The Preacher Man

Eleora smiled at me with indulging amusement. She knows of my childlike love for solar geology. "Ah Abdul Hadi, as a matter of fact, yes, this is Judgment 1."

I looked again out the window. "But this can't be Karbala! Where are we?"

"You're right about being on an island. We're at the construction site of a new township. The town's name hasn't been picked yet. That will happen later today. The old name of the island is Lanzarote."

I blinked. "Oh. The Canary Islands?"

Eleora laughed. "Yep!" She kissed me and then pointed to the dawn with a frail arm. "Africa is just a short 200 km hop from here!"

I laughed back and then blushed. "Forgive me, but you look so ill! But you're not ill, are you?"

"Nope! This is what the body of an old woman is supposed to look like. This is what's normal for a hundred and two years old!" She kissed me fiercely before I could reply.

I laughed again when Eleora broke the kiss and began licking my ear. Such a tease! She knows how much this tickles me, remembers our wedding night! I tried to get back to the conversation. "A hundred and two, huh? What's the date?"

The soft tongue stopped its teasing, as least for the moment. "Judgment 1, 8316."

I blinked, the reality of her words finally crashing in on our playfulness. "My Holy! The start of the new Holy Century, the seven-day Judgment. So many years Eleora! What happened?"

She was about to answer, but we wound up getting back to kissing first. It was pure love and kindness for a while, but the platonic nature of our caresses didn't last. I was amazed how easy it was to slide from simple caring love to eroticism. Our tongues were playing with each other, and her skin felt like fine, worn leather. Our flesh was pressing against each other, and our hands were very active in expressing our appreciation. I moaned at how much my body loved her body. A strong, bony hand replied by gripping my penis firmly. Eleora began to stroke me. I was soon gasping in the pleasure, thrusting my erection in harmony with her pulsing grip.

"Eleora?" I whispered and panted.

"Hush my love, unless you want me to stop." She sat up and turned. Soon her mouth joined her hands at my penis and sac. Warm slick moisture everywhere, and a wet fingertip teasing and probing me lightly at my anus. I panted and rocked my hips, rolling with the sexuality until I felt myself nearing orgasm. The wet finger then pushed hard against my asshole, sliding and entering me and hooking my rectum. I gasped as Eleora started pumping my prostate, just as her suckle lifted to my penis head and intensely simulated me there. I spurted into my wife's loving and hungry mouth.

Eleora purred when I had finished. "Hmmm. My beautiful lion! And so tasty too!" She sat up and sat on me, her groin against my spent but still wet cock. She took it in her hands and worked my erection for a while, making me fully stiff again, and then she pushed the velvet nose partway into her wet vagina. I felt my manhood held in a soft and silky circular embrace. Eleora began to hump her pubis down, impaling herself on my male eagerness for her.

She looked at me, her eyes bright and her body flush with desire. "See? I like to Ride the Asad too!"

I grinned. "And how far do you want to ride?"

"To orgasm of course! Just be a little gentle, no swift hammers against my old bones. I'll be okay."

I thrust up into her very gently at first, learning to make love to her all over again. Her hands came to my nipples as she rode, and we communicated to each other without words. She would bear down and grind her pubis into me when she wanted me to be fiercer, squeezing my nipples to encourage me. And then she would lift up her hips away from me and gently caress me across my breasts when she wanted me to slow down. The time flowed without notice. There was nothing else in the universe, no other concerns at all, until my beautiful wife collapsed on me crying. I caressed her thin butt as her body shuddered in orgasm.

Quick pecks of appreciation as she at last unsheathed my wilting penis from her womanhood. "See? Not bad, huh?"

"Oh no!" I laughed. "You definitely passed and can ride the lion again!"

We spent a number of minutes in the easy playfulness of post-coitus, affectionately cleaning each other's bodies with our mouths. Eventually though, my curiosity overwhelmed me. "Eleora, how..."

She nodded. "Yes, how indeed! It's all in your marriage book there," she said pointing, "But I'd much rather tell you in person. What would you like to know first?"

I smiled and then drew thoughtful. "You must have done this so many times, you probably know my first question. You're very kind and patient to do this."

"Nonsense! Abdul Hadi, don't think like that! And to answer your question about how many times, lots, about once every six days! I share you with my sister wives."

My heart broke. "They're all still alive!"

