by Thomas McColl
MORAL and IMMORAL are both vast organisations, operating in each country networks of spies and agents concerned solely with each other’s overthrow and destruction. Agents are everywhere – everyone’s involved – working undercover in every occupation, in every pub, in every household, on every street, watching, collating, reporting their information …
All that is known for sure about the two groups is that the one side will oppose whatever the other side supports. On both sides, secrecy is essential. Agents often do not even know which side they’re working for. Orders are given in the press through coded messages, and people only have to read and take them in to be recruited, often not knowing why it is they have become involved, or where it was they got their orders from …
Double agents are numerous. It’s thought most members of IMMORAL still retain MORAL membership, and it’s not known how many members each organisation has. Once, it was believed that IMMORAL membership was almost universal within MORAL, but now it’s thought that MORAL has managed to infiltrate IMMORAL so effectively, if its own members were taken away there would be nothing left. It’s even been rumoured that the two organisations are simply one and the same …
Double agents are sometimes dealt with by a third organisation called AMORAL, that owes its allegiance to neither side, but works for both, and is currently supplying drugs into IMMORAL at their request in order to flush out the double agents and pretenders within its organisation. These noxious, mind-bending drugs, if taken by double agents, twist their minds so much, they render their reports incomprehensible, and now that drug use is compulsory within the ranks of IMMORAL, MORAL has found that its members who’ve infiltrated are not being driven out and back into its own camp as expected, but instead are taking drugs as often as possible to benefit from their pleasurable side effects, ignoring the warnings of possible brain damage, and giving IMMORAL more control than ever before, enabling it to infiltrate MORAL from within its own organisation, and at the same time, stem the flow of information that could be used to put a stop to it …
There is concern within IMMORAL that this latest success will make its membership almost redundant in its fight against MORAL, which instead is being won by AMORAL drugs, and making it seem more likely than ever before that the end of MORAL could mean the end of IMMORAL too. AMORAL though concedes that its agents also work for MORAL, using methods MORAL would not use, to combat the spread of drugs, and has agents too who work for neither side, sabotaging the efforts of both. It’s also thought that AMORAL is heavily infiltrated by both IMMORAL and MORAL, and would collapse if the two organisations they claim to use and work against suddenly ceased to exist …
– Thomas McColl lives in East London and has had short stories published in Notes from the Underground, Ranfurly Review and Smoke. He recently came second in 4’33” Magazine’s 60 second story contest, and has completed a novel. His favourite bookshop is Quinto, on Charing Cross Road.
Oblong 