 
The Acid Trips of Saint John The Divine

The Second Book of Revelations

Mel C. Thompson

Copyright © 2013, 2017, 2018

Mel C. Thompson Publishing Company

Mel C. Thompson Publishing Company

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Table of contents

1. Living In Exile

2. Helen

3. Guided By The Holy Ghost

4. Three Dancing Ladies

5. A Death Threat

6. The Horse of Mockery

7. An Assassination Plot

8. Fifteen Sailboats

9. The Governor's Mansion

10. The Power of Her Orgasms

11. More Liquid Opium

12. The Erotic Adventure Room

13. God Calls His Prophets

14. The Presence of Blood And Death

15. Giant Carnivorous Beetles

_16. Who Am I To Judge The World?_

_17. The Wine Bill_

_18. Are_ _You Afraid of God?_

_19._ _One Man's Poison_

_20. Chanting The Funereal Hymns_

_21. The Ungrateful Wretches_

_22. T_ _his Immortal City_

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1. Living In Exile

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St. John was tripping hard a lot of the time. No one on the island would figure out what the milky liquid was for a while. But for days on end, he would sit in his room and dose on it. He would blend up certain herbs with water and a kind of paste from a small jar. The herbs were of several varieties and colors, and he had a small mortar and pestle which he used to pulverize them to a pulp. He would spend many minutes, sometimes a half hour, mixing and remixing the ingredients together until it all resembled a heavy, creamy gravy. It produced long hallucinogenic trips, not unlike the acid trips that people would undergo nineteen centuries later.

Because St. John was paranoid, he liked to tell everyone who lived around him at the resort, which was situated on a very nice island in the Mediterranean, that he was living in exile. The truth was that a rich patron who owned the island was amused by St. John and allowed him to have a type of monk's cell which was at the end of a row of such cells that housed many spiritual seekers of several religions. Many of them spent their days in fervent prayer, or were regularly engaged in long, drawn-out cultic rituals and/or trying to have highly-spiritualized versions of god-realization-sex, similar to what was later known to be tantric sex. In any case, the rooms were rented by people trying to engage in serious spiritual feats, and it sometimes annoyed them to have this mentally-ill person on dope living down the hall writing scriptures based on these protracted drug voyages.

As for the owner of the complex, he would just wave off the complaints of the others. St. John was charming to him. He was kept there because St. John kept his end of the bargain, which was to allow all of his psychedelic prose-poems to be read to the owner while the owner ate his gourmet dinners and drank large goblets of fine wine. If St. John was too hysterical to read the works in person, the owner would hire the most talented of the tenants to give dramatic readings of the newest works, often combining them with St. John's older pieces, pieces they all enjoyed hearing over and over again. The proprietor liked these spoken-word recitals so much that he would often wave away would-be lovers in order to hear everything St. John had to say.

The work did not come every day; and since St. John slept through whole weeks in states bordering on profound depression, or was in raging ecstasies for several nights on end, there was no telling when he would be productive. When he was productive, as far as the owner was concerned, the recitals of the works came first and all other activities would have to wait.

* * *

Everyone knew that St. John's real name was Marcus Alexander, a man from a mixed Greco-Roman family of middling status. How he ended up on the island was clear enough. He'd once had a wife, but never sired a child with her due to his subconsciously conflicted attitudes about sex, attitudes that blossomed into fully psychotic reactions later on. His family was able to care for the increasingly mentally-ill man for a while, but later decided to send him away for a month or two in hopes that some relaxation on a nice island retreat would do him some good.

The owner of the spiritual resort wrote back with unequivocal news that the doctor on the island had pronounced Marcus Alexander incurably insane. And furthermore, to make matters even messier, Marcus had developed something similar to what was later to be called Multiple Personality Disorder. In short, the seemingly-rational man known as Marcus Alexander was only occasionally available to other people. Most of the time he spent in the persona of St. John The Divine. The family replied, saying that they were running out of funds to support their son at the resort, but the owner informed them that he had taken a liking to the madman who was alternately Marcus Alexander and St. John The Divine, and that all his expenses would be borne by the property owner himself. Given the extent of his holdings, and the fact that there were always unrented rooms and left-over food, the burden would be almost nothing.

Additionally, one of the cultic sex priestesses had found something charismatic in this dual person, so much so that she had become his devoted sex partner and spiritual mate. She had started a small temple there for people of her sect to pilgrimage to. The venture was successful and she was able to pay handsome rent to the land owner and pocket a lot of extra cash for herself.

Hence, St. John was a very well-looked-after man, having a kindly family of modest means on the mainland, a generous patron underwriting his basic survival expenses on the island, and a prosperous concubine willing to handle any extra costs associated with maintaining his health and well-being, in so far as it could be maintained.

In any case, all of these sources of support proved to be themselves redundant since representatives of delusional priests from the mainland who were exposed to his works, works which they believed constituted legitimate additions to the cannon of scripture already accumulated, would press large donations, gathered by various congregations for St. John's support, into the hands of the owner. The owner, not needing these funds, and not willing to embezzle from a sickly mental patient, set up a kind of trust fund with a financial institution on the mainland.

St. John believed himself to be exiled and impoverished, and had grown attached to that identity, so much so that he was offended by the initial offerings proffered by the churches. Not knowing what else to do, but determined to see to it that they contributed to St. John's efforts, they forced the money into the hands of the resort owner who then had servants carry the donations back to the trust fund holder on the mainland. In modern terms, St. John was a future millionaire who preferred to keep his vows of poverty.

On the mornings he awoke as Marcus Alexander, he was informed of the immensity of the trust fund that awaited him should he ever return home. But he did not trust himself in regular society and cities. He figured, should he ever take his multiple-persona act to the mainland, he'd make a mess of things or end up in prison, or in an asylum for madmen. Marcus Alexander wasn't around much, but when he was, he had it explained to him very clearly who St. John The Divine was; and Marcus did not want St. John The Divine freaking people out back home. So on this island he planned to stay and live out the majority of his life as someone he did not know, a man who claimed to be a direct Apostle of Jesus, a man who claimed to be writing the most authoritative revelations of all time, a man who claimed he could see the events leading to the end of the world, and beyond.

* * *

St. John's prose-poems, which were always copied and distributed by the churchmen who ferried back and forth to the island, were sometimes rewritten as letters to the churches, also called "epistles", and at other times incorporated into the continually-compiled and continually-interpolated Book of Revelations. It angered St. John's patron whenever he encountered, on his trips to the mainland, completely altered versions of St. John's works. He knew these to be totally unauthorized perversions of St. John's words, but he did not want to risk further traumatizing his completely hysterical ward by initiating a public lawsuit. So, in spite of his love for St. John's real writings, he allowed this injustice to go on, figuring a public battle over the matter could drive St. John to suicide.

"It shall have to be enough," he said to Helen, St. John's concubine, "that you and I and St. John have copies of the real writings. One day, when we have collected enough of them, I shall finance the publication of the authentic works for literary scholars to see."

Marcus Alexander, when he was present, also agreed that his alter ego should not be told of what became of his writings. All responsible parties, including the family, allowed this travesty to continue, figuring it was the lesser of evils, as far as the welfare of the mental patient was concerned. The doctor on the island concurred.

One thing both St. John's earlier prose-poems and the Book of Revelations agreed upon was that the end of the world, as they knew it, was practically upon them, and that the appearance of a new world was also immanent. One day, early on in his psychiatric illness, just as St. John began to dominate the body of the person who was once Marcus Alexander, he wrote an extensive prose-poem, of which the following is merely a short excerpt:

"I, St. John, an Apostle of the most-high God, declare to you that the end of all things is at hand. Let all the churches in Greece and Rome know that the arrival of The Kingdom of God and the destruction of your world order is at our very doorstep. Within this very lifetime, you will all see billions of trumpet-blowing angels coming to earth in clouds of glory, descending in fearsome airborne vehicles that no living human could comprehend. They will utterly lay waste to the governments of this earth and set up a new world order where men and women, no longer ashamed of their nakedness, will wander the streets of our cities, taking whomever they will as lovers. And they shall toast to the glory of their sex with full bottles of red wine and deep inhalations of hash pipes."

The owner, not a superstitious man at all, often said, after hearing St. John read these works, "If ever there could be a real prophet of the gods, St. John would surely be that man."

The owner had met many hedonistic pagan prophets, and he had met many sober-minded sectarian Christian prophets, but never had he encountered, from a literary standpoint, such an overt blend of the hedonistic pagan ideas he admired and the evocative Judeo-Christian style of declamation, which he found strangely exhilarating.

The sect leaders who were inspired by St. John always edited out what the owner of the resort called "the fun stuff," leaving only the gloomy parts of the prophecies intact while adding in extra prohibitions against anything they regarded as sensual or sinful. The resort owner sometimes lamented to Helen, "I fear that when you and I leave this world, we will do so as the only ones who really knew St. John."

* * *

The Island's doctor, Pantheonus, also doubled as the island's unofficial psychiatrist. It would be thousands of years before the field of psychiatry, as we know it, would exist, but this does not mean that men of medicine did not practice something like it. Although the sciences were primitive back then, medical men and women sought, just like the pioneering psychoanalysts many centuries later, to find a method to human madness, and to label, categorize and even treat mental illnesses. True, most of what passed for psychological treatment was nothing more than shamanism and quackery. But quietly, people of reason were trying to lay the groundwork for a theory of how the minds of the mentally-ill worked, and they sought to do it without resorting to explanations such as "demonic possession" or "the channelling of spirits."

Pantheonus was just such a person. And since he treated everyone on the island, he made it his science project to meet with St. John at least once a week. He did his best to record summaries of everything he heard. Then later, he would study those notes, compare them with previous notes, and try to discover meaningful patterns and classifiable phenomena. He would try to study the connection between the events of St. John's life and the symptoms he exhibited. He was under no illusion that he could cure the madman, and so he did not trouble himself with trying to take on the case with the intent of working a psychological miracle. His job, as he saw it, was to just observe, record and analyze.

The doctor also kept in mind that the owner of the resort, his employer, was on the lookout for anything that waxed poetic. And thus there were also financial incentives, should he emerge from a session with St. John in possession of some crazy verses.

A typical example of such a psychology-poetry session might begin thus: Pantheonus would overhear one of the servants saying that St. John The Divine was in one of his fits, fits made all the more disturbing by the constant use of the mysterious drug combination he was addicted to, drugs which the doctor had ordered St. John to quit countless times. (It was later found out that it was the church-men who supplied St. John the drugs, even though the average believer was forbidden from abusing intoxicants. The church-men reasoned that special revelations required special indulgences not allowed to the ordinary, uninspired man of faith.) At that point the doctor would enter the cell and check on St. John's condition. A typically-colorful session might begin by Pantheonus entering the cell to see St. John standing motionless, eyes bulging in a hypnotic trance.

"St. John," the doctor might ask, "tell me what you are hearing and seeing now?"

At that time St. John might begin uttering a spoken-word prophecy. If the doctor found it compelling, he would not only write out copies for his own records, but would also write a copy for the owner and St. John. And thus, many times, if the person awaking in St. John's bed happened to be Marcus Alexander, he would discover on his night stand a sheet of paper revealing at least a fragment of what his alter ego had said the previous night:

"If only you worldly fools knew of the scroll of God, then you would not spend your days in vain folly. The scroll which was revealed to me was written by the flames bursting from the eyes of God the Father. On that scroll are the planets and the stars themselves. They are the physical world emerging from the spoken word. Why do you not see that all of these constellations will one day be rolled up and tossed into the fire of divine love-fury. The doors of Heaven, and the doors of Hell itself, are both unlocked. Come and go from there as you like. Listen to me, for I, St. John The Divine, am an apostle; and my book is comprised of the blood and bone of the ultimate sacrifice; and we are that sacrifice. If you are ever to see what I see, you must partake of the sacred herbs and blend the intoxicants with your own hands. Serve these to your wives and husbands so that your erotic union might be sanctified. And if the churches have ears to hear it, let them share their husbands and wives among each other in this holy state of divine passion and inebriation. Then all will know that no one owns the body but God. And none are married to anyone but God."

Upon reading something like this, Marcus would then rise from his bed, usually in the late afternoon, and bring the paper over to the owner's house, where, often, the owner would be dining with the doctor.

His most common reaction would be to hold up the piece of paper and say to the men, as they were sipping their soup while beautiful servants bustled about them, "I didn't really say all this, did I?"

And the owner would just smile as the doctor might reply something like, "You surely did say every word of that, and more. Those there are just the lines I was able to write down. Once you get going, no one can stop you, and you speak too quickly for me to catch it all. And anyway, if you don't believe me, you can write to the two other doctors from the mainland who came to observe you yesterday. You really blew their minds. They will testify to all of it."

Upon hearing such clear evidence, Marcus would shake his hanging head from side to side and say, "Wow! How about that? What a nut case that St. John must be. Well, anyway, as you can see, I'm Marcus today, and I could use some company. Do you mind if I join you for dinner? I'm starving."

On nights like this, especially in late spring, a few reddish clouds would glow on the horizon, and the gleaming sea would sparkle against a heavenly blue sky as The Sun God bid the world adieu for several hours. The three men, Marcus, Pantheonus, and Athenodorus, would silently stare out at the magical twilight, none of them with a word to add. The wine was good. The the church-men and the resort owner were getting the scripture-poetry they depended upon, and Marcus would never be neglected. And St. John, Marcus thought, was a basket case, but by now a pretty famous one. And it rather tickled his ego to think that somewhere in the unreachable depths of his unconscious mind there lived someone who left countless others standing in speechless awe.

Marcus, for his part, viewed his long stints as St. John The Divine as a kind of sleep he underwent. He'd somehow reconciled himself to the fact that Marcus only got to be conscious about one day per week, two if he was lucky, none if he was unlucky.

2. Helen

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Helen had been having an unusually-slow work week, which meant specifically that she had not had nearly enough sex work to feed her inexhaustible libido. That made her arousal at the thought of paying St. John a visit all the more urgent. She'd decided to dress up in an extremely erotic diaphanous dress and bring lots of strong wine, which St. John would interpret as an aid to a deeper holy communion. In short, she was really ready for a hard romp in the hay and was determined to stalk to his door showing off her intrepid nature in all its glory.

She walked up the pathway from her quarters to the main dormitory and entered through the far end that met the flagstone pathway. Pushing the door open she strutted down the long hallway past the other rooms of artisans and spiritual seekers, all of whom, upon seeing her, experienced an instantaneous loss of faith in their ability to transcend the world and stay true to their craft in spite of their vows of relative poverty and-or their lack of notoriety.

When she got to the other end of the hallway, she noticed that St. John's cell door was shut, (not a good sign). She knocked gently, hoping against hope that St. John would be there. (He usually left his cell door open so that all who passed could hear his rantings.) But her knock had been too gentle, and the occupant was hard of hearing, so she knocked again more forcefully. This time the person inside heard the knock clearly.

He slid the sliding door open and said, "Helen! Great to see you. Come on in. Sit down. Let's share that bottle of wine you brought."

Helen gave Marcus a very platonic hug and plopped herself down on his bed and sat there glumly for a moment, sighing with sexual frustration.

"All I get is buddy-hug and a frown?" protested Marcus for the hundredth time. "What about a little action here? Hey, I'm a man. I have needs too, you know. And that see-through gown you're wearing would drive any guy nuts. It's not fair!"

"Marcus," she said as she exhaled in exasperation, "you know I've never been attracted to you that way. We're just friends. And if you want to stay friends, you'll have to stop hounding me for a romance."

She had said this dozens of times, but knew deep inside that she would not abandon Marcus as a friend, even if she had to put up with a certain amount of sexual harassment. She cared for him deeply and knew he had zero chance of finding a lover, not only because of how extremely ordinary he was, but also because, should some woman fall for him, he would only be available one or two days a week, at best. So she tolerated his rather abusive begging because she understood his desperation all too well.

Marcus, as always, was immediately wounded and felt a sharp pain in his chest from the reprimand.

"Oh, Marcus," said Helen in a resigned way, "don't worry. I won't dump you as a friend. Anyone can see you're so hard up that it's ruined your manners with women. Don't worry, I'll be there for you no matter what happens. But just keep your paws off of me for once, okay?"

Since Marcus knew better than to proposition her again immediately, he quickly managed to stuff his hurt feelings down as best as he could and took on a reasonable, albeit melancholy, tone with her.

"Well," he said, "The doctor transcribed a new poem or two of St. John's while I was, you know, out-of-it. I suppose we could read them and see what the old nut-case had to say this time."

"Hey, buster, that's my boyfriend you're talking about," protested Helen. "Don't call him a nut-case."

"Right, but since that nut-case shares this body with me, I get to call him, or myself, whatever I want," countered Marcus.

Helen could not challenge him on that point. Marcus Alexander and St. John The Divine were, legally-speaking, one person, in spite of the seemingly obvious appearance of two souls in that one body. Everyone around the resort thought of Marcus Alexander and St. John The Divine as two persons in one body, spiritually; but the law was decidedly secular on that point, and so that spiritual view had no currency with the authorities. And, to put an even finer point on it, the law only recognized the existence of Marcus Alexander and considered St. John The Divine to be a fictional character, in spite of the fact that it was St. John that was found to be dominating that body the vast majority of the time.

"So," said Marcus as he sat next to her on the bed and reached toward the nightstand to pick up the piece of paper lying there, "do you want to do the honors tonight, or shall I read the good doctor's latest transcription of scriptural poetry from our Great Saint?"

Helen crossed her arms and broke into a solid pout and replied, "Oh, you go ahead and read it. I don't have the energy to do it right."

Having gotten over his self-pity, Marcus snatched the paper up and, like a good sport, leapt up with a prose-poem in his hand and played the part of the bard:

I beseech all you worthy saints not to persecute all the sexiest people in your midst. You are commanded to love every beautiful body that God has created, and, if you are strong enough to do it, be willing to swap wives and husbands with one another with frequency. Please do not silence the inspired preachers among you who have shed the dry dust of dead doctrines and who embrace the stuff of life. Do not linger in self-righteousness nor abide in uptight squareness.

To those wonderful believers who were also hookers and call-girls, and also to those men who were gigolos or had sugar mamas: For God's sake, do not turn away goodly paying clients or risk your whole livelihood for the some idea drilled into you by celibates and recluses. And do not, for the sake of any newly-acquired doctrine, risk going to jail or clashing with the governor's troops. If the authorities are coming, I advise you to run.

In your relations to the Jews and the pagans, you are not to battle them or be tempted to desecrate their sanctuaries nor to in any way persecute them by stealing away to their temples at night and setting them ablaze or cutting the throats of the late-night attendants. Recall that your Heavenly Father creates countless millions of gods besides himself and loves each them just as he loves you. In no way are you to be carried off by one belief or the other in such a way that you resort to violence, unless the violence is mutually agreed upon sadomasochism for the purpose of achieving orgasm. Beliefs themselves have no transforming power, but rather transformation itself transcends all beliefs.

I exhort you to refrain from grasping so tightly at words which are written or spoken, since words not followed by sacred sex or sacred intoxication are things which merely take away life instead of giving it. You must remember your God is not the God of words, but the God of the deeds of creation and of the mating and copulation of billions of animals and heavenly beings on countless planets and in countless heavenly realms. Do not debase the states of trance, beatitude and arousal by the worshipping of mere books, since our God is not a God ruled over by books.

Rumors have gotten back to me that you've grown dull, weighed down with doctrines, and unresponsive to the great prophetess who wanders among you topless. Many of your parishioners are turning away in disgust and refusing to partake of her most fantastic breasts which she offers you daily. Please do not turn away from the abundance of the Lord. Dear friends, open your hearts for once. Were I not trapped on this island,, I'd come over there and show you how to have a real orgy, Roman style."

As Marcus read, he imitated perfectly the inflections, tones and gestures of St. John The Divine. Although he had no way of knowing himself how St. John behaved, many of the servants and residents of the resort were themselves experienced actors and were able to show Marcus how to do a perfect parody of St. John.

As she heard the fiery words of her lover and watched the familiar mannerisms of St. John acted out by Marcus, she became aroused. But as the poem was only a few minutes long, the performance could not be sustained. She let out another sigh and got up to go back to her suite.

Taking advantage of her very recent arousal, he crowded her a bit as she moved towards the door.

"Marcus Alexander," she snapped, "what do you think you're doing?"

"Helen. I saw you get all hot when I was reading. Let's go for it, while your blood is still boiling," pressed Marcus.

He tried to grab her, and managed to catch her arm. But she let out a squeal of laughter and peeled his fingers off her as she hastened down the hall. She was stronger than him, and so she could not be molested against her will. She would have been within her rights to slap him or hold a grudge against him, but she was still under the spell of St. John's words and would not remember to hold the offense against him the next time they met. After all, Marcus could be gone for two weeks at a time, in extreme cases, so it was no use getting worked up over someone who was hardly around.

She slammed the dormitory door behind her and galloped down the flagstone path to her own bedroom, tossing back her head and laughing even louder now. Marcus, knowing he probably only had a few hours left before St. John assumed ownership of his body, stood there, arms akimbo, and said, "Dammit!"

3. Guided By The Holy Ghost

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Much to Helen's delight, the very next evening, after she dolled herself up in another provocative outfit, St. John was back in possession of Marcus Alexander's body. She sometimes felt guilty about her torrid love-making sessions with St. John, thinking to herself, "If Marcus only knew how good this feels, he'd be furious."

St. John The Divine was in fine form when Helen got there. He was all ready to make love, and to receive revelation, and boldly pronounce divine poetry, as Helen ravished his body. This was the treat she lived for each week.

Her job as a sex cult priestess was not as erotic as one might suppose it to be. For one thing, many of her customers were more interested in watching sex and praising the pantheon of gods than they were in being participants. The ones who would participate often had performance anxiety about being sexual in public and hence suffered from either frigidity or impotence; and furthermore, even if the congregants were sexually-functional, they were often anorgasmic. Perhaps letting themselves go in such an emotional way, in front of their peers, was too intimate and perhaps required more spiritual or psychological freedom than they possessed. The occasional orgasm that did occur was often labored. It was somewhat unusual for her to have really fulfilling sex on the job.

St, John The Divine, however, when he was not in some puritanical depression, would give himself over fully to hours of manic sex. These sessions with Helen could become quite loud, to the point where the other residents would sometimes complain to the owner.

The owner, though a total Agnostic, would put the complainers off by saying, "John and Helen are celebrating the most transcendent divine union, and St. John is the holy prophet who is writing the greatest revelation for all of mankind. It would be unthinkable to interfere."

Given the prevailing beliefs at that time, almost no one had a good retort to such logic and thus the residents were left with merely being glad that these get-togethers only happened a couple of times a week.

St. John The Divine was not always consistent in his logic. Some days he would denounce sex as an impediment to God-realization, and then the next day he would speak of it as the highest of celestial pursuits available to humankind. And yet on other days, he was either too doped up or too depressed to be romantic. And still on other days, Marcus Alexander would reappear to reclaim his body and mind. Thus the resort residents were spared these noisy carnal affairs several nights out of the week.

* * *

Pantheonus, the doctor, was beginning to have grave misgivings about the mysterious drug mixture that St. John The Divine had become addicted to. He approached the resort owner and told him that he feared the drugs were pushing St. John, already suffering from what modern doctors would call Multiple Personality Disorder, over the edge completely. He feared the self-appointed prophet might kill himself, or in some delusional fit, cause harm to other people or to the property itself. The owner, while not liking the idea of interfering with what he called "St. John's creative process," could not ignore these warnings and decided to try to take some action.

Paganon, one of the wild churchmen who were interpolating St. John's writings in order to produce the Book of Revelations, was also St. John The Divine's main drug dealer. Of course this idealistic religious man would not think of exploiting St. John financially, and so he gave the alleged prophet his intoxicants for free. As noted, the blend was mysterious at first, and St. John wasn't letting on about the mixture. By the time the doctor got to St. John's cell, he had already mashed the various herbs, powders and other plant materials into in an unidentifiable mulch-like paste, and so only Paganon could tell them what it was John was dosing on every day.

To try to get to the bottom of this mystery, the resort owner had posted several guards around the island, making an unseen approach difficult. Sure enough, after a few days, Paganon was spotted paddling a small reed-boat toward the island. The guard who spotted the canoe-like craft called out to the owner and the doctor who came running over before Paganon could make his landing. The other guards came running over too. They all took Pagnon into custody, putting him in the resort's little jail, a small holding cell which was used to keep residents who ran afoul of the law in custody until the authorities from the mainland could arrive to complete the arrest.

The guards roughed up the church-man pretty badly and tossed him in the holding cell where he was subject to a harsh interrogation by the island's doctor. When the owner heard that Paganon was not cooperating with the investigation, he entered the cell himself. His appearance was short. He simply told the church-man that if he failed to reveal the substances in question, he would see to it that the most anti-Christian police chief was called to the island to take custody of him. The law-man was known to occasionally murder Christians of all sects on a whim, or subject them to long, painful and humiliating forms of torture that tended to break the souls, minds and bodies of all who were subject to them.

At the mention of the name of this fearsome public servant, the church-man decided to confess to the doctor, in a vague way, the basic categories of drugs St. John was addicted to. In the end, they would prove to be something like stimulants related to modern-day cocaine, combined with a hallucinogen imported from India, not unlike psilocybin. There were other ingredients that acted as catalysts to enhance the combined effect of this potion, and other processes involved in getting the mixture into its final, stable form. It was all clear enough to the doctor what sort of effect such a compound would have on a sane person, let alone a madman. However, the church-man kept the exact details of the formula to himself, answering mostly in general ways, refusing to surrender the precise knowledge the doctor would need to pin down the exact recipe of the compound and the precise manufacturing process. The doctor, feeling he knew enough to make a responsible decision, let the matter go at that.

The church-man, after giving his partial confession, was tossed back onto his little boat and ordered not to come back under pain of death, or worse. However, this strategy failed to produce the desired results. Far from making St. John The Divine a more reasonable person, his personality without the drugs proved horrific. Any friendliness, sexiness and inspired literary qualities that had been there disappeared at once. The depressions became even more prolonged and marked and dangerous. The doctor tried to reassure himself, the patient, Helen, and the resort owner, that these were preliminary withdrawal symptoms which would pass; and in time, St. John The Divine, while still predicted to be quite mentally-ill, would be less perilously volatile than he had become.

Sadly, this did not prove to be the case. Over a period of weeks John had tried to kill himself twice and, even when put on suicide watch, was so depressed that he could barely speak or move. He was romantically unresponsive, refused to eat or drink hardly anything, and began wasting away. Besides depriving the owner of the prose-poems he had become hooked on, the owner was also worried about the possible permanent disappearance of Marcus Alexander, who had not made a single appearance since the "sacred intoxicants" were taken away.

At last, much to his embarrassment, the resort owner was forced to have his servants go to the mainland and track down the church-man/drug-dealer who had been supplying John. They were forced to order him back to the island for his weekly visits.

When he arrived the next week to deliver the drugs and to get a copy of the inspired poetry that had been written before his temporary arrest and expulsion from the island, the church-man said to the owner, shaking his his head, "You see! This is what happens when worldly people try to intervene in heavenly affairs. You think only in logical and calculating ways, in the ways of mundane men. You could never understand the mysteries we are embarking upon. Shame on you for even trying to control our prophet."

The resort owner snapped back, "We're not making any more copies of St. John's poetry. I'm tired of seeing you turn his wonderfully-liberating work into that uptight boilerplate slop you call scripture."

The church-man crossed his arms and glowered: "No copies of the poems for me? Well then, there'll be no medicine for St. John."

