Chapter 49: On the Eighth Day of Judgment

Time: Judgment 8, 8244, 11:40 AM

"Well, okay so far. Try to stay calm Ilias," I thought to myself, and then my face almost broke into a grin. After all the months of hearing absolutely no one make that mistake, I made it myself. "Relax, Abdul Hadi," I thought, as I looked around the Babylonian hall and tried to appear cheerful. "Pray if you want."

The hall was magnificent. The monks take a vow of poverty, but that does not apply to their common areas. I was surrounded both by monks with ceremonial weapons and my own Royal Guard with more modern weapons. Not that the two sides would go to war with each other. Within the city limits of Babylon, and even worldwide under some special circumstances, command authority of the Guard falls to the head monk of Babylon. If he ordered my Guard to kill me, they would, as long as the order was seen to be a sacred one flowing from the Code of Bel'dar.

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.