The Preacher Man

I closed the door of my room as required, hearing the lock click and the door seal behind me. The time was 10:09 PM, and the Day of Judgment was almost over. Sometime within the next five hours, I would hear a gas hissing into my room. It would either be a simple nitrogen-oxygen mix, or something just as odorless but extremely lethal. By tradition, acolytes void their bladders and undress, in order to minimize the work of the acolytes in next year's class.

Some acolytes doubt this, but bedrooms really are unmonitored. The human psyche needs a place to wallow in peace during the hours of low impurity, and the Priesthood does provide that place. One thing I've learned about the Priesthood over the years is that they are many things, but they are not liars.

I actually fell into a restful sleep shortly after entering my room. I was that confident, and regardless the matter was out of my hands. I've learned the lesson to grab rest when I can. I was awakened by the faint sound of hissing air. I opened my eyes and glanced at the clock display on my monitor, 2:53 AM.

It was later than I expected. The test administrators are required by law to complete all executions by 3 AM. I shuddered as I thought about being one of the thousands of judges for the gate. A vast amount of the scoring is based on computer tabulation, but the final decisions are human, done over a worldwide teleconference. With over 87,000 Initiates per year, there are rumors of many heated discussions for the exacting rankings near the cutoff.

I laughed at myself as I realized I was sniffing the air. My subconscious demand to live was overwhelming my reasoning. Sniffing the air made no sense. I tried to calm myself by thinking of the soft hissing sound as relaxing. I looked at my sealed door, and waited for my adult life to begin.

Chapter 3. Adulthood

At exactly 3 AM the hissing stopped and I heard my bedroom door unsealing. A moment later the lock clicked and a woman entered carrying adult clothes for me. I couldn't tell what she looked like of course. She was encased in a full burqa. Purdah (the curtain law) forbids any part of a woman's body to be visible in public. I thought she might be one of the wives of the monastery's priests. It was the first female I had seen in thirteen years.

I got dressed quickly. My shirt had insignia on both arms, showing a bright green circle (the symbol for Citizen Level Two), and underneath that the insignia of the Security Guild. There was also a small card telling me where to report to my Guild's representative for my debriefing.

All males are required to display their Citizen Level when in public. There are color codes for the different levels. Blue is for children (Level One). Green is the base color for labor (Levels Two and Three), and like Level One uses a circular emblem. Yellow is the base color for management (Levels Four through Seven) and uses a triangular emblem. Red is the base color for command (Levels Eight through Fifteen) and uses a diamond shaped emblem.

At the very top is purple for both Royalty (Levels Sixteen through Twenty-Three) and Ruling Royalty (Levels Twenty-Four through Thirty-One). Royalty uses a square emblem, except for the Cunif Carifar who wears a pentagon bearing all five colors, signifying his role as the representative of all people to the Holy.

My bedroom had been my small place of refuge for the last thirteen years. I took one quick last look around and then left.

The hall was busy with the new adults heading off to their own meetings. Within the coming hours and days, we would all be traveling to the home cities of our various Guilds. Mixed with the feelings of joyful relief and excitement was an air of nostalgia. After two decades of very close living, most of us would not see each other again for years. Or never. I grimaced when I saw Afeef's door had not unsealed.

The door was open to my interview room. I saluted the superior there from my Guild, a CL-12, his diamond emblem red at the bottom half and yellow at the top. I was pleased someone of such high rank had been sent to debrief me. The man snapped a sharp salute back, and then signaled me to close the door and sit down.

He went back to reviewing his monitor while I waited. I couldn't see his screen, but I guessed he was reviewing my test scores. Finally he sighed and looked up at me. "I'm Commander Fadil. Welcome to Security! Before we begin the debriefing, is there anything you'd like to know?"

"Yes, thank you sir. The testing, how did we do?"

"You mean Anqara?"

"Well, that would be interesting too, but I meant Ghazi and Hakem." I was referring to two CL-23 Royal priests who were both taking their advancement tests this year. Both had entered Royalty through the Security Guild.

Fadil raised his eyebrows and then smiled in approval at me. "That's the right attitude Ilias! And the answer is the Guild did extremely well! As of today, we have twenty-six Royalty from Security, including two at the ruling level." He then shot me a sly grin. "Can you guess who was promoted?"

I weighed my answer before I replied, "Ghazi sir, I'm almost sure."

The Commander blinked. "Correct! Judging from your test essays, I thought you might pick Hakem."

I nodded. "With all respect sir, I had to document my essays with references to official capital news. There was nothing from Bandar Arenas to suggest Ghazi, nothing that I had access to anyway, and putting unsupportable hunches into my essays would be, well..." I smiled and shrugged my shoulders.

Fadil gave me a long, thoughtful stare. "Indeed. I'm beginning to see why the Guild is so excited about you." He finished up with his monitor and then looked at me. "Let's begin the debriefing. Your combat scores, do you think they were fair?"

"The three minors?" I paused for a moment. "Yes sir, the demerits were fair."

"In total, I think so too. Maybe not the last demerit itself, your combination roundhouse spin kick was a thing of beauty. But in your eighth match, you pulled a knife-hand strike to the throat so early the blow wasn't scored, and the judge let that one go."

I nodded. "I agree sir."

"But your third match, the one with Afeef, what was up with that?"

"Ah..." I thought for a moment and decided to be completely honest. "A friend sir, since early childhood. I suspected he was low in the rankings."

Fadil typed on his monitor for a moment. "Fourth percentile, not even close. You should have known you had no chance of pushing him above the cutoff."

I was properly chastised. "Yes sir, agreed."

Fadil looked at me. "Ilias, your defensive skills are world class. Seriously, if defense were everything, you could compete in the world competitions right now. You're that good. And nobody is ignoring the fact you were the only Anqara Initiate who did not suffer a single solid hit during the sparring. But you have to work on your aggression!"

"Yes sir!"

He shook his head in disbelief. "Your ninth opponent, Uday, you took him down in less than five seconds."

I smiled at the memory. "I had no choice. His punches are lightning! He could well have taken me in a longer fight." I have a reputation for being a careful fighter, and I had used my reputation as a weapon against a superior opponent. Uday was so surprised by my wild combination attack that I scored a quick takedown.

Fadil finally understood my strategy for the competition. "Interesting," he mumbled as he went back to reviewing the test scores. "You'll be happy to know you're the top rated Initiate from Anqara. And Anqara made their 8% again, which means you're among the top scorers in the world, out of 78,044 survivors to adulthood. You're definitely in the top 1%. Security will be very interested in your decision about booking the run."

To understand Fadil's comments, I'll have to explain how promotional gates work.

Worldwide, across the 120 townships and the capital, 90% of the Initiates survive the final childhood gate. It's a worldwide ranking, but the competition between townships is also capped by a minimum monastery culling of 8% and a maximum of 12%. Anqara has a reputation of having one of the toughest monasteries on the planet, and it is one of a handful of townships that consistently hits the lower cutoff.

Adult gates are designed differently than the childhood gates. There is no culling for failure, at least not directly. The name for Citizen Level Two is Lower Labor. Under usual circumstances, I would take my tests to advance to Level Three (Upper Labor) in two years, on the First Day of Judgment in 8237. Test success is based on ranking. The top 20% of the applicants will advance to Level Three (which has an emblem of a green lower hemisphere and an upper blue), and 80% will remain at Level Two.

For those who fail the first gate, there is a second gate three years later, again with the top 20% of the remaining applicants passing. Similarly, there is a third gate five years after that, a fourth gate eight years later, and a fifth gate thirteen years after that. By the time of the fifth and final gate, citizens would have lived 31 years at the same Level. Success at any gate starts the whole process of advancement over again, taking the next Level's first gate two years later.

Failure at the fifth gate is not an immediate death sentence, but it does put your future access to the anti-aging drugs into a lottery system. There is no further possibility of promotion, and the lottery odds get exponentially worse each year, culling about half the population after ten years, and then rapidly culling the remainder. The record for survival in the lottery system after failing a fifth gate is twenty-two years. That record was set over three thousand years ago.

Citizens in the lottery show up for their annual shots along with the other citizens, but the lottery system might assign them a placebo. Somewhere between their fifth and eighth month, those who receive the placebo will notice their bodies begin to age rapidly, more than one year per day. By this time their medical condition is hopeless, even with access to the real drugs. Death always comes before the twelfth month, and in mercy the Priesthood will offer assistance in suicide.

