Midnight by Dean R. Koontz

Of the fourteen hundred people employed there, nearly a thousand lived in Moonlight Cove. The rest resided in other communities elsewhere in the county. All of them, of course, lived within the effective reach of the microwave broadcasting dish on the roof of the main structure.

As he followed the entrance road around the big buildings toward the parking area behind, Loman thought: Sure as hell Shaddack’s our very own Reverend Jim Jones. Needs to be sure he can take every last one of his devoted followers with him any time he wants. A modern pharaoh. When he dies, those attending him die, too, as if he expects them to continue to attend him in the next world. Shit. Do we even believe in a next world any more?

No. Religious faith was akin to hope, and it required emotional commitment.

New People did not believe in God any more than they believed in Santa Claus. The only thing they believed in was the power of the machine and the cybernetic destiny of humanity.

Maybe some of them didn’t even believe in that.

Loman didn’t. He no longer believed in anything at all—which scared him because he had once believed in so many things.

The ratio of New Wave’s gross sales and profits to its number of employees was high even for the microtechnology industry, its ability to pay for the best talent in its field was reflected in the percentage of high-ticket cars in the two enormous lots. Mercedes. BMW. Porsche. Corvette. Cadillac Seville. Jaguar. high end Japanese imports with every bell and whistle.

Only half the usual number of cars were in the lot. It looked as if a high percentage of the staff was at home, working through the modem. How many were already like Denny?

Side by side on the rainswept macadam, those cars reminded Loman of the orderly ranks of tombstones in a cemetery. Those quiescent engines, all that cold metal, all those hundreds of wet windshields reflecting the flat gray autumn sky, suddenly poemed a presentiment of death. To Loman, that parking lot represented the future of the entire town silence, stillness, the terrible eternal peace of the graveyard.

If the authorities outside of Moonlight Cove tumbled to what was happening there, or if it turned out that virtually every one of the New People was a regressive—or worse—and the Moonhawk Project was a disaster, the remedy would not be poisoned koolaid this time, like Reverend Jim Jones used down there in Jonestown, but lethal commands broadcast in bursts of microwaves, received by microsphere computers inside the New People, instantly translated into the language of the governing program, and acted upon. Thousands of hearts would stop as one, The New People would fall, as one, and Moonlight Cove would in an instant become a graveyard of the unburied.

Loman drove through the first parking lot, into the second, and headed toward the row of spaces reserved for the top executives.

If I wait for Shaddack to see that Moonhawk’s gone bad and to take us with him, Loman thought, he won’t be doing it because he cares about cleaning up the messes he makes, not that damn albino-spider-of-a-man. He’ll take us with him just for the bloody hell of it, just so he can go out with a big bang, so the world will stand in awe of his power, a man of such incredible power that he could command thousands to die simultaneously with him.

More than a few sickos would see him as a hero, idolize him. Some budding young genius might want to emulate him. That was no doubt what Shaddack had in mind. At best, if Moonhawk succeeded and all of mankind was eventually converted, Shaddack literally would be master of his world. At worst, if it all went bad and he had to kill himself to avoid falling into the hands of the authorities, he would become a nearly mythical figure of dark inspiration, whose malign legend would encourage legions of the mad and power-mad, a Hitler for the silicon age.

Loman braked at the end of the row of cars.

He wiped at his greasy face. His hand was shaking.