The resort owner grabbed the church-man by the neck and lifted him off the ground, nearly strangling him. He was torn away by the doctor who said, "Athenodorus, get a grip on yourself. We've lost this battle. Let's try to behave with some dignity here. Just give the guy his copy of the last piece John wrote before we took him off the drugs, then let's get John back on this stuff before he kills himself or somebody else. Besides, we need to see Marcus Alexander again. His family would be furious with us if he vanished forever."

The resort owner calmed himself down, set Paganon back on the ground, heaved a quiet sigh and dismissed himself, leaving the doctor to accompany the drug-dealer to the troubled cell of St. John The Divine.

Within three days St. John The Divine was writing proclamations, making love to Helen and behaving within the range of behaviors they had known before, behaviors which were troubling, for sure, and even frightening sometimes, but not as frightening as when St. John was taken off the drugs completely. Sometimes intoxication simply is the lesser of several evils. Many a drunk has emerged as such a hideous sober person that all around him longed for the days when he was just an ordinary self-destructive alcoholic. This is a truth whispered from doctor to doctor, and from doctors to the families of patients, but always denied in public. Drugs and alcohol can kill a person in the long-run, but the lack of them can kill some people immediately. This is a very hard reality that the healthy, sunny, optimistic people of the working world often reject out-of-hand, not from knowledge, but from fear that their own mental and physical health are more the product of luck than hard work. (If hard work is not the answer to every malady, then indeed the universe is uncontrollable and chaotic, and this is an idea so-called "self-made men" flee from the very hint of.)

After Pagonon delivered the drugs to St. John The Divine, he took away several verses of scripture which he and his church-mates would corrupt utterly. For some reason they did not feel any moral compunction about this, but sincerely thought, deep within their hearts, that the changes they made to St. John's work were guided by the Holy Ghost; and the texts were ultimately not the word of God until they made their changes. It somehow never disturbed them much that John was often preaching nearly the opposite of what the churches were preaching. They somehow saw the act of contradicting John as a part of "the mysterious process by which God preserves His word on earth."

The following is a fragment of some of the poetic lines Paganon took back with him to the "translation committee" waiting in an underground church meeting-room back on the mainland:

If only I could free you from the calcified words of dead prophets who, if brought back to life, would beg you to please stop reciting their words for eternity. Having seen the face of God, as one man speaks, face to face, with another man, they could not possibly believed in the narrow concepts they once passed off as immortal.

Never become groveling sycophants before any leader, any book, or any lover, unless you're doing it for fun in some sadomasochistic game. Who ordered you to be so deathly serious and contrite? God is not so fragile or His own soul so ruined that He could only survive by ordering you to praise him. The only love that is voluntary is love given without any fear of penalty. All else is survival-oriented cowardice clothed in love's dress. Please stop all this obsequiousness and start behaving like the fun, interesting people you used to be.

The end of the old Rome and the old Athens is coming sooner than you think. We shall all be inhabitants of the new cities of God, which shall descend to earth from heaven. In that new utopia, even the most sexless drones among you will be getting laid daily. And even the most annoying of panhandlers will be wealthy. Bums, perverts, hookers, junkies — all of them will share in the light that shall beam from my prismatic crystal throne.

Why become mediocre hacks in the miserable church of conformity Word has got back to me that you are all a bunch of neurotics. You are paralyzed by your self-doubt and indecision. Figure out what the hell you want to do and just go do it. Remember, you cannot fail to the please the mighty Creator who views all his creatures as equals. On the great day He returns to rule on earth, every mental patient and low-life will have a throne to sit on, even spineless people like you.

After a few more days had passed, Helen, Athenodorus and Pantheonus were having a quiet dinner at sunset. They had met not only to enjoy eating together at their favorite time of day, but also to discuss many daily business details that had to be seen to at the resort.

Their quiet discussion and delicious meal were interrupted by the appearance of Marcus Alexander who said, "Hey folks, what's up? How's things?"

Helen leapt from her seat and threw her arms around Marcus Alexander and smothered him with hugs and said, "Oh, Marcus Alexander, you don't know how very thrilled I am to see you!"

Marcus Alexander backed off from her a moment and said, "Thrilled? You're usually a bit disappointed. We're friends and all, but what's the sudden jubilation all about?"

He looked around at the others who wore poker-faces and said, "Hey, has something gone on that I should know about?"

The owner was tongue-tied. Helen was unsure what to say or whether she had made a mistake in behaving the way she did.

The doctor winked at Helen and said, "Oh, it's nothing Marcus. Helen's just a bit off her rocker this week. It's been a tough time for her. A couple of her clients flipped out on her, and her family back home is embroiled in some dispute over property. It's all resolved now. She's just been out-of-sorts lately."

Helen also backed away cautiously and said, "Yeah, I guess I'm being a bit emotional these days. But listen, it's good that you're here. Why don't you join us for some dinner and wine? We were just about done with all our shop-talk anyway. Let's watch the sunset and get a little buzzed. The wine is great tonight, and the weather is perfect."

Marcus shrugged and sat down to eat with them. He only had half a glass of wine. Frankly, he felt no stress at all. Other than wishing that Helen had a real crush on him, he had pretty much resigned himself to his lot in life and was not, by nature, much of a complainer.

4. Three Dancing Ladies

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Marcus Alexander had been around for three straight days, and much to everyone's surprise, he was still around. For some reason, St. John The Divine had not come to claim his body. To the doctor and the family, and to any objective and compassionate outside observer, this would be excellent news, perhaps a sign of some kind of remission of the mental illness.

But it is a nasty fact of human nature that our interest in other people is often only coincidentally related to their well-being. Usually we like people, or ostensibly love them, based on something they can do for us, some need they meet in our lives. This forces us into the awkward position of having to pretend to be happy when an improvement in the life of another means that they will no longer be available to meet our needs. The beloved is promoted, but that promotion means a transfer to another city. A friend is successful and becomes famous and now has no time for us. A family member gets married or becomes wealthy and no longer feels we fit into their social circle. Positive change in others is often bad news to the person who will no longer be getting the attention, sex, money or time they feel is due to them. Someone who calls us every day to discuss their neurosis often keeps us company in our loneliest hours. Should their neurosis be cured, there could be less to talk about, or nothing to talk about.

While the doctor was thrilled to see Marcus Alexander in full possession of his body and mind for three days straight, the resort owner and Helen had to try hard to conceal their unhappiness. After all, Marcus Alexander could not produce prophecy or prose-poetry; and Marcus Alexander could do little to enhance Helen's love life. In fact, she was without a steady boyfriend so long as Marcus Alexander remained mentally-healthy.

The truth of the matter was so obvious that the resort owner and Helen tended to avert their gaze from one another if they happened to be walking by each other. Neither knew what to say; and what they would have liked to say would sound evil and selfish beyond measure.

In the privacy of her mind, Helen knew that the man whose name was Marcus Alexander, while appearing stable on the surface, was really a delicate creature, someone who probably could not handle stress, change, extreme emotions or confusion well. She theorized to herself, much as a psychoanalyst might, that any jolt to his system would cause a defensive reaction which would activate the reappearance of St. John The Divine. She was sure any event, even a very positive one, if it were unusual enough, would trigger his other personality into action. And since it was Marcus Alexander's other personality she was in love with, she plotted to bring it back, even if that meant ruin to her friend Marcus Alexander. It was a terrible thing to do to a friend, but lust, in most human affairs, trumps friendship hands-down.

The resort owner, Athenodorus, knew Helen well; and as he walked the grounds of his resort, overseeing repairs and landscaping, he would catch glimpses of Helen. He could tell her face had changed in the last few days. Her expression had gone from one of sadness and loss to one of lively conspiratorial glee. There was no doubt in his mind that she was musing on how to get her beloved St. John back, but he dared not accuse her of planning anything of that sort. And, given that he would want her to succeed in such an endeavor, he would have trouble feigning moral outrage should she confess her contemplated misdeeds to him. Like all wealthy men, he knew that money usually played an important factor in any unethical activity, and although he did not know exactly what kind of activity Helen had planned, he knew he would be willing to fund it.

One day, as they came upon each other uneasily on a trail, he turned to her, just as he passed her and said, "Helen."

She turned quickly, with a guilty look on her face and said, "What?"

He sauntered over to her casually, and turned on his businessman's charm, acting as though nothing major had been on their minds over the last week, and stated, "Um, Helen, I've been wondering about your financial situation. Of course I know your business is usually quite self-supporting. But, you know, every so often an unexpected expense comes up, an old debt comes due — or whatever. So, well, you never have to worry about that kind of thing as long as you're on the island here with us. I'd be happy to loan you whatever you need. Heck, I'm not much of an accountant anyway. Who knows, I might just forget you owed me anything. I mean, if there happened to be some sudden need, maybe something private — personal things and such. I, um . . . I wouldn't need to know or anything. But you just tell me anytime . . . anytime . . . that . . .

His thoughts trailed off at that point, and the situation was awkward enough. But she knew exactly what he meant. Deciding it would feel strange to take him up on his offer that moment, she smiled in a winsome way, softly thanked him for his considerate thoughts and excused herself rather abruptly.

A week later Marcus Alexander could be seen relaxing on a deck chair taking in the island sun and bantering with the resort workers and the occasional family member that arrived to check in on him. Athenodorus was becoming moodier by the day and Helen was beginning to panic. St. John was the best lover she'd ever had, the only man in the world that really moved her, and she would be damned if Marcus Alexander, friend or not, was going to take that away from her.

After working hours were over for her and the resort owner, she gracefully slid up to his dinner table and asked to join him. He magnanimously swept an arm over the table and said, "Helen, my food is your food. Please join me, my dear."

She had to hide her elation. By sheer luck of timing, it so happened the doctor was on the mainland that week consulting with the family of a wealthy land-owner who had been taken mysteriously ill for weeks on end. She could have had the discussion in his presence, since the topic was so general; but the doctor, being a master psychologist would pick up on something wrong in the tone of their speech and begin pressing for details that would cause her to become defensive and thus further arouse his suspicions. He would then be on the lookout for anything unusual that transpired. It would be a labored and unpleasant business to ask for Athenodorus' help under the scrutinizing eye of the doctor. His absence made her task pleasant and way easier on her conscience.

Wanting to make the matter seem incidental, she engaged in general and jovial conversation for most of the meal. The chef was at his best that night, and the lamb and the quail and the side dishes were beyond delicious. The island's wine curator had just imported some excellent North African blend of grapes that was heavenly. Both Helen and the resort owner got very buzzed.

Just as the darkest hues of twilight hit, she gave the appearance of offhandedness, by adding, almost as an afterthought, "Oh, by the way, that money you mentioned the other day — it's no big deal or anything, and it can wait; but if it were no big inconvenience, I could use a few thousand just to cover, like you said, some unexpected expenses and things. I don't need it desperately. I'm already overbooked for next month, but it might help the cash-flow go a little smoother over the next couple of weeks."

Athenodorus, understanding the delicacy of the matter perfectly well, replied in a nonchalant way, "Think nothing of it. Just go see my bookkeeper in the morning when he first comes in and tell him what you need. It's a wonder I still have that guy on staff. He's as absent-minded as I am. He'll probably forget to even send you the bill."

There was an uncertain silence that followed, causing Helen to rise from her seat and say, "Whoa! I've had too much to drink tonight. I better get home and sleep this off or I'm going to have a nasty hangover tomorrow, not such a good thing in my line of work."

"Yeah, sure . . . sure," stuttered Athenodorus. "Of course, of course, you should . . . well, get some rest, Helen. Good night."

The next week the doctor would come back to the island in good spirits, at first. He had made some suggestions for the treatment of his wealthy client which the family seemed to think were brilliant. He was doing rather well that month and was beginning to consider that his financial position might facilitate taking a wife. (He had considered that many times, but it was clear enough to everyone that he was so dedicated to his work that there would never be enough leisure time to indulge in romance to any great degree.) In any case, both Helen and the resort owner were glad enough the doctor would be returning in some days, but also glad that they hadn't seen him during their delicate and awkward negotiations.

* * *

Before the doctor returned, though, seemingly apropos of nothing, three "dancing ladies" came to the island in a rather upscale craft followed by a couple of over-dressed-looking bodyguards. Since the island had a wide variety of celebrants, and a countless number of holy days which were observed in every which way by people of all sorts of sects and cults, it seemed, at first, that no particular notice was made over the dancers' appearance. The grounds workers and security guards simply waved them through in the typical way, and no one spoke to them in anything but the most casual and ordinary manner.

The bodyguards assumed their posts, one outside the dormitory itself and the other outside the door of Marcus Alexander's room. The dancing ladies, dressed in colorful pants from India and minimalist tops made by a local stripper-supply store, knocked straightaway on Marcus Alexander's door, giggling and laughing as they did so, being given to poking and pinching each other. They were co-workers, but as a matter of course, they were also good friends and lovers. Their bisexuality was almost unavoidable in their trade, since half the time, when working, they ended up naked together and watched each other performing sensual activities with their clients. Only the coldest of fish in that profession could really maintain pure heterosexuality for long. Even so, they were not particularly possessive, since they were sharing men, and many were given to traveling with different troops of workers and taking up therefore with other ladies and so on. And there was, in the course of time, the eventual marriage and/or pregnancy that came along. So the job was basically a kind of free-love that paid.

This particular pod of three had drifted together over the years because they each, through trial and error, found out they worked together well. They tended to love each other, and therefore their clients, a lot more than your average traveling entertainment and prostitution outfit. There was a wholesomeness that had evolved around the three, and their warmth was infectious. They tended to look into their client's eyes a lot and spend a lot of time talking to their customers about the circumstances of life. They fancied, and with good cause, that they were also psychological healers too, although they had no idea that the psychological problems of this particular client were way over their heads, nor would they ever know, since they would only see Marcus Alexander, and not his darker half, St. John The Divine.

It went without saying that such a high-quality experience cost a lot of money, and that was where the "loan," which was really a gift from Athenodorus to Helen, came into play, making money no object. Helen, the dancers explained upon arriving, must be quite a good friend to send them to Marcus, since the use of their boat, their guards, and the dancing ladies themselves, was unimaginably-expensive, (even more so than usual, as word had quickly gotten around the upper classes on the mainland that these were the sweetest, most affectionate lovers-for-hire known to the region).

Marcus was stunned, not only because of his lack of unusual sexual experiences, but also because his little cell was no place to be hosting a musical and dancing show, let alone an orgy. The leader of the three, Aegyptina, explained that a much larger room on the compound had already been rented for the night and that it was already stocked with food, wine, large beds, plush rugs and wide chairs covered with soft blankets and posh pillows. She took the nearly-speechless Marcus by the hand and led him, like a little child, into the utility event room, something like a small convention room in a modern hotel, but more romantically appointed. The guard followed behind to guard the entrance to the convention room.

These ladies were highly-educated, spoke several languages, had a real sense of comedy and sensuality about them, and were accomplished musicians and dancers on top of all that. And they quickly set to enthroning Marcus in the most luxurious chair in the room. A few of the more experienced resort employees had been rented out to make sure the room was supplied with wine, tea and delicious appetizers on a continual basis. They checked in several times an hour to see if anything else was needed or if anything might be lacking. The idea of interrupting some group-sex scene didn't trouble them in the least, since such things took place on the island frequently, (although on the island such things were usually for religious reasons and not casual pleasure).

The two other women, who looked a lot like Aegyptina, wore almost the same outfit as she, only their clothing highlighted different bright colors. They were all around the same height, varying only an inch or two between them. They had each dyed their hair different colors, but all three were slender and had finely-chiseled faces and bright green or blue eyes, flecked with gold and/or black highlights.

After sitting Marcus in a chair and almost bowing to him, the other two ladies broke into song, making use of musical instruments brought along by their bodyguards. A couple of the island's servants were drafted into playing drums and tambourines in between their catering duties. All the while Aegyptina alternated between singing and erotic dancing. Because she was both aggressive and very affectionate, she took little time in becoming naked, and it wasn't long before the other two followed suit. Soon, Aegyptina set to work removing Marcus Alexander's clothes while he just watched, as though he were an innocent bystander.

By the time he had been dragged to the large, circular bed in the middle of the room, which was decked out with dozens of dazzlingly-colored cushions, they began to talk to him in a very personal way, especially Aegyptina.

She pushed him down flat on the bed and pounced upon him, stared directly into his eyes, as though she had been his lover for years and said, "Helen tells me you're starving for physical affection and that she's had enough of watching you go without. She's a fun lady, you know, so much fun, in fact, that we made love to her after we signed the agreement to come entertain you today. You do find us entertaining, don't you, Marcus?"

This ploy, of pretending they would be hurt if the client was not attracted to them, was their classic way of breaking down the defenses of anyone who had not expected to receive such a gift. (And mostly they were hired out as presents by husbands or wives who wanted to give their spouses an anniversary treat they wouldn't forget.) This made the client let down his or her defenses and become affectionate as a way of "reassuring" the ladies, although they, in reality, needed no reassuring whatsoever. Also the deep eye contact, tended to draw even the most reluctant and shy client into an intimate mood. It was Aegyptina's philosophy that clients were not to be left feeling merely "sexually serviced," but loved and cared for.

Soon, as Aegyptina held Marcus in her arms, she was asking him probing psychological questions about his life so that the she might figure out how to use her erotic powers to charm and benefit the client. And too, she liked to get to know her clients as well as possible, even though usually there was only a few hours to do this. Clients who had a chance to tell a bit of their life story often came away from the meeting with a sense of being known and nurtured. As she and Marcus chatted away, the other two were massaging every part of every body in the room.

The combination of conversation and group oil massage, which always managed to sexually arouse the ladies, tended to free up the sexuality of even the most uptight client. Generally-impotent men were suddenly found with an erection, and hopelessly-frigid women discovered that they were suddenly charmed into lubricating. It would be no exaggeration to say that these ladies had turned around the romantic lives of many people.

Marcus, who'd been plagued with difficulty in attaining orgasm, due to years of sexual neglect and too much masturbation, was shocked to realize, at one point in the evening, that he had experienced three almost-overwhelming climaxes, (one with each of the dancers, each of whom had developed different pleasuring techniques in order to really spice up the client's experience). The last orgasm was the biggest and really shook Marcus up a bit and he started to cry, but forced the tears back.

This came as no surprise to them as they frequently found themselves tapping into deep wells of suppressed emotions, since so few people really encounter anything like unconditional sexual acceptance, especially from a prostitute. Aegyptina, sat in Marcus Alexander's lap and held him very tightly and said, "Let it all out, Marcus. We're not here just for fun. We want you to open up your heart. That will bring more love to you in the future."

At this cue, Marcus sobbed into her chest like a small child, and found himself suckling on her breast in between bouts of tears. This aroused the most passionate maternal and erotic instincts in the three of them, and they all descended upon him and, in every position and combination, they all gave each other many more hard climaxes and wept a few tears themselves.

Around two in the morning, one of the bodyguards, who was also captain of the small, but luxurious boat they took to the island, lit the reflective lanterns on the boat and set up the oars and rang the ship's bell loudly. At that call, the ladies tenderly bid Marcus Alexander farewell, hugging him tightly and kissing him warmly and wetly. And as they dressed themselves and helped Marcus put on his clothes, they earnestly implored him to take good care of himself; and they honestly asserted they would miss him.

* * *

The next day, as Helen had predicted to herself, St. John The Divine reappeared. She knew that a person of Marcus Alexander's delicate constitution could not easily absorb such a sexy and emotional experience without retreating deeply into what Freud would call his subconscious or unconscious mind. The combination of surprise and intensity had sent Marcus Alexander away within hours of the dancing ladies' departure. She was confident that the regular patterns of alternating personalities within Marcus Alexander would reassert themselves for a good while after this hugely-emotional affair took place. And so now she had mixed feelings, feeling both terribly ashamed about what she had done to her friend, and feeling profound relief that the person she loved more than anyone else in the world was not gone permanently.

But it was not only St. John The Divine that had returned to the island the next day. The doctor did too. And it would not be long before he pieced together what had been done. Helen had not taken into account how attached the doctor was to his patient and how deeply-enraged he would really become if he ever found out what had transpired. Furthermore, she had deluded herself into thinking that the doctor would not necessarily figure out her plot.

* * *

That day Helen and Athenodorus were having a late lunch together, neither admitting to feeling almost giddy at the return of St. John The Divine, neither bringing up their part in the matter to each other. Some conspiracies are so filled with guilt that not even the conspirators ever speak of it to each other. In this case the conspirators had hardly even planned it together. Instinct met instinct somewhere at an evil crossroads, and each knew that the other knew something would be carried out that would be mutually beneficial; and both knew not to mention it to each other, or hardly even to themselves.

But this pretense of innocence would come to an abrupt end presently. The doctor appeared at the patio with his hands full of baggage, which he dropped on the ground with a thud as he faced the two perpetrators. Below a servant with a carrying cart waited with two large trunks as a water taxi made it's way to the shore.

Athenodorus looked at the doctor and said, "What is the meaning of this?"

The doctor pointed his index finger at both of them and said, "I know what you two have done to my patient! You have not only wounded my patient, perhaps permanently, but you have injured me. It was my job to see to Marcus Alexander's health, and you took the chance to ruin that health for your own selfish literary and sexual amusement. Well, I am not amused! That water taxi will be taking me away from this island for good."

Athenodorus, a bit more surprised at this than Helen, spoke out and said, "What on earth are you talking about? I have done nothing to Marcus at all."

"Oh yeah?" replied the doctor. "Well, another water taxi was seen by many others. It landed at the docks yesterday and everyone saw your little dancing ladies disembark. Everyone knows they are the highest paid concubines in the province? Didn't you think everyone would inquire for whose benefit they came? I already talked to your accountant and to the serving staff. They might not have been slick enough to piece together your motives, but they described the events of yesterday to me in precise detail. Am I to imagine you brought them here in a fit of generosity? If such grand perks were a part of the program around here, why have you not hired them before? Did you honestly take me for such a fool? Did you think I wouldn't connect their appearance with the sudden reversal of Marcus' mental health?"

"So then, that's it? You're just walking out on us?" protested Athenodorus.

"You're lucky," the doctor barked as he turned to go, "that's all I'm doing, for now. You both belong in prison for what you've done. And I may yet have the Governor toss you both in jail for this. I'm too furious to figure out what to do. All I know is that I don't ever want to see either of you again."

As the doctor stormed off, the water taxi pulled into position and the servant loaded the trunks onto the boat. Within a dozen minutes the boat was just a dot on the perfect, sparkling, aquamarine water as it made it's way to shore.

Athenodorus turned to Helen and said, "I think we've just lost a dear friend."

Helen replied, "And more than that, we have gained an enemy, and one who may yet return to exact his revenge."

They sat silently as a gloom fell over both of them. Neither the wine nor the tea seemed to lift their spirits. But then, suddenly, up to the table came St. John The Divine in trademark fashion.

"The Lord has given me another revelation which I am compelled to deliver to you, you who are the only true realizers of the import of the word of God as it comes to me, the hippest of the exalted prophets of God."

Forgetting all about the consequences of their actions, Helen turned to Athenodorus, smiling, and said, "I don't know about you, but somehow all of my regrets have fallen away just now."

Athenodorus was infected with her happiness and generously swept his arm out to "yield the stage" to his private bard, to whom he said, "Yes, indeed, you are St. John The Divine, and there is no other with a mission like yours; and so do bless us with your poem which hails directly from the throne of our Heavenly Father."

Filled with child-like excitement at the approbation of his two favorite people, he energetically and emphatically declared:

"I, St. John The Divine, was transported into heaven. And there I met an angel who appeared to be stoned. He said: Follow me, brother, and I shall show you all of the wonders of the freaky things of Our Father."

"At once I was elevated to very throne of God. I tried to bow before this glowing, radiant creature, but God said to me: Please, my son, don't do that. I am not a human egomaniac nor a petty dictator. Being self-sufficient, I require no worship from you, nor from any of the angels of Heaven. There is no reward for loving me, and no punishment for not loving me. From all of eternity, I never needed cowering servants. If you like it here, someday you can stay here. If not, you can go stay with the demons or return to the delusional human world. Do as you please. I created the universe to see what would happen, not to run it like some celestial tyrant or childish puppet master. It's true I may destroy the world one fine day, but it won't be to avenge Myself or to teach you all some moral lesson. Frankly, My main motivation for obliterating your planet would be sheer boredom with how you trolls live. You are all such quivering, risk-averse conservatives. If I should become wrathful, it would only because of your lack of imagination. Now, as for these hideous creatures with hundreds of eyes all over their bodies that fly around here praising me — I swear that I told them to leave, but they're just stuck chanting, 'Holy, holy, holy.' We gave up trying to shut them up. As for these flunkies on the thrones around me — who knows? They like to feel important. If only they would go."

Athenodorus heaved out a sigh of relief at hearing such words uttered again. Helen just stared at St. John after he finished speaking and said, "Good God, you are so sexy."

5. A Death Threat

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Their happiness was not long-lived. The next day a letter was found tacked to St. John's door. St. John was still asleep at mid-day and did not see the letter. A servant thought it best that it remain that way, and straightaway he took the note to Atheonodorus. The gist of the situation was that someone had snuck onto the island at night and left a death threat tacked onto Saint John The Divine's cell door. The letter read as follows:

Attention to he who is fraudulently-named "St. John The Divine:"

The prophets of God have all warned against those who preach unorthodox doctrines and divide the flock of God. The churches on the mainland are now always in an uproar over your self-appointed status as prophet. Let me make it clear: You are a false prophet who shall, on the judgment day, feel the full force of God's wrath.

As for the effect of your writings: One half of the churches believe you are a prophet and are taking your words as scripture. But did you know that those words which are attributed to you are not really yours? Yes, your trusted churchmen are taking your poetry and changing its meaning entirely, and then publishing it in a fully-adulterated form.

One of our own church members pretended to convert to this strange, new gospel. He did so in order to get into the room of the so-called "translators" of your writings. He found a pile of your original poetry there and reported back to us that the "translations" the public sees bear no resemblance to the things you really teach. By the way, the things you really teach, he told us, are nothing but an apocrypha of pure filth sent directly from the Kingdom of Satan to deceive men.

In any case, you should know that not only have your efforts divided the Lord's church in two, which is the ultimate sin, but that your followers are betraying you daily by printing things which you never taught and concealing most of the things you have taught.

You must stop this writing, not only because you invite upon yourself the sentence of death, a sentence our church High Council is about to pronounce upon you, but also because those who are your so-called allies are your worst enemies. After all, we never took it upon ourselves to twist your words into something they are not.

Be advised that you would do well to write some other kind of poetry, something non-prophetic, not only to save yourself from our swords, but also to get your so-called followers, who are really your worst foes, to lose interest in you. Then perhaps your other poetry might get published in its real form, instead of the deceitful form it now appears in. We will not tolerate anymore of this trash to be circulated on the mainland. This shall be your last warning.

After that, if you continue to preach the doctrines of demons, our assassins will come for you, and they will not fail in their mission, as they will be guided by the hand of the Almighty.

Most truly,

Christos Christos, High Councilor of The Apostolic Brethren.

Although Athenodorus tried to hide the letter from St. John, more than one servant had seen the letter posted to the door before one of them thought it his duty to bring it to the attention of the management. Hence, word had made it's way back to St. John that a harshly-critical letter had made it's way from the mainland, only to be intercepted by the staff. St. John came in, nearly frothing, demanding the letter.

Athenodorus had little choice but to turn it over to him, especially since St. John appeared to be on the verge of becoming violent over the matter. When Athenodorus pulled the letter from a desk drawer, St. John snatched it from him and brought it back to his cell. He read it over and over, and his reply to all the churches was this:

To all those churches on the mainland: Hear now that I am a prophet. There is no church elder above me and none below me. Were you to awaken as I have awoken, you would be prophets too. My words are the songs of the divine harlots who are forever singing in the presence of the Lord.

