The Preacher Man

My eyes went wide. "You're not still..."

"Huh? Oh! No, of course not! We kept the deception going for two Holy Decades. At the High Judgment of 8268, we confessed everything, all our secrets, how we hacked The Code of Bel'dar, our new holographic science, absolutely everything. The world was a completely different place by then. People begged us to forgive them for ever making such deceptions necessary."

I nodded, my mind in deep thought. "You know, it was Providential that the Nikahaldi booby-trapped their airlock the way they did. If they didn't turn me into an eternal virgin, I would have had no way to avoid the scanners, nor to leave the building. I would have died in the 2:15 explosion, and the world's adult and teenage population would have been doomed. It was Providential..."

"Oh yes. You're not the first one to advance that theory. And how we barely got all the data out in time, miraculous! "

I grinned. "So, if I don't govern, what's my life been like? What do I do?"

"Well, you like to exercise a lot, and you really enjoy touring the world and appreciating its beauty, but mostly, you preach!"

"I what?!"

"Beautiful sermons Abdul Hadi, once a month! On the first day of every month, we fly to a new township and are their guests for a month as you write a new sermon."

I just gulped and stared at her.

"You write notes and build a sermon. Then you give the sermon at the town's cathedral at the end of the month, and we depart the next day. In ten years, we cover all 120 townships. Then we start the cycle all over again, visiting the townships in different seasons. The cathedrals are always packed! People travel from around the world just to hear you."

"My gosh..."

"Beautiful sermons, Abdul Hadi, really. They touch our souls. They're so lovely!"

There was a knock at the door. Eleora glanced at the time, 4:00 AM sharp. "Come on in!" she called out.

The door opened and two women entered. Abigail was wearing a bathrobe and the other woman a lab coat.

"Abby!" I cried out.

"This is my cue to leave," said Eleora with a smile. We shared a quick kiss and then she went and stood by the doorway, not quite departing.

The woman with the lab coat came by my bedside carrying a modest sized case. "Good morning father. Accept me as your doctor?"

Her voice, her eyes! "Of course Kefira. Such a pleasure to see you as an adult!"

She nodded back with an easy smile and then pulled out an instrument I didn't recognize. "I need to examine your eyes father. I want to place this around your head. You'll see tiny, multi-colored dots moving around, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Just relax. You don't have to do anything except keep your eyes open. You can focus on the dots or not, it doesn't matter."

"Okay, sounds easy."

Kefira nodded. The test was actually somewhat pleasant. The head device was light, and Kefira's hands were both adept and loving as she held my head during the test. And then she started to gasp. "Clear EM echoes! I'm getting EM echoes on the retina synapses, clear and strong, no clouds at all!" she cried.

"There was also a strong confirming link to 8244 memory," Eleora called from the doorway.

Kefira removed the eye examiner from my head and nodded and wiped her tears on the sleeve of her lab coat. She looked me in the eyes. "Father, prepare yourself to be hugged by me later. But for now, this is mother Abigail's time." And then Kefira turned and left the room with Eleora, closing the door behind them.

Abby climbed into bed with me. My mind was flooded with so many emotions and thoughts, it was difficult to speak. So we just held each other for a while, not saying anything.

As Abby felt me rest, she sat up briefly to shed her robe, returning to snuggle with me naked. She rested her head on my shoulder, sighing deeply as I petted her hip. She draped her arm lightly across me. "Oh, so many years Abdul Hadi. Have you guessed? About today?"

I gasped as I tried to speak. Tried again. "I'm daring to hope. I'm not an eternal virgin anymore, am I?"

"No. As of today, no. Welcome home husband. Tomorrow, this day will be as clear to you as it is to me."

"How..."

Abigail giggled. And my heart broke at the sound of her sweet laughter. "You can thank your daughter! Well, not just her of course. But Kefira has been leading the charge on this work for the last seventy years. She dedicated her brilliance and her life to it."

Abby held me in her arms, gently petting me until I shuddered and started to cry. Abby turned and started kissing my cheek and crying with me.

"I know, I know," she whispered. "Sweet servant of the Guide, we've won!"

Chapter 60. Publisher's Note

So ends the First Tower of the Servant of the Guide. Readers will also want to see the Second Tower, Abdul Hadi's collection of over eight hundred sermons written in his six Holy Decades as an eternal virgin. The Second Tower is of course the foundation of our modern catechisms.

Abdul Hadi's Third Tower has the popular but unofficial title of "And The Government Shall Be Upon His Shoulders," and details the period from 8316 to 8447, describing the creation of the modern government and ending with the celebration on the six-day Preacher's Judgment of 8448 and the start of the current Holy Millennium. The reader may wonder why we still base our calendar from the date Bandar the Wanderer entered the city of Punta Arenas after the global nuclear war, but Bel'dar's calendar was admired by Abdul Hadi, and we keep it as a sign of our respect for the true preacher.

For pure emotional appeal, Abdul Hadi's unfinished Fourth Tower is without question his finest work. The love poetry he wrote with his wives and the ballets he co-authored with the legendary musician Hadassa are incredibly beautiful.

Two notes on township legends. Confirming evidence was discovered centuries ago that Abdul Hadi originally wanted to title his First Tower "Dark Judgment", but at the pleading of his wives who were editing the manuscripts, he agreed to change the title to "The Preacher Man", even though he told his wives he found the title somewhat embarrassing.

A more interesting confirmation of a township legend occurred just three years ago, in the discovery of a series of private communications among Abigail, Eleora, and Kefira from the year 8315. A safe and effective cure for eternal virginity had been verified in December of 8314, based on viral-enhanced stem cells that would re-generate the critical memory processing abilities of the brain. But the cure required resources that were scarce at the time, and it would take three years to cure all those afflicted, over ten million women and one man. Historical medical records show that the last woman was cured in November of 8317.

Throughout 8315, Abdul Hadi's wives would ask him to accept the cure, and every day he would decide anew to refuse, saying that as the last person to be afflicted, it was fair that he wait to be the last person cured. We know now that Eleora made a personal plea to Abdul Hadi in late 8315, begging him that her life was almost over and it was breaking her heart to live her last years while her husband was still not cured of his affliction. In love for his wife, Abdul Hadi agreed to begin treatment on December 24, 8315. Eleora died at 104, in October of 8317.

And so here we are now, a thousand years after the time death freed Abdul Hadi from his mortal body. We owe the man so much. We don't live in paradise, and each generation seems to find a new challenge that it must face. But nothing over these last thousand years compares to the nightmare times from which Abdul Hadi woke us. The musician Hadassa in the First Tower was perfectly correct to call him our savior. And he is more. The Servant of the Guide taught us how to live, and he taught us how to Pray.

The Central Publishers of

The Islands of New Jerusalem

Judgment 4, 9570