(ICTP2) Incident At The Centre Of The Universe - Part 2

Alchemi knew all of Fassions flaws but he also knew that she posessed an iridescent soul,the scanning glass showed it up clearly: bright blue like a gas flame with flecks of violet and baroque swirls of amber around its periphery. Would it not be a crime to discolour such a beautiful soul? He’d pondered that question for weeks but now the minutes of her life were ebbing away fast. The little Mickey Mouse on his holo-watch was pointing a white gloved hand toward the 8th hour and smirking because it knew that at 8 o’clock Fassions mirror-plated temple and all within it would be incinerated.

The coffee coloured transmat booth automatically slid open and the re-materialised Fassion stepped out into Stungun street,checking her hair in the booths glossy metal exterior before whizzing off gracefully down Alsatian road.

Fassion had planned to make a big entrance: in her head she’d envisaged herself pirouetting on the tips of her roller-boots before the congregation as they lined up to enter the temple building and as she saw its crystal spires
soar into view she was building up her momentum, skating on one leg with her whole body thrust forward like a hood ornament and her arms stuck out like swan wings.

Little did she expect that before she ever reached the temple she would be snatched off of her feet by two masked men and bundled into the
back of a waiting wheel-less.

Warden’s irritation was visible even through his mask, “I hope that all this trouble is really worth it, Kemmy”, he said.

Alchemi pointed a gloved finger towards the raging woman who was banging angrily upon the sound-proofed window of their van, her usually emaculate face seething with murderous hate, “But she has a beautiful soul.”, he said,limply.

“I don’t think that it’s her soul you’re interested in”, griped Warden, “If
I didn’t owe you a favour… anyhow she’s your problem”.

Then Warden looked at his holo-watch, a neon-green hour glass tilting for the 8th time, “We’re late and Matrick wont forgive that easily”.

The blindfold and the cable tied too tightly around her wrists didn’t go well with the rest of her ensemble but for once Fassion’s mind was occupied with something other than her appearance. She had spent a lot of money
to have her childhood traumas, being neglected and abused in a foster home for clone children, electrically erased from her memory but now some
images were beginning to creep back as she listened to the one called Matrick,a woman but with a voice that was hard and coarse like a mans,
address a group of what Fassion took to be her followers.

“News just in; Brother’s Crumb and Wetmouth have successfully infiltrated the Narcissist temple in Teargas Street and have successfully implanted the Phoenix Egg device beneath the main altar. In approximately 30 minutes from now the mighty fire-bird will unfold its wings and incinerate the un-believers in their pews”.

Alchemi wondered if Fassion, bound up in the back of his hover van, might have felt any concern for the fate of the people in her temple or wether her unholy religion had sucked all the genuine emotion out of her. As he looked around him at his happy, cheering brethren he also wondered if he were committing a sin by not
being as overjoyed as they were.

He knew, vaguely, what a 'Phoenix egg device' was. He'd seen in old news broadcasts that the Phoenix was a large flying creature trapped and shipped back from the off-earth colonies that exuded fire from its skin and when its egg hatched it did so like a one-kiloton bomb. He’d seen how the US Spaceforce had employed trained Pheonii in their role as Universal Policeman and the sort of devestation they could cause. Alchemi felt cold as he imagined it.

As if sensing his doubting mind like a stain amidst the zealous crowd, Matrick rounded off her speech by reminding them all why the Teargas Street temple had to burn. “Our credo is simple,my friends. Our prophet, Sawney Bean, taught us that the Universe is a vast body of which we as individuals are cells and as communities are organs. We are also the heart and the soul and the mind of the universal being. As such ,it is our biological destiny to protect and preserve universal health and sanity. In simpler times, when the Universe was still young, our methods need not have been so severe but whilst the Satanic Parasite stalks the human race, weaving its web of illusion, spreading its diseases of greed and fear; we, the universal immune system, the homunculi, are at war”.

Fassion Ikon burned with anger, her face flushed as red as a communist flag. It wasn’t so much the idea that the other Narcissists would soon die because they were more like competitors in a business than friends, it was more like
a sense of violation; violation by the grubby hands of these hairy anarchists.

In her head she had already formed a picture of Matrick as some unshaven,fat, butch-lesbian, the kind that, she thought, would routinely get beaten up at school full of bile and bitterness, pathetic really, thought Fassion. Then the cramp
started to throb in her tendons and she thought about whether she too would soon die.

On the intersection of Teargas street and Laughingas Lane a crowd of stunned onlookers had gathered; paparazz-oids hovered like mechanical bluebottles sniffing with their long lenses amidst the carnage, whilst inside the charred temple ruins bewildered firemen with lances of water and foam were duelling futilely with the enraged infant Phoenix circling the temples vaulted ceiling.

Alchemi watched like the others who had come rushing out at the sound of the explosion. He saw the bodies of men and women, their gougle-plex dollar gowns and tuxes singed and ripped, their designer bodys torn and smashed, smeared around the temples mouth like entrance, their blood soaking into it’s long red carpet or dripping off the leaves of its potted palms. A 30ft long
jet black limousine turned over on its side by the blast now formed a barrier between the onlookers and the blazing edifice and Alchemi, preferring not to look directly at the death or the destruction in front of him, gazed at the orange flames reflected in its opaque black windows.

“Looking at your reflection brother? Vanity’s unbecoming you know”,laughed Matrick, her pretty freckled features brimming with a strange happiness that he had only ever seen in women who had just given birth. She placed a hand on
his shoulder and for a moment Alchemi wondered whether she knew what he’d done, wether she knew about Fassion. He’d often been mesmerized by
Matrick, her aura showed up like a raging furnace and, sometimes,he’d even convinced himself that she had preternatural powers. But she
seemed to trust him, “Tyger,tyger ”, she muttered, “Tyger,tyger”, rubbing his shoulder as she gazed at her flaming handiwork.

The back of Alchemi’s hired van, dented by the impact of Fassion’s flaying roller-boots,opened to reveal her unconscious and loudly snoring, her white afro-wig had slipped down over her face and now looked like a purring creature, rising and falling as Fassion breathed in and out.

Alchemi had seen her from a distance many times. It was he and Warden who had been assigned to survey the area around the Temple, note the coming of going of local people, check the geographical lay-out, work out the most opportune
moment for the temple to be infiltrated and the safest entrance. Alchemi had gotten employment as a cleaner and had been able to watch everything that went on inside the temple, their masses and rituals and fundraisers.

Inside,the temple had been like an old-time theatre; Alchemi had first spotted Fassion from up in the gallery but this was the first time that he had been so close to her.

“What am I supposed to do with you now”, he wondered aloud, “Take you back to your flat and let you help the police with their enquiries. I can’t tell any of my brethren about you or who knows what they might do to me”. He pressed a hand gently upon the afro wig and felt it purring. “No. I’ll have to take you home with me until I can think of a better plan”.