Realize that around the throne of God, even as we speak, there is a long scroll. Upon that scroll are the names of all mankind, those who are for me and against me. Those found to be doubters of my words will not be punished in the afterlife. They shall be sent tot he very heaven they wished for, but they will discover it to be a land of blandness, conformity and mind-numbing repetition. They will always dress in white and continually hear syrupy-sweet music. They themselves will finally tire of watching sexless angels bowing obsequiously before the Creator who never asked to be praised and never needed His ego protected.

Those who have understood me well will be sent to the Heaven of Intermittent Imperfection in order that the spirit of the curiosity of God will always be with them. It will be a paradise of diversity; and to them it will be revealed that all worlds are paradise because they are diverse. Evil and good are hence forever bound together and are only ever delivered together. Were goodness ever to exceed even half of our experience, we ourselves would beg for an end to existence.

Beware the doctrines of Christos Christos and his council. All of it will bring you nothing but misery. You are to flee at the very sight or sound of him. A bigger uptight square cannot be found in all of the multifaceted worlds of the eons. He above all is to be most pitied.

* * *

Like clockwork, the churchman, Paganon, came to resupply St. John's drugs, and, as always, to get any new scripture installments. After Paganon got his copy of the latest "revelations from God," he began to head toward his boat to return to the mainland. At that time Athenodorus caught up with Paganon and insisted they speak.

"Hey," he called out, as he caught up with the churchman. "We need to talk."

The churchman turned around abruptly and said, "No, we never need to talk."

"I'm serious," said Athenodorus. "This is no time to hold a grudge. We have a mutual problem."

"What," snapped Paganon, "I might ask, could a useless non-believer like you have in common with me?"

"Well," replied Athenodorus, "for one thing, we'd both hate to see anything happen to St. John The Divine."

The churchman gravely scrunched his eyebrows together in silence and waited for further explanation.

"Look at this," said Athenodorus.

He handed over a copy of the threatening letter sent by the High Council of the rival sect which Paganon despised. Paganon read the letter carefully and slowly.

After several moments of silent reading and rereading, he looked up at Athenodorus and said, "They'll kill him within the week when they find out I'm bringing this letter back."

"Right," concluded Athenodorus, "and I've only got three or four security workers here; and this island has a lot of small coves and inlets — way too many landing spots. It's too porous for just a few guys to cover twenty-four hours a day. They have their work cut out for them already. I'm in over my head here."

Paganon shook his head up and down, slowly and solemnly, and concluded, "Then I shall send fifty armed men, and we will cover every inch of the shoreline night and day. No one shall get past us without a fight to the death. That I promise."

Paganon did not wait for Athenodorus to reply to this offer, but simply got in his boat and rowed off. Grimly looking back at the shore, perfectly tranquil in the face of a possibly-fatal conflict. He rowed away, both looking angry and calm at once. Athenodorus silently stared back at him until the combination of twilight and distance and haze caused Paganon to disappear into the white and blue and red atmosphere that joined the land and the sea and the sky.

Helen was unable to handle the precariousness of this situation and broke down. After hearing the news that the island could end up a battleground and that all of them, especially St. John, could end up dead within the week, she ran to St. John's room and wept in his arms, shaking and sobbing, both out of fear and guilt. She realized that if Marcus Alexander had not been thrown into his other personality by her antics with the dancing girls, then all of them would be safe now. The churchmen on both sides of the conflict would see plainly that St. John was no more and that there was no one left to fight about. Certainly Marcus Alexander would be unable to help them in any way as his belief in the gods was doubtful, sometimes bordering on Agnosticism.

St. John held her tenderly and said, "It is a great honor to have a chance to be martyred because of the word of God and His prophets. Stand by me, dear Helen, and whether we live or die, surely our Heavenly Father shall see to it that there are enough intoxicants, in this life and the next, to keep our rapturous sex life going for eternity. Whether we make love and get stoned here, or in the next world, makes no difference. Be without fear. You are a woman of the Lord."

She looked up into his eyes, and through her tears she laughed and said, "Oh John, you're so funny. I don't know why, but you always make me laugh. Maybe it would not be so bad to die with you. I don't know if I believe all that stuff about the afterlife, but it's sweet of you to say it anyway. I love you, John."

Meanwhile the security guards and Athenodorus were practicing sword fighting. Athenodorus was neither a man of particular honor nor bravery. Why, at this time, he should decide to risk probable death for a delusional maniac was somewhat of a mystery to all of the servants on the island.

Many of the servants were afraid, but only a few could resolve to leave. The island was a prestige hospitality property, and any next job could well amount to a demotion. The majority of workers knew their lives were in danger, but the mainland held little appeal for them, so they stayed on, living daily in anxiety and fear.

The assorted cultists that occupied the other dorm rooms and the more fancy suites and cabins were not afraid. Before this time they had viewed St. John The Divine as a quack, but, up until this point, they had not realized that they would jealously feel that he was one of their own, however deluded his thinking might be. Thus they reasoned: "He is a man of the gods, or at least a man who searches for the gods. We cannot abandon him now. And so we too shall fight for the honor of this island and our fellow spiritual seeker."

Of course, during their little talk on the shore, before Paganon left, it had occurred to both Athenodorus and Paganon that the matter could be turned over to the Governor's authorities on the mainland.

Reading Athenodorus' thoughts on the situation, without his having brought it up, Paganon said, after a few readings of the threat letter, "If you tell the Governor's authorities about this, you know what will happen, don't you?"

Paganon did not have to spell it out. Athenodorus just nodded.

"Good then," Paganon had replied, "then this matter will remain between the parties concerned. I shall return with some fighting men. Any other course would doom our enterprises, mine and yours, not that yours is worth anything in the scope of eternity."

6. The Horse of Mockery

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As predicted by Paganon, the spies of Christos Christos had quickly become aware that St. John The Divine was unrepentantly keeping up his "scriptural work." The fury of the High Councilors of the rival churches brought a response that was quick, unequivocal and deathly dangerous. They were humorless and vengeful to the core. Men were armed to the teeth. Fast boats were prepared. They would sail that night and launch a surprise attack at dawn.

* * *

One of the security guards was seated on a rock near the shore. He was the night-watchman, and the entirely of his employment consisted or staying awake in order to sound the alarm in the event of any danger. But, as night-watchmen often do, he drifted off to sleep while on duty. Oddly, it was not the blackness of night that caused this dereliction of duty, but rather the very mildest of pink, at the horizon, which faded into the darkest of navy-blue heavens. It was just the first hints of dawn that took him off to dreamland.

And what did he dream of? He sat dreaming of being on the mainland, wandering the port's brothel district, going in and out of whore houses trying out any woman who took his fancy. He dreamed that he did this while high on any number of drugs and drink, imagining his pockets full of binge-money. But, most fortunately for everyone on the island, his blissful dream was disturbed by a lone seagull that began barking at an oversized crab lumbering in the sand.

The crab was some kind of mutant with outsized pincers that might cut a leg off the bird if it were not careful. The gull was used to being able to tear apart any crab it wished and resented having to be careful to steer clear of this one's large claw. In anger it squawked and snapped at the creature as it made it's way toward the rocks the night-watchman was sitting on. This caused the guard to pull himself out of his sleep to see what the disturbance was all about.

At first he noticed the mutant crab moving toward him, then he saw the bird circling, landing, resuming its cawing and squealing as it tried to wrap its small brain around the fact that it could not defeat this crab. He laughed at first, then he decided to throw small rocks at the bird till it flew away. It occurred to the guard that he deserved a rest and that it was really inhuman to ask anyone to stay awake all night, almost every night. And thus did he sit himself back down on the rock, and, already wishing to be lulled back to sleep by the gentle Mediterranean waves lapping the shore, go to settle in for another short snooze.

He gazed serenely at the horizon and the narcotic beauty of the now-emerging dawn, ready to let sleep take him again when, suddenly, he leapt to his feet, shook his head and wiped his eyes.

"This can't really be happening," the guard mumbled to himself as he ran to wake up Athenodorus.

Now, clearly, one could see, perhaps only a mile off shore, five masts filled with wind, and the rhythmic splashing that could only indicate the sailboats were further sped along by several oarsmen. Up till that point, the idea of open hostilities and military battles taking place on this island-sanctuary had seemed only like a distant theory. But, since each boat looked as though it held ten men, it was probable that a contingent of fifty fighting men were to land on the beach of the resort island shortly.

The night-watchman quickly roused Athenodorus who, stunned, even though warned and prepared, shook off his sleep with some struggle and ran to roust Paganon and his men. Paganon, who had accurately predicted the approximate size of the initial force Christos Christos would send, bolted out of bed and shouted to all his soldiers, each of whom threw on their armor and got their weapons ready within minutes.

For his part, Christos Christos did not start out being a spendthrift, (that would come later), and so he did not wish to exhaust his church's treasury by sending an overwhelming number of fighters, although he was at liberty to do just that. He had underestimated the resolve of Paganon's faction and figured there might be a dozen brave men among his cohorts, at best. He would have been mortified to know his men would face an equal force, and that he had greatly underestimated his enemies. He was used to winning easily. Such is the danger of success that comes too early and without much struggle. Christos Christos was far too young to be head of his faction, but the nepotism involved in his sect dictated that he would be the one to inherit his father's post whenever the father passed on, whether such a promotion was made on its merits or not.

As Athenodorus, his guards, and Paganon's men, rushed to the shore to greet the boats that were already about to land, Paganon turned to Athenodorus and said, "Have you ever killed anyone?"

Athenodorus, running along side him, and already short of breath, said, "No, never."

Paganon shook his head patronizingly and said, "You real-worlders are just as useless in life as you are pathetic in death."

* * *

Paganon had not let on that the situation that day would not be as dire as it looked. He had a plan. When the boats were about twenty yards off shore and getting ready to drop their anchors, Paganon, with a cohort of sixty or so fighters behind him, (this included those members of Athenodorus' staff who were willing to fight), shouted out to the invading party, "Don't land! Don't land!"

All of the fighters behind him stood confused. The boats stopped their progress for a moment and their commander came to the front of one of the boats.

"Why shouldn't we land and slaughter all you heretics? It's what we've been ordered to do by the High Councilors. Our eternal salvation depends on obeying their commands. And, in any case, you all will be dead within forty-five minutes of our disembarking," replied the opposing commander.

"I think not," hollered Paganon who turned and pointed at the top of the hill. "Do you see those five bowmen up there? They are in possession of dozens of flaming arrows. Once you leave your boats to fight us, they will commence to rain down fire upon your vessels. They will be burnt up where they sit and you will have no way off this island, no escape if the battle goes badly for you. But then again, you will escape the island, since your souls, after we are done dispatching with your puny mortal bodies, shall roast in hell forever. And thus we will succeed in burning both you and your boats, the boats for an hour, you forever."

It was not a bluff, Paganon had procured five mercenaries who had been former Roman army officers who were expert bowmen, and the flames and smoke from the fire pots they had set up in order to fuel their flaming arrows could be seen from the shore. The mercenaries' helmets were of military grade and sported noble crests. They looked like harbingers of death, birds of prey whose power and speed could not be confronted if one held out any hope of seeing the next day.

After much arguing amongst themselves and heated exchanges involving shoving, accusations of treason and discussion of excommunication, the invading force decided at last not to land at all. Apparently they were willing to risk life in Hell for eternity by disobeying the orders of Christos Christos. Suddenly this passing world of sin, illusion and debauchery looked more rational than ever.

The fighting force of fifty unceremoniously turned their boats around and began tacking into the wind and rowing away as best they could. An unspoken mutual agreement seemed to settle over the crew, and when they hit port, not a one of them said a word to the other, but rather all scattered in various directions and never looked back. Not a one of them returned, ever again, to the main church of Christos Christos. It was said by the locals that they all embraced Greek and Roman polytheism again, and with a fervor they had never known before.

Christos Christos, in full priestly regalia, was forced to comb the docks looking for his boats. He inquired of dozens of merchants, fisherman, traders and importers before being directed to a pier on the far end of the harbor. There the empty boats were found, bobbing back and forth on the water, filled to the brim with oars, armor, weapons and empty ration boxes.

This outrageous act of cowardice was deified by some of the more perverse local polytheists. And thus, to the enragement of Christos Christos, the harbor's central plaza, within days of the incident, was adorned with fifty life-size statues clustered together. And a large monument stone was placed in front of the sculptures with this inscription:

All gods hail the Great Deserters, those young Christian soldiers who fled from a painful crucifixion. They would not share the torments of their savior, but instead they rushed back into the arms of the pantheons of Greece and Rome which guard all creatures under the sun. Such is the goodness of fate.

When the mail boat came, St. John The Divine, knowing it would anger both Athenodorus and Paganon, sneaked an extra copy of that week's prophetic prose-poem into the hands of the delivery worker, bribing him into silence by slipping several silver coins into his hand, easily a month's salary for a very low-ranking government functionary. The letter was addressed to Christos Christos. And the mail boat worker, who never failed to carry through with any promised action involving a bribe, did indeed see to it that he personally witnessed the letter being placed into the hands of Paganon's rival. It read as follows:

To Christos Christos and his hapless lackeys:

Did you really think you could defeat God's anointed with that sad excuse for a military force you sent? God will yet send the Romans to feed you second-rate circus clowns to the lions.

As for me, I, under the authority of the Almighty, shall send four curses upon you in the form of horses:

The first horse shall be the horse of mockery. He will nullify all your serious sermons with laughter. Each time you try to be deathly serious, mockery shall follow you everywhere. All future jokes shall be at your expense.

The second horse I send is the horse of boredom. You shall be consigned to everlasting dullness. In this life, and in the afterlife, you will beg our Father to extinguish the light of your soul forever, so as to avoid facing forever the pompous nonentity that you'll always be.

The third horse I send to you is the horse of unbelief. The Lord shall see to it that none of your orthodoxy survives. All of your missionary works shall be in vain. I promise this.

And finally, I send you the horse of disorganization. This one will ensure every one of your churches is always divided against itself. Nothing but chaos will result from your insidious prudery and pomposity.

* * *

The mail boat worker, not without a bit of sadism himself, had used a small bit of the silver St. John gave him to hire an off-duty Roman soldier as a bodyguard. He had some idea of what the letter might say and was already aware of the antagonism that was growing between St. John and Christos Christos, so he decided he had best have some protection when he brought the missive to the High Councilor.

Christos Chistos was seated at his desk writing orders for his subordinates when suddenly the mail boat worker and a fully-armed and fully-armored Roman soldier burst in. The solider was huge and muscular, and he was in the mood to deliver as much amusement as he could to the man who had paid for his services.

"What on earth is this intrusion upon my holy sanctity!" scolded Christos Christos.

"Oh, nothing much," said the mail boat worker in an artificially-casual tone, "just doing my job, you know, carrying messages here and there. Who, in this sleazy town, doesn't know me and my work by name?"

"But you deliver mail upon the seas, not on land," protested Christos Christos. "You should have handed that letter over to the workers on shore."

As the mail boat worker and the Roman soldier turned to one another and smiled, the Roman soldier took the envelope from the mail boat worker's hands and shoved it forcefully into the hands of Christos Christos, and said, "We aim to deliver customer service far beyond the call of duty, unless you have some objection to that?"

"No," replied Christos Christos, curtly and formally. "I thank you for your attentive service. Now, if you will excuse yourselves from my office, I have work to attend to."

The Roman soldier bore down upon the seated High Councilor and pressed his heavy, huge, calloused hands upon Christos Christos' shoulders and said, "Read it now!"

Christos Christos protested, "You can't force me to read this in front of you. You have no standing to be in this office. I am a Roman citizen and have the full rights of any Roman citizen!"

The soldier then brutally shoved the High Councilor against his desk which caused the cleric to fall to the floor with a thud.

Now jolted out of his complacency and sense of superiority, Christos Christos shook as he tore open the letter. He was forced by the illiterate soldier to read the letter out loud. As he read the letter, his voice quaked with anger and shock that such defiance should come from all sides. After he concluded his reading of the lines of the poem, he tossed the letter to the floor in disgust.

As they were leaving the Roman soldier said with a bullying grin, "As for the first horse in that poem, the horse of mockery — I think he's already here."

And with that the two men left the room laughing uproariously as they slammed the door shut. Christos Christos, now trying to pick himself up from the floor, could hear their boisterous laughing all the way down the street. This was the last straw. Now there was nothing on his mind but murder.

7. An Assassination Plot

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Christos Christos hatched an assassination plot the next day and acquired the necessary funds to carry it out. He located an assassin he felt comfortable with and hired him for double the usual wages for such a job, both to ensure the assassin would keep the plot secret and also to make sure he would be truly enthusiastic about getting the job done.

The plot was quite simple. In the dead of night a hired assassin would row a very small dinghy to within about a half mile of the island. The boat had no lights of its own, so the assassin navigated by the torch lights on the island that remained burning for much of the night, lighting the pathways of the spiritual seekers on the island who were night owls and preferred to conduct their sacred rituals in the early pre-dawn hours.

Once the assassin had gotten to within a half-mile of the island, he'd abandon his small rowboat and make the hard swim to the shores of the resort. His splashes would be no more noticeable in the dark than the splashes made by the ordinary action of the customary breezes and movements of the sea. Once on shore, he was to sneak over to St. John's cell, quickly cut his throat, and then, before security had a chance to notice anything, leap into one of the resort's own rowboats and hurry back to the mainland. By then it would seem certain that one of the security officers would notice a boat was being stolen, but the assassin, if he timed it perfectly, would already be launched by the time anyone mobilized. The call to action would go out, but by that time his pursuers would be hundreds of yards behind him and not likely to catch up. Once back on the mainland, the assassin would leap from the rowboat and lose himself in the labyrinth of alleys and side-streets of the port city. If he was pursued as far as the mainland, by the time the guards from the island disembarked, the assassin would be safely tucked away in some den of iniquity, perhaps even in an underground brothel, leaving the pursuing party to wander the dark streets randomly searching in vain for him.

The athletic man chosen for the job was something akin to a retired Navy Seal, in modern terms. For him, such a job would be far less risky than the assignments he'd received while serving in the real military where he fought truly lethal foes whose training was equal, or superior, to his.

It was the assassin's bad luck that was his undoing, and not any incompetence on his own part. With incredible stamina, he quickly rowed several miles from the mainland at about two in the morning. As planned, he abandoned his boat and undertook the somewhat arduous half-smile swim toward the shores of the resort. He was only slightly fatigued by the time he was just a few hundred yards from shore.

He had a really good feeling about this mission. His killing blade was tucked neatly in his belt and he felt in almost perfect condition for a man of his age. There had been no unexpected turns in the weather or the currents. In fact, the only thing that bothered him was the superstitious feeling that the mission seemed to be going almost too smoothly. He could see, right as he got near enough to be certain of making landfall, that torchlights were going out and the island was darkening, and only a few candle-lit windows glowed. Given the lightning speed with which he was accustomed to operating, it seemed obvious that these slow civilians, by the time they realized someone's throat had been slit and a rowboat was being stolen, would hardly be able to react before he was a quarter mile off shore and well on his way to safety.

An assassin is not always a man without a religion. In fact, he is usually of the opinion that the gods and the fates, and the crosswinds of nature, are such that ending up a criminal is simply one of countless strange divine callings in which one might find one's self. Perhaps unexpected financial necessities or lack of skill in commercial endeavors, or simple illiteracy could be the cause. In any case, almost all assassins feel they are doing productive work and noble work. Many of them are even given to praying before, during and after their mission. Like certain pious hunters, they may beg the deities for success, and then upon making the kill, make an additional prayer of propitiation, feeling that both the hunter and the hunted were put in their respective positions by forces far larger than themselves. Both hunters and assassins may feel that they have done something violent, perhaps even illegal, but not anything unconscionably evil. They reason, "We all must employ whatever gifts of survival the gods gave us. If I am only good at killing, and not much else, then what am I to do, die of starvation or live off of degrading charity and be a bum?"

And so it was with our assassin. He had prayed for favorable weather, favorable currents, and, most of all, that his task might be successful and his escape might be flawless. It seemed like a lot to ask of a busy universe, but he piously asked for an extra helping of grace as his post-retirement debts were mounting due to several unfortunate injuries and illnesses that left much of his family unable to earn their own livings. As for his victim, he even offered a kind of prayer to his soon-to-be-departed spirit, saying, "Please forgive me and understand the position I am in. There was no other occupation for me. May you be transported to paradise upon leaving your body."

The civil authorities would have had a much easier time apprehending such people had they known that a small temple existed in the back room of a former army captain's house which housed a small altar to gods the assassins invented to watch over them. Much like some of the Japanese kami, their gods did not have to be known from long ages past, (not in this subculture), but could be "discovered" when certain unexpected needs arose. Hence our antihero had pilgrimaged, as he always did before an assassination, to the old captain's temple-room where he prayed for protection on this mission and for prosperity for his ailing family. He left there feeling holy, devout, and most importantly, assured by the patron god of hired killers that his current mission would not only be a victorious one, but a sanctified one that would advance him spiritually.

But alas, just minutes before he was to make landfall, a worshipper of Poseidon awoke in the middle of the night feeling strangely energized and full of gratitude for his life at the resort, which was at once quiet and lively, providing fellowship, spiritual stimulation and good food and lodgings. He had three roommates, each with separate beds. They all belonged to the same cult and had decided to find an inexpensive way to live at the resort. They all had small government pensions and had agreed that rather than pay for rather pricey single-person cells, they would rent a larger room together and split the rent four ways. None of them hankering for much in the way of privacy, and all of them perfectly compatible as friends, they had landed on the ideal formula for living at a much-coveted spiritual-retreat island for practically nothing.

This devotee of the Sea God tapped on the shoulder of the lodger in the bed next to him and whispered forcefully, "Are you awake?"

"Yes, brother, I am. But how would you suspect, for I have not even stirred, but have been laying here awake with many thoughts rushing through my mind. I am not unhappy or worried, simply restless and not needing of rest at this time. Still, I did not want to stay up reading, or be walking around the island, coming in and out and keeping the rest of you awake with me," replied his comrade.

"Excellent!" replied the first man. "Then let us roust our other two brethren and go to the shore with torches and let us recite every prayer we know until dawn breaks. By then I am sure we will be drowsy. The other men are good natured and will go along with us. What does it matter when we go to bed? We are all retired. We cannot be late for duty, even if we sleep all day."

"Yes!" replied the second devotee. "And how wonderfully mystical it shall be to pray to Poseidon as he moves through the blackness of the night ocean, deciding the fates of men and women with his movements over and through the waters and winds."

The other men, only somewhat groggy when awakened by the first two, smiled when they realized what was afoot. They too were of the spontaneously-religious type who were quite subject to the power of suggestion. The four of them stumbled happily down to the shore and planted torches in the sand. After they had pushed the sharpened edges of the torches into the sand, they lit them in preparation for the hours of prayers they had been intending to recite from memory. But, just as the four torches cast their wide light over the shore, who should stumble upon the beach but our unlucky assassin.

It was immediately decided that the appearance of this unknown man from out of the ocean was a miracle. After all, the man had no boat and no companions, and certainly not even an exemplary human could swim from the mainland to the resort island unaided. Thus, it was obvious to them that the individual was a demigod, an ocean creature sent by Poseidon to bless them for their enthusiastic devotion. The assassin played along with this and agreed to join the men in their room for many strong glasses of wine and any food they might have on hand to offer. He felt lucky he was not viewed as an invader and killed on the spot. Although his mission was now to be a failure, it seemed clear enough to him that he would not be confronted about who he really was and what he was there to do.

However, when plans go awry, they often do so in more than one way, and thus these excited devotees sought to show off this bit of divine intervention to the night-watchman with whom they'd had many spiritual discussions and debates. But, as fate would have it, the night-watchman did not take a spiritual view of the matter. Having studied much about the military, and having known many soldiers, he could not help but notice that the belt the "demigod" was wearing was of the sort issued by the local military. Clearly this was an ex-military man. And furthermore, the kind of knife he had tucked under his belt was of the sort which were only issued for "special operations" of the kind which implied the most severe sort of violence.

Not wanting to appear sacrilegious, the guard said, in a friendly and upbeat way, "That's a very nice belt and an impressive dagger you have on you. Would you mind telling me where you acquired them so that I might purchase ones like it when I next take a holiday on the mainland?"

He then smiled and he crooked his head to the side; and the Poseidon worshippers, having no idea of the subtext of the question, also smiled and said, "Given that he is a demigod from the ocean, there is no doubt he should have the best of everything."

"I agree," said the security officer, playing along for the moment, but honing in on his target just the same. "And it was good of the gods to give to one of their own sea creatures a belt and knife with the marks of the most prestigious military academy on the mainland, knowing that it would mean a lot to anyone who had studied such matters."

This statement had a rather odd ring to it, as though it sounded like something less than divine, causing the Poseidon worshippers to smile a bit more awkwardly and look at each other quizzically.

"And such a finely-toned body as yours — it is only to be had, in our world, by those who are trained distance swimmers, the kind of exemplary athletic sort that one finds in the elite corps of our naval personnel. Indeed, yours is not the physique of an ordinary man, but clearly that of a god, or a demigod, or . . . that of a special operations veteran, one trained to endure the most extreme battle conditions on land and in the water," added the security guard in a most amiable way, knowing the matter would now be pressed beyond the assassin's ability to endure any more conversation.

The guard, having attained his objective, a very harsh objective, without appearing sacrilegious, had indeed threaded the needle very finely; and so he was not surprised when the assassin suddenly pushed the Poseidon devotees aside and broke for the shoreline. This was a desperate move indeed, since his boat was drifting lose in the sea and he could not possibly have swam back to the mainland after all of the rowing and swimming he had already done. Indeed, to flee to the water was to invite his own drowning from exhaustion.

Now the guard was free to speak his mind, since the Poseidon worshippers would not believe a demigod would act in such an abrupt way for no reason to people being respectful of him.

The guard shouted out as he rushed forward, "Apprehend this man with me. He is a paid assassin sent to murder our prophet!"

As he shouted this, two other guards whose sleeping quarters were nearby were awakened by the fuss and sat up in their beds. They concluded something was amiss and shook the sleep off of themselves and hurried out to see if they could be of assistance. By then the assassin had begun swimming into the open sea in the dark. His progress was slow due to his exhaustion, but the others could not catch him because they were not expert swimmers. Surveying the situation, one of the guards was given to understand something wrong was going on in the water. He hurried to a dock just two blocks away and plunged into a rowboat. He was a good oarsmen and easily caught up with the tired swimmer and impeded his progress, which led to his ultimately being captured. (The other men located a second row boat and eventually made it out to where the first boat was, surrounding the unlucky hit man.)

The assassin was taken into custody the next day by the local authorities who had sent a boat out to investigate the matter, the import of which had made it back to the mainland by then. However, strictly speaking, there was no evidence of any wrongdoing on the part of the assassin, since he simply claimed to have been driven off course by an unexpected wind and an untimely current. He further claimed that his cheaply-made boat had sprung a leak, and thus he was forced to swim to the nearest shore he could find. The fact that he fled when being questioned by the guard was inexplicable, to be sure, but that in itself did not indicate anything except an irrational fear of being questioned or detained. With no further evidence and no witness to contradict his tale, the authorities saw no option but to let the assassin go, especially since he was identified as a man who had served honorably in the military for many years and had never been suspected of any crimes before.

Although the assassin could not be prosecuted, the security team on the island, along with Paganon, Helen and Athenodorus, were all certain that the intruder was a hired hit-man most certainly under the employ of Christos Christos.

Both Helen and Athenodorus did not want to upset St. John any more than they already had, and so they did not share the details of the previous night's events with St. John. But, as privacy and secrecy were virtually impossible to maintain on this resort, it was inevitable that St. John would catch wind of the plot and react to it. Once he understood that an assassin had been sent to kill him, but that the plot had been foiled by the security team, he responded in his usual way, by writing a prose-poem. This bit of writing would soon make its way to Christos Christos, further antagonizing him and ensuring that open hostilities would continue:

Oh Christos Christos, how dare you make an attempt on the life of the only prophet with any real life in him! The consequences of your thirst for worldly power and worldly authority will one day come to haunt you.