"Of course! And in this very building! And looking a lot sexier than I do, I assure you! They're all on the anti-aging drugs. I'm not."

I nodded eagerly for her to go on.

"Kefira is here at Lanzarote too."

"Kefira! She's here?!"

"Of course! She's your personal physician."

"My what?!"

"And she's here now, with her husband and daughter too, for the celebration." Eleora paused. "But I'm getting way ahead of myself. Abdul Hadi, ask me another question, and be assured, you are not a robot. Your questions are different, one day to the next."

"Okay. What are we celebrating?"

"Well, for one thing, the naming of the new township. Think fast husband! There's a ceremony at noon today. You'll be expected to announce a new name."

"Me?"

"Well of course! Come up with something by noon, something good." She laughed. "Local time, it'll feel more like late afternoon. Sunset today is at 1:19 PM."

"So we're building more townships, huh?"

"Yes, twenty-one new townships in all."

I paused. "Is the population growing?"

"Yep." She saw me sigh and laughed. "Abdul Hadi, relax! We're growing to a new equilibrium. We're growing because temporarily we have a very young population, no one is dying. Our birth rate is rock stable at 120,000 per year and we intend to keep it that way, at least for a long while. The population should stabilize at 28.5 million."

"Ah... Okay. An extra 3.5 million, an extra 21 townships, okay... And I get to name this one?"

"Yep. Think up something good."

"Wow, what an honor, okay." I paused. "What are the new Guilds?"

"That's still being decided, but the focus will be on the arts. There will be ten townships in the New Zeeland / Australia area, including one at Boddington. That's obvious, the place is a paradise! The focus for that ten will be in the medical arts. And then ten townships down the west coast of Africa, focusing on the performing arts, music, dance, drama..."

"Wow. Sound's idyllic. Nothing in Eurasia?"

"No. We're keeping the old custom of having Anqara be the farthest township from the capital. We've leaving the other half of the planet as a free preserve."

I nodded. "An excellent idea. And the Canary Islands? What's its Guild?"

"Ah, these islands will be unique. Guildless, an amusement park."

"Huh?"

"Well, not just an amusement park, though there will certainly be lots of facilities for play. But it will also be a place for retreats, for meditation and reflection, probably the site of our finest museums too. It will be a reminder to the world to always keep its sanity, to always appreciate beauty, and to always be considerate. I don't know if I'm saying this right."

"Oh, I think you're doing a fine job."

"The world's core library and publishing facilities will probably be here too, to show that knowledge and associations should be free." She saw me smiling at her. "What?"

"Eleora, for you to be here, I must have succeeded beyond my wildest imagination. I must have uncovered the secret of the death trigger, not just the anti-aging drugs."

"Yes, that is true. Forgive me for babbling about 8316. I'm sure you'd rather hear about 8244."

I nodded.

"You managed to output every single file from the Nikahaldi archive. In took over eight hours. It was absolutely critical that we got it all. The technical readouts for anti-aging drug fabrication were distributed over hundreds of files, each one critical. We had our first emergency production facility going in less than three months, early February, and had everybody injected by the end of March."

"Wow. Close. How did it work out?"

"Almost complete success. There were a few hundred deaths later in 8245 and 8246 from old males who seemed to have suffered a delayed anti-aging withdrawal. Old men who were all over two hundred years to begin with. Otherwise complete success." She paused and sighed. "Our friend Ammar didn't make it."

I sighed. "Ah... A good friend..."

"Oh yes, a fine man..." Eleora finally returned to my original question. "There were also technical specs on how to turn off the death trigger for people who have never had the drug. The procedure is actually a bit different for males and females. We concentrated on the female branch of course."

I nodded. "Is there a safe way to wean a person from the drug?"

"No, none whatsoever. It's a choice every child has to make before their thirteenth year, start taking the drug annually and live to be three hundred in a youthful body, or deactivate the death trigger and age like the original humans. No one chooses the second path Abdul Hadi, no one."

"Well, I guess I'm not surprised. But that means we're still in danger if we lose the drugs again."

"Oh, we're okay. By law, every township in the world must have its own manufacturing facilities for the drug. It's freely available. Our species is safe." She paused and added, "unless our society goes and does something really stupid again."

"Yeah..." I nodded, and then remember something she said earlier. "Eight hours of technical readouts?!"

"Yes! More actually, just a few minutes shy of nine."

"How did I do that?!"

