cannot be. This is madness.”
“We should put the bastard out of his misery,” said Abel. “He’s clearly a stone bonker.”
“I am telling you the truth.” Dr Malone thrust his pale white hands into the pockets of his grey tweed trousers. “Cloned from blood taken from the Turin Shroud. I have puzzled long regarding your differences. But then I checked my case notes. You, Abel, the blood from which you were cloned came from scourge marks. While yours, Cain, came from the rib where the spear of Longinus the Centurion pierced you. The Agony of Life and the Ecstasy of Death. But I must take my samples at the next stage. The moment of resurrection.”
Cain stared into the eyes of Dr Steven Malone. “And you do not think that God will strike you dead for this? For surely you seek to commit the ultimate blasphemy.”
“No, Cain, I do not. For God does know all and God exists outside time. God knew, before the dawn of creation, that his son would die upon the cross. So he also knew of the Turin Shroud and of the blood and of twentieth-century science. All this is for a purpose. Ultimately God’s purpose. The difference between myself and others who believe in God is that I deny God’s divinity. I do not believe that God is to be worshipped, I believe that God is THE BIG IDEA. What will come when I clone God is of God’s purpose. I am following his passive will.”
“The man’s a frigging space cadet,” said Abel.
“No,” said Cain, “I don’t think he is.”
Howl, shriek and scream.
Having three lead guitarists who played three different lead guitar solos simultaneously gave the Hollow Chocolate Bunnies a certain edge.
Norman had his earplugs in, so he wasn’t too bothered about edges. He was focused on his rather splendid switchboard. This was covered, as switchboards so often are, with switches. Each of these had a little label above it. On one the words Big Rockets were pencilled, on another Catherine Wheels, on yet another Starfires, and on yet another still, Golden Showers.
Cables led from the switchboard up the scaffolding at the rear of the stage to a gloriously ramshackle framework to which were attached hundreds of Roman candles arranged to spell out WELCOME TO THE YEAR 2000. All at the flick of a switch, of course. Norman did further screwdriver twiddlings, then looked upon all that he had made and found it good. He turned to the groundsman and grinned. “We’re rocking and rolling here,” he said. “Now please take your willy out of my machine.”
“A bull’s heart?” said Clive. “He stuck his willy in a bull’s heart?”
Derek grinned. “That’s what it said in this article I read. He’d wired it up to make it beat. But he’d wired it up to the mains and he was electrocuted to death. When they found him he was fried. Looked like a doner kebab.”
“Or a beefburger,” said Clive. “But I still don’t believe it.”
“It’s true. I read it in Fortean Times”
“Then it must be true. So where is Mr Pooley?”
“Here it comes,” said Fred.
And here Jim came.