Let me tell you how the final reckoning shall go, so you will know beforehand the things that are to come, things which will disgust you, because you are a demon, and demons are always demoralized by the things of God.

It shall come about that after this Earth has gone away, having served only a temporary purpose, those you call sinners shall be assembled before the throne of the Creator Himself. They shall await the Great Judgment, but, to their surprise there will be no judgment whatsoever. Why would God judge his own creation with anger and hatred and wrath? Only the ungodly can conceive of such a wicked thing. Instead all so-called degenerates will all receive new bodies, perfectly formed.

And in between celebrations many centuries long, they shall congregate around the throne in beautiful robes, not the bland, white robes of sexless, judgmental prudes, but in colorful robes, festive robes, robes brightly decorated with every pattern and every hue that has ever been known.

And in front of them will be the very most blessed ones. These are the ones who lived life without fear of anything, least of all God. God will reward them with celestial nakedness. They will receive the most beautiful bodies in all creation. And they will be sealed with the seal of the sacredly unclothed, the ones who lived boldly on earth. They will be cheered and adored. And The Lord will say, "Most excellent!" to them.

8. Fifteen Sailboats

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Christos Christos made a firm decision: His sect would take out loans and go into extreme financial hardship in order to see that competing sects and heretical prophets did not get the upper hand on him. At this point it was not only looking like people were dissenting, but that they were doing it with impunity. Up till this point the other Christian sects had lived in fear of Christos Christos. And although he didn't have the power to wipe them out, which is what he wanted to, he could persecute a high-profile dissenter, here and there, and generally keep his rivals wringing their hands as to what he thought about every issue. St. John's open defiance was making him a laughingstock, and soon he would just be regarded as an also-ran in the race to emerge as the victorious sect in this blossoming religion, a faith that he had hoped would one day become the official religion of the whole empire. (These hopes appeared to outsiders, at that point, to be little more than pipe-dreams; but this did not stop him from acting like his dream was a certainty.)

He would bring his church to the brink of bankruptcy in the following way: He would demand that a naval force three times the size of the original one be sent, perhaps 15 vessels each containing ten soldiers each. This would ensure that the battle for control of the island would be a route and that St. John could finally be killed. And then, some months after St. John's death, his rivals would lose their fire and passion. The hearts and minds of the masses would, according to Christos Christos' thinking, then fall rather mechanically to the best-known and largest of the sects. In the absence of real inspiration, people go with what is familiar.

The High Councilor would have to do a lot of arm-twisting of wealthier patrons who were not only reluctant to publicly admit sympathizing with his sect, but also nervous about justifying such a loan to the sect when family members began to question such an uncertain action. As one great saint said about his own kind, "If you loan money to a saint, don't expect to get it back." The truth would probably be that certain patrons would be paid back, at much hardship to the sect, and others would be stiffed, causing public relations problems for the sect. The whole plan was going to cost the church a lot in lost political and financial capital, but Christos Christos felt he had to set the precedent early that anyone fiddling around with the orthodoxy of his sect would meet with a swift end. Otherwise, so he opined, theological chaos would result, making the religion an unstable bunch of unknown minor cults.

After a few very rough weeks of conniving, cajoling and smooth talking, and after accepting a rather high toll on his own nervous system in the process, Christos Christos had formed his naval fleet and would give the order to kill anyone who stood between his soldiers and St. John. And, he would reiterate, St. John was to be killed on-sight. As a prisoner he would be nothing but a liability. Where would they keep him? Under whose authority? And if it were known he were captured, would not the search for him eventually involve the Governor's authorities? Having any such set of outstanding questions would not do. The invasion must take place quickly and the whole matter of the very existence of a one St. John The Divine must be settled definitively.

When the fleet did finally set sail, Christos Christos sat on the docks and watched fifteen sailboats with ten men each, each man a capable oarsman and soldier, speed out to the island where his nemesis lived. The High Councilor knew that the fundamental truth about Saint John was that he was mentally ill, and so he even told himself that he was doing St. John a favor, perhaps curtailing his blasphemous sins before eternal salvation was lost to the madman forever. In either case, he thought, as he sighed a sigh of relief, soon the small security force on the island would be overwhelmed and St. John's crazy writings, and the whole Book of Revelations thing would be over, a footnote in history.

And all of that might have been true, but Christos Christos made the simplest of errors. He did not fully consider that the docks were full of part-time spies who, when they weren't working as fishermen, ship-repairmen, exporters and importers, kept an eye on the port for the Governor. Surely he should have reasoned that no serious Governor in the Empire would allow any naval force to be assembled for any reason without his approval. Did he imagine the Governor's men would not see it, would not hear of such a plan unfolding? Christos Christos had acted in religious hubris, believing no worldly force could interdict his decrees. It was magical and simplistic thinking at its worst, the kind one would not imagine such an otherwise brilliant mind to be capable of. Here was a man who'd built a large sect from the ground up, knew six languages and had the capacity to hold in his mind an endless stream of theological and organizational details. How he thought he could skirt the long arm of secular power was something no one, including himself, could understand.

The ships were soon nearly a mile off shore, and only a few hours, at most, from their destination. By then rumors had spread to the island about the size of the invading force. Every able hand had a weapon, even the chamber maids were ready to wield spears and daggers. As far as numbers go, the match was again about even, the main problem being that only a third of the people protecting St. John had any military experience. The battle would consist of approximately 150 experienced soldiers facing 50 semi-trained soldiers and about 100 civilians with weapons they had never practiced using. The battle, should it ensue, could be won, but the sheer number of combatants, nearly 300 in all, assured that the affair would be bloody and messy, and the professional soldiers of Christos Christos would still face some heavy casualties. The price to pay for such a battle would be very high indeed.

All of these scenarios were based on the presumption that the battle would take place and go as planned. But assuming things will go as planned is a bit like underestimating the enemy, any Taoist sage will tell you never to do either.

* * *

St. John The Divine was, as one might imagine, forbidden from attempting to join the fight. In fact, his cell was surrounded by guards for the very purpose of making sure, in his manic, delusional state, he didn't suddenly think of himself as omnipotent and venture into the battlefield hoping to strike down real soldiers by calling down God's wrath upon them, (a thing which will get you killed far more quickly than merely being inept with a sword).

All St. John could do was to write the words which he was certain were being channeled through him by The Holy Ghost:

Oh, Christos Christos, how many times must you be warned? Do you not know that the trumpets of Heaven will sound and lay waste to this army of mere mortals you're sending?

All of your ships will be torn apart in the ocean, reduced to mere planks of floating wood; and even those pieces shall be burnt and bent and twisted. May your boats be reduced to shredded splinters, crushed by the hand of the Almighty who guides my every word and deed.

That all may speak of the power of my God, and the paltry illusion that your doctrines are, I shall have my servants amass seven censers from the altars of the holy prostitutes here.

They shall fill those censers full of the most potent incense, and they shall, upon my orders, circumambulate this island, sanctifying every inch of its shoreline with the holy smoke which God shall use to place a protecting spirit upon me and the island I inhabit.

I swear by the name of the Almighty, your ships shall never touch the shore of this sacred island. Not a man you have sent to slay me today shall return home. All of their wives shall be widowed, and all on account of your faithlessness.

And when my servants have circled the divine sanctuary, I shall order all seven of them to bring the holy censers to the water's edge and throw the smoking censers out into the waves. This symbol will illustrate how the Lord's angel shall strike you down.

Much to the dismay of Athenodorus, seven men who should have been making preparations for battle were badgered by St. John into carrying out his ritual of stuffing the censers full of incense and encircling the entire island with them. However, Athenodorus finally had to admit that the spectacle of it was somewhat impressive and had a kind of poetry to it. And so when each of the censer-bearing fighters came to the central harbor of the island, Athenodorus, Helen and all the others followed. They stood in an inexplicable ecstasy as the men repeated St. John's curses as they tossed the smoking steel balls full of incense into the water.

Athenodorus could not be sure, but he intuited that Paganon, usually the superstitious and irrational one, seemed less moved than himself, the perennial Agnostic.

He turned to Paganon and said, "The whole thing kind of sends a chill up one's spine, does it not?"

Paganon ignored the question and said, "Sir, your workers and my soldiers have concluded what little training I've had time to give them. Surely you understand that at any hour now we are, in all likelihood, to die in the face of a stronger fighting force. I have no more tricks sufficient to prevent the battle that is coming. In truth, the failure of the assassin was sheer luck. We've had two victories that were undeserved. I am not sure I have the faith, at this hour, to believe in a third miracle. And I am ashamed that you, a man who believes he is soon to return to unconscious dust, is more filled with joy about dying for the man he believes in than I am. When we met, I knew for sure I was ready to die, and you were a coward. Now, as my time approaches, I find my feet unsteady beneath me. I am a bit faint. You will please forgive me for not feeling the mystical inspiration that you do just now. In any event, it appears we are to be partners in death. May God grant me a joy like yours."

Athenodorus, without saying a word, pulled Paganon to his chest and embraced him and replied, "Don't be ashamed. To tell you the truth, I liked you from the moment I met you. We were enemies then, so I could not communicate my admiration for your bearing and your manly honesty. And you are right. It is usually I who plays the coward, and usually you act as the brave one. Why things should be different today, I can't say. But do consent to share a glass of wine with me and Helen and St. John. He is to offer a select few of us communion today. I tried to explain to him I don't believe in communion, but, you know, he never listens. So I'm just going to partake of it for his sake. Let's you and I go, with your top three or four men, and join John and Helen. He will pray amazing prayers for us. That will surely bolster you in this hour. Frankly, I have no reason to be happy. I just am. I can't figure it out at all."

* * *

After a predictably-rejuvenating time with St. John The Divine, in the full throes of his manic sermonizing, praying and prophesying, Athenodorus and Paganon, along with the other ad-hoc soldiers, went out to the harbor, which was sure to be their battlefield. Almost all of the able-bodied islanders, (and some of the disabled islanders), were there with real weapons, or improvised, crude weapons, ready to face a far superior enemy. The show of solidarity moved Athenodorus. Everyone just stared out to sea waiting for the tips of sails to appear on the horizon, and it was not long before they did.

Once the first two ships were sighted, a surrealistic horror came over everyone, but that horror was mixed with an otherworldly ecstasy. There was a kind of confusion on everyone's face. Most of the people there did not actually believe St. John was a real prophet, and thus they all wondered how exactly it was they got so worked up that they'd now put their own lives on the line to attempt to protect him, especially when that attempt seemed quite likely to have a dire consequence. And thus, each person wore contorted or screwed-up expressions, but virtually all of them also lacked the courage to, in front of all their peers, run for a row boat and abandon the island while there were still enough moments remaining to do so. And too, there was the natural high that comes when one really goes extremely beyond one's comfort zone and is probably beyond the point of no return. The ecstatic counterpoint in such situations tends to be caused by the fact that the outcome may be fatal or glorifying, or both, but one feels that there is no way out of the situation that will not mark a huge turning point in one's life-narrative. In such a circumstance, there is no doubt in anyone's mind that, at least for a while, one is really and vitally alive.

Soon all fifteen mini-ships were to be seen in a simple attack formation, wedging their way to shore. It was just a given that this group of invaders could not be turned back without a lethal confrontation. It was an awesome sight for the locals who had never seen any naval force of any size, although by conventional standards this force was minuscule, or even laughable. Their awe at seeing the fifteen sails approaching them at once was like the wonder one sees on the faces of those who turn to look at the tsunami or tidal bore that they know they cannot outrun. They are aware that they are likely to be swept to their deaths, but the thing coming to kill them is so grandiose-looking, that they seem not to begrudge, at least for a second or so, the fact that the beauty of the wave signifies their own extinction.

However, before those small paramilitary craft could get to within three-quarters of a mile of the shore, something initially more disturbing, and initially impossible to interpret, came between the invaders and the shoreline. These were real ships, several times the size of the row-boat / sail-boat craft employed by the invaders. By the time the invaders got to about two-thirds of a mile from the shoreline, this new force, involving several larger, more populated craft began ramming into the smaller craft. One could see from the shoreline that these ships were outfitted with iron-spiked prows that simply cut the invading boats in half, scattering the invaders into the shark infested waters, many of them bleeding profusely from cuts sustained by the splintered wood breaking around them.

As the ships were shredded, one could hear the terrified cries of the drowning, injured men. It went without saying that this larger, more horrifying attack force would not attempt to save them. And thus the fate of most of them was to be eaten alive as the bloody water called a ravenous convocation of sharks to the scene. If even a single man in the invading party survived, no one on the island ever heard of it. The consensus on the island, and on the mainland, was that all of the men died horrifically from injuries sustained from the impact of the aforementioned collisions, or that they died horrifically in the jaws of merciless sharks.

Even as the shouts of the drowning, dying men, especially those being eaten alive, continued to reach the shore, the war ships that had destroyed the invading force of Christos Christos reached the harbor and a handful of soldiers disembarked at the main dock. One of the soldiers had a most impressive crest on his helmet and his appearance was almost godlike in its simplicity and boldness. This one led the pack of soldiers to where Athenodorus and Paganon were standing.

"You are Athenodorus and Paganon?" he inquired curtly.

They shook their head in the affirmative, too dazed by the rapidly unfolding of events to reply.

"Very well, then," he continued. "You, Paganon, and all your men — you will begin packing your boats and supplies and leave the island as soon as all of your men and possessions can be loaded onto your boats. If you are still here by the time I'm ready to leave the island, I will personally kill you, and my soldiers will finish off the rest of your men immediately. In a moment we will begin unloading several hundred soldiers onto the island to secure it completely."

Paganon knew this military officer well, as he was the most famous commander of the provincial navy. His reputation was such that he never joked, never bluffed and never minced words. If he issued a threat, every word of that threat would be true in every detail. And so he merely put his head down, turned around without speaking a word and began to order his men to pack up and prepare to go as soon as possible.

The officer then turned again to Athenodorus and added, "You fellows didn't really believe you could hide this conflict from the governor's intelligence services, did you? He's got spies all over the docks. You must have known open and ongoing warfare would not be tolerated in this province. What made you think you and the forces of Christos Christos could carry on a war in secret? Well, it is no matter anyway, how or why you came to live under such a delusion. You and I must now retreat to your drawing room and discuss where things will go from here. Meanwhile, my troops will secure and search every inch of this island. Additionally, they will assume protective duties over Marcus Alexander, or St. John the Divine, or whatever it is you've taken to calling that madman."

The commander was joined by the old doctor, Pantheonus, who walked up just about the time Helen came over to see what was going on.

The commander nodded to the doctor and said, "Oh yes, and he will be joining us. The Governor, who you must know is a personal friend of his, has sent him along to assist me in making sure there are no mistakes made in the handling of the case of Marcus Alexander."

"And you!" he said to Helen as she approached, bewildered by all that was happening around her. "The doctor told the Governor what you did. And the Governor knows this has all resulted is civil strife. It only so happens that he must have had a momentary, sentimental weakness about killing you, a weakness I do not share with him. You are lucky I don't run you through with my sword this very moment. Had the Governor left it up to me, I would have. And were I to be Governor, I would drag you back to the mainland and make a real public execution out of it. We'd tear you to pieces in front of a few thousand cheering people. But, as it is, you and I, and the doctor and Athenodorus, shall now proceed to the proprietor's home so I can inform you, in detail, about your fate and the fate of Marcus Alexander, the man you murdered in favor of that madman St. John The Divine, who shares his body. Hundreds of people have now died because of you, you shameless wretch!"

The doctor gave a hard and angry stare at Helen, and she averted her eyes and began to weep.

"Don't weep, woman!" ordered the commander. "Celebrate the fact that you've not been tortured to death. That is an amazing victory for a person guilty of your crimes."

"Now," he concluded as he turned toward Athenodorus' villa, "let us stop all this sentimental nonsense and go to the proprietor's parlor and conclude our arrangements there. You, Athenodorus, will order a suitable meal to be prepared for us."

9. The Governor's Mansion

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On the mainland it was starting to get dark and Christos Christos had not heard a thing. The plan was simple enough and overwhelming force was applied. Why had no messengers been sent back to shore to give him the details of what was sure to be a simple and successful operation? It made no sense.

He got tired of waiting at his desk as the shadows fell. So he got up and resolutely set out on a brisk walk toward the docks. Perhaps there had been some misunderstanding. Maybe the soldiers they had sent back had forgotten the directions to the High Councilor's residence. Surely someone from the invasion force would be waiting at the waterfront to tell him of the "swift and mercilessly slaying" of St. John The Divine and all the "sub-human creatures" who were trying, most likely in vain, to protect him. Obviously most of the mercenaries would be on the island for several hours cleaning up any pockets of resistance, taking women as sex slaves, destroying anything they found offensive and carrying out some old-fashioned looting. But they were plainly instructed to send one boat back immediately with early news of the goings on. Clearly something had gone wrong in the lines of communication. News should have arrived at his office hours ago.

Christos Christos got to the waterfront street just as the merchants were lighting up candles and torches to brighten up their taverns and restaurants to serve the port city's night owls. He wandered along the promenade along the harbor for some while, anxiously casting his gaze out over the water to see if the lanterns of any boats could be seen heading toward the mainland. His anxiety drove him to wander out onto the end of the longest pier, as though the extra couple hundred feet would bring him close enough to see anything not visible from the street. But it made no difference.

Other than the moonlight, and the glow from businesses along the street, there was nothing to see on the water but an occasional ripple. In fact, the sea had an eerie calm about it, as though it had resolved some conflict within itself and no longer needed to struggle about with heaving waves and raging cross-currents. From time to time one heard a rustle of wings from a cormorant rushing forth to some new feeding ground at another shore beyond the harbor; and, here and there, in the distance, one heard the wail of a sea gull or two from some cliff face beyond the range of vision. At one point, after staring at the water for a while, he saw a small sea turtle stick up its head and then submerge again.

He turned away from the pier and headed back to the promenade. Now his head was hanging down and he felt a bit of panic rise in his chest. Something did not feel right. A clear victory would not come with this kind of lack of communication. Something had gone on out there on that island that was not according to plan, but there was no one to tell him what it was, no way to get any reassurance that the situation was under control. A lot of money, and his own prestige, were riding on this operation. He was shaken by the mysteriousness of this odd silence in the harbor.

He became quite distracted and was so lost in a series of circular, worrisome thoughts, that he was not listening properly, nor looking about him in an alert manner. He found himself practically bumping into a man, someone a few inches taller than he, a rather regal, almost senatorial-looking person in a Romanesque robe. The man had short, well-groomed, curly, dark hair and wide, brown eyes and large, but shapely ears. Unlike Christos Christos, this man looked alert and completely at ease.

The High Councilor excused himself for almost bumping into the fellow and walked around him to carry on his nervous pacing about the waterfront promenade.

The man, however, after a few seconds, turned and said, "Christos, Christos. Is that you?"

Christos Christos did not hear him at first, so absorbed was he in his thoughts. The man had to repeat himself a bit more forcefully, the way one would with a senile person in a hospital, in order to bring him out of his cloudy mental state.

At this second calling, the High Councilor snapped out of his torpid state and suddenly became alert and lucid. He turned to the unknown person and eagerly walked over to greet him.

He offered his hand to this stranger, and, as he shook his hand said, "Were you sent here to look for me? It must be that you have news for me regarding the soldiers."

The man shook his hand warmly and said, "Yes, in fact I do. I have been looking for you for the last half hour. I had gone to your office, but they told me you had gone out walking. Knowing your concerns about the events on the island, I guessed you were to be found on the waterfront. But the harbor is big, and so it seems it took us a while to catch up with each other. But I'm glad to have found you."

"So then," Christos Christos eagerly inquired, "have soldiers successfully landed on the island? Has St. John The Divine has been subdued? Have his protectors been properly humbled?"

The man's eyebrows arched upward onto his expressive forehead, his smile broadened and his eyes seemed to twinkle; and he replied with the utmost sincerity, "I'm glad you asked those questions in exactly that way. Because it is precisely true that soldiers are all over that island, and St. John The Divine was subdued, and his keepers there gave up without a fight."

Christos Christos tossed back his head and let out a chuckle of relief and unfettered joy. His interlocutor prided himself in technically telling the truth in every detail. It pleased him, on a semantic level, that he had not been required by his questioner to state exactly which soldiers controlled the island and what the fate of the original invading force had been.

"It's getting rather late," added Christos Christos, now in a somewhat more somber tone. "When will ships be coming from the island back here to the mainland so that I may hear first-hand from them of their exploits?"

"As to what exactly the returning soldiers will have to say to you— who knows? — but I hear that they have decided to spend the night there in order to have time to square away all the details."

"What details?" asked Christos Christos. "Their mission, in essence, was to kill one man. If no one stood in their way, then they should have been back hours ago! So I confess to being a bit worried. And furthermore, I'm confused, because you do not look like a mercenary, nor anyone attached to the military. Frankly, you don't look like a local, but more like a political aide to some Roman Senator. Why would you be sent to give me news of the invasion? And who told you of the events there, since you were not yourself on those ships that left here? And why did those few who returned to tell you of the invasion not tell me first? I am their employer!"

The robed man sighed in a rather friendly way and said, "The only way to make this all clear to you is to take you to the man who told me of the events on the island today. Actually, you could say he has a most uncanny ability to see into the future, especially where military affairs are concerned. It was he who told me, in advance, what the outcome would be. That's how I knew what to tell you, even though no ships have returned just yet. My friend is a remarkable man. You really should meet him."

Now Christos Christos was losing patience, and snapped, "So you really have no information outside of a prophecy? This sounds like some kind of Pagan soothsaying to me. I cannot be led around by the fortune tellers of Satan. If you have no real knowledge of what became of my men, then I shall wait here at the docks for their return. I shall wait all night if I must!"

The Roman winked at him in a patronizing way so as to give the impression that no offense was taken at this outburst of impatience. He then patted him on the back, as if he were a child in some nervous tantrum.

"Look," he said quite warmly, with the sympathy of a saintly nurse, "even if you think my friend is foolish, one thing is for sure; he's got a good cook. You've probably not eaten for hours. Why not come and take dinner with us? As you can see there are no lanterns on this dark sea. Even if your men are on their way, they probably won't be back for hours. Why exhaust yourself with this frantic pacing? At least allow us to treat you to a meal. You're a holy man of the highest rank. That is the least we can do for you."

Christos Christos turned around, stamped his foot on the ground and clenched a fist toward heaven, and cried, "Why are You tormenting me this way? Why does nothing ever go well for the men of God? Oh, curse it all!"

After venting some steam in front of this unflappable man, the High Councilor saw the apparent wisdom in his counsel to take some food and wine and enjoy some amusing company. It annoyed him to take a meal with a heathen oracle, but he was low on money, due to his latest military adventures, so he decided God would forgive him this one lapse in protocol. And too, he agreed that his nerves were being put on edge by just staring out at the water pining for returning ships.

He and his amiable new companion wandered just a few streets over before arriving at the governor's mansion. The High Councilor should have recognized it immediately, but it was dark and they had come to the back entrance which was off a side-street practically no one used. He had never walked down this alley before and did not know that the governor's mansion had sprawling additions that stretched to other streets. At most, this particular face of the building looked like the home of a low noble.

"Pretty fancy rooming for a small-time Pagan prophet I've never heard of," quipped Christos Christos.

"Ha ha!" laughed the Roman. "I like your sense of humor. And I promise you this: You will be treated to cuisine like you have never known before."

"Well, fine enough then," concluded the High Councilor, "then let us go in and eat."

The Roman smirked in a most ironic way and said in a mocking, yielding tone, "As you insist, Your Holiness."

* * *

As soon as the they had advanced several steps into the foyer, a couple of soldiers who had been stationed in the hallways to the side of the foyer closed in behind Christos Christos and the Roman. As this occurred, another man, much more genteel, almost feminine-looking, approached them wearing very formal clothing, something akin to funeral attire.

He greeted them both, "Welcome, my friends, to the Governor's mansion. We have been greatly anticipating your arrival. The Governor has been looking forward to seeing you all day. It's almost all he's talked about since the early afternoon."

"The Governor!" exclaimed Christos Christos, as he turned to the Roman with alarm. "What are we doing here? And who are those soldiers following us?"

"Please don't be agitated," the Roman replied. "The Governor always has soldiers accompany the guests to his dining table. It's a restive province, you know, and there are many threats to the Governor's life. He's narrowly survived two assassination attempts just this year. He must be guarded at all times. As for the reason we are here today — well, the Governor was also displeased at all the fuss that was being made of this lunatic they call St. John The Divine. And he was . . . astounded . . . shall we say, at the swiftness with which you were able to assemble a formidable force of men in an effort to quell the unrest that St. John seems to have been causing. He asked me to invite you to dinner so that we might all toast to the neutralization of the threat that St. John posed to us. And too, given the growth of your church in the city, and given how quickly you have set up satellite churches around the province, he has come to realize that you are a force to be reckoned with; and so he wanted to meet you, face to face, to discuss a matter or two with you."

As they approached the dining room, Christos Christos began to feel uncomfortable and started to turn back with an idea of exiting the building. But just then the dining room door swung open and out stepped the governor. He had the face of an Olympian god and the calm grace of a holy man.

"Please, please, my friend. I insist you join us for the sort of meal that the average man never tastes in this lifetime. It's the least I could do for you," said the Governor.

"Oh, but, but . . . I'd rather not trouble you. You are a busy man, and I would hate to take up your time like this," stammered Christos Christos.

At that point the large Roman man put his arm around the shoulders of Christos Christos and forced him forward against his will and said, "Really, we insist you join us. In fact, you may not believe it, but word of your bravado spread even to the Emperor. I know this to be true since, you may as well know, I am one of the Emperor's personal secretaries. And, by the way, he really insisted you join the Governor for dinner tonight. He himself could not be here to join us tonight, but he sent me to personally see to it that the Governor treated you to an excellent meal and presented you with the best wines the province has to offer. We were told to spare no expense. So we really had no choice but to be extremely persistent in our invitation."

Christos Christos had been told nothing but kind things, and yet his instincts told him to struggle to get away. But he found that the tall Roman had the grip of a wrestler and he could barely budge in any direction. The only direction he seemed able to move in was the forward direction, toward an unbelievably lavish table spread. Servants were buzzing to and fro as he was pushed down into a very plush chair. All about him was conspicuous ornamentation. He beheld with much disgust that solid gold images of the Roman and Greek pantheon were set on cabinets all about the room. Before he could protest any further, goblets of the finest wine were set before him and small plates of gourmet foods were laid before him. And although he was nervous and suspicious, he was starving by that time, and so he ate, albeit with confusion and anxiety.

Apparently the Governor and the Roman were famished too, because neither of them spoke a word, but gobbled up every course set before them. And, in between courses, both sloshed back wine as though they were parched with thirst.

Christos Christos knew enough not to speak out of turn or to start a conversation with a Governor, and so he kept eating and drinking until, at last, toward the later part of the feast, after all had sated their immediate hunger, it seemed natural to look up at the Governor and the Roman.

And so he looked up inquiringly at them, wondering if he should receive further rewards, other than this excellent meal, or if the Governor might have some quarrel with him that he had not foreseen.

The Governor was indeed ready to speak. The Roman also looked at the Governor, but with a casual air, as though he himself were in no suspense about the matters at hand.

"So, so!" began the Governor, "we have the leader of the one true church gracing us with his presence today, the mighty and holy Christos Christos. Hmm, but it's not every day I get the chance of meeting with a Christian man of your stature."