In addition to the C.L. gates, there is also adult culling due to criminal behavior or heresy. There are no prisons. The end result? Slightly less than 62% of all citizens entering each Level will advance to the next higher Level, and 38%+ will die within the Level. The average age for all adult males (exclusive of children) is 51 years and 4 months, including the long, thin tail of the distribution of the citizens living hundreds of years. By law, the average age of the adult women is exactly the same, although they are on a completely different system.

There are only two exceptions to this process, one at each end of the Citizen Levels. Promotion and culling within the Ruling Royalty are processes not of formal testing but political infighting, and the Cunif Califar is appointed for life. At the other end is the Asad, the Lion. That is what Fadil was referring to when he asked me about booking the run.

The Lion is only available to the top 1% of the surviving population entering adulthood. From what Fadil told me, a total of 780 new adults would be offered the chance for advanced placement in the Citizen Levels. Historically, close to 90% will accept the challenge, and a third will target two-level advancement for immediate placement into management. How far the new adult wishes to "ride the Lion" is declared to the Priesthood on the Fifth Day of Judgment. Once declared, there is no turning back.

Lion tests are given on the 21'st day of each month, starting in January for the advancement to Level Three. Most of the testing is over by February, though a very few ambitious candidates will target the higher levels. Success brings the additional status, prestige, and privileges of the higher levels, including the entitlement for an adult male to have his number of wives equal his citizen level. But the primary reason to ride the Lion is the dream of Royalty. One must start adult life at a minimum of Level-Three to have any chance at Royal promotion. On average, there are 93 promotions into Level-Sixteen each year. And one must start adult life at a minimum Level-Four Management Level to ever enter Ruling Royalty (an average of two promotions per year into Level-Twenty-Four).

The downside risks are considerable. First of all, Lion passing rates are wildly unpredictable. The scoring process is somewhat of a mystery. All scoring is supposed to be by computer, but some years almost all will make it, and other years less than half. There seems to be a large random element for how high the bar is raised. The year 7777 was a horror, when not a single candidate made it to Level Four.

Failure on the Lion automatically fails you for all your future adult gates. You get 31 guaranteed years of the anti-aging drugs, and then are put in the lottery. Declining the drugs at the beginning of adulthood and trying to age normally is not an option. The human genome (at least in its present definition) can not tolerate that.

Is it worthwhile to ride the Lion? The risk of failure plus the lost years of not living at the lower Levels result in no net increase of life expectancy. Booking the run is really about ambition, not the desire to live longer through Royalty. And in three days I would have to declare my choice.

Fadil smiled at me and went on. "I reviewed the security logs of the day before your exam. What Fateen did to you on December 30th was way out of line. Do you want the Guild to make an issue of it?"

"The Hour of Repose, his last question? No sir, not at all. I realize now Fateen was teaching me one last lesson, about ambition and discipline, a lesson well worth knowing."

Fadil nodded slowly. "Very well." We chatted a bit more about my performance, and then he surprised me with an unexpected offer. "The Guild's ramjet will be taking off for Jizari at 5:30 AM. We'll make a brief landing at Bandar Arenas first, to drop off the Royal test monitor. There's one vacant seat on the plane." He grinned at me. "Want to hitch a ride?"

It was an extremely magnanimous offer. The other new adults in ancient Canada and the ancient U.S. northeastern seaboard would be flying to the hub city of Aleppo, at 42 o 21' N, 0 o 9' W, the ancient site of Boston Massachusetts. The city had been slowly rebuilt over centuries, long after being directly burned by Shaitan's fire 8,235 years ago.

The Judgment Days are the busiest time of the year for air transport, with all the successful Initiates making transfers to their new homes. The opportunity to travel sub-orbital in the Guild's plush private jet was a pure gift. And I would probably have the chance to chat informally with the Royal monitor. Fadil's offer was priceless. I gratefully accepted, and we left for Anqara's airport shortly after.

