“Beia – what are you thinking?” Astroburger asked.

It was odd to be asking his ex-queen such a question, as until their incarceration in the living asteroid, he would have never dared to. After a few days of their plight, however, it was silly not to become more familiar with each other. Now they were making love two or three times a day, their senses were a bewitched swoon, and even though the bond was enforced, paradoxically, it felt natural. Nevertheless, Astroburger wondered if she really was the queen and not some weird manifestation of the asteroid itself. His ‘Beia’ had a long, thin, prehensile membrane attaching her to the wall, which allowed her to move around freely but also served (so Astroburger assumed) as a conduit for his seed into the greedy maw of the gargantuan being that held them prisoner.

“I was thinking… perhaps we should buy this place,” Beia replied.

“You can’t buy a living asteroid!”

“No, I mean – just these quarters,” Beia said. “I feel very secure here.”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing,”Astroburger said. “The Queen of Simulacra talking like a housewife – incredible! You actually want to set up home here?”

“Yes, I do.”

“But can’t you see – it’s this thing talking through you,” said Astroburger in an exasperated voice. “You share your bloodstream with it.”

“Yes, it’s quite nice, really – much nicer than being the Queen of Reflections. Do you know, when I was queen –”

“You’re still queen!”

“– I was only in love with myself.”

“So, who are you in love with now?”

“You,” she replied.

“We’ve only been here a few days.”

“It seems longer. Much longer.”

Lord Maledor rolled his eyes. Damn it all to hell – Queen Beia had turned her punishment into enjoyment, converted humiliation into love! How could he ever understand a woman’s psyche? They were mysterious, alien creatures – more unfathomable than the Octopus. As he slumped back in his chair, pink thoughts welled up again, even stronger than before.

Lord Maledor needed a sure-fire distraction… The scene on his screen dissolved and then refocused. Blond brutes in gleaming knee-high boots tramped the streets with wolfish dogs, sniffing out Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and gypsies… And when had this world or any other been fair, thought Lord Maledor as he surveyed the scene. The law throughout the universe was the same – the strong devour the weak. Only in a land called Grease had the strange notion taken root that all men should be equal. In an even stranger system called Christianity, the weak had assumed dominion over the strong, and used the rack, the thumbscrew, the gallows, and the stake to prove that weakness could prevail. Oh foolish doctrine!

So what could be done here? Of course he could become a blond, jackbooted Nazi brute, but the notion had no appeal – Nazidom was banal, while Lord Maledor knew that evil should be exciting! Where was the challenge in becoming a Nazi?

An instant later, and Nathan regarded himself in a shop window. His appearance was more than satisfactory. Dark hair, brown eyes, and with a swarthy countenance that looked Jewish in contrast to the pale Nazis. Where was he? In the streets of Warsore, where he was defiantly not wearing the yellow Star of David. Two young members of the SS emerged from a butcher’s shop and strode towards him.

“You – come with us,” the taller one ordered. They bundled him into a caged van.

Nathan, along with twenty or so others, was driven to a field where over a hundred men and women were lined up in front of a large open grave. A biting north wind scoured the fields, and the imminent victims waited, for bureaucracy in all its forms is unable to work as quickly as one would imagine. A tall, heavily built blond bully approached the line and stalked to the end where Nathan stood. He raised his Luger, pointed it at the first man in line, and Nathan blinked hard. Without changing his expression, the officer put the muzzle to his own head and pulled the trigger.

The officer fell at the feet of the man he had been about to shoot. The others stared dumbfounded, unmoving, while the remaining SS were flabbergasted.

“Shoot them!” shouted the senior officer.

Six more Nazis stepped forward, aimed their guns at the line of men and women and then, at the last moment, turned the guns on themselves. At this point, the officer, seven feet tall and with a cannonball head, strode forward, pulled out his pistol, and shot himself. It was too much for Lord Maledor – in the form of Nathan, he collapsed laughing.

The survivors peered first at Nathan, then at the dead Nazis in bewilderment. For a long moment, nothing happened, and Lord Maledor wondered if they might strip the officers of their uniforms and assume the outward appearance of the enemy. But no, instead they glanced around as if wondering whether this was some kind of trick, and then made their way quickly into the woods, where they disappeared.

Time to move to another zone. Lord Maledor had no sooner reincarnated himself as Judas when he was ambushed by an attack of goodness. It came on without warning, just as they always did – right when he was about to perpetrate some particularly juicy act of evil. He was walking down the street having received his thirty pieces of silver, and he would soon identify the Messiah with a kiss, but he felt an overwhelming urge to give the silver to a poor woman bent almost double beneath a pile of firewood.

“Here, old woman, take this silver and use it to buy your family some food,” he blurted out.

Lord Maledor blushed deepest scarlet at the shame of what he had done. He, the villain, the schemer, was doing good, and the worst kind of good – charity! The shame of it! His attempt to humiliate the Queen of Reflections by making her the conduit for Astroburger’s seed – that too had failed, and love, hideous, revolting love, had flourished in her normally hard heart. And now that he thought of it, reversing the cortical synapses of the Nazis and thereby causing them to shoot themselves could easily be construed as a good deed as well, rather than the cruel enticement for the innocent to commit evil that he had intended.

But I didn’t mean it that way, he thought with desperation. That hadn’t been my intention at all.

He was obviously losing his grip. What had gone wrong? Was there a blight on evil? Was good stronger than he thought? Had he chosen the wrong side?

Was it time, heaven forbid, to change horses?