The High Councilor would have taken more pleasure in this flattery had not the two guards in the room begun chuckling softly.

The Governor turned to the guards and pretended to scold them harshly, saying, "Do you two dare to laugh at a man of such eminence under the Governor's roof! I should have you both dismissed from your posts for such insolence. But, as it is, I'm of a mind to be forgiving towards you two today, given how loyally you have served me."

Turning back to the High Councilor, the Governor said, "I see you've been scowling the whole time at my collection of statues. I take it that your curious form of monotheism precludes your approving of such icons."

"I beg the Governor's pardon for saying so," said Christos Christos, "but a man of the cross is never to take leisure in a facility full of idols. I fear my presence here may give rise to accusations of my having taken part in Pagan rituals. My flock would be scandalized by such rumors."

"One thing I can promise you," retorted the Governor, "from this day onward, you will hear of no untoward rumors about you."

"Then why was I called here," pressed Christos Christos. "This whole situation of our meeting seems highly improper for all concerned."

"You see?" said the Roman to the Governor. "I told you our guest would not be one for small talk. Hence, I say that you might like to get right down to business, lest he be vexed further by all of this ceremonial prelude."

"Ah," assented the Governor shaking his head slightly. "My friend, you are always so insightful. Hopefully our guest will forgive our ostentation and trifling niceties."

"So," continued the Governor, "as you might well guess, I have many . . . friends . . . who work in the harbor area."

"Do you mean spies?" snapped Christos Christos.

"Sure, I suppose," nodded the Governor, "if one got down to the very bottom of the matter and wanted to put it crudely. But I've always thought of them rather fondly as . . . dear colleagues."

"You see?" interrupted the Roman, turning to face the Governor again. "I told you he would be no fun at all. So we might as well call it as it is in plain language. I hope you don't mind if I interrupt your excellency in order to facilitate a bit clearer communication."

The Governor smiled graciously and nodded to the Roman and yielded the floor to him.

"Yes," began the Roman, "it is as you say. The Governor has spies all over the port. And why shouldn't he? Any trouble that comes to the region is likely to come in by way of the docks. We are surrounded by high mountains on two sides and an almost barren plain of some hundred miles on another side. Oh sure, from time to time, there are trouble makers that drift in from those directions, but usually, more often than not, if there's to be some underhanded doings, they start and end in the neighborhoods by the waterfront. And therefore we have paid informants on every block. We take nothing for granted when it comes to security."

The Governor turned to the Roman with mock gratefulness and said, "Ah, thank you for relieving me of the awkward burden of having to wind my way ineloquently to the heart of the issue at hand."

Turning back to Christos Christos, he said, now in all seriousness, "How is it that a man of your intellect and scholarship and leadership ability did not think this thing through? Did you really suppose you could assemble a small navy and launch it from the docks less than a half-mile from here and think I would not catch wind of it? And furthermore, did you imagine that I would allow such vigilante groups to form on territory the Emperor has charged me with keeping orderly and quiet? You must know that we cannot tolerate having some sect, large or small, assembling it's own navy and enforcing its own laws while under the administrative wing of one of the Emperor's hand-picked Governors. Can you imagine what the Emperor said to me when he heard of such things? I shall not repeat what he said, because he used foul language, and you are a holy man, but it was unpleasant, to say the least. And so, you see, you've put me in a very awkward position here."

"Indeed, very awkward," chimed in the Roman, "so awkward as to be . . . untenable. I was just with the Emperor a few nights ago, and his temper is such that . . . one would be at a loss for words to describe it. But it would be sufficient to say that it is almost unendurable to be in the presence of one of his outbursts. And, as such, you see, it would be unthinkable that I should return to him empty handed, or he should have my . . ."

". . . head preserved in a pickle jar in his office," added the Governor, completing the Roman's sentence. "Well, I seem to have found my bearings here, and so you won't be called on to tell our guest anything more, dear Aide to the Emperor. For I feel I am now comfortable enough to get around my somewhat indirect manner and speak forthrightly."

Just as the Governor was finishing that last sentence, Christos Christos felt two ropes come around him from behind. While he was listening to the Roman and the Governor, he had not noticed that the two soldiers had left the room and returned. When they returned, they did so with ropes; and before he had time to react, he was quickly bound to the chair he was sitting in. Each time he squirmed to set himself free, yet another loop of rope came around and held him more firmly. The ropes were long and wrapped around his arms and shoulders, and the chair, dozens of times. Within moments the chair had become a straightjacket.

Christos Christos just stammered in terror. He would try to begin a sentence, but then would stop and begin hyperventilating. Again and again his sentences would trail off and he would end up in a panicked panting.

The Roman regarded him sternly now and said, "For a man of such famed eloquence, it seems that, upon mere imprisonment, all of your faith has left you. If I didn't know better, I'd say you are more cowardly than the most worthless of us Pagans."

He turned to the Governor again and said, "I beg your pardon, sir. I recall you saying you'd handle the rest of the speaking from here. But my assertiveness got the better of me."

The Governor, in a joking manner, said, "Don't worry, friend. I shall not have you thrown out of here on account of your barbaric manners. In any case, our work on this matter is all but done, and I think, unless Christos Christos' god can produce one of those miracles those traveling Jewish storytellers used to tell us — was that David and Goliath or Daniel and the fiery furnace? — then I suppose we will prove victorious."

"My personal favorite," added the Roman, "was the one where Samson pushes in the pillars. Do you think, Christos Christos," he added, turning again to the captive, "that the divine favor shall fall upon you such that you can break the binds upon you now? Or has it so happened that you are suddenly a doubter of miracles, you who have spent your life proclaiming miracles?"

The High Councilor fell into a free fall of hysteria and shouted and jerked about in the chair, causing the chair to fall over. The guards moved quickly to put the chair and its occupant into the upright position.

"I suppose," concluded the Governor with a truly gloomy tone in his voice, "we can toy with this prisoner no longer."

Speechless, Christos Christos turned in panic to the Roman who had brought him there with a most imploring and urgent look.

"If you are meaning to ask me what your fate will be, (and again I beg the Governor's pardon for intruding upon his speaking time), it will be that which the Emperor has commanded."

"His preferred method," said the Governor, "if I may properly call it that, is slow strangulation. The smaller of the two guards — that's his speciality. It's a hard, hard way to go. It's not quick. The technique takes time to learn. I'd frankly rather have my head cut off or be stabbed through the heart. But . . . the Emperor's word is law. And, I suppose, you have this one consolation, that you will live on, in a manner of speaking. After your . . . ordeal, our . . . preservationist . . . will pickle your head in an air-tight jar which will be displayed in the Emperor's main office; and your visage will be seen by every guest who crosses the threshold."

Just as the Governor made a slight nod, the High Councilor felt two small, delicate hands come around his throat from behind. And although many of the saints had been reported to be in pure raptures during their martyrdom, no such blissful spiritual experience was fated for Christos Christos this day. In fact, none of the other soldiers who had suddenly crowded into the room to watch the execution, could recall a more torturous and hideous death, nor could they recall a victim who faced such a death with more fear. There was no grace of any kind to it whatsoever. The affair was one of pure frenzied, prolonged terror without any consolation to the victim, so far as anyone could see.

The Roman, who had been ordered to watch the entirety of the gruesome, senselessly protracted, painful and terrifying death, shook his head at the conclusion of it all and said to the Governor, "That had better be a very, very fine paradise he went to."

Word of the event leaked out to the waterfront taverns within the hour. A late-night supply boat that was leaving for the island carried the tale to the islanders and occupying soldiers by morning. St. John The Divine overheard the soldiers guarding his cell talking about it. In response he wrote:

Oh Christos Christos, did you really think you could suppress the will of the Voice of Eternity? If so, you clearly have not understood a word the living prophets have spoken, but instead persecuted them as you tried to persecute me.

Were you so convinced that the truth resides in books and in ancient words? Why did you fear the reviving power of new revelations, ever fresh and joyful, streaming from the Throne of The Universe like a great river that starts at the Crown of Heaven and flows down to the Earth?

You above all are to be most pitied, for you were are an idolator of books. You sought to contain the everlasting message in written sentences and bound pages. You starved the spiritual world by depriving living beings of The Living God who never stops speaking and changing.

If I could send one message to your life-suppressing and energy-draining congregation, I'd tell them they all need to get laid more often and treat themselves to a lot more good wine.

10. The Power of Her Orgasms

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The meeting at Athenodorus' home was brief. There was not much to say. The commander explained that the Governor had ordered Athenodorus, Helen, the doctor and Marcus to each pack a trunk of essential belongings. They were to stay with the Governor in a form of protective custody until such time as further instructions came from Rome. Since Athenodorus had a full staff of managers, it was not really essential for him to be there for the resort to function. He was to notify them in the morning that they would be assuming control for an indefinite period of time.

Helen inquired of the commander what would be done if she and St. John refused to come along. The commander noted that such a possibility had already occurred to the Governor and that he had already resolved the matter in his mind. Should she refuse to come along, or should she encourage St. John not to come along, she would herself be killed, and then all her known relatives would also be hunted down and killed. Hence, her refusal would result in dozens of deaths, since she came from a large family. Her curiosity satisfied, she did not pursue that line of questioning any further.

Athenodorus would miss his home while he was away, but he did not resist the idea of accompanying the group to shore, since he wanted to help out in any way he could, and, if possible, to see to St. John's welfare, if it were within his power to do so.

As for the doctor, he was determined to come on the journey every step of the way, not merely because he was a friend of the Governor's, but also because he did not want to see his former patient abused again.

By morning all of the ships were being reloaded and everyone was on board and heading back to the mainland. The process was orderly, and all of the details were agreed upon and set in motion. There was only one detail that had been overlooked: St. John The Divine was a drug addict; and he was out of drugs. Paganon, his dealer, had been sent from the island. And thus, St. John began going into withdrawals and had to be bound, hand and foot.

While the doctor was himself familiar with the general nature of the drugs in the chemical cocktail that had sustained St. John, he was not able to quickly find all of the ingredients. He did not know who dealt in such supplies, and it would probably involve some time and travel. Additionally, making such a substance required precise measurements and timing. Any mistake in the process of trying to improvise such a compound could prove fatal to the patient. And hence, the first order of business, once they got back on land was to find Paganon again, and ask him where he got his supplies. And, if he knew how, he would need to teach the doctor how to make the drug cocktail perfectly so that Saint John would no longer be reliant on the churchmen for his supply. Of course the doctor would prefer that St. John not be on any drugs at all, but apparently, in St. John's case, the cure was worse than the disease, and so drug-supply independence was a top priority, especially if St. John was to be living in some sort of protective custody with limited access to the outside world.

* * *

The answer was simple enough, Paganon would be summoned to the Governor's palace and ordered to turn over the recipe so that the Governor's doctors could reproduce it and keep St. John from going over the top.

Paganon appeared the next day in the dining room as the Governor and his guests were sitting down to eat. He was in a defiant mood.

"What is the meaning of this — summoning a holy man to this mansion of Satan's dominion over the earth?" he huffed.

The Governor softly wiped his mouth with a napkin, then looked up at Paganon in a genteel way, thoughtfully setting his hands on the table and leaning forward slightly.

He looked up at him and said, "You will go to my doctor's quarters. He is awaiting you. There you shall dictate to him the formula that St. John is currently . . . medicating with."

Then, looking back down at his plate, and picking up his fork to resume eating, he said, almost as in passing, "Sorry to have disturbed you. We shall not bother you again."

The others sitting around the table were surprised at the Governor's relative docility. But the illusion of civility was soon broken.

"Not in a million years!" cried Paganon. "Never would I allow the tools of God's revelation to be a plaything of worldly powers."

The Governor set his fork down again and looked up and replied, "You can't be serious?"

"Your kingdom, sir," uttered Paganon in trembling anger, "is of the dust of the earth. You shall have no quarter in the Kingdom of my Father, nor shall the things of His holy realm be bequeathed to you under any circumstances."

The Governor's Interior Minister turned to him and said, "Sir, the man is deadly serious. You know, I've dealt with his kind many times before. There are the ones who bend under torture, and the hard cases whose resistance only ceases at death."

"But your prophet is suffering without his medication. Why would you withhold it from him when doing so would cause all subsequent revelations through him to come to an end,?" wondered the Governor.

"I am not withholding his medication," replied Paganon. "I shall come here every week, if you wish, and deliver the medication myself."

"I am afraid that won't work. The plans of the Roman government cannot be subject to your veto at any time. We control the prisoner, and we control his medication. In any case, such a potent substance could be used to influence people in ways Rome disapproves of. As soon as Rome is made aware that you are withholding such valuable information from us, they will insist that I extract that information from you. The welfare of our prisoners shall not be determined in any way by you, but solely by us. Frankly, we don't want to see you in this palace again, or in Rome. We are in charge of every aspect of the prisoner's life from hereon, as long as Rome wants it that way," explained the Governor.

"Either the medication is delivered by me," declared Paganon, "or it won't be delivered at all. That is our prophet and it's our sacred medicine. If you insist on imprisoning our prophet, then we must be permitted access to him to be sure he isn't being corrupted by worldly governments. And since the medicine itself is the exclusive property of God, I am powerless to turn over the precise formula. I went too far already by explaining its general properties in a moment of duress. I also compromised too much by not fighting your men to the death when you tried to take St. John into custody. My conscience condemns my weakness already. There can be no further compromise!"

"Very well," replied the Governor as he turned his head back toward his plate and again picked up his fork to eat.

The room was silent as the Governor took a few more bites to eat and then a small sip of water from a goblet.

Without looking up or again stopping his meal, the Governor simply added, "In that case the guards in the room shall take you to a holding cell downstairs and you shall be hanged at dawn."

The Governor continued eating and made no further comment on the matter. Slowly the others resumed their meal and began conversing lightly.

Athenodorus was deeply troubled and excused himself. He went straightaway to the holding cells downstairs next to the underground gallows hall. He asked the guard if he might visit with the prisoner for a moment. The guard did not seem to mind at all and unlocked the cell to let Athenodorus in and then relocked it until such time as Athenodorus should choose to exit.

He walked over to the bench where Paganon was sitting and sat down next to him and put his hands on Paganon's shoulders and exclaimed, "Are you out of your mind! Don't you understand that the Governor will simply have your church turned inside out by tomorrow morning and find the recipe anyway? You can't stop him from getting what he wants, so why are you committing suicide this way?"

"What!" protested Paganon. "Am I to be a defiler of the Kingdom of Heaven just because if I am not, someone else will be? No, no! I must stand before the judgment throne of God to account for my deeds alone. Let others seal their eternal fate, if they will, but I shall not join them."

"Paganon," said Athenodorus softly, and with sad resignation, "I never thought I'd say this, but I'm going to miss you. It seems like life is changing so fast just now, and I guess I had just grown accustomed to seeing you around. We were brothers at arms. I know we don't see the world the same way, but even so, I like you."

Paganon had nothing more to say and stood up in dignified silence, indicating that he wished to speak no more of the matter.

Athenodorus turned away in sorrow and muttered to the guard, "Okay, it's time for me to go."

"As you wish, sir," said the guard who relocked the cell after Athenodorus wandered forlornly down the passageway leading to the stairs.

He did not return to join the others at dinner, but instead went to his room to lay down. He felt sleepy and was too depressed to engage in animated conversation. In any case, the others would not understand his feelings, even if he felt free to express them.

Having gone to bed early, he woke up at about 3AM. He sat up in bed and wiped the sleep out of his eyes. He decided he would wander the streets until breakfast time, as he didn't have the heart to be in the palace at dawn when Paganon was to be executed.

By 7AM he was back at the palace and joined the others for breakfast. He pretended to be feeling a bit ill and begged everyone's pardon for not being as talkative as he might otherwise be. Just then Paganon's body was being chopped to bits and fed to the skinny, stray dogs that wandered about the town's main plaza. One thing was clear, life back on his island would never be the same.

As fate would have it, Paganon's parishioners were having a service when a large detachment of the Governor's guard surrounded the building. Upon meeting the slightest bit of resistance, the soldiers killed everyone there and then conducted a thorough search, tearing apart everything inside the church until the exact formula for the "divine" elixir could be located. They found it buried underneath a stack of books and brought it to the Governor's doctor. Within hours the government knew exactly which "sacred" ingredients the captive prophet needed to survive and exactly how those substances were to be processed once obtained. Pantheonus, now reasserting his role as St. John's doctor, ordered everyone to refrain from telling St. John of Paganon's death, as he was certain the patient would take the news badly and perhaps have a serious breakdown. Instead, St. John was told that Paganon had suddenly decided to embark on missionary work in a far-flung province and would not return for months. St. John believed this simple lie and the patient remained semi-stable, in spite of the change in surroundings and the unsettling events of the last few weeks.

* * *

Just as sleep had begun to tighten its grip around Pantheonus, there came a quiet knocking at his bedroom door inside the palace.

His eyes popped open, and he thought, as he lay there, "Nothing good can come out of this. There is no good reason for anyone to be at my door tonight."

Again the quiet knock came. The doctor was not fooled. The knock was quiet, but it was not gentle. There was restrained force behind it, polite insistence. He knew the knock would become impolitely loud if he did not comply soon.

He quickly propped himself up, and, although still being pulled hard by sleep, fought the force of internal gravity and took two long lumbering strides to the door. He pulled it open three or four inches and looked around it, not wanting to be seen in his loose bed-clothes.

It was Helen, the one whom he most despised in all the world. She had on a see-through gown and was clearly naked underneath. He knew the governor well enough to know that he would pay no notice to such a thing, nor would anyone there think it inappropriate. It was well-known that the governor had the capacity to engage his sexual appetites in a healthy way, but that he was, at heart, a working man and a soldier. His appetites, once satiated, did not bother him. A nude woman walking by, or one barely dressed, usually elicited no reaction at all from him. His true love, and the bulk of the energy of his lust, were reserved for the Roman state.

Taking advantage of the lax and indifferent attitude in the palace, she confidently appeared at Pantheonus' door in her nearly-naked state as though nothing in the world could be more ordinary and unimposing. Of course she knew this was far from the truth, but this was the message she attempted to convey with her face. She looked at him as though she had merely stopped by to relay some message or other, as though the visit were strictly mundane in every way.

"Why don't you open the door all the way, Pantheonus? And why are you staring at me suspiciously? Don't you know it's bad manners not to invite me in? We're neighbors now, living just down the hall from one another. You should be more civil."

"You don't fool me one bit, Helen. You know very well what I think of you. Do you really think you can get into my good graces by showing off your passion-crazed body to me? And, for your information, I happen to be in my bed clothes. One does not appear before one's enemies in one's underwear. Now, if you will excuse me, I shall try to return to my previously-restful state. Go knock on the door of some simpleton who you can manipulate."

As he went to shut the door in her face, she stuck her foot in the crack and said, "I may have a nice, petite, feminine figure, but I'm stronger than you. So I'll force my way in if you don't let me in."

Pantheonus opened the door and regarded her sternly: "Fine, then I'll call the palace guard and have you arrested for assault and trespassing."

She shoved him back and stepped into the room and locked the door behind her. Then she shoved him once more, even harder, and he fell back onto the bed. She pounced on him like a panther and pinned him down.

"So what," he said, "you're going to try to rape me?"

"If you feel you're being attacked, then cry out. The guards will be here in a minute and drag me out of here," she replied.

She tore off his robe and found the doctor had a firm erection.

"What is this!" she said, bringing her face close to his and staring into the doctor's eyes.

"It means nothing," he explained. "This has been a hectic week, and I simply forgot to masturbate. Rest assured it's a purely physical response. It means nothing. I don't like you, and I consider you my enemy. Just because I don't want to make a scene in the palace by having you arrested, doesn't mean I have an ounce of feeling for you, other than contempt."

"Good," she said. "Then if you don't scream for help, then I will have my way with you. I don't care why you have an erection. I intend to make use of it anyway."

And with one graceful motion, her entire robe was off her body. She was already soaking wet, completely aroused by her own power. And so she slid herself over him, and in an instant he was inside her.

He looked up at her with disgust and said, "Must every priest be a sexual abuser?"

"Yes, yes," she replied as she began to move up and down over him. "Every other one I know is a sexual predator. Too bad if you don't like it. Report me to the authorities, if you think I'm a criminal."

"But why would you want to have sex with an enemy, someone who hates you?" he inquired, indeed seeming to have told the truth about his purely physical erection having no emotional content behind it.

As she thrusted herself up and down faster and faster, already nearing orgasm, she replied, "I find the fact that you hate me to be especially arousing. There is nothing more thrilling than sexually dominating my enemies, when I have the chance to."

And with that she came. It was a middling orgasm, but she seemed satisfied with it.

"So there, are you satisfied," he said mockingly. "Are you thrilled to have sexually owned me for a moment."

"No," she countered. "I am not satisfied at all."

And with that she began to copulate again after only a short interval. His lack of enthusiasm for her prevented him from having an easy orgasm, meaning that she could fulfill herself multiple times, each orgasm being more intense than the last. By the fourth orgasm, she was feeling satiated. And with this last one, all of the muscles in her athletic body rippled and jerked in rushing, violent waves. He could see the pulsations start at her hips and thighs, move through her highly-defined solar plexus, and at last swell through her full breasts as she quivered and flexed and heaved.

As she gasped for air, and finally caught her breath, she groaned one last time and choked out the words, "Oh my God, yes, now . . . now I am satisfied."

"Well, I'm not," he said blandly, not admitting that the emotions she'd displayed in this last orgasm had finally moved him.

"We'll see about that," she countered.

And soon she was on her knees deep-throating him. And her ravenous hunger managed to reach some part of his brain that was still holding on to resentment, and he allowed himself to come in her mouth. He watched in amazement as his adversary hungrily consumed every drop of liquid that would come out of him. And, much to his further surprise, this first orgasm gave way to a second, something he had never experienced. This second outpouring was even more ecstatically drank down by her as though it were a divine wine poured from the gods, which, according to her religion, it was.

For a moment he was silent. She turned away for a moment and slid her revealing robe back over her sweat-drenched body.

She turned back to him and said, "Don't worry, I'm not going to try to stay the night. I just wanted an hour with you."

He turned his head toward the wall with a bit of confusion and shame. She saw that he was vulnerable, but this type of vulnerability she would not take advantage of. Rather, she began to dress him, slipping his bed-clothes back onto him and giving him sisterly hugs. Soon they were both sitting up on this bed.

"You did not kiss me," he said matter-of-factly. "So I suppose this means you don't love me?"

"Sure I love you," she said with a smile and a wink, "but just as a friend."

"What we did just now was more than friendly," he noted.

She stood up again and straightened out her robe and replied, "It was just a way of trying to get close to you again."

"You know," he said, "we can't go back to being friends, the way we were. I will never have a deep trust in you again."

"That's fine," she concluded as she made her way to the door. "I just didn't want you to hate me anymore. You don't still hate me, do you?"

"Maybe not," he admitted, "I might not hate you, but I don't really like you either."

"But we can be distant friends, can't we? We can at least be civil and kind, if not close?" she inquired.

"Fine, fine," he said with an exasperated exhale.

"Good," she said, as she smiled and turned away from him to leave the room. "I'm not an idealist like you are."

"By the way," he added, just as she was shutting the door behind her, "we won't be repeating this performance again."

"I know," she quipped. "Once was enough. Good night, doctor."

She closed the door and headed down the palace hallway to her own room, smiling the entire time. Later, after she finally made it to bed, she masturbated, and had two more orgasms as she recalled her hour with the doctor and how sexually satisfying it was to be so aggressive and so impertinent.

That night she had initially planned to pay a visit to St. John's room for an evening of madly-ecstatic love-making. However, just as the evening set in, Marcus Alexander showed up and ruined her mood completely. With nothing else to do, she decided it would be a good time to carry out her plans regarding the doctor, plans which she had been waiting for the right moment to implement for some time.

When Saint John The Divine reappeared, she described in detail her sexual escapade with the doctor. Saint John, unlike Marcus Alexander, was almost incapable of ordinary human jealousy. In fact, he was inspired by the tale and wrote some lines to commemorate the event:

The good doctor saw a heavenly angel descending clad in the bodily form of my dear, naked Helen. Her face was as brilliant as ten-thousand suns and her nude legs were saviors returned to earth.

At first he did not want to take the heavenly gift offered by Him whose throne is aflame with love. But, like a lioness, she roared forth with passion in a divine fever over which no man has control.

She consumed his body. His body, like all the bodies of humans, became a sacrificial food for The Divine Mother. The power of her orgasms no human male can ever comprehend. All hail Helen, the multiorgasmic saint of God.

But I saw, through the power of revelation, into the past, and knew that the foundations of the heavens and earth, and even the depths of the sea, trembled awesomely from the earthquakes caused by her heavenly climaxes.

Unfortunately for Helen, her scheme would prove to have only a temporary effect over the hostility the doctor had for her. It seems that forgiveness is also among the things the sages of the East had determined were impermanent. With changing circumstances, a spark of resentment once seemingly contained can be turned into an all-consuming fire. As songwriters and poets have told us, not only do we not know what love is, but we cannot know what hatred is either; and not knowing what these things are, we speculate in vain as to where they might lead.

11. More Liquid Opium

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Athenodorus dared to peek his head inside the Governor's office after dinner. It would never occur to the Governor to habitually and simply retire after dinner, or to bother spending most of his nights chasing women or going to concerts or plays. He saw himself as some kind of glorified clerk who was always behind in his duties. He usually wore some version of his old military uniform and treated the job of Governor as simply another subordinate position to the Emperor. He accepted whatever benefits happened to be attached to the job at the time he was given it. While he knew that certain offices of the government had a typical level of corruption going on within them, it never occurred to him to personally go hunting after bribes.

The area he ruled over for the Emperor was large. He was, in essence, doing the duty of a Prime Minister or President without caring to glory in it, never bothering to immerse himself in most of the privileges that were his for the taking. Some would have regarded him, in spite of the violence he occasionally carried out, as a man of moral excellence and unimpeachable character. And while there may have been some truth to this, (if one did not take into account the periodic mass killings involved in putting down revolts, restoring order and generally forcing respect from the native populace), he could not be bothered with the perpetual self-praise his contemporaries indulged in. He viewed himself as a simple worker with a rather serious job. Beyond that, he guessed he'd be forced into retirement one day with a modest pension and some sort of estate of the kind that was routinely handed out to former Governors. And thus, he tolerated, though did not appreciate, interruptions from people who really had no business bothering a man of his stature.

He heard steps at his door and looked up. He saw Athenodorus at the threshold with a quizzical look on his face.

"Well," he began. "Don't just stand there. Come in and state your business."

Athenodorus took a few hesitant steps into the office and looked down imploringly at the chairs in front of the Governor's desk.

"So you want to sit down and have a chat?" added the Governor. "I'm not a man of leisure, you know. I'm not in this palace for the purpose of social visits and idle conversation. There is no trace of the philosophers in my blood."

Athenodorus stepped another foot forward and softly said, "Might I impose on you to take one of these seats for a moment?"

The Governor leaned back in his chair and gestured in a begrudging way which indicated that Athenodorus would not be forbidden from sitting down for a moment.

"Okay," said the Governor in a flat and short tone. "What it is it? How may I be of assistance?"

Athenodorus gingerly sat in the chair toward the outer edge of the desk and haltingly said, "I'm a little uncertain, not sure of what to do next. There are questions. Am I to return to my island now? Where are the others going? Is there anything I need to do? I'm concerned about St. John and Helen."

"Is that it?" asked the Governor sarcastically.

"Well, yes, I suppose. That would be about it," replied Athenodorus.

"So then my servants didn't make it clear?" inquired the Governor.

"Make what clear?" said Athenodorus.