Chapter 4. The Choice of a Lifetime

The jet was a lot smaller than I expected, only four passenger seats. Everything about the interior screamed wealth and power, four huge plush leather seats arranged two by two with the aisle in between. We received Anqara departure clearance at 5:28 AM and took off immediately. The plane rose steeply right after takeoff, the turbine engines near maximum power. As we approached our cruising altitude of 20,000 meters, we went supersonic and the ramjets activated. The acceleration was considerable, and within a few minutes we reached our target velocity of Mach 3.77. We were cruising at 4000 kph, and scheduled to land in Bandar Arenas shortly before 9 AM.

I was in the rear left-side seat. To my right was the capital's Royal test monitor, Mufeto Khatib, with his executive assistant Dabir sitting directly in front of me. Fadil sat diagonally across from me.

I couldn't help but stare out the window after takeoff. This was not just my first jet ride. This was my very first trip away from Anqara. I stared at the township in the moonlight, watching it fall rapidly away. The moon was full and the sky clear. The view of the snow covered landscape of ancient Quebec was mesmerizing.

I finally tore my eyes away to glance at my fellow passengers. They were all busily working with their laptops, totally ignoring the view out the windows. I however found the sight of the virgin Earth from twenty kilometers up irresistible.

There was a chuckle on my right. I turned back from my window and saw the mufeto smiling kindly at me. "We are scheduled to fly over Aleppo twelve minutes after going supersonic. Its runways will be a hub of activity today, and should already be well lit. You're on the right side of the plane to see it."

I nodded gratefully and gazed again out the window. I could see the Atlantic shoreline angling in from the horizon to meet us, and then, there it was up ahead, Aleppo! I sat transfixed at its beauty. I could even see one plane far below us, its lights flashing in a landing approach. At 4000 kph the scene fell rapidly behind. The shoreline actually receded east for a while, but then three minutes south of Aleppo all land abruptly ceased.

"That's it for land until we pass over Metula," the mufeto went on. "Probably in about another thirty-five minutes. That far south, it'll be well past sunrise."

I turned back and nodded again slowly. I was more than a bit puzzled by his kind demeanor. The mufeto was acting like a tour guide, and to a lowly CL-2 no less! His smile was totally different than the stiff and formal countenance I saw during my Initiate testing.

The next township he was referring to was built near the ancient city of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 18 o 29' N, 1 o 0' E. It seemed incredible to be traveling around the world this quickly. I paused for a moment and considered the time. It was almost 6 AM. Something was troubling me. "Great Mufeto," I asked. "May I ask a question?"

He laughed. "Oh, when we're alone like this, just call me Khatib. I'll tell you a secret. I'm an honorary member of Security. Isn't that right, Fadil?"

Fadil looked up from his laptop, gave one snorting laugh, and then went back to his work.

I would not have been more stunned if a giant pterodactyl had magically appeared outside my window and seized our jet in its massive beak. A CL-12 treating Royalty like this?! Was Fadil insane?! What was going on? Was this some elaborate test to see if I would also be disrespectful? If not, there were clearly dynamics here that I did not understand. I suddenly felt very tense and was unsure how to proceed. I did not understand my environment. I looked across the aisle and saw the mufeto waiting for my question.

I cleared my throat. "Yes, thank you for the honor Khatib. My question, how will morning prayers be done while flying?"

"Ah yes, thank you for reminding me." The mufeto waited until precisely 6 AM, and then clicked on his intercom to the cockpit. The two pilots from the air transport Guild respectfully acknowledged his call at once. Khatib recited a Prayer of the Mind in Ascension, one of the shorter ones, and then clicked off and went back to his work.

"What?!" I thought. I felt totally confused about what to do next. Back in my monastery, idle chatter now would be severely punished, even to the point of death. But my three fellow passengers were acting as if they were still not in the Prayer Cycle. Again I felt a shiver of fear and wondered if this bizarre scene were some sort of test. Fadil sensed my distress and looked up from his work. I stared at him grinning at me.

"Ilias, you're going to have to learn that being an adult is not like living in a monastery. Observance of the Prayers varies by Guild. Not in public though! When you are on a Guild mission, you'll put in a full eight hours of Church in whatever township you are. But alone like this, or at Guild headquarters, things are a little more... relaxed."