"By being absolutely brilliant!"

"Yes, but... Oh Eleora! Don't tease me!" We were both laughing so hard we could barely speak.

"Okay, okay, I'll tell you. You remember the day?"

"Remember?! I was there an hour ago! Everything is crystal clear."

"Excellent! That's diagnostic! An additional confirmation!"

"Huh? A confirmation of what?"

"Oh! I shouldn't have said that. Please be patient with me. We've all promised Abigail we'd let her tell you. Trust me?"

"Okay." I waited for Eleora to tell her story.

Chapter 59. ...Are Sent From Heaven Above

Time: Judgment 1, 8316 3:43 AM

As Eleora stretched, I lay back and relaxed, at peace and admiring the bright morning sunlight washing the room from the eastern bay windows. Then my wife closed her eyes and brought us back to 8244 with her words.

"I remember this so clearly. We were at mission operations, in the command post two kilometers south of the Academy. Kefira was doing an excellent job of being visible on the global holocasts without getting in anybody's way. I remember being amazed that a twelfth-year could have such a commanding presence. We all cheered when you activated the holo-feed from the lobby and let us see you, and then cried when we saw the activated auto-destruct sequence."

Eleora opened her eyes. "Well, we and the rest of the world followed you along your journey. Abigail starting screaming and calling for you to turn back at the third airlock. She could read the ancient symbols. She called the language Spanish."

I interrupted. "Like Spain? Didn't they own these islands?"

"Yes, I believe they did. Anyway, once you entered the airlock, the holovideo switched to the view from the control room. There was no way to warn you!" Eleora paused and sighed. "It was so awful when we saw you getting hit with the eternity drugs. We couldn't believe the look of triumph on your face as your mind was mutilated. It was Kefira who first realized why you were smiling."

"Ah, my sweet daughter. She's so smart."

Eleora laughed. "Light-years beyond smart! Abdul Hadi, you have no idea! Anyway, we watched you wait patiently until 12:35 PM when the airlock opened. You leaped out and got to work hacking the console."

I sighed. "Wow. I remember wanting to do that, planning to do that, but I have no memory of actually doing it."

"No, of course not. Six minutes Abdul Hadi! You hacked the system in six minutes! The mission team was astonished. We lost our holovideo of you then, at 12:41 PM."

I nodded. "Yes, that was the plan, use all available bandwidth to transmit the files."

"The mirroring system was working fine, multiple copies of everything you sent were being created all over the world. The concept of too many backups just didn't exist, not for this."

Eleora paused for a moment, sighing before continuing. "By 1:30 PM, we guessed you would be entering your sleep cycle. All my sister-wives and I were beginning to come around to Kefira's perspective, that having you in a primary purge coma at 2:15 PM would not be such a bad thing."

"At 2:00 PM we got our first report from worldwide mission analysis. There were numerous technical details on the anti-aging drugs, but many, many critical files were almost certainly still missing. We were going to fail."

Eleora shuddered. "The next fifteen minutes were the most awful of my life, and they would have been even worse without Kefira. We hugged each other and wept the whole time. And then 2:15 PM came, and there was no explosion. And then 2:16 came, and no explosion. And the files kept coming."

"It was miraculous Abdul Hadi! No explosion and the files kept coming. The excitement and suspense of not understanding was incredible! I tried to use one of your tricks to calm myself. I watched the shadows of the day as the afternoon progressed. The sun finally set at 7:26 PM, and still the files were coming. I remember watching the fall of the twilight. And then a few minutes after 8 PM, a beautiful full moon began to rise in the sky. It was so pretty, and it seemed like a beautiful omen. I remember it being 9 PM, and the data still kept coming. Then it was 9:30 PM, and the data still kept coming."

"At 9:31 PM the exterior airlock cycled and you came running out of the building. You raced south towards the mission operations bunker. You made it back to us at 9:36 PM carrying a bunch of notes. Data transmission completed at 9:37 PM. The Nikahaldi library had been fully drained. At 9:38 PM the complex exploded."

Eleora shuddered. "I can still remember how the room shook. The explosion was huge, almost nuclear! It took more than a decade to repair the damage. Thank the Holy the township had been evacuated."

I grinned at her. "So tell me of my brilliance!"

"Okay. This was from your notes. We still have them, by the way. They're on public display at your palace at Bandar Arenas."

I was shocked. "It's still my palace?!"

"Well of course! You are Cunif Califar! No one's ever going to take that away from you Abdul Hadi!"

"But... But I'm an eternal virgin! I can't govern!"

"Well, no. Jibran is first facilitator of council operations now. He's CL-30."

"What? First facilitator?"

"Oh, the government has changed a lot since 8244 Abdul Hadi, a lot and for the better."

"Ah. And we're still using Citizen Levels?"

Eleora nodded. "Oh yes. We still want to run the society as a meritocracy. There's a little bit of seniority mixed in too."

"Hmmm?"

"Well, the system's changed a little."

"Tell me?"

"Sure. There's no culling of course, and everything one has free access to the anti-aging drugs for life. All boys and girls are CL-0, a white cycle with a black outline. All children become CL-1 adults on Judgment 1 of their twentieth year. In the following years as adults, they are free to take promotional testing at any Judgment, as often as they like. Think of a matrix with the CL on one axis and the age by year on the other. For each cell, exactly one in thirty will advance to the next Citizen Level, regardless of how many take the test. Promotion is based purely on relative performance."

I laughed. "So for any cell, if only one in thirty take the test, they all pass?"

"That's right. But the number seeking advancement is always higher than that, usually about 20%."

I nodded. "And you always compete only within your own age group?"

"That's right, to the single year of your birth. The lowest Citizen Levels thus become depopulated as the generation ages. We think this is the best way. It's a challenging meritocracy, but there's also some kindness and consideration and respect for age. The system is balanced to have on average one CL-31. Abdul Hadi, I could go into a lot more detail. Do you want me to?"

"Uh... No. Take us back to 8244."

Eleora nodded. "This is from your notes. You are in the Nikahaldi control room at 12:41 PM and facing a 2:15 PM detonation. There's not enough time for you to exit the building. You have completed your planned mission, but it's just not like you to be idle. So you sit and try to think of something to do to improve your position. And then you have an epiphany. You can run a diagnostic test on intruder sensitivity. You modify the sensor arrays to make them as detuned and insensitive as possible, and then you run the system that way in a diagnostic loop test."

Eleora shuddered. "I know this as a doctor. The first forced sleep cycle right after eternity injection burns the brain. The coma is brutally deep. A little after 1:30 PM, you picked what you thought was the most difficult spot in the security center for the sensors to lock scanners on you, and you collapsed there shortly afterwards. In your state of near death, the out-of-balance sensors could no longer see you. In the Holy's mercy, the fuzzy-logic concluded there was no one in the building and cancelled auto-destruct."

I shivered. "Of course, when I woke up..."

"Yes, sensors re-established a lock on you at 5:38 PM and initialized a new auto-destruct countdown. You woke up a few minutes later and began to read your notes. You told us this part yourself, later in the evening. You decided to wait around in the control room for a while, in case your attempt to leave would trigger an earlier detonation." There was a pause, and then Eleora wailed, "Oh husband!"

"Huh? What?"

"You were actually going to stay there the whole time, just to maximize the chance that the data transmission would finish."

"I was?" I paused for a moment. "Yeah, I can see myself thinking that. But I didn't?"

Eleora whispered. "No. Sometime after 7 PM, you said your Guide came to you, stood by your side and within you and told you to leave, and as His servant, you obeyed."

"My Holy, really?" I whispered back. "That sounds... That sounds... Eleora, I don't know why, but that feels like my dream. I was dreaming something just now, before I woke up I mean, and that feels like... Oh, I can't remember... I can't remember... Perhaps it was just a dream."

Eleora shrugged. "Perhaps. But Kefira didn't think so. She went ballistic with the idea. Five minutes after the explosion, live on holocast before the world, Kefira announced she also had a vision from The Holy!"

"She didn't?!"

"She did! She said that the promised miracles two, three, and four had been given to you. That as a sign of Holy Judgment and Mercy, that Abigail, Shephatiah, and Chanah were now free from their eternal virginities. And that the fifth miracle would be when the Servant of the Guide was cured, but that the world would have to work long and hard for the fifth miracle, as ransom payment for its sins."

I was speechless. My jaw dropped. Finally I whispered, "Did it work?"

Eleora laughed. "I know your old analogy about throwing the Holy's dice. Well, Kefira threw the dice up to the moon! Yes, it worked! Your three wives were medically examined and found to be completely free of the mind mutilation. And the world went crazy!"