The Governor lightly hit the desk with his hand in frustration and said, "I see what's happened. The care-takers, in all the rush of the past few days, had assumed you knew everything or simply forgot to fill you in on the details. But no matter, because I can get to the heart of the matter presently. You see, tomorrow morning the servants will enter each of our chambers and begin to fold and pack enough of our belongings to make a trip to Rome. Anything you might lack for the journey will be provided for you, compliments of my office, of course. By the afternoon we shall have engaged a small caravan of carriages and shall be on our way to the Capital of the empire."

"Rome!" exclaimed Athenodorus. "Why are we needed in Rome? That's some days' journey and involves much expense. In spite of this bit of trouble we were involved in on the island, we're unimportant people."

"You and I might think so," agreed the Governor. "But as things stand, anything or anyone the Emperor decides is important — well, that becomes important."

"The Emperor!" further exclaimed Athenodorus. "Why in the name of the gods would he seek to be in our presence? We are nothing."

"That's one way of looking at it," noted the Governor. "But, as the Emperor sees it: I am a Governor. You are a prominent and wealthy businessman. Helen is a well known sex-cult priestess. And your friend, the so-called Saint John The Divine — his antics and intrigues are whispered about all over the empire. He feels that makes us all important.

"Furthermore the implications of the assassination of the high priest of the largest Christian sect has to dealt with. True, I had the assassination carried out, but there will be social consequences that may follow. And then I've just had a room-full of rebellious Christians summarily executed in their own church. Some people will be angry, especially since I just had Paganon executed. He was not without sympathizers."

"But there's nothing any of us can do to help you with any of that, is there?" said Athenodorus nervously.

"Usually citizens such as yourselves and the good doctor would not be called into the Emperor's presence," continued the Governor, "but there was a sizable naval conflict involving your island. It's not every day I send my navy out to crush a small armada and drown over a hundred men in the process. The Emperor wants to know what's going on in his empire. Between you and me, I admit that no human being could ever control this empire. In any case, now that your so-called prophet has created this much controversy, the Emperor is intent on examining the man for himself. And, in his way of thinking, one way to understand the matter of this Saint, as he styles himself, would be to meet those of his inner circle."

Athenodorus looked on in utter disbelief, cringing at the specter of such a scene, and added, "He is an unpredictable and dangerous man. I've no wish to risk my life by facing him."

The Governor leaned forward in his chair and concluded, "Your lives have been in danger for some time. Had my spies been slacking in their duties, that armada would have defeated you and tossed your heads into the sea, and your skulls would be resting on the ocean floor now. And yes, the Emperor presents a new danger, for sure. He might kill you all on a whim. But he has not yet told me that he is determined to kill you, so there is some reasonable hope of surviving the meeting. It was, after all, partly he who decided that you should never have to meet up with Christos Christos. A war with that man, had I not been protecting you, would have surely been fatal. Of course we all face danger by entering the Capital. The Emperor is mercurial, to put it charitably. Of course, by now you realize that the meeting has been ordered and that none of us has any choice but to go."

Athenodorus had, by then, put his head in his hands and had begun to panic, and beads of sweat were coming off his forehead.

The Governor got up, patted Athenodorus on the shoulder and softly said, "I'll order you some strong wine to calm you down. You need to get some sleep. We have a long journey ahead."

The Governor motioned for a nearby soldier to gently lift Athenodorus out of his chair and lead him to his room.

As the soldier looked back at the Governor while leading the bewildered Athenodorus out of the Governor's office, the Governor added, "On second thought. Cancel the wine. Have the palace doctor prepare him an opium syrup. That should keep him properly sedated until morning. The pressures of the last month have clearly given this man a nervous disorder of some type. Perhaps he has not had a good night's rest in some time."

"Yes Governor," replied the soldier. "Just yesterday the palace doctor had already made a new batch. So our guest will be feeling no pain whatsoever and shall be soundly sleeping in short order."

"Very good, soldier," said the Governor. "Keep a watch over our guests' quarters tonight and see that they are abiding peacefully till morning. I shall give you two days leave of absence for your extra efforts."

"Thank you, sir," said the soldier as he half-carried the shock-stricken resort owner to his room.

The palace doctor came by the guest quarters with the soldier a while later and ordered that any guests still awake consume a very sweet mixture of opium combined with fruit juice. St. John, like the others, complied. But for his part, he asked for a second round of the drink.

"Fine," the doctor said. "You can have two, but no more. We can't risk making you sick before your audience with the Emperor."

The soldier and the doctor and Helen all sat watching Saint John as the effects of the second drink hit him.

Saint John The Divine laid back against his pillows with his eyes wide open and full of wonder and mumbled, "On the sacred scroll are written things, things which the Father has declared I can reveal to no man or woman before the appointed time."

* * *

In order to make his guests and himself comfortable, the Governor set himself and his guests out in the first three carriages of a caravan. The drivers of each one sat on a short bench in front to tend to the four horses pulling each carriage. Behind the driver was a longer bench which seated two passengers. And behind that was storage space for as many possessions as any traveler might reasonably ask for, along with ample room to sleep and eat.

The governor and the doctor Pantheonus were in the first carriage. In the second carriage Athenodorus rode with the palace doctor who was assigned to look after him, since he was not quite psychologically stable yet. And in the last carriage, Saint John the Divine and the beautiful Helen carried on a three-day sex binge interspersed with revelations, poems, prophecies and divine decrees.

So that Athnodorus might not be further unnerved, the cavalry escort of about a hundred soldiers was ordered to keep about a quarter mile behind the carriages. They were not expecting any trouble along the way. The route they were taking was fairly-well patrolled and any organized opposition to the Romans had been eliminated long ago. If there were danger of some kind of political attack, it would more likely come from the residents of the city that hosted the Governor's palace. That was the place where occasional revolutionary impulses bubbled up to the surface from time to time.

A few days into the trip, the cloudy weather had cleared up. The sun was shining brightly and the sky was clear and purified by a light rain the evening before. All about them was the pristine beauty of the countryside, everything fresh and vibrating with life. Birds of prey circled overhead and squirrels and rabbits scampered. The Governor thought to himself that all was well with the world and that the gods were seated on their thrones; and all the laws of nature were operating in perfect harmony and most of the Empire was at peace most of the time. It took little more than these things to keep him happy.

There would have been no way of suspecting that, hidden in a copse of trees, just over the next hill, was a newly-formed band of highway robbers who had decided that they could outwit the local military patrols and make a bountiful living robbing the carriages of the wealthy families that often made use of this well-maintained road.

As the wagons went over a hill and began a slow descent into a small valley, the five horsemen, armed to the teeth and eager for plunder, bolted from their place behind the trees and stopped the caravan in its tracks. They announced plainly that they were a band of highwaymen who were going to relieve them of all their money, jewelry and weapons, and anything else that might be small enough to carry off on a horse and sell in the marketplaces of thieves.

The Governor, for his part, heard them out and listened patiently to their demands, which they delivered in a haughty tone interspersed with bits of bragging. It seemed that they were in the habit of putting on a little show of bravado and swagger before making off with the goods. Such expenditures of time and energy were not indicative of professionals who had been in the business of robbery for long.

After the bandits had concluded their song and dance and it became time to hand over the goods, the Governor told them in a most mild tone, "There's been a terrible mistake here. You've picked the wrong caravan. I myself am a governor, and I am carrying some important people to visit the Emperor in Rome. In order to make my guests feel more at ease, I've ordered my soldiers to stay a quarter mile back behind us. Momentarily the first of the troops will be coming over the crest of the hill and see you here. I don't have complete control over the most enthusiastic of them. There will be no telling them to have mercy on you. Once they see me and my guests are threatened, they shall go into a frenzy that won't stop until you've all been slaughtered in the most painful and grisly manner possible. Only after you've been dismembered and fed to the condors will they settle down and follow my orders properly. There would be no mercy for you, and no way for me to order it, not in a situation like this. They are not reasonable men in such circumstances."

The leader of the bandits, turned to the second-ranking man and just laughed at what the Governor had said.

The second-ranking bandit also laughed and said to the governor, "You've amused us highly. We may be new to this business, but, so far, each caravan we've robbed has all come up with some tall tale about why they should not be relieved of their valuables. Some of those stories were half-believable. But this . . . this assertion that you have a troop of soldiers hiding behind the hill ready to rescue you . . . this is the silliest story we've yet to hear. No! There will be no more excuses, you will begin turning over everything of value to us, or we shall ransack your carriages and rough up your guests."

"Very well, then," replied the Governor. There is a sack of silver we're using to cover our incidental expenses on this trip. It would support you for weeks, I shall go into the back of my carriage and get it now."

The governor came out with a sack of silver coins. The eyes of the bandits bulged. It was true, the five of them could be supported for many weeks with such a prize. In fact, the Governor had understated the case. They immediately realized that they could live for months on such bounty.

The leader of the bandits spoke up and regally declared, "We've decided not to disturb the carriages of your guests. This sack of silver will do. I thank you for this treasure, and we grant you safe passage from here."

"Sadly," the Governor noted as he handed over the silver, "you shall never have the joy of spending even a single coin in the sack I have given you, as you shall only possess it for another minute. When it is taken from you by my soldiers, your life will also be taken from you. And that's a shame, because you all look so young and healthy and handsome. Surely you would have done well in commerce. Be that as it may, if you will look a quarter mile down the road, you shall just begin to see the first of the soldiers coming over the ridge. I won't bother to try to convince them to take you alive. Before I'll have time to say much, they'll have torn you to bits while you yet live, then, as you experience the horror of being dismembered, they'll disembowel you, and you'll watch your own intestines being yanked from your body. Just as you are about to pass out, you'll feel your head being cut from your body. I've told them before not to be so sadistic, but in emergency situations, they can no more understand legalistic detail than a pack of hungry lions. So I shall say goodbye to you now, and wish that the gods will have pity upon you in Hades where you are going presently."

The bandits turned their heads to see that indeed the seemingly-impossible was actually quite true. They gave their best attempt at fleeing but were overwhelmed by the speed and power of the most elite soldiers and horses money could buy. The Governor did not bother to try to get a word in edgewise amidst the mad shouting and battle cries of the soldiers, but rather turned his head as the bandits were torn apart alive, disemboweled and beheaded. The orgy of blood was over quite quickly as there were only five inexperienced criminals to defeat.

The other passengers in the other carriages had been napping. They were awakened by the tumult and crept to the front of their carriages in time to see a horrible sight. The leaders of the armed guard were carrying the five severed heads by their hair over to the Governor.

"Well," said one of the soldiers, "shall we do the usual with these heads?"

"Yes," replied the Governor. "When the Emperor hears this story, he will be overjoyed to have five more pickled heads for his collection."

And thus did the bandits meet the same fate as Christos Christos, their now-preserved heads having been carefully placed in large, sealed jars full of preservative liquid. Pantheonus, Helen and Athenodorus stared on in horror as the heads arrived back from the village mortician. Only Saint John was completely composed.

The Governor walked over to Saint John's carriage and looked up at him, saying, "Sir, you seem in ecstasy right now, not fearful in the least. Your eyes are as one looking into eternity. Can you tell me what you are feeling about all of this? Why do you not cringe at the sight of severed heads preserved in jars?"

Saint John The Divine looked into the sky, as though beholding the throne of God, and said, "I now see, more clearly than ever, thanks to the power and glory of revelation, that all phenomena are co-equally divine in nature. No experience, however it might appear to mere humans, is anything but the perfect unfolding of the Creator's glory."

"Clearly though," protested the Governor, "something in the divine plan has gone awry. It can't be that the gods actually glory in such butchery as my soldiers carry out."

Saint John The Divine held up his hand authoritatively, so as to silence the Governor for a moment, and he whispered, "Just now I felt it, the souls of those men, some going to heaven, others descending to Hades. All are filled with wild ecstasy. They have experienced their worst nightmare, the greatest of human horrors, and even so, they are laughing and cavorting with the whole pantheon of gods in the heavens and in the underworlds.

"But it is falling out of fashion to say that the gods are the author of all evil things, as well as good things," protested the Governor.

"Then the new fashion is misguided," replied Saint John, his eyes bulging out in manic mania. "All evil comes from the gods, in the very same way good does. It is our duty to celebrate both. Let us stop our journey to Rome for a while and take a large meal to celebrate the dishonorable lives and agonizing deaths of these bandits. In all of this, I see absolute perfection. And let us offer up the bodies as a sacrifice. Let a bonfire be built."

The Governor stared up at Saint John in disbelief and said, "Sir, you are simply a madman of the first order. You should be kept under lock and key in the infirmary for the rest of your life. Even so, this once, I shall be your subordinate and follow your orders."

The Governor shouted out to those who also cooked and set up tables and chairs, to go into his wagon and prepare a feast and a sacrificial fire on the spot. They were further ordered to pay handsome sums to any village caterers who would bring an array of fine foods and additional cushions and rugs in order to make the affair more official. Within two hours, twenty or so soldiers and villagers were buzzing about, making the feast a reality.

As they ate their sumptuous meal and Saint John offered up prayers of thanksgiving, the body parts of the bandits, per John's request, were burnt in the bonfire instead of being fed to the condors. This was, according to St. John, "an offering upon the high altar of Jerusalem to He who is beyond form and matter and has no likeness, and whose very body is all of creation."

Helen had begun to share John's experience of the matter, and was herself becoming blissful. The palace doctor had simply poured more liquid opium down Athenodorus' throat; and he sat there like a zombie. The Governor and the soldiers were quiet and content, most of them eating peacefully, and occasionally gazing at Saint John, whose hair was standing on end. From time to time a soldier, bowing his head slightly would humbly toss another limb or torso into the bonfire. No one was unhappy, and the food tasted excellent. By nightfall, they resumed their journey.

Before he finally passed out from spiritual exhaustion, Saint John composed these lines:

There are two hideous beasts that haunt the earth. The first is called The Prude From Hell. He is the one who has driven the world to madness by telling them that all that is natural is sinful. He is the one always suppressing cosmic sexuality and shaming those who partake in our sacred hallucinogens. The second repugnant and repulsive creature whom angels rightly abhor is called The Soulless Man of The Dry Dust of Doctrines. He has misled the masses by telling them that the ultimate truth is contained in particular books or that certain spiritual teachers hold the keys to Heaven. These two creatures are responsible for almost all of your suffering on this sanctified earth. The game of this incarnation, if you can accept it, is to avoid being fooled by either of these creatures. Think of them as God's own jokers and clowns. Only the true prophets proclaim that every failing and defeat is as blessed as the greatest triumph and the most famous victory. In the spirit of this realization, we celebrate again the lives and deaths of these robbers, extolling both their short-but-vigorous lives and their brutal and stunning deaths. All hail the gods who engineer all doings in ways no ordinary mortal can fathom! Cheers to those robbers who were sacrificed upon our altar today! The smoke of the sacrifice of their bodies is a pleasing incense to the Most High.

Know now that The Lord God declares through seven trumpets: "Do not continually bow before me like slavish hacks. I am God. I do not need the worship of mere humans. Who do you think I am, some child in need of praise? I gave you all independent lives. Live them however you want to. Stop your dull prayers for My advice and guidance. Think for yourselves. This is the divine theater your are living this moment. Act your parts to the fullest. And when you are tossed from this worldly stage, do not concern yourself in the least over the matter. Our Heavenly Father sees your part, however badly and ineptly played, as equal to all other parts, however excellently performed. Be unto yourselves your own scriptures and your own lights. I accept you completely as you are, even if the thing you are seems shameful to the common human mind." Thus sayeth The Lord God of No Final Opinion.

Saint John was very excited upon rereading the work the next day and presented it to Athenodorus, who was just himself regaining his senses.

Athenodorus read the work and, for a moment, the nausea that had been plaguing him seemed to return. However the condition soon passed and he found himself smiling sadistically upon musing over the work. He tucked the poem into his garment.

He turned to Saint John and said, "I know you'll want to read this to the Emperor, but let's just keep this one to ourselves for a while."

12. The Erotic Adventure Room

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After their dinner stop, and after Athenodorus tucked the "secret poem" into the bottom of one of his trunks, Saint John went back to his carriage and promptly fell asleep as the wheels rolled on and on.

Later in the morning Saint John received a rather hard shoving from Helen as she shouted, "Saint John! Wake up! Wake up! You've got to see this!"

Saint John was a heavy sleeper, when he wasn't being a mad insomniac, and fully waking him was no easy matter. Helen had lost patience with this long ago and was adamant that he wake up when she needed him, and thus her roustings verged on being physical abuse.

To both their amazement, it was Marcus Alexander who woke up, reassuming possession of his body for a short while.

Helen was not upset at this because she wanted to share the wonder of what she was seeing with someone.

"Marcus!" she exclaimed, pointing out the windows, "have you ever seen anything so stunning in all of your life. It's Rome in all its splendor. Marcus, this is the biggest city you'll ever see in your lifetime. It's the capital of The Empire, and you've awakened just in time to see it."

Marcus and her stared in awe at the vast edifices, the huge statues, the wide plazas and the throngs of people. Everywhere was activity on a scale they had never seen before, markets the size of whole cities, battalions of soldiers going to, and coming from, far-away lands. There were foreigners of various complexions who wore exotic clothing and shouted to each other in indecipherable languages. It was an assault on the senses, a seemingly endless maze of streets, alleys and broad thoroughfares. They could not understand how the coach drivers could even find their way around such a labyrinth.

Had Marcus and Helen been lovers, the moment surely should have been reckoned as very romantically-inspiring. Helen seemed pensive for a moment. Then suddenly she broke out of her melancholy and threw herself onto Marcus and thrust her tongue into his mouth. He was both alarmed and confused, but his continual lust for Helen assured that his shock at such behavior on the part of Helen did not did deter him from responding in kind. And so they made-out furiously for about three minutes. And then, just as quickly as she had become romantic, she broke away forcefully and moved back to her side of the carriage and began pointing out the wonderful sights to him. It was as though their one romantic moment together had never happened.

"What's this!" protested Marcus. "I've been waiting for years for you to kiss me and now you act like it never happened. Why would you do that to me?"

"Oh Marcus," she replied testily, "please do not make a big deal out of momentary madness on my part. We're just friends. Things are as they always were. I don't know what got into me, but don't you go deluding yourself into thinking you've got a lover now. Besides, you hardly show up anymore, so we wouldn't have much of a dating life now that Saint John is around most of the time."

"I don't get it," continued Marcus. "You're not crazy or mad or anything like that. I know you. You don't do anything for no reason at all. Your passions only go as far as the borders of your personal advantage and never beyond. You're way too calculating to have a romantic accident. I don't believe you. You're lying. Tell me, really, why you kissed me like that if you still aren't in love with me."

"Okay!" answered Helen. "I'll tell you why. Because I know how you are and how you talk. For years you would be telling everyone: We came into the great City of Rome, and it was one of the most romantic things in the world; but wouldn't you know it, Helen, my carriage mate, was such a stick-in-the-mud that she wouldn't even kiss me."

"So you made out with me for public relations reasons?" said Marcus. "I can't get over how stuck on yourself you are. Have you no ethics at all? Sometimes I wonder if you wouldn't kill to get what you want."

"Some people," replied Helen, "think I have already. So you better just watch yourself mister."

The accusations caused her no guilt, at the moment, even though she knew she was guilty of everything.

"What do you mean by implying that you're already a killer? What evidence do you have for that?" said Marcus incredulously.

Helen thought for a moment and was about to reveal what she had done to him, but then thought the better of it and turned her eyes into evil-looking slits and hissed jokingly, "I gotta' knife on me, buddy, so don't tempt me."

Marcus could not be serious or inquisitive for too long, as such traits were not a part of the light-hearted, good-natured soul he was. So he dived on her and they began to wrestle like teenage boys inside the carriage. In the fun of the moment, she let out a squeal. Immediately the carriage came to a stop and the door opened.

But it was not the driver at the door to inquire if everything inside the cabin was alright, rather it was the Governor himself.

He looked at the two and misunderstood their play and remarked, "Well, it's good that you're getting more affectionate together, since you'll soon have no choice but to love each other."

Since Marcus was on top of Helen on the floor of the cabin, she looked out from underneath him toward the Governor and said, "What? What are you saying? What do you mean by 'no choice'?"

"Oh," replied the Governor, putting his hand over his mouth as though he'd had a lapse in protocol, "so my servants forgot to inform you that the Emperor has ordered that you two be married?"

"What!" exclaimed Helen as she shoved Marcus off her and dashed out of the carriage to face the Governor. "But why? Why would he care whether Marcus and I are married?"

"He has his reasons, for sure," said the Governor calmly, "and once we have time, you will be more fully informed about this matter. But the long and short of it is this: He thinks it's a fitting punishment, given that you tried to . . ."

The Governor looked over at Marcus who was staring at them both with his eyes bulging.

The Governor then looked back at Helen and said, "Have you told him yet?"

"Told me what?" Marcus interjected.

"Nothing! Nothing! Marcus," she snapped, and then turned back to the Governor. "No! No! Remember, the doctor said not to tell him."

"Oh, right, right," replied the Governor, now putting his hand to his forehead. "This case is too complicated. I can't get it all straight. Well, the Emperor will sort it all out when we get there."

"The Emperor!" cried Marcus. "What! I don't want to see the Emperor! I'm not ready. I don't know what to say to an Emperor. I'm just Marcus Alexander, a nobody."

"No," quipped the Governor, looking up at Marcus. "You're not just a nobody. That's the problem. You're a prophet too. And that Saint John The Divine who shares that body with you — he is no end of headaches for our administration. We have to figure out what to do with you. The Emperor already has a lot of Senators who want him dead, and Christian priests too. We don't need some mad prophet stirring people up."

"But the Emperor can't just force this on us," protested Helen vainly.

The Governor shook his head sadly and said, "You have no idea what kind of things this Emperor has forced on people. But I will tell you this, an unhappy marriage would be about the mildest of the punishments he metes out. The methods of torture he's employed are just . . . well . . . you just must consider yourself lucky for getting off so easily. In any case, you should not panic just yet, since he has a tendency to change or rescind any order at will. So you should relax for now, since God only knows what he will really do." (Actually, the Governor was lying about his level of uncertainty about the arranged marriage, but he did not want to have to put Helen in restraints just yet, so he fibbed just to muddy the waters in hopes that would smooth things over temporarily.)

"So listen," continued the Governor. "Now I've stopped us here for a reason, and it's not to argue about matters that are out of our hands anyway. We've stopped the carriages so that you country simpletons can have a look at the Colosseum."

Marcus got out of the carriage. The Governor turned around and began heading toward the giant structure to give them both a personal tour of it. Dazed, and now speechless, Helen took Marcus' arm and followed the Governor to behold the spectacle of a live Gladiator fight. Two famous warriors had challenged each other to a public fight, both agreeing that the battle between them would not end till one man was slain.

The crowd cheered wildly as one of the warriors finally overtook the other one with faster sword work. As the Governor sat reading his notes to himself and going over his plans for the day, Marcus and Helen were glued to the action. They stared silently as the vanquished man's corpse was carried off the field to the raucous shouts of joy from the bloodthirsty audience of many thousands.

"Okay," said the Governor, satisfied that he had laid out a good plan for his day, "enough of this silliness. Now it's time to get you to your rooms. And, by the way, the rooms you'll be kept in tonight are even more palatial than the ones in my mansion. The Roman Emperor, whether he kills a man or bestows wealth on him, never keeps him in a cheap room the night before the meeting. Tonight you shall live like kings and queens. Tomorrow . . . ah well . . . who knows. Now let's go."

"I don't understand," said Marcus as he trailed behind the swiftly moving Governor, "why would they take joy in senseless killing?"

Helen said nothing, but slowly moved forward behind Marcus like a zombie.

The Governor turned to both of them and replied, "Firstly, Helen, you will stop stumbling about like the dead. I order you to restore your spirits to their ordinary condition. The Emperor frowns deeply on dispirited people. He has no patience for that. And Marcus, as for your question: Romans are comfortable with killing, very comfortable. Had they took no joy in killing, they could not have created the biggest empire the world has ever known/ It's time for you to stop being so naïve and easygoing. The world is meaner than you know. It's better that you learn it now. The knowledge of the true state of affairs in this world will enable you to make better decisions, at least the part of you that is Marcus Alexander. As for the part that is Saint John The Divine . . ."

The Governor stopped mid-sentence and simply waved them back into their carriage. They soon found themselves in a massive guest palace the size of the Governor's palace. The Emperor's palace across the way was built on a scale almost beyond description.

* * *

The next morning they were all met by a tour guide in the employ of the Emperor. As far as one could tell, the man was just short of being outrightly mad. His clothing was wildly colorful, practically to the point of looking like the garb of a court jester. His hat was topped with multi-colored feathers sticking out in all directions and his voice was loud, commanding and self-consciously formal.

The doctor, the resort owner, Helen and St. John were told, "Now, most honored guests: Before anyone is allowed into the Emperor's presence for the first time, they must receive a full tour of his magnificent palace. After which you will be escorted into the offices of the Emperor himself. Oh, it is always so grand to show our facilities to first-time guests. It's such a treat! We shall all go together in about a half hour from now. I shall meet you all downstairs in the main lobby at that time. Farewell till then!"

After this short announcement, the tour guide scampered off to his own office to see to some last-minute details before going downstairs to the main lobby of the guest palace to begin, as he called it, "the tour of a lifetime."

The four gathered in the grand foyer of the guest palace. Although they had each other's company, the lobby was massive and dwarfed them. They felt very alone and apprehensive.

After a few moments of silence between them, Athenodorus spoke up and said, "This place gives me the creeps, and our tour guide seems crazy. I've got a bad feeling about this trip."

Saint John did not reply, but was rapt in ecstasy, his head turning from side to side, gazing at the strange statues and bizarre murals that dominated the room, apparently seeing divine revelation in all of it.

The doctor noted, "It's an understandable reaction to unfamiliar surroundings and the recent traumas you've been through. You'll come to have an appreciation for this great city soon . . . supposing the Emperor doesn't take a disliking to any of us. Then, I guess . . ."

As his sentence trailed off, Helen interjected, "I just want this over with so we can go back home. What about you, St. John?"

She looked up at Saint John, and he looked down at her. When she looked into his face, it was clear he did not share her sentiments.

"All things," he began, "including this City, especially this City, exist to manifest the glory of God and all His most excellent mysteries. There is no cause for uneasiness nor fear. Whatever our fate may be, whether death at the hands of our fellow man, or exaltation to the ranks of princes and princesses, we are forever safe in the arms of Eternity and Infinity."

Athenodorus smirked at hearing this and quipped, "I'd like to have your optimism today, but I can't say that I share it."

"Look," said the doctor, "our weird tour guide is hastening toward us."

The tour guide bounded up to them and said, "Ready folks? I know I am. Ah, what a joy, to introduce others to the majestic environment of our glorious ruler. If ever there were a living god, he would be one. Oh, the majesty of it all. Now, shall we be on our way?"

Helen said, "I don't know if I should go. I think I'm feeling sick. Could me and St. John just go back to our room and rest for a while?"

Rubbing his hands together, the tour guide said, "Oh no, there shall be no exemptions for mild illnesses. Only the most grave of terminal illnesses would be accepted as an excuse for not touring the Emperor's wonderful Palace."

Athenodorus ventured, "Suppose we refuse to go on the tour, then what?"

"Oh that," replied the tour guide . . . "I'm afraid that would be regarded as direct disobedience to the Emperor himself."

"And what would be the consequences of direct disobedience?" pressed Athenodorus.

"Ooh," exclaimed the tour guide, "there's a well-established protocol that covers such situations. In short, any subject deemed to be in direct defiance to the Emperor — they hunt down all of his relatives and friends, and anyone with whom he has any relations or bonds, and they are all beheaded. The defiant one is then led to a jail cell where he is forced to share his cell with all of the severed heads of everyone for whom he might have any affection."

