Hi all

A little bit of fantasy using Michael Moorcock's time-travelling assassin
Jerry Cornelius. If you all think it terrible then I shall just have to
continue it on my soon-to-be-constructed web site.  If you want to
contribute to it PLEASE DO!!!   And if you just want me to keep writing
then say nothing.


THE HYDE PARK HIATUS

        Jerry knew it was all fucked up as the vortex began to collapse
around 
him. That fool Alvarez had screwed up the co-ordinates again. It would be 
the last time.
        He slowly materialised in the big front bedroom on the fourth floor
of 
what was once the RCGP building---before the Iranians bought it.  As the 
time threads loosened around him he saw a tableau of extreme horror before 
him. The room was dominated by a figure on a Parker-Knoll recliner. It was 
the rap singer turned medical politician, Johann von C.  The aquiline
facies 
was relaxed, the body covered in a poor copy of the uniform of the 14th SS,

the hands held a large unlit cigar and a balloon glass of cognac. von C was

enjoying himself.
        Jerry felt himself take root and solidify in the present; the two
SAS 
men flanking von C quickly covered him with their Ingram model 11s. 
Beside the chair there was a SP25 on a small Queen Anne table. Abba's 
Greatest Hits was spinning to a close. Wires led off to an Amstrad amp and 
a pair of Wharfedale Lintons in the corner.  It all looked very bad. Not
only 
had he missed  Wilson, he had also missed Bogle and now look at what was 
before him; von C getting off on Abba. Very bad indeed.
        von C opened his eyes as the LP ended and stretched his mouth in an

obscene rictus. 
        "So! Herr Doktor Cornelius! Ve haff you been expecting! How good 
of you to drop in!"
        Jerry said nothing. He had no chance of reaching the needle gun on 
his hip, even before one of the SAS goons moved around to disarm him. 
Didn't matter much anyway. He had six pounds of de-commissioned Semtex 
in his peritoneal cavity, the detonators wired to a micro-switch in his
upper 
left seventh. If the time came, one good crunch! and Princes Gate would be 
an entirely different kind of history.
        von C waved his hand around the room.
        "Not vat you vere expecting, ha? You thought perhaps, a simple 
insertion, assassination and off again with a---how do you Englanders put 
it?--a hey-nonny-no? Haff a good look, Herr Doktor. Look and be amazed at 
ze  power of rap combined with bad politics!"
        Jerry looked. The beds had been upended and placed against the
front 
wall over by the two windows, ready to be pushed into place as makeshift 
barricades in case of heavy fire. As his ears tuned in, he could hear
distant 
rattles of small-arms exchanges, the occasional WHUMP! of a mortar round 
and the whine of remote-controlled gunships. 
Four squaddies from the Argylls crouched by the windows; the two on the 
right had a 7.62mm  belt-fed GPMG  and a sniper and his spotter were at the

other one. The sniper had a SLR with night-sight, the spotter was peering 
through a pair of Zeiss-Ikon 10x50s. It was looking even worse; obviously 
there had been some serious action to precipitate the emergence of von C in

his military persona. Perhaps some major disturbance in the quantum 
undergrowth? Or a time tide tornado? Perhaps it was not all Alvarez' fault?
        von C leered in Jerry's face and invited him to look behind him;
there 
was something unpleasant crumpled up beside the door.  The unpleasant 
thing was blood-stained; as Jerry looked at it it moaned and stirred.
        "An interesting coincidence Herr Doktor!  Ve haff quite the unusual

meeting of old friends, nicht wahr? Here you come and before you, Herr 
Doktor Hotchkies!"
        Jerry looked. It was indeed Hotch.  Hotch stirred again and hissed
at 
von C with toothless gums and lipless mouth.
        "Herr Doktor MED to you, fucker!"
        "Ha ha ha! Alvays the good joker, eh Herr Hotchkies? But perhaps ze

time for jokes has passed?"
        Jerry felt himself shiver. It was worse than he ever expected. The
von 
C persona was almost unprecedented in all the projections; the awful state 
of Hotch was a quantum event of staggering rarity. And where were the 
cyberbandits of GP-UK? Where were Risk's Renegades? Where indeed?

To be continued......


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