The Preacher Man

--- Excerpt from The Book of Bel'dar, Tower 1, Chapter 1, Verse 2

"My Holy curse be upon those who deny My one true Preacher, refusing to submit themselves and their descendents to the divine revelation of My Code. Let their eyes be gouged out, lest they attempt to defile the clearness of My Code with their corrupt visions. And you know it is righteous to submit to Me because it has been preached, and I the Holy am One, and Bel'dar is My one true preacher. Thus Bel'dar has preached, therefore thus he preaches. Let the believer know that submission is the second of the eight great pillars of true faith."

There was a rustle on the bed next to me. My beautiful wife had turned her backside towards me and pressed her rump into my groin. She lifted a leg and butted back into me, pleading that I couple once again into her feminine warmth and moisture. I drifted in my dream as I humped her playfully from the side, running my thick, full cock between her moist ass cheeks, separating her butt with my strokes and poking against her anus several times.

Abby laughed playfully at my failed attempts to copulate. She then arched her back, raising her rump and allowing my stiff rod to find the proper vaginal entrance. Abby giggled as I slipped inside her and then shuddered. Beautiful Abby... I gripped the side of her hip with my hand as I pushed into her depths, locking her body for my strokes, my hand loving the curving flair of her hip. As I fucked in and out, my hand wandered up and caressed her fit waist. My beautiful Abby...

No, wait... I buried my nose into the back of my wife's neck and inhaled the smell of her clean hair. Such a singular smell! This must be Michal... Yes, Michal, no question...

I thrust into Michal's soft vagina, she grunted back in pleasure. My hand came up and grabbed a taut breast, very fit, with a large, tight nipple. My gosh, this must be Sheffie! How could I have thought otherwise? This was Sheffie's breast, so distinctive...

I caressed her softness as I slid back and forth inside my dear Sheffie, petting the soft, silky underside below her nipple and then rolling her between my fingers, her pink bud swollen with arousal. I squeezed her, milking her on my downstrokes. Sheffie cried up and whimpered as I pushed deeper, forcing myself towards her womb. And yet her vagina felt as soft as a feather.

I began to desire a firmer resistance as I pushed up inside her. Sheffie started stroking my head and whispering how much she loved me. Huh?! She didn't have the body position to do that. I blinked my eyes awake, pulling myself from my dream.

I blinked again. Two beautiful pale green eyes were staring back into mine. Such a beautiful face. Rich, curly hair just off the shoulders, and the freckled nose looked so cute. The eyes, so bright with intelligence. I yawned and relaxed and enjoyed the hand that was softly caressing my head.

"What time is it?" I said smiling.

"A few minutes before four," Chanah replied. She kept stroking my head. "I've been here for quite a while, petting you and thinking." She smiled at me. "That was the first time anybody ever petted me, when I fell asleep before. I thought I'd return the affection. Do you like this?"

"Oh yes," I nodded with my eyes. "It feels wonderful."

Chanah gave me a shy smile. "I'm glad. I had no idea though, you'd find this so arousing."

"Arousing?"

"Well, your penis..."

I glanced down. Under my loose house clothing I was showing a full and obvious erection. Chanah's caresses were so relaxing I hadn't noticed how stiff I was when I awoke.

"Oh, that's probably from my dream."

"Ah, you were dreaming huh? About me?"

"Uh, no, another wife."

"Really? Which one? Was it a sexy dream?" She gave me a very playful smile.

I smiled back. "Yeah, pretty sexy. First Abby, then Michal, then Sheffie... I think..."

Chanah's eyes went wide. "Wow! You were having sex with all three at the same time?!"

"Well, not exactly. It was more as if one wife was morphing into the next. The dream was not well formed. It had lots of sexy desire and very little else."

"Ah... Ilias?"

"Uh huh?"

"Do your other wives realize how sweet you are?"

I thought for a moment. "I think so. Sheffie even calls me sweetie as a nickname sometimes, but only when the two of us are alone."

"Ah... Good. It's nice to know my sister wives are smart enough to recognize true kindness." Chanah laid herself down beside me, our two bodies gently touching along their lengths. "This beautiful dress was on the chair by my bed as I awoke. Did you pick it out for me?"

It was a cotton house dress, very finely woven, short sleeve and designed to fall just below the knees. Its base color was pure white, with green vines with large and bright purple flowers flowing through it. The dress was designed to be worn either with an under-halter or without. From the soft shapeliness of her bosom, I could see Chanah had elected to wear only the dress.

I smiled. "Actually, it was something Abby picked for you, a small welcoming present. She'll be glad you like it."

Chanah nodded. She lay with me for a while, lots of kisses and playful caresses but no direct expressions for coitus. Chanah seemed more joyful and playful the longer we kissed.

"Ilias?" she whispered.

"Uh huh?"

"All my defenses are down. Do you want to mount me?"

I took a large breath and sighed deeply. "Inside I'm a whirlwind of emotions. More than anything, I want what you want." I felt that statement dangling and looked at her.

Chanah scrunched up her nose at me, so cute! Then she exclaimed, "This is paradoxical! If you were my master, I'd be eager to please you, begging for commands to obey to show you how obedient I am. But as my equal, I think I want to wait, just a bit, get to know you more. Then when you do mount me, it will be the most precious experience of my life."

I nodded. "The better part of me agrees. Let's get to know each other first." We petted each other for a while, lots of friendly kisses. Chanah became deeply relaxed and cuddly. I lay beside her, propped on my elbow, petting her stomach and abs through the thin dress. Chanah eyes were closed, but there was a big, playful smile on her face. She snuggled into my arms, very happy for a while.

But then her face turned into a frown. "And to think I almost asked for the pill," she muttered. "Do you know about it?"

"Oh... The super narcotic?"

"Yeah, that's the one. Back in Judgment, I almost asked for it. But once you ask, there's no changing your mind. And I never quite had the guts to do it. Came close though... Hmmm, that feels so nice..."

I nodded. "I've sometimes wondered, after talking to Abby and Michal and Sheffie about their childhoods, about what I would have done as a girl. I really don't know. I don't think I would have asked for the pill though. Walking meekly into a monster's den for slaughter just isn't my style."

Chanah shrugged. "Monastery girls are extremely well guarded. There's never a chance to escape, and where would we go if we did?" She gave a humorless laugh. "And what would we do when we got there? We would have no anti-aging drugs."

I nodded at the dilemma. All children at the start of their thirteenth year, all the girls and all the boys who have survived their second gate, are given their first yearly dose of the anti-aging drug on Judgment 4. This is the optimal age to start the drug. It allows the body to complete its maturing to adulthood, but then locks the aging process for several hundred years.

Once started though, stopping is not an option. There is no record of anyone surviving a year after missing a dose. The drug gives you life, but it also locks you into obedience to the society that produces it.

Chanah continued. "And our wardens are innocent women slaves who have had their ability to revolt stripped from their minds. What would you have us girls do Ilias? We are so isolated, so perfectly controlled! We just don't have a third option."

Chanah began to cry. "We're up against absolute brutality. A year ago, a classmate of mine was caught in blasphemy. She was strapped naked to a tilted rack, her head cruelly lowered and her legs spread so wide they were almost breaking." Chanah sniffled for a moment and then wailed, "They killed her! Monsters in hoods came on stage. My entire class was forced to watch! The men shoved a meter-long sharpened spike up her vagina and then took turns with a mallet! They drove it completely through her body!" Chanah continued to wail in her distress.

It was several minutes before she found her voice again. "Our choice is to die, or submit to the damage of our minds. There! I've finally called it as I see it! Pure blasphemy, and it felt so good!" Chanah kept crying in my arms.

I cried with her and kissed her. She kissed me back fiercely. We hugged and held each other, comforting each other, giving each other strength. And the time passed. Eventually we calmed down.

I gave her lots of kisses near her ear and whispered, "Remember what I said about deception. Be very careful about blasphemy when we're not secure."

Chanah nodded. "I have all of your lives in my hands, I know." She took a deep breath. "Such a responsibility Ilias! I wish I could promise perfection. All I can offer is to try my best."

"That's okay Chanah. It's all any of us can do." I glanced at the security display and looked at the time. "Hungry?"

She thought for a second. "A little. Do you want to eat now?"

"Oh, I don't know... Want to see the lab first?"

Her eyes lit up in brightness. "Oh yes!"

Four hours later...

"Hungry now?"

Chanah tore her eyes away from the computer display, and then looked out the window. "Actually, I guess I am. But I don't know why. The sun won't set for another hour. Wait! This is Dakar! When is sunset here?"

"Today? 9:37"

"Yikes! Okay, let's get some food!"

Chanah was thrilled with the kitchen. I turned into her helper, and she showed off her cooking skills. As sunset neared, we were sitting down to a very tasty dish of hot and spicy breaded fish.

"So," I said between munching bites, "learn much?"

"Oh, you bet! You and your wives have done a fantastic job so far!" She munched a mouthful of fresh greens. "Oh, these are so good! Anyway, I think your guesses about the file-size distributions are right on. We're probably looking at about twenty terabytes of compressed video on each crystal set, simple 2-D stuff, non holographic. Then I'm guessing ten terabytes of audio and five perhaps for text." Chanah attacked her large flask of fresh orange juice with gusto.

I thought for a moment. "Ten terabytes of text for the two crystals? Compressed? That's a lot of writing."

"Well, perhaps there are imbedded pictures." She returned to her fish.

"Any ideas on how to proceed?"

Chanah gave me a bright smile. "Oh, I have a thousand ideas I can't wait to try! Probably more... This might take a while though."

"My three wives are going to love this. We were out of ideas of what to do next."

"Ilias?" Chanah asked with a blush. "Will they really accept me as an equal sister-wife? I'm the newest. It's customary for me to be on the bottom. I won't mind."

"Oh no Chanah. It'll be the same as between you and me. When we're alone, we respect each other as equals."

She stared at me and shivered. "My husband, my equal... Brrrr! Such wicked blasphemy Ilias! I love it! But it's going to take some time getting used to!" We ate the rest of our meal in silence, occasionally flashing each other friendly smiles. The future seemed so bright and full of hope. Bonds of love and commitments of equality were growing between us, and we both knew it.

--- Excerpt from The Book of Bel'dar, Tower 1, Chapter 1, Verse 3

"I have created the human female inferior to the male in all things, so that the male may learn of the hierarchy of obedience from both perspectives. I have designed the universe so the male must depend on Me for all things. It is thus proper for the male to design the female to be dependent on him for all things, and for the male to spend his wealth to maintain her. In return, the bashful virgin must allow her superior to mount, anoint, and breed her as he sees fit. She must remain a meek and faithful virgin throughout her life, ever a willing and receptive vessel to be broken by her husband's anointment. For a good woman must be eternally obedient, virgin and meek and without impure thought, lest she be impaled on a spear under the hammer of the righteous. Let the believer know that this hierarchical obedience must be absolute, and is the third of the eight great pillars of true faith."

Chapter 31. Alone at the Top

Time: Judgment 1, 8239 10:00 PM

At the sound of the gong, I released my form and slowly stood up. I had spent the last hour in the Prayer of Repose holding a Shaolin half-lotus sit while nervous Commander Priests questioned me on theology. My mind went back to my conversation with Makin two years ago at the boy's monastery at Karbala. Adult testing is indeed easier than passing the third childhood gate, even with the ringers I suspected the Health faction had lined up against me in the Prayer of Weakness testing.

It did cause me to pause last June, when I was on an afternoon video link to Aleppo. I had called Jibran to confirm a bullet-train test run to Aleppo the next day. In return he idly mentioned he was considering taking a refresher course in Kung Fu.

It's just not Jibran's style to bring up something like that. I felt a bit queasy for a moment as I realized that power politics sometime move in strange and mysterious ways. Regardless, I spent the next six months in intensive training with Dakar's reigning Wing Chun master, and learned exactly the skills I needed to blow my Judgment competition away, ringers and all.

Another advantage of adult testing is that at 10 PM the Initiate is free to go home and wait for the results. I still felt a bit hot from all the testing though, and decided to take the long way home through my gardens and open courtyards.

The moon had set hours ago, and Dakar has a tradition of no external lights on the night on Judgment 1, in sympathy with the monastery boys facing their gates. I found the tradition encouraging, a show of compassion by the township. But turning off lights is a far cry from turning off the practice of culling children. The gulf between their Holy and mine is still so wide.

So I walked around the courtyards with only starlight as my guide. It was enough for walking, but barely. The gardens were in dark shadows, well bedded down for the winter. After the stress of the day, the evening temperature was pleasantly chill, and with no wind off the lake I was not cold at all. I idly remembered this morning's forecast, a high of +3C this afternoon and a low of -6C tonight, a very typical Dakar winter day. We might get a winter storm in a few days, a big one. That'll be nice. We could use the moisture.

It took Chanah just five months to come through with her breakthroughs with the crystal data. I have to give a lot of credit to Sheffie too, for her foresight. A year ago she asked me to get a high-performance quantum computer from Ariel for my private lab. It's the specialty of the High Tech Guild there, at the ancient site of Mobile, Alabama.

It's not a pure quantum computer of course. It's an integrated three-way hybrid, with a classical electronic front-end backed by classical photonic processor arrays and specialized quantum-resolution electronic modules. I got the top-of-the-line model for a desk-sized unit, an Ariel 4700, and its ability to sift through combinations is awesome. The computer was Chanah's primary tool for cracking the data transforms.

After the breakthroughs, my four wives spent the next three months working furiously to translate the data. Almost all of the files are in English, the video and the text. It's an ancient language that Abigail is quite familiar with. The four have been off on their own doing the translation work, concentrating mostly with the text files.

I've done almost none of this work. There was just no time. The political maneuvering I needed to do as I approached my test for CL-28 was immense. My wives and I have had little more than brief sleep periods to be affectionate with each other. None of us wanted to talk much about our work, especially my wives until they have something major to report.

I have also been doing some specialized work with Sheffie, and with Chanah too for that matter. In some other research, Sheffie came up with a very novel way of using nano crystals in photonic switching. We both worked on the write-up which I then published under my name. The paper has been very well received. The Photonics Guild at Baalbek has been after me to visit and give a guest lecture. My paper is also dependent on some large scale quantum computations. It provides a good cover for the computer's real job.

Ah, home at last! I walked in through the front door. My four wives came running and knelt in supplication before me, beseeching me to accept their bondage. It's the traditional way wives of royalty are supposed to act, and I've heard many commanders and even managers and some laborers have begun to demand this evening ritual from their wives.

I gave the hand sign to show that their bondage was acceptable, and then reached over and typed in my personal code to completely seal my personal complex from monitors.

It's a burden for my wives, but there just isn't a good cover story for why I would want my living quarters unobserved while my wives are here but I'm not. Men are not observed without their consent during the hours of low impurity, but the privilege does not extend to women.

Fortunately for all of us, I have an excellent and acceptable reason why I don't want my private research spied upon, including the work of my wife-assistants. The four women spend most of their days in the lab, happily working on our plan to one day change the world.

Abigail studied the display closely after I finished typing, and called out, "Clear!" My four wives all rose off their knees smiling at me. I shook my head at the thought of the necessity of turning off the monitors. I had not given them permission to stop kneeling in reverence before me. A standard punishment for such gross negligence would be to have them all whipped, the leather strap for the first and perhaps the second offense, certainly the thin bamboo cane for the third.

Instead a few moments later we were all cuddling in loose sleep clothing playing on my huge bed. Whipping my wives?! The thought was unfathomable!

Abigail gave me an affectionate hug and then playfully pushed me down on the bed and sat on my groin. I had Michal and Sheffie by my sides, one in each arm, and Chanah was sitting above my head playing with my hair. Four delightful, beautiful women! Abigail wiggled her hips to get my attention.

"So, what do you think?"

"Hmmm, I think your hip bottom fits into me perfectly."

"Hah!" laughed Abby. "Ilias, be serious!" She kept up her gentle wiggling motion though, very playful. It felt delightful through the loose clothes.

I smiled. "The testing went fine. The martial arts, the theology, the... Sheffie! Your coaching was fabulous! High Tech put me through a huge amount of physics testing! If I had taken this same test two years ago, it would have been a disaster!"

She leaned in close and gave my ear an affectionate kiss and lick. "Just happy to do my part!"

Abigail continued her slow gyration across my groin. It was her way of nudging me to continue answering her question. I blew her a kiss. "Everything looks very promising. There was no problem with the testing, all the political agreements have been in place for months, there's a glaring need for another member on the Supreme Council, and I'm the only candidate."