"How long does that go on!" inquired Athenodorus, now genuinely alarmed.

The tour guide chuckled and said in a kind of sing-song tone, "Oh, you know, maybe a week or so. After that he goes to the basement torture chamber where they . . . Oh my . . . It's almost too deliciously horrific to . . . Mmm. In any case, you are all coming, right?"

They all nodded yes emphatically. The tour guide, quite pleased with this, proceeded to bound forward, almost skipping as he went, toward the Emperor's Palace.

Saint John The Divine marched forward, fully enthralled by the notion of touring the Emperor's Palace. He was utterly unafraid and his eyes bulged with anticipation of glory.

* * *

The first part of the tour was quite beautiful and included the kind of things anyone would imagine would be a part of a royal castle or a lordly compound, (although the facilities seemed to them to be several times larger than anything they'd heard of or seen depictions of). There were great celebration rooms where one would now host things like balls and conventions and political conferences. These were all quite ornate and sublime, decked-out as colorfully and expansively as anyone could imagine. There was a confusingly-labyrinthine assortment of long hallways decorated with alcoves full of art and sculpture. Along the way were countless display cases with gifts and artifacts from other kingdoms and realms, many of which the touring party had never heard of. Surrounding the buildings were many acres of delicately-manicured gardens with all kinds of flora to be enjoyed. The grounds also included an impressive zoo with animals from all parts of the known world. That portion of their adventure was wholesome, and even inspiring.

When the ordinary portion of the tour was concluded, the tour guide turned to his guests and said, "My friends, that will conclude the standard tour of the Emperor's palace and grounds. But . . . since the Emperor feels that you are — how did he put it? — 'highly anticipated guests,' he absolutely insisted I give you what he calls 'the more intimate tour.' And so I shall show you one last area, an area so special that not even most ambassadors get to see it. As for myself, I'm just giddy about having a chance to show it off to you. Does anyone object?"

Innocently assuming that the remainder of the tour might be somewhat like the first part of the tour, they all agreeably stated that they wanted to see the whatever else their tour guide might have to show them. Their assumptions would turn out to be quite wrong, but, in any case, they had no choice but to agree.

"Oh goody, I'm so glad you want to come," said the tour guide. "Really, it was just a formality that I asked, since you were ordered to see this part of the palace anyway."

Again Athenodurus inquired into the topic of opting out of such a tour, "But supposing we hadn't wanted to go? What then?"

"Ah, that question again," snapped the tour guide with a bit of sarcasm in his voice. "I suppose you would have been boiled alive and your body . . ."

He turned and waved away the rest of his sentence and said, "Let's go to The Erotic Adventure Room."

"The erotic adventure?" said Athenodorus with a certain amount of fear in his voice.

The doctor furrowed his brow and whispered to Athenodorus, "This is where we see the most eccentric side of the good Emperor."

In a couple of moments they were already at the door of The Erotic Adventure Room and their tour guide turned to them, clasping his hands together in excitement and whispered, "Prepare for a treat, my children. This is going to be fabulous!"

He tossed open two tall, wide, red, cushion-lined doors and proclaimed, "Behold the unimaginably sensual life of our mighty ruler!"

The room was two stories high, about a hundred feet wide and nearly two hundred feet long. Inside were many of the Emperor's most favored subjects. About two thirds of the people the Emperor approved of accepted gifts of great wealth and land, but had turned down his offer to unlimited admission to his sexual playground. But the remaining third regularly availed themselves of the pleasures to be had in the diverse wonder-world of carnal indulgence.

Almost no one turned to look to see who had entered the room. The majority of them had become exhibitionists and were perfectly comfortable with, or even aroused by, the presence of voyeurs. Most continued on with their activities as if no one else were present but themselves and whoever, or whatever, they were having lusty relations with.

An exhaustive array of sadomasochistic equipment was installed all over the place. There were prison-like rooms with walls with shackles and other assorted restraining gear. There were boxes full of whips, chains and other tools of domination scattered about. Dozens of voyeurs would be crowded around certain couples, masturbating to the sights and sounds of couples who had successfully hooked up.

Dozens of bedrooms lined the walls, complete with beds and baths, urinals and running water that came from cisterns on the roof. (Slaves carried the water up there all day and night.) Each room had as many candles as it needed and fresh sheets were piled on counter tops. Each room had three walls and a roof. Only the inner wall was missing, since the Emperor believed everyone had a right to enjoy watching what anyone else in the Erotic Adventure Room was doing. Privacy was the one privilege not allowed.

Light streamed in from panoramic windows about twelve feet above the floor. This was so the public could not see in, but the occupants could enjoy as much daylight as possible while engaging in their promiscuous antics.

Helen and Saint John The Divine were quite excited by the place and embraced each other warmly whenever hysterical squeals or low groans erupted while someone was in the throes of a powerful orgasm.

St. John said to her, "God's Kingdom has so many mansions in it. This surely is one of them."

They stopped upon arriving in front of a couple who were unusually fervent in their expression of their erotic impulses. The man was naked and chained to a wall. A nude woman was whipping him mercilessly as he cried out in agony. As she beat him, the woman cursed loudly and verbally abused him in every conceivable way.

The tour guide paused for a moment and said, "This couple is one of the Emperor's favorites. Aren't they lovely?"

The doctor replied, "I believe their form of love is most unhealthy and reflects some kind of mental derangement."

"Is the man a captive?" asked a mortified Athenodorus.

"Ha ha ha ha!" laughed the tour guide. "No, no, my innocent darling, not at all. You've spent too much time in the hinterlands, my boy. It's time a wealthy man like you got off that island more and went to the big city, and I don't mean that provincial port town you live across from. That's a mere village, as far as we Romans are concerned. Ah, but you still look un-convinced."

The tour guide turned to the couple and said, "Ofelia! Maximus! Stop for a moment!"

The woman turned around and said to the tour guide, "What do you need, sir?"

The man chained to the wall grunted in frustration, "Why are you people interfering with us?"

"Maximus, just you never mind! Wait a moment! We need to have a word with Ofelia," the tour guide replied.

"Ofelia," said the tour guide. "Would you please explain the basics of your style of love making. Our visitors are from rather rustic places and are not sophisticated regarding the love-making ways of the Emperor and his favorite subjects."

Ofelia was quite obliging and explained that Maximus was essentially addicted to pain and could not achieve orgasmic arousal without it. Far from wanting him to suffer, she was attempting to assist him in achieving release from the pent-up frustrations that resulted from an overly-satiated life. He, like many in the Emperor's inner circle, and like the Emperor himself, were so wealthy, and could so easily attain ordinary sexual access to the most beautiful people in the Empire, that they had become sexually jaded, bored out of their minds with regular sex. And thus they were continually inquiring into the matter of how to introduce further novelty into sex in order to prevent their jadedness from ruining their erotic life altogether. The final result was something that, to many outsiders, would appear as something along the lines of pure insanity.

The doctor asserted, "These people need the help of doctors and priests in order to restore themselves to some kind of sexual health. They are only injuring themselves further by choosing to live in this way. They have lost the way to real and lasting love and have opted to allow their inability to enjoy daily life drive them to a kind of sexual mania. As a doctor, I have made a careful study of mentally-disturbed people for decades; and I can tell you that this may seem pleasing to some people, but it's a road that leads to madness. I wholly disapprove."

"As you like," replied the tour guide with indifference. "Carry on with your dull life if you wish. But know there are a million people who would give anything for a chance to be in this room. If you are not grateful for the invitation, the loss is all yours. The Emperor was only extending his deepest kindness to you. But don't worry, I will not anger him by reporting your lack of gratitude."

Athenodorus asked, "How soon can we leave here. I find that I'm becoming quite anxious in this environment."

"Oh gods of Olympus!" exclaimed the tour guide in frustration. "What sort of simpletons have you brought me today?"

Seeing that the doctor and the resort owner were unhappy with The Erotic Adventure Room, and seeing that St. John and Helen were spiritualizing the whole thing, the tour guide decided to conclude the tour. It was obvious enough that none of them, for differing reasons, were sharing in his kinky view of the world.

However, as Ofelia resumed whipping the man chained to the wall, and as that man began to cry out in pain with each lashing, Saint John The divine declared, with his arms open wide and his face facing the light streaming in from the large windows above, "Blessed are you, Maximus, for you are experiencing the very agony of birth and creation itself. It is only through such pains that the world itself could come into existence and only through such torments that the full blessings of God could come upon humankind."

"All praise to all the gods!" shouted Helen as Saint John sermonized.

"Whatever," said the tour guide as he waved them forward to exit the room through the two large doors they had come in by.

The doctor and Athenodorus walked on scowling.

As they entered the hallway, they heard a blood-curdling scream. It sounded quite different than the screams of those engaged in exotic sexuality in The Erotic Adventure Room.

"What was that!" exclaimed Athenodorus.

"That didn't sound quite right," chimed in the doctor.

"Oh, I'm very sorry you had to hear that. I told them to suspend their 'basement work' while you country folk were here. Never mind. I'll take you back to your rooms across the street until the Emperor is ready to see you.

"Dear, dear," added Helen, "it sounds like someone being killed."

"Yes, yes," admitted the tour guide. "Below us, if you must know, is the real torture chamber which is reserved for those persons who are so foolish as to anger the Emperor. The extent of the pain inflicted on those people, and the things that are done to the human body in there, and how protracted those experts down there can make a human death — it boggles the mind. I myself have gotten used to it, and the Emperor allows me to go down and watch whenever I like. But it's a bit much for most ordinary people, so I don't include that in tour, except when certain rulers come to visit who happen to share the Emperor's taste for . . . Well, we'd best be getting along. You all ought to take a nap and get refreshed before meeting the most powerful man on earth.

Just then the loudest and most bone-chilling howl exploded from the room beneath them. For a moment the doctor, Helen and Athenodorus were frozen with terror.

At that moment John uttered the words, "God is Himself the very possibility of the arising of any and all states of being imaginable. No bliss and no horror are too great for His Universe."

Before his nap with Helen, John composed this poem:

And in the beginning The Father of All Existence, upon the most excellent of whims, just for fun, created The Heavenly Maiden, Goddess of Virtue.

And in His infinite creative impulsiveness, God also created The Dragon of Wickedness. He introduced The Maiden to The Wicked Dragon.

They fell in love and the Lord made a palace for them. And in this palace were much wealth and splendor. It was here they consummated their sexual union.

And behold! The Heavenly Maiden became pregnant. And out of her womb came the whole Planet Earth. In it were the seeds to all sinful and praiseworthy deeds.

Thus, for millennia upon millennia, the battle rages between good and evil, neither attaining supremacy as both were the product of The Maiden and The Dragon.

For how could what is half evil become wholly good? And how can what is half good become wholly evil? All states of being are eternally loved by The Father.

Upon the birth of that baby planet, where all sins and all virtues were set in motion by God himself, The Lord removed the judgement throne from Heaven.

13. God Calls His Prophets

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The Emperor liked to the throw the Governor off balance whenever he could, and he did so today by sitting in his office dressed like a clean and conservative Roman Peasant. His garments were absolutely average and had a slight yellow-cream tint. He wore no head dress and his sandals were of the ordinary working-man's variety, except that they were new and showed no signs of use in the field.

When the Governor escorted the guests into the Emperor's office, he was immediately suspicious of the Emperor's motives and mood. Frankly, he trusted his superior more when he appeared as a flaming fruitcake, since one knew more of what to expect from him then. Whenever he dressed modestly, he only did so because he wanted to shock people more by being outrageous while dressed in a way that would seem to indicate a rational tone.

The Governor gave the Emperor a slightly reproachful glance as he showed the guests to their seats around the Emperor's desk, as if to say, "I know you're up to some bad behavior today, and I don't like it."

The Emperor, always wise to the inner thoughts of the Governor, did not speak when being looked at this way, but instead pressed his lips together to form a perverse and mischievous smile. His eyes followed the Governor till the Governor took his seat; and the Governor also, without saying a word, studied the eyes of the Emperor until everyone, including himself, was seated.

The Emperor liked the Governor, not only because of his devotion, but also because the Governor seemed to not mind risking death by being in the mad ruler's presence. The Governor would never willingly bait the Emperor or in any way be gratuitously offensive. And the Governor was not suicidal, so he would never want to offend the Emperor, however, he did not fear being sentenced to death and spoke earnestly and straightforwardly when he felt the Emperor was acting in way which posed a danger to either the Empire or the future well-being of its ruler.

After the Governor and all the others were seated comfortably in their chars, the Governor said to the Emperor, "Okay, what sort of surprise do you have in mind today. You know I'm never happy when you dress like a normal man and try to make people think you're going to behave in a temperate manner. You must stop joking with people in this way. You must either be a madman or not, but do not try to give our guests false hope that you shall be reasonable with them, when we know the real course of your whims."

"Ah," replied the Emperor, now deliberately not looking at his interlocutor as he pretended to amiably seek the sympathy of his new guests, "do you see how my servants disrespect my holy office? Here I am trying to hold a whole empire together, and all he does is add stress to my days. In olden times such impudence would have been met with immediate execution. Instead, I tolerate all kinds of abuse from this man. When, I ask, will my forbearance and kindness be repaid with true respect from my subordinates?"

The guests looked around in confusion and then stared back at the Governor, looking for guidance as to how to respond to such an overly-familiar manner coming from such a person in such a lofty position.

The Governor waved off their alarmed expressions and said, "Don't believe what he just said. He's a lunatic, and yet he knows I would give my life for him in a moment. So, you see, he's only toying with you. Just because he's mentally-ill doesn't mean he doesn't have great intelligence and intuition. His mind is perhaps too acute, and really he is too bored with life to do his job as I do, with properly serious comportment. He's simply being wicked right now. You are to dismiss his last remarks."

The Emperor turned to the Governor and said, "Off with his head! A grisly death to this disobedient churl!"

"Oh yeah, like I could be so lucky as to have all my problems ended with the swish of a blade," said the Governor with mild scorn in his voice. "No, no, nothing like that. I'll be serving in this capacity until death or madness overtakes me. Death — that would be the easy way out. Now stop further teasing our poor visitors and do your business, whether it be terrible or tender. Then whatever it is you really have in mind can be carried out."

The Emperor, still refusing to look at his beloved friend, again looked at the group and said, "Now I ask you, between he and I, who is the more cantankerous and irrational? Is it he or I? Here I am, dressed like a humble land-owner, just trying to be civil, and this cursed creature does nothing but taunt me."

St. John The Divine, now in a fully prophetic mode and game for anything, broke the ice by leaning forward from the middle chair and saying, "Of course the Governor is right. You're no ordinary man, and so it can only be an illusion you're putting on when you dress like one. And obviously, you're up to no good, or you would not have greeted your friend with the smile of a boy who is planning to misbehave in the worst way. He loves you although you're a complete brat."

The Governor now lost his grave expression and was the one to smile. It was the smile of revenge sometimes seen to pass between two rivals when a third party steps in between them and favors the argument of the one over the other. It is the smug smile of someone who knows that he has won the debate, at least for the moment, and who is unashamed at transparently basking in his victory.

Now the Emperor turned to his friend and antagonist and stretched out an index finger angrily and shouted, "You will not smirk at me like that. Isn't it satisfaction enough that you've outsmarted me again? Must you also punish me further by gloating so?"

"I am truly sorry," conceded the Governor, realizing he had taken his severity and his defiance further than he wished to. "You will please excuse my excess in this manner and ignore me for now. Our most-honored guest has begun to speak for himself, and he is of far more importance now than I."

The Emperor turned back to St. John and the others and said, "So you see, he knows when he's stepped out of line. So he's not such a bad soldier, after all. Of course I've had men tortured to death in the most unimaginable ways for so much as shooting me a sideways glance, and it must be a mystery to everyone why I've not had him skinned alive for his nonchalant attitude toward my majestic station. Ah well, such things are sometimes inexplicable."

The Governor almost opened his mouth to speak again, but thought the better of it and stared down at the floor.

The Emperor turned back toward him and said, "Go ahead! Go ahead and say it! You've taken enough liberties already. You may as well spout off your latest insult. What harm could it do now?"

Refusing to be drawn in, the Governor sat like a stone and stared at the floor, refusing, for the moment, to enter into conversation in any way.

"No, it's best for the Governor not to speak now. He is right," asserted St. John. "You and I, we are both prophets. Let us not let the presence of the others disrupt the sacred decrees you must issue today."

Tilting his head in thought, the Emperor became truly fascinated and curious about St. John's line of reasoning. His voice finally lost all comedic flavor, and he sincerely questioned St. John.

"How could it be," inquired the Emperor, "that a man like myself, overtaken by lust and intoxication, one who delights in killing and torturing — how could it be that I am a man of God? That makes no sense."

The Governor had silently nodded in assent to St. John's statement, but was otherwise silent.

The Emperor shot him a glance and said, "Don't nod like that! Remember, you just promised not to take sides!"

Unable to avoid smiling again, the Governor took to turning his head straight toward the wall so his expression could not be seen. Of course he had not exactly promised neutrality, but he supposed he was obliged to attempt to present such an affect during the remainder of the discussion.

"Now, where was I?" continued the Emperor. "Oh yes, so again, why could my person be said to be anything like divine?"

"You know it full well," answered St. John. "You could commit sins from now until the end of time, but that would not change your calling. God calls His prophets unto Himself for his own purposes. It matters not whether they are evil or good. A murderer will serve as well as a saint as far as Our Heavenly Father is concerned. It is none of our business what you do. You are the Emperor of The Empire. As such, you are seated beneath the throne of God. Should He not want you there, He could remove you at any moment. But until such time as he does, I view you as a messenger from Heaven."

"You have no idea," replied the Emperor, "how much I felt what you said when you said, 'could remove you at any moment.' Both me and the Governor are worried about that every day."

The Governor now looked up sternly at the Emperor, and a true sadness crossed his face.

"Never mind his morbid expression," declared the Emperor. "He knows the Senate will have me killed one of these fine old days. And you know, the Governor — he's so sentimental. I could swear that when I'm not looking he must actually weep when he thinks of my fate. Sometimes his eyes well up. He claims it's just allergies, but I know he is, in his heart, already mourning my certain death. But me, I am not so afraid. I know that I can't change who I am, although he has fantasies of reforming me. Oh no — it's better to die being who, as you might say, 'God called one to be,' than to try to carry on as a temperate man."

St. John, sitting upright in his chair, beamed with pride for the Emperor and added, "Then all is well for you. You know that you were sent to serve in this exact capacity, and you've already made peace with your impending death. This truly is a word from the Lord. But, do not be too dismayed when the poor Governor tries to change you. It's his job to attempt to protect you, even when your case is hopeless. And anyway, how many humans pass this way, through a world like this, and have any one man be so devoted to them as the Governor is to you? You can count yourself lucky, having a friend in both life and death, and being, for a short time, the bearer of the strange torch of this bizarre history of mankind."

Athenodorus was unable to contain his dis-ease any longer and blurted out, "Mr. Emperor, sir, I cannot bear to remain in the office much longer. These walls being lined with jars full of the severed heads of people — this is too much for an ordinary man to take!"

Now the Emperor smiled openly with satisfaction and said, "I was wondering how long it would take for one of you to mention that. Of course the prophet here cannot be moved by mere considerations of life and death."

"Will we be able to leave soon?" pressed Athenodorus, against his better judgment.

"I'm truly sorry, my good friend. I would excuse you now," replied the Emperor," but you are essential to the end of our discussion today. And so, if you must, go ahead and close your eyes until I address you again. As for the woman you've brought here, I think she almost takes pleasure in my gruesome decorations. And, of course, the doctor has seen every sort of horror that those in the medical profession must. And so it turns out you are the only one in the room subject to the ordinary man's type of fear. You must bear with us for a time. Just close your eyelids and try to pretend we aren't here. Take a few deep breaths. That will do you some good."

This simple advice did indeed seem to work for Athenodorus who was, for better or worse, an extremely suggestible man, when it came right down to it.

"Speaking of heads in jars," said the Emperor — "St. John, have you yet noticed that I placed the head of your rival on the shelf closest to the door?"

"Ah, yes!" how thoughtful of Your Majesty. "You did not have to go through such trouble for me. I was prepared to die for the word of the living God, whether by his hand or anybody else's. Even so, thank you for your kind consideration."

St. John The Divine rose from his chair along with the doctor and Helen. They circled around the large pickling jar that contained the floating, preserved head of Christos Christos. St. John picked up the heavy jar and held it in his arms and looked closely at the face within it.

"Oh Christos Christos," uttered St. John in ecstasy as he then looked up toward heaven, "you did not know that those who seek too fervently to do good for the world end up wreaking more havoc and doing more harm than anyone else. My dear Christos Christos, maybe in your next lifetime you will learn your lesson."

As St. John spoke, the Emperor was moved to stand at attention, as though showing respect, as one would to a priest speaking at the funeral of a high office-holder. The Governor also instinctively rose when his Emperor did. And for an instant they all felt something like what the Pentecostals of later years would describe as "the presence of The Holy Ghost descending upon them."

When Saint John set the jar back onto the shelf and sat down, they all sat down with the intention of resuming their discussion. No one mentioned the spiritual experience they had just shared. To do so would have, each of them felt, ruined the sanctity of the moment and cheapened the value of what they had just witnessed. The only one who did not share their spiritual experience was Athenodorus, who remained in his chair with his eyes closed, breathing deeply, almost fading into sleep.

After thinking for a moment, the Emperor himself gazed skyward and pronounced, "You know, I think it's best to just conclude our meeting for today. I realize it's only been a few moments, but sometimes a brief introduction is best. With your kind permission, I think we shall end today's momentary meeting on a high note. I did not call you here to merely trifle with you. We have a quick item or two of business to discuss also, very specific worldly business. But I think it would soil the pleasantness of our introduction to get down to the nitty gritty of matters just yet."

Looking over at the Governor, who was now paying very close attention to every word the Emperor said, the Emperor concluded, "If His Excellency The Governor will spare us another day, then we shall all retire to our rooms and rest some more. I fear we all spend too much time working, even those of us with no jobs. So I order us all to relax for another day and meet at this time tomorrow, that is, unless The Honorable Governor objects."

The Governor rolled his eyes and in a grumpy tone replied, "No, I don't object. Of course, I don't."

The Emperor, who viewed himself as a very "atmospheric man," felt that everything was just perfect the way it was, for now. And, just for that day, he felt he would like to leave things that way. And so they all disbanded to go to their separate rooms to enjoy the large, luxurious beds and the fine wines and finger foods that came in streams from armies of servants. The next day they would meet in a more formal dining room and try to conclude their business over a meal. That way the Emperor could address a few concerns of his to Athenodorus without the presence of so many floating heads in large pickle jars. The Emperor also had pressing matters to discuss with Helen. She would be the least pleased with the Emperor's orders, but she had committed crimes against the State, and as such, owed the State a great debt.

* * *

Helen was a bit frustrated with St. John The Divine that evening because she was hungry for physical affection, and St. John was in a distracted mood and unable to become excited about romance. Instead, he was taken up by writing some lines about his brief meeting with the Emperor:

I saw today that all men are beasts, royal beasts, and that christs and antichrists are of one body. Idolators and iconoclasts are surely of one flesh.

The Emperor is holy, and yet he is a murderer. He cannot be understood by any name or number. There are no signs in the universe by which man may interpret his madness.

His station is divine, and the loss of his throne will be divine. Whether people worship him or not, whether they believe my words about him or not — the outcome will always be the same.

The prophets and rulers are sent, and the songs they sing are the songs of Heaven. But Heaven itself is not raised nor lowered because of the praises or the blasphemies of humans.

Belief and disbelief are all sacred estates. We are to revere the believers and non-believers, since their paths are in harmony.

Whether or not they place a crown on my little head or cut my head off and stuff it into a jar, I shall love the Emperor, just as His Excellency The Governor loves him. And I shall follow his injunctions, but not out of fear, but for the cause of love alone.

Helen grabbed the poem from St. John's desk at the moment he completed it. She read it rapidly and threw it back down on the desk. It was the first time she had ever been displeased with St. John's writings.

"Are you finally through," she asked in a contemptuous tone, "writing love poems to that psychotic madman, that crazy Emperor doomed to die. It's true what they say, you know, that the Senators will kill him soon enough. Don't set your heart on his survival. Don't get caught up in his cult of personality. It will all be gone soon enough. I hope he lets us out of this city tomorrow. If I never see Rome again, that will be fine enough for me!"

After he observed her unusual outburst, he stood up, and without an ounce of anger or defensiveness, said, "Come here, my dear Helen. Embrace me. Do not be worried that my heart is given wholly to any one human being. Surely you know by now that I serve only one Master, and that Master has no human face, no human traits, and could never be named in a million years of naming. The unseen force that runs through every thing, that force that gives life to what was only dead dust — that force is the one I serve for eternity. And you, you are my heavenly concubine, always inspiring me, always communing with me in the eternal communion of the male and female principle which runs through the very pores of the earth."

She resisted this overture at first, but at last calmed down and embraced him. They did not have sex that night, but instead spooned together till dawn, going in and out of sleep, listening to each other's breathing.

St. John was showing her some other kind of love. It was romantic, but not so infused with sexual mania. She was not sure if she liked it, and she was not sure whether or not it was the best kind of love. His love for the Emperor, his love for the Governor, his platonic mood tonight — she didn't quite trust any of it, but something told her that she had no choice but to go along with it.

Being honest with herself, she admitted that her willfulness would not rule the day in this situation. When push came to shove, St. John the Divine was less of a victim than he appeared to be, and the seemingly-psychotic Emperor was not completely a monster. Her world was not quite like she thought it was. In truth, she had seen the meeting of three minds, the mind of a prophet, the mind of an Emperor, and the mind of a Governor; and she realized that when those people met, she had no idea of exactly how they operated, how they understood each other so easily and what they would do next. She and the doctor and Athenodorus were mere spectators as the other three bargained in ways that were incomprehensible to her.

There is nothing like a strange environment for revealing what people are made of; and the truth was, she didn't know herself like she thought she did, nor she did know her lover the way she thought she knew him. Maybe he could live without her. If that was so, then his love for her was pure and not polluted by sexual necessity. If sex were merely an option and not mandatory, then that changed everything. It was all disturbing. She slept less than St. John did, but what little sleep she did get, would be just enough to get her through another difficult day.

14. The Presence of Blood And Death

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The next day they were all seated in a high-ceilinged room with heavy stone walls, a wood-beam vault and wedge-shaped openings that let in air and light, but kept out the breeze and the glare. The Emperor was seated at one end of the table and the Governor was a few seats over. The rest were filled with uncertainty and took their food and beverages with a certain trepidation.

The Governor was not so uptight as he had been the day before, owing to the fact that the Emperor had let down his guard a bit and was dressed like the lunatic he really was. He wore baggy, multi-colored robes with many fringes and buttons. His shoes were that of a jester and his hat was outlandish, a kind of fez with assorted peacock feathers bursting out in groups around the circumference of his head.

Additionally, the Emperor was unusually quiet. Even so, considering his position and how he was dressed, it was clear that the day would progress in an absurd way and that nothing short of a miracle or an outrage could stop that. Incidentally, something along the lines of a miracle, and something very much along the lines of an outrage, would, in fact, happen, and would, in fact, stop him from fully acting out. This would mean that, for a second day in a row, the guests would see an Emperor who was, for sure, a disturbed and evil man, but not the insatiable wild-man of legend. When the insatiable side would return, no one knew.

In his case, most of the so-called "legends" were simply accurate accounts, since very few of the tales that were told about him were false. In this way he differed from other leaders, in that he was not beset with false rumors, but rather, beset with true rumors. The Governor knew all this, but his loyalty remained as irrationally unflinching that morning, as it had been every morning, since the day they'd first met.

The Emperor tried to start out the awkward afternoon with some small talk, talk that would be alarming in ordinary circles, but in the higher echelons of Roman society were considered daily chatter.

"So," started the Emperor, looking up at the Governor, "now which of those Senators do you think will finally have the manliness to take upon his own head the responsibility of ordering my assassination?"

As the guests looked up, startled at the casualness with which the political classes regarded their own deaths and the continual and fatal rotations of power, the Governor put his hand on in his chin and mused serenely, "I think it must be Maxentius. The others may hate you more, but they lack resolve and care too much for riches. Maxentius cares for the fate of Rome, perhaps more than for his own life, and he might not mind it so much if the plot failed and he were to be exiled. Losing everything would mean almost nothing to him. He's a true stoic. The others — they are not so afraid of death as they are poverty. They would prefer execution to poverty and loneliness in an alien land."

Athenodorus lurched forward, finding some bit of strength and a mild wind of courage brought on by sheer curiosity, and inquired, with one finger in the air, "But wait! Am I to understand that you think you know who will kill the Emperor, and yet you do not imprison him now?"

"Nah," replied the Governor gruffly, "the Emperor thinks it's bad form. So we usually wait till they make a move. He thinks it's safer that way. When the plots fail and the hit-men are caught red-handed, we let the would-be assassins slip away if they spill the beans on the conspirators. Then, so the logic goes, the Senate can't claim we're making up excuses to pick them off one by one, which I would just as soon do, but . . ."

". . . but your crazy little Emperor here has a moment of discipline now and then," asserted the Emperor with a wink.

"True," the Governor said, rising up authoritatively and addressing the others directly, "His predecessor, whom I also loved and served — his madness was of the sort that led to a much quicker death. Our dear one here has always managed to push the Senate to the edge, and then, just as they are convinced he must die — then he pulls back and moderates to the point that their motivation to go through with it seems to wane."

"But don't you think, wild eccentricities or not, that Maxentius will, so to speak, pull the lever this year?" inquired the Emperor.

Leaning back again the Governor assented, "Yes, I'm sure by the year's end. They can't let the balance of power just waver in uncertainty forever. Perhaps just before the Holy Days, or maybe just after, but not much longer."

"Will you weep for me, dear Governor?" asked the Emperor importunately, much to the embarrassment of the guests.

The Governor waved his words away and added, "That is so obviously so that it is beneath our dignity to speak of it."

"I'm sorry," interrupted Athenodorus again, "so could you please explain why exile is employed instead of execution?"

"My dear Athenodorus," whined the Emperor, as he began to become a bit more manic and giddy — "but you've never really known true wealth, have you? You and your little island, and your modest resort. Don't you know, dear fellow, that some of the Senators own a hundred islands? Of course you could live elsewhere, but Rome — Rome to a truly worldly man — one would be at an utter loss to describe the bleakness of living without it. Village life would be a living hell. And too, you see, they would be living as peasants then, laborers, or mere farm owners. All their old friends would shun them, and they would suffer each day as though receiving a thousand daggers to the heart."

"Though," quipped the Governor, "the thousand daggers to the heart part — we do that too, once in a while, just to keep everyone on their toes, just to keep them guessing, and nervous."

Just then their former tour guide entered the room to ask the Emperor a question regarding the arrival of some new guests to be met with in a couple of days; and he added, ". . . and he sometimes pulls the hearts out and eats them, doesn't he, after he tenderizes them with those thousand daggers, hmm?"

The Emperor put his head down in his hands in feigned exasperation and then exclaimed, "You! You will be tied down and whipped until every pore of your skin is bleeding, you with your impudence!"

"Promises, promises," replied the tour guide, now with one hand on his hip and the other on the Emperor's shoulder. "Now, Mr. Tough Guy, will you please tell me which quarters I should put the Ethiopian Ambassador's family in. They're very fussy, and their translator is obnoxious; and they're quite tired from their long journey."

"Oh yes, of course," replied the Emperor in a very civil tone, "then put them in the back rooms overlooking our new crocodile pond. They should feel at home there. And see that the crocodiles are fed a crippled horse while the family watches. I hear such things amuse that puffed up socialite and his entourage."

Smiling, the tour guide turned around and said, with an air of smug satisfaction, "Most excellent, then. Very well. I shall see to all of it. It is most fitting with all of your glories, sir."

Helen let go a laugh at this, but the Emperor turned to her and said, "Don't you be taking things so lightly. You, young lady, are the one person at this table who is in far more trouble than the others. They can laugh if they want to. But you must remember, whether I die tomorrow, next week, or next year, I will not permit this throne to be disrespected. Whoever takes it from me shall find the chair to be one which instills reverent fear in all men and women. And, as the doctor and Governor have reminded you, on more than one occasion, you have harmed the prestige of this office, and you shall pay for it."

"But don't worry about being executed or jailed," added the Governor. "As the Emperor said, there are penalties worse than prison or execution."

The doctor, at some risk to his person, could not resist noting, "And an unwanted duty is the harshest of all penalties."

The Emperor, appreciating the doctor's ability to hint without playing their hand fully nodded in approval and said, "Is there nothing more grievous than decades of servitude at a post one finds unflattering?"

"If there is," concluded the Governor, "I cannot think of it. How I should just die if the next Emperor will not let me serve in some cherished capacity. How I should then want to fall on my own sword. I envy our dear Emperor, and you St. John, and you Helen, for you can all find joy in something as childish as sex. As for me, only the graveness and most intense service can arouse any passion in me. Ah, those days I could take pleasure in lots of wine and concubines — what became of my old light-hearted self?"

After saying this, St. John could see that the Governor was holding back tears. And so he put his hand on his shoulder and reassured him.

"Your Excellency," he said, "your selflessness and earnestness have not gone unnoticed by Heaven itself. A great reward awaits you. In future lives, you will be always given an important position from which to offer your loyalty and your labors."

"You are only saying that just to console me, just as any priest would. You are only too kind, but I cannot really believe you have any such knowledge. It may be that you know the truth of other lives and other worlds, but I cannot believe such sweetness awaits me. I am too bitter not to greet such a proclamation without cynicism."

St. John The Divine then grasped the Governor's shoulder even more tightly and said, "Sir, as I look up, up beyond this temporal plane, I'm saying that I really see it, see it as clearly as I do this table we take our wine from."

The Governor turned and regarded St. John with genuine gratitude and surprise, and replied, "I do not know if you are truly a prophet or, at last, a complete madman; but I see that you are not attempting to deceive me in the slightest, and for that, I must say, you have my sincere thanks."

At that moment the servants brought out a lunch fit for an emperor. Athenodorus, not truly in love with anyone, saw good food and good wine as one of his deepest consolations. His other major consolation was the camaraderie and affection of his tenants and coworkers at the resort he owned. Not having a real spouse was the cause of some pangs of loneliness for some time each day, but the love of dozens of people, and their sincere liking of him — these were treasures enough to get him through the days. For a man who had little faith in the gods, he did better than most men his age without a wife.

* * *

Just as they began to deeply savor the culinary achievements of the palace chef, a disturbance could be heard at the guard post just outside the dining room. There was a heavy clang of swords and a sudden outburst of shouting and general alarm. Everyone at the table stopped eating and looked up in complete bewilderment.

Just then a bald man in a Chinese monk's robe dashed over to the wall across from them and dived to the floor, flinging a box to the ground in front of him. Two armed swordsmen who were not part of the palace guard charged in to defend him. The three guards assigned to guard the dining room followed closely behind. But as soon as the monk had hit the floor, the swordsmen that followed him turned on the palace guards and easily defeated them although they were outnumbered. In only a few loud, terrifyingly-violent, uproarious, thrashing minutes, all three of the palace guards were dead. One had his head cut off, and it presently rolled to within three feet of the table. The other had suffered a single stab wound to the heart and had bled to death, leaving a spreading pool of blood which began to cover much of the floor. The last poor fellow had been disemboweled, and his entrails lay in a disorganized heap upon the floor next to him.

By then the monk had stood up and the crate-like box he had been carrying was again in his arms. The two invading swordsmen came and stood next to him. All three stood upright, as if in reverence and deference to the Emperor, and none of them spoke a word, at first.

At that very moment an older soldier stepped in to the entry way and shouted, "Have no fear, Emperor, a detachment of forty-five soldiers in on the way!"

Everyone but the Governor stared back in complete astonishment when the Emperor waved him off and said, "No, my dear, just send them back. They won't be needed. Simply send the palace burial crew and our best cleaning men and women. It will take a few hours, I suppose, to bring this room back to normal."

The elderly soldier's jaw dropped and he stuttered, "But I . . . I mean, Sir! . . . We cannot just . . ."

"Yes, yes, you can. You can just forget you ever saw this. Now get the funeral workers here and the cleaning people. I want this room ready for the Ethiopian Ambassador's dinner later in the week. I will not have this room looking like Hell when he arrives. Now go!"

"But, but . . . Mr. Emperor, Sir . . . I just . . . I just," mumbled the elderly soldier, who, eventually seeing the Emperor was still staring at him in anger, turned to leave in total befuddlement.

The Emperor turned to examine his visitors as Athenodorus ventured, "You have forgiven an assassination attempt so easily?"

"No, no," asserted the Governor dismissively. "They will not kill the Emperor at his lunch table in front of his guests. This is obviously something else, something ridiculous, no doubt; but the Emperor is disposed to indulging in the ridiculous, and so these men will live, presuming the Emperor enjoys their foolish explanation for their actions, whatever that explanation might be."

The Emperor turned to the Governor and scowled as he said, "Shut up! I am speaking to our recent arrivals. You are to keep your commentary to yourself for a while."

The man with the shaved head, wearing a dark saffron robe hobbled forward a step or two and performed something between a bow and a nod, and, as yet, said nothing, but had only indicated by this action that he would answer for the invading group.

"You, sir, look like a kind of a sham!" said the Emperor scoldingly. "How dare you affect the garb of a Chinese monk when you are clearly European and obviously not behaving like a Buddhist. What brings you here? And what is in that box?"

The monkish-looking man could sense that, although he had been asked a few questions, he was not yet to speak, and indeed the Emperor continued on his tirade, "And why, in the name of the gods, have you brought two men who are clearly Christian into the Holy Palace of the Representative of the Roman Pantheon on Earth? I can see the shape of the crosses tucked under their shirts. Didn't we kill all those violent Christians just days ago? Did they not hear of the slaughter of their compatriots? Why would they court certain death like this?"

The leader of the invading group now saw an opening and he spoke rather softly, but plainly, and without fear, and said, "I beg the pardon of your holy personage, sir. I might have thought of a more civil way to approach you, but your appointment-setters were not keen on letting me in to see you for some months. And my time here is quite limited. I really must go this very evening. There was no choice but to get this box to you this instant. These gentlemen are old friends of Paganon, ones who escaped the onslaught of your soldiers against their church. They were only too happy to offer up their lives for my mission, even though they could not understand it. I merely told them that a box of potions must be delivered to St. John The Divine, that it was for his own good."

"These two men were willing to die for you on such a flimsy pretext?" replied the Emperor with squinting disbelief.

One of the soldiers spoke up and said, "Your Majesty, we have nothing to live for. Our teacher is dead, our friends and families are gone, and we were wandering the streets alone with no mission."

The Governor leaned forward and added, "Now that is indeed a position I could sympathize with. I somehow fear I may meet such a fate soon, that of being a man without an employer just sent to the streets with no cause to live for."

The Emperor sighed in exasperation at the Governor's disobedience, but did not let it get the better of him while he still had questions to ask.

"Who sent you? Where are you from, and where are you going that makes your departure so urgent?" asked the Emperor.

"I cannot say," replied the monk humbly as he bowed. "Please forgive me, sir."

"Forgive you? I'll have you skinned alive if you don't tell me now!" shouted the Emperor.

St. John interjected, "Mighty Emperor, regrettably, it is not within your power to kill this man, but this is not due to any failing on your part. No being, human or divine, could kill him."

"Is that so?" replied the Emperor with a half-frown as he turned to regard St. John. "Well then, we must find out what he wants from us."

"Sir," continued the Emperor. "You are apparently under some kind of protection I cannot comprehend. But if the Prophet says you can't be killed, then it's no use me threatening you. And a pity too, because I so love threatening people. Isn't it true, Your Excellency, the disobedient Governor?"

The Governor smiled and said, "Oh yes. Yes, indeed. It's all very true. Mr. Chinese-European monk, whoever you are, I think the Emperor would be about to ask you to join us for lunch, if you would be so kind."

The Emperor turned to the Governor and nodded in approval. The monk gave an almost imperceptible nod and sat himself next to the Emperor as the others moved over to make room for him. As for the Emperor, he was lost in thought and looking into the air, pondering many things.

The monk cleared his throat and humbly added, "Sorry to interrupt your train of thought, Your Majesty, but what are my men to do, now that their mission is completed? Are they to report to the executioner's holding cells or . . ."

"Oh . . . oh them, yes those fellows," replied the Emperor, as if coming out of a daze. "They are to simply go on their way."

The Christian swordsmen looked at each other in confusion, and the Emperor, still a bit lost in a kind of reverie, but perceiving their uncertainty, waved at them, while not moving his head to the left or right, and said, "Tell the guards in the front of the palace to take your swords. Just go. Just leave Rome."

The Governor interjected, "Gentlemen, are you capable of living in exile?"

The shorter, silent one now answered for both: "Your Excellency, we are simple men. We don't need city life. We would be just as well off, if not better, being manual laborers or tenant farmers of some sort. We have no further business in the Capital. We are barely literate. We are from poor families of no distinction."

"Yes, then," replied the Governor, "then please, hasten to the country before some relative of the slain soldiers takes justice into their own hands. Here," he said as he stood and took a middling sum of currency from his own pockets, "you'll both live easily on this until you can find suitable employment in the countryside."

Athenodorus had a hard time tolerating the ambiguity of this situation, and objected, "But I'm confused! Why are we to take lunch with this beastly white, Chinese man, or whatever he is? And why are these murderers given a stipend?"

The doctor put his hand on Athenodorus' shoulder and whispered in his ear, "I'll explain later. It's complicated. Just go along. We can talk about it later."

Athenodourus got a grip on himself and settled down, trusting the good doctor's counsel. He took more deep breaths and began trying to eat a bit of his meal, although his hands were trembling, not only from the shock of the violence he had just seen, but because nothing around him had made sense for days.

"So," began the Emperor, "if you cannot be threatened, and if you will not tell us who sent you, where you came from or where you're going, then can you at least tell us what the potions in the box are all about?"

"That I am permitted to say a thing or two about," admitted the monk. "You may even examine the medicines yourselves."

The box was opened and the hundreds of small bottles within were made apparent.

The monk held one of them up and said, "You may each examine these bottles to your satisfaction. If you open them up, you'll see small, hard capsules inside. My superiors have ordered me to ask St. John The Divine to take one per day such that his health might be more constant."

The monk winked at the doctor when he used the word "health," and immediately the doctor understood what was being confided in him.

"I was told," added the monk, "that there was a doctor in the group. You are obviously he. I can sense it. You will examine these thousands of pills yourself, and I have all trust that you will find them to be of a non-malicious nature, meant only to benefit the patient."

The doctor leaned forward and said, "And so your superiors want my patient to take one of these each day, for perhaps the rest of his natural life?"

"Yes," answered the monk, "and my superiors gave me a recipe of sorts. A scientist like yourself could easily make sense of it. If the supply should ever become exhausted, I trust you will employ all of your talent and the best chemists in the Empire to duplicate these ingredients."

The doctor's eyes were locked on the monk's. This so-called monk clearly knew more about science than he was letting on. The doctor did not want to embarrass the guest by accusing him of being more than what he appeared to be. But he was letting the guest know, by his hard stare, that he was quite aware of the reality that was passing between them.

The doctor said to the Emperor, "I have a feeling this monk's advice will greatly benefit my patient. We ought to agree to try it at once and observe the results. Since I will be in possession of the recipe, I should be able, with the help of your scientists, to reproduce it at will, presuming it proves to be beneficial."

"Of course, of course," agreed the Emperor. "Mr. Chinese monk, you will be expected to stay for lunch. Our chef has prepared a world-class meal, and you are all ordered to eat it."

"Certainly," agreed the monk. "Frankly, I'm very hungry just now and have a long journey ahead."

"How long?" asked Athenodorus.

The monk raised his eyebrows and quietly asserted, "The distance is not of the sort that I could express in ordinary language to you. Suffice it to say, though, such distances are making me quite old and quite tired before my time."

"But really," suddenly interjected St. John, "you exist outside of time and space. So you are, in fact, ageless. Isn't that true?"

The monk winked forcefully at St. John and replied, as he dabbed his mouth with a napkin after taking a sip of soup, "Now let's not talk nonsense in front of the others. They are worldly people who cannot have their time wasted with fantastic tales and the like."

St. John, understanding that he was being politely told to shut up and drop the matter, just chuckled.

Helen, although having seen more than one violent fight in her life, was also quite shaken up and implored the Emperor, "Ought we to be excused to go to our rooms? How are we to enjoy our meal with these mutilated corpses about us?"

The Emperor sipped his soup and wine and then replied, "Apparently our Chinese guest, or whatever he is, has no problem eating in the presence of blood and death, so why should you?"

Helen looked down at her plate and managed to get ahold of herself and avert herself from throwing up. After some moments she began to find the ability to force down the delicious food. And too, the doctor kept forcing more wine on her, refilling her glass continually, until she was indifferent to everything.

"Have you anything else to say for yourself?" inquired the Emperor sarcastically, as he took a huge bite from a leg of spicy lamb?"

"If it's all the same to you," replied the monk, "I'd prefer to eat in total silence. Me, and my kind, when we eat, well, we simply do not say a word to each other until the meal is over; and even then we may work together the whole day, in total silence. It's not a time in my life for talking much, if you see what I mean."

"Very well," proclaimed the Emperor with a wide smirk on his face as he puffed up his chest and proclaimed to the others, "we shall be eating in the way of the holy monks of China today. All of you are to remain silent for the rest of the meal in honor of our guest who has come bearing capsules of medicine."

"And," added the Emperor, "before we begin our period of silence, the monk is to break what I imagine is some vow he may have against the consumption of alcohol."

The Governor looked at the monk as though all would be well-served if the monk would capitulate in this small way. The monk, out of great compassion, had the waiter bring him an entire bottle of wine, out of which he poured what would be the first of several full glasses of wine.

The Emperor then ordered, "But first, all will raise their full glasses of wine in honor of the two murderers the monk brought with him today. They did a really fine job of killing. I and the Governor could only weep that more like them are not in our armies. May those two beasts find a happy life in the country as simple farmers!"

All toasted to this, a few even adding, "Here, here!" as the glasses all clinked together.

The rest of the meal was served, and all the guests, now suitably intoxicated, paid no mind to the bodies being cleared from their midst and the blood being scrubbed from the floors. Around the table, an endless stream of servers took away plates, brought new plates full of delicacies, replaced used napkins with fresh ones and barely let a glass of wine even get part of the way empty. These workers had seen and heard everything in their time working there, and so they carried on in a hearty, happy and undaunted manner.

After a few hours, the lunch-dinner time had ended. No one would need to eat for the rest of the day. Large bottles of fresh water were waiting in all of their rooms. Beyond that, it was imagined they'd sleep till the next day. The Emperor still had a bit of real business to conclude with them, but two days in a row he had been interrupted by the mood of the people and the pace of events around him. In truth, he was too exhausted to issue the orders he wished to issue. And so they would meet again in his office the next day, the one filled with heads. Tomorrow would be all business, for sure.

The monk took his leave, leaving the dead and the living behind him, and also leaving the box of thousands of pills behind him. No one ever knew who he was or where he was going, but they all missed him after he left. None ever forgot him.

* * *

Saint John was not thrilled that his friends were now convinced by a stranger to push pills into his daily routines. And he felt a vague uneasiness, wondering what exactly the medicine was for. But, for now, he would not let such things ruin his experience. Rather, he would concentrate on writing some lines commemorating another astounding day in the Emperor's presence.

The purity of the holy man and the killer are one purity. I saw them both before me today, like beaming lights. Whether violent or non-violent, they were, in essence, forever virgins before the Most High God.

And I, compared to those saints, am the lowest of sinners. And yet I have no pity for myself and my flaws. All qualities that can be named — are they not all like stains?

Better to have no qualities whatsoever, kike the Chinese holy man with white skin who came from thrones none on this earth will see in this world. He came from a monastery whose members cannot be spoken of, for their features are beyond shape, beyond color, and beyond space.

Holy harlots and sacred drunkards orbit their world, and yet they neither abhor, nor imbibe in, any pleasures. Their pleasure is feasting on formless vastness.

Let God tell the churches that the vast pits of Hell have been filled with the dirt of a thousand dumps. The slime of the doctrine of Hell itself is an ooze, a stench that fills the earth. May all beings be liberated from it. And may the incense of a billion heathen gods blot out that foul odor. The holy books must all be rewritten.

The wrath of God has been canceled. Instead a comedy club with strippers has taken its place.

15. Giant Carnivorous Beetles

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The next morning the Governor himself rousted everyone out of bed, shouting, "I have to get back to governing my province! The Emperor has guests from Africa to prepare to entertain tomorrow. We have to get out of this palace now and go back home! Up!"

And so it was that everyone in the small party, disheveled hair, wrinkly clothes and all, was hustled to the small office with the heads in jars. The Emperor was again dressed austerely and had a very impatient look on his face. They were all hustled to their seats by various aids who had begun buzzing about them to get them over to the Emperor's office.

They all sat down in front of the Emperor's desk looking perplexed, eyes blinking like stupefied cows.

The Emperor first spoke to St. John, "Dear man of God, I must ask that for our last few moments together that you not speak at all, even if it should be the most urgent message from Heaven. I simply will not tolerate these delays in issuing my orders. There are to be no surprising invaders, no great spiritual insights, nothing to interrupt my issuing of orders."

St. John looked unhappy, but he did not contradict the Emperor.

The Emperor turned first to the Governor and began, "So your wagons are all loaded up and the servants are prepared to have these people back on their Island?"

The Governor merely nodded in the affirmative, showing no desire to speak even a single word.

"Good," continued the Emperor, now directing his attention to Athenodorus. "Unfortunately, I must inform you that the Northern quarter of your island is being annexed by the State for the purpose of building a fortress in which we can keep St. John safe. The fortress will be well-guarded and impregnable to all but the most sophisticated of armies. Construction began on the project while you were on your way here. Temporary quarters have already been built. They are crude, for now, but will be suitable for a prince once completed. This will be the fastest fort-construction project we have ever attempted. We expect a good deal of it to completed over the next several months, though its perfection shall take many more months."

Athenodorus rose up in his seat to begin to protest this annexation of a portion of his property, but before he could say a word, the Emperor stood up and said, "Don't speak! You are the one that harbored this maniac who has caused my administration so much trouble. Your client, so to speak, has also wasted much valuable time my Governor could have been using to further my other objectives. Zeus knows we honor your so-called prophet, and we like him. That's why we're spending millions to protect him. But the building and the guarding is all we're prepared to pay for. The land shall be taken. And you're lucky its only land we're taking, and not your life and the lives of your troublesome Helen and St. John. So you will not speak, and you will not object. If you do, I'll have the Governor drag you into the hallway where the soldiers out there will stab you to death this instant! Am I clear!"

Athenodorus mutely slid down into his seat. His face red with anger, fear, confusion and frustration.

"Now, since St. John will ultimately be behind many layers of stone, there is no way any primitive invading force of sectarian madmen can get to him. That will be clear enough to all of his rivals now and all of his rivals to come. The project of assassinating St. John, and all the civil strife and complications that come with that, will all be laid neatly to rest by our making the attempt impossible. It would make more sense for us just to kill you all, but your insane prophet has, like so many others, garnered my unjustified sympathies. So be it!" said the Emperor.

"I will make an exception for the doctor," added the Emperor. "Please tell me again what the plan is."

"Yes, certainly, Your Majesty," replied the doctor. "The matter will be simple enough from my point of view. I wish to study this patient and care for him on a full-time basis, given that none of my other patients holds any interest for me. The retainer you had in mind will be more than enough. I'll happily retire on Athenodorus' island, seeing to St. John's physical well being, and, of course, studying his case carefully, as I hope to write about it extensively and use the case history to widen our currently-primitive understanding of psychological matters. It goes without saying that I'll also monitor the interactions he'll be having with the guards and the other service staff around him, especially during the difficult construction period, where the patient will be moved from room to room as we struggle to complete things in the time frame you mentioned. And I will, as we both agreed privately, insist that he take the medicine the monk brought, which, by the way, we're well on the way to being able to make on our own. I believe that I know exactly what it does. You will be amused once I tell you. We'll talk about it later."

"Good!" said the Emperor, now broadly smiling at the whole group. "You see. He is a man who gets business done, a person who respects his Emperor and serves his State humbly and without posturing. Posturing should be my domain alone. Someday you will all learn that lesson. Thank you, good doctor."

The Emperor then looked down and shuffled some papers as he got his remaining thoughts in order. Meanwhile St. John scowled darkly. He was not happy about being ordered to take medicine and being ordered to be under a doctor's exclusive care for the remainder of his days. The idea of the fortress, or palace, seemed prison-like to him. He already missed his old dorm-style room in the long hallway of spiritual seekers. He could not know that all his possessions had already been removed from that room, and that room had already been rented to another spiritual seeker, (and Athenodorus would only find out about this upon his return when he found the first month's rent laying on his desk).

A substantial wooden structure was already in place to serve as the temporary headquarters of the fortress until cut-stone could be hauled to the island by a huge barge already built exactly for just such a project. The Emperor's motives were not all charitable. The fortress and the barge were to be experimental prototypes for the construction of other forts on other, more far-flung islands that the Empire had hoped to maintain more solid control of. In this way, the Emperor could save St. John's life and also use him as a guinea pig for far more expensive endeavors. There were people to protect in various parts of the Empire whom the Emperor viewed as strategically far more important than St. John. He was thrilled to be using St. John's security predicament as the perfect model for protecting VIPs throughout the realm.

The Emperor shuffled one last piece of paper and cleared his throat, and proclaimed, "Now we come to the hard part. What to do with our dear, dear Helen. Helen, Helen, Helen. Oh dear, oh my, my."

The Emperor hung his head for a moment and concealed a smirk before continuing, "So, you know, I heard that you seduced our love-starved doctor the other night, took advantage of his weakness. Oh Helen, my dear, that is behavior so unbecoming of a sexual priestess."

She had opened her mouth to protest when she found the Governor had put his strong, large hand over her mouth and snuffed out any sound that might emerge from it. She began to struggle to get up and run. But before she could get far in that effort, two more soldiers rushed in the room, each holding her down from one side of the chair. Hence she was both stuck in place and muzzled.

"Oh goody," the Emperor continued, "so you think you could run from the ruler of the biggest empire that ever existed? That's very, very silly. You are a grown woman. You should not be so absurd."

Looking up at the Governor, who was now smiling as he kept his hand over Helen's mouth, he said, "So, you see, the dear thing has abused her sexual power, a thing reserved only for Emperors, am I not right?"

The Governor, the doctor and St. John stared straight ahead without saying anything. The two guards looked on confused, yet agreeably enough.

"So, my pet, you must see that the State regards you as a rapist, a serial rapist, having molested both Marcus Alexander and our highly-esteemed doctor, and probably a few other people we don't know about yet. You've been such a naughty, naughty thing. You do know how the State punishes rapists, myself excluded, don't you? Ah, but that's the most gratifying spectacle to watch. What a way to die!" mused the Emperor.

Just then the tour guide popped his head in the door and inquired, "Will you do it then? Will I get to watch? I've been so looking forward to it, the blood-curdling screams, the sheer terror. It's just so . . ."

Before he could continue the Emperor shot him a glