The Preacher Man

Everything was going perfectly so far. Chanah, Sheffie, and Michal had made extensive modifications to my I.D. card during our short stay at Dakar. I assumed all the Australian programmers were logged into our private web. Finally and just as importantly, I had convinced the head monk Commander Mukhtar to send live holographic video of this ceremony to the world. As I had hoped, he was delighted by the idea. The ceremony is an act of subservience by the Cunif Califar to the Code of Bel'dar, and the monk thought that a live transmission of the ceremony was the perfect way to start the new Holy Decade.

My mind flashed back to a little jingle Chanah would hum under her breath as she did her intense work at Dakar. The words were strange, "On the Eighth Day of Judgment, my true love gave to me..." and so on. Chanah says she paraphrased the words of an ancient pre-War holiday song that she found in the music section of the crystals. It's an extremely old song, five-hundred years before the War of the Burning Metals at least, and maybe a whole lot more. A catchy little tune though, hard to get out of your mind once you start thinking about it.

It felt a little nostalgic being back in Babylon, knowing this was the one day during my entire reign that I would be allowed to be here. The monks have a sacred duty to execute any Royal within the city limits, my visit now being the sole exception. It was part of Bel'dar's brilliance, to separate sacred power from secular power, and put the sacred power into the hands of non-Royal monks.

I would never have been allowed to Ride the Lion as far as I did if the Lion were controlled by the capital. This was Bel'dar's mad genius, to separate the daily operations of the society from the lynchpins of its structure. The result was a stable form of government that has lasted more than eight thousand years. Evil ideas to be sure, but enduring ones.

It was time! Makhtar began the ceremony by called the Ceremony of the Recompilation to order. He inserted his authorization card into the terminal before us. I followed a few seconds later by inserting my own card, powering up the micro holo-emitter embedded within my I.D. I flashed Makhtar a bright smile as I did, hoping he wouldn't notice the faintest of flickers Chanah warned me might be there as my I.D. created a hologram inside the front-panel glass of the monitor screen.

Success! Makhtar just smiled back and started the formal Prayers. He was taking his time, savoring the moment, and I couldn't be happier. I silently recited a Prayer of Confidence during Makhtar's orations, waiting for my own turn to Pray publicly. I had chosen some of the longest passages from the Book of Bel'dar that I thought I could get away with.

According to our calculations, an out-of-tune pseudo-crystal inside my I.D. would slide the harmonic of our shielded hall just enough to let Boddington Control join the video feed through the portal. The monitor before us was hopefully flashing Makhtar all sorts of warning notices of the many operations that were now being done in the restricted kernel and data regions of the OS, but the hologram in the glass kept showing the dull status of an idle system. We were on our way!

Time: January 3, 8244 10:43 PM

Three days after returning to my palace at the capital, we were all excited about making our first contact with Australia since before Judgment. The monks of Babylon were not screaming for our execution, so our attempt at subterfuge appeared to have gone undetected. But was it successful?

The holographic video blinked into existence. Dalis looked at our questioning eyes and said, "Success, as far as we know." There were huge sighs of relief on our end.

That's all we needed to know. I was about to break the transmission when Chanah asked, "How much extra time did you have?"

"None at all, less than two minutes," Dalis replied, and with a quick nod between us we broke the link.

Dodi and Michal looked puzzled, my other wives looked terrified. "Two minutes?" whispered Abigail. "The Holy! We came that close to utter doom?!"

It had been a busy day for all of us. We retired to bed right after the conference. It was Michal's turn to sleep with me. I caressed her gently as we lay together, my mind filled with so many thoughts. Michal still looked puzzled.

"Abdul Hadi?" she whispered.

"Yes Michal?"

She didn't answer, not directly, but she did begin to pet me back. The caresses drifted towards sexuality, and then became intensely sexual as Michal rolled her body on top of mine and began to rub her vulva along my hardening cock. I realized Michal was already aroused, wet and open, and she positioned her body for coitus as soon as she had me stiff. I eagerly slid up inside her when she arched her hips for the entry.

We soon turned, Michal offering me the mount position. Her beautiful, shapely legs were curled up by my sides as I lay on her, pumping her, her hands caressing me and then gripping my body. As I neared orgasm, the backs of her heels pressed into my butt, trapping me within her as I released my seed. "So soft and silky smooth," I thought dimly to myself, as I added my moisture to hers. I felt her body shuddering underneath me as I inseminated her, pulsing my seed up into her female tract.

Michal is so sweet. My other wives tend to move around after sex, and our post-coitus sheets tend to get a bit messy. Michal likes to tuck a pillow under the bottom of her butt and raise the angle of her vagina. She likes to keep my cum within her, and I find her desire very touching. I was soon lying beside her again, drawing slow, lazy circles on her breasts with my fingertips, feeling her wiggle and getting comfortable as my semen pooled near her cervix at the far back wall of her vagina.

"Abdul Hadi?" she whispered sleepily.

I looked down at her peaceful and contented face. Her eyes were closed and she looked so beautiful, relaxed and enjoying the feel of the after-sex. I kissed her cheek. "Yes Michal?"

She sighed and blinked her eyes open, willing herself to be awake. "Oh, you are so incredibly kind to me! It goes against all my years of training to speak to you like this. You are the Cunif Califar! I should be in mortal fear of you!"

"Are you?"

Michal giggled. "No!"

I laughed back and kissed her again. "Chanah found a quote in a very interesting book. The quote said, love is patient. And I do love you Michal. I don't mind." I started kissing her again until she kissed back, slowly and sensuously and so full of promise. I finally came up for air and asked, "So what's your question?"

Michal nodded. "Abigail was my orientation guide this morning. She told me a little of our attempt to use the Ceremony of Recompilation to our advantage. But Abdul Hadi! What exactly did we do?"

"Well, our hope was that the head monk would set-up his I.D. to log into the system as prime-user. There was no particular reason to open up the system like that, but we hoped his ego would push him into doing it."

"Oh, I got that part. Abigail was very kind to explain about Australia, about how their programmers got prime-access to the source of the Z-prime-prime operating system. But what could they do? Don't the monks re-check every line of code after the ceremony?"

"They do indeed. Updates to the OS are only done once at the start of each Cunif Califar's reign. If a mistake slipped through, the Code of Bel'dar states the world has to live with it until the next ruler."

"Yes, so I don't understand. What could the women at Australia do?"

I smiled. "Chanah dreamed up the core of this. She realized that if the operating system is written in Z-prime-prime, then the compiler for Z-prime-prime is written in Z-prime-prime too."

"Sure. So what?"

"The Austalian women didn't modify the next release. They used their prime-user authority to modify the current complier, re-compile the compiler, and then delete all reference of their work from the security logs. Then they erased their modifications from the compiler source code and exited the system. Apparently just in time too."

"But..." Michal gasped as her sharp mind gasped the implication. "Oh!!!"

"Yes! The modification we made is that the Z-prime-prime compiler now tests to see if it is compiling its own source code, the source for the Z-prime-prime compiler, every time it compiles anything. If it is, it duplicates the extra object code into the new version of itself. And the source for this extra code can't be detected because it doesn't exist anymore. The only way to discover it would be to trace and understand each machine instruction during the recompilation, and the skills to do that haven't been around for thousands of years."

Michal nodded. "Besides replicating itself into the next generation, what does the code do?"

"Besides testing for compiling its own compiler, the code also tests if it is compiling the authentication function. If it is, it inserts some extra object code that accepts an alternative spectral response for prime-user login."

Michal was quiet for a moment, looking happy but very sleepy, and then she smiled. "Oh, I get it! Neat!"

I smiled back. "Yep! How do you communicate with someone in a shielded room? You shine an access request on the quantum foam with a valid user-ID, and then meet the spectral challenge. But prime-user is always a valid user-ID, and no matter what the monks set its spectral pass-code to, our alternative key will also work."

Michal nodded happily and yawned. "This is so neat! You'll be able to talk directly to the Code of Bel'dar."

"Well, not just talk to it. For all its abilities, it's just an algorithm. It might take some time to figure out how to do this, but we're going to change the Code. Sheffie calls it pivoting the religion."

"Umm Hmmm," Michal agreed sleepily. She petted my soft penis for a moment and then reached down and gently cupped my scrotum. "How long?" she mumbled. Her thumb began to softly caress my testes, long, light strokes.

I sighed and drifted in the pleasure of her loving kindness. "Until we can test?" I sighed, struggling to stay awake. "Our modifications won't become active until sometime in February. We'll probably make our first probes," I gave a deep yawn, "in March."

Michal nodded, her eyes closed. She snuggled up against me. After a moment she appeared to try to say something, but she just sighed instead and was deeply asleep a moment later. I placed my hand low on Michal's pubis, enjoying the silky softness of her fur. It felt so good to cuddle into her warmth and feel Michal's slow breathing with the palm of my hand. I soon met her again in a dream.

Chapter 50. Dawn of the Revolution

Time: July 4, 8244 11:48 AM

Taking over the Code of Bel'dar proved to be delightfully easy. The monks of Babylon completed the upgrade of their operating system in mid February and we began our probing soon afterwards. We were ready to make our first backdoor changes by early March.

The Australian women and my family have two objectives today with my meeting with the Babylonian monks. The first objective will be executed at noon. If successful, we are expecting a great deal of chaos at Babylon, and our second objective is to propagate our compiler changes discreetly into the historical archives. This will guarantee the existence of our backdoor regardless of whatever historical version of the OS is running. After all the years of intensive work and planning, our modifications to The Code of Bel'dar are about to pay off.

Pitiful! What a shock to see how simple The Code was! Even I who am not a professional programmer was startled by the awkward coding and lack of sophistication. During the months of analysis, the recoding team in Australia kept reminding me that The Code of Bel'dar was written in an era when photonic switches and quantum computers were in their infancy. And yet, this was The Code of Bel'dar! How could I have ever feared such a decrepit piece of flawed logic?

To put it bluntly, the thing is garbage, millions of lines of poorly written Z prime-prime that form a rat's nest of decision trees with a pathetic AI interface planted on top. I think I understand now why AI research is forbidden. It would be so easy to construct interfaces with modern coding techniques that would make The Code of Bel'dar look ridiculous. And yet in the hands of its champions, The Code had ruled the sacred world with absolute might for over eight thousand years.

Bel'dar was fond of making announcements on days tied to special events of the solar calendar, so we waited until the Southern hemisphere winter solstice on June 26th to have The Code come alive with our new messages. To the astonished monks of Babylon, The Code made loud but vague complaints against the senior leadership of the world and directed the monks to be at a large auditorium on July 4th in Bandar Arenas. The monks were to bring before them all of Ruling Royalty. The Code could then pronounce Judgment.

My own council was flabbergasted over this decree, but it was a direct sacred order and I complied in a timely manner, meeting with all the Domines as they flew in from around the world. I dedicated the second largest hall in my palace for the meeting. It seats well over four thousand people.

As soon as The Code was informed of my compliance, it issued new orders. It made the unprecedented move of ordering all Babylonian Commander monks (CL-15 to CL-8) and Upper-Level Manager monks (CL-6 and CL-7), and I mean all of them, to travel to Bandar Arenas without delay and witness The Code's high-noon pronouncement.

A short history on the monks of Babylon: Not since Bel'dar himself has sacred power and secular power resided in one person. The two lines of authority were split that long ago. Babylon has its standard quota of 3,900 Priests, but except for the CL-2 Priests of Lower Labor, Babylonian Priests are also monks, special Priests entrusted with protecting and maintaining The Code of Bel'dar.

It is a revered position to be a Babylonian monk. The positions are eagerly sought after by many young Priests who have failed to be in the top 1% of their childhood class and thus have no chance for Royalty. The only way to enter the Sacred Order is at the first adult promotional gate, when CL-2s petition for CL-3 two years after becoming adults.

By tradition, CL-2 Priests reared at the capital or currently stationed at Babylon are not eligible. . Bel'dar was quite determined to limit contact between the secular and sacred capitals as much as possible. The Order of monks was thus created to be a self-electing body, and they invite whom they chose of the successful petitioners. Acceptance is life-long. The only way to leave the Order is through death.

There is also a strong correlation between the monks and the Health faction. It is perhaps not surprising. Society's sacred functions are based on medical expertise, the human genome modifications and the drugs for anti-aging and eternal virginity. Historically, eighty percent of monks come from the twenty percent of monasteries that are in Health-faction townships.

The current head monk CL-15 Makhtar spared no expense and chartered three large commercial jets to fly his Order to Bandar Arenas. The largest would carry all of the 213 Commander monks (from CL-15 to CL-8), and the others would transport his 134 CL-7 and 218-CL-6 managers. I offered to fly Makhtar and his highest Commanders to the capital in one of my private ramjets, the top three CL-15 and five CL-14 monks of the Babylonian adult monastery.

Makhtar's holographic image stared at me in horror when I made my suggestion. Perhaps he was remembering the last group of people who flew in my personal ramjet. I assured him my offer was one of simple cordiality, and I even offered to be on the plane myself and travel with them. Makhtar rebuked me for making what he considered an improper offer of familiarity, and flew in with his other Commanders.

Undaunted, I offered Makhtar the privilege of leading the morning Prayer service at my great capital cathedral, and on this point he graciously accepted. He gave hard sermons during the hours of the Prayer of Wonder and the Prayer of Counted Failures, stressing that The Code of Bel'dar must be eternally and absolutely obeyed, even to the point of death. Staring at the Guards during the service, he reminded them that the lack of doubt is the first pillar of faith of the true believer.

My Royal guards were clearly unhappy about the likely prospect of being ordered to assassinate one or more members of Ruling Royalty and possibly even me, but the central tenets of the religion left them no choice. After morning Prayers, Makhtar was busy checking with his technicians on the quantum encrypted link to Babylon. He then confirmed to Aleser that the auditorium presentation system was in direct and infallible holographic contact with The Code's Judgment. Aleser swore a sacred oath that his Guards would faithfully carry out The Code's orders, no matter what they were.

The Domines and I sat at one side of the great hall while the 565 monks sat with their ceremonial weapons near the center. Surrounding us were more than a thousand of fully armed Guard, five-hundred along the perimeter of the main floor, and the remainder in the circling balcony. My entire council, including Jibran, looked as if they were mentally preparing themselves for death. The Code of Bel'dar had not ordered the death of a Ruling Royal since the end of the Wild Times, not directly, but it appeared the long period of inactivity was about to end.

Jibran was sitting next to me. He noticed that my eyes were half closed, and he glanced up at the clock. "Three minutes Abdul Hadi," he whispered softly.

I fully opened my eyes, stretched, and nodded.

He watched my slow breathing for a moment and commented, "I must say Abdul Hadi, you seem remarkably calm about this."

I sighed. "Resigned might be a better word."

"Yes, perhaps. I wish I had your stoicism. I do not wish to be killed by..." He stopped himself before he could commit blasphemy.

"By The Code of Bel'dar, you mean?" I whispered, trying to be helpful.

Jibran stared at my smile for a moment until he finally cracked one of his own. "You shame me Abdul Hadi. I can't match your liking for dark humor."

"Perhaps it's an acquired taste," I said shrugging.

"Oh, very likely," agreed Jibran. He then turned to face the monks, and we spent the remainder of the three minutes waiting in silence.

At noon precisely The Code of Bel'dar came alive on the holo-screen and pronounced its Dark Judgment. It severely rebuked and then condemned the sacred monks present for the recent changes they had made in the operating system. To the gasps of many, The Code sentenced them all to death, with the executions to be carried out immediately. The Code then signed a symbol signifying its pronouncement was both sacred and final. Active transmission ended right after the symbol was shown.

There were perhaps two or three seconds of frozen time in the auditorium, and then more than a hundred Guards began firing. The hundred executioners quickly turned into a thousand. The air became filled with a high-pitched angry whine as a dense cloud of supersonic needles blanketed the monks' position. The monks were in a state of absolute shock and denial, unable to believe what was happening. They had no chance to defend themselves. A very few did manage to throw their ceremonial weapons, the most common being a short hatchet with a razor-sharp blade on one end and a needle spike on the other.

The hatchets are balanced for throwing, and are sometimes referred to as a Bel'dar cutter. They are not as effective as a good throwing knife of course, but they're still a weapon you have to respect. Unfortunately for the monks, they were not particularly close to my Guard, and the Guardsmen easily dodged the throws with their classic ballet-type moves. It brought back sharp memories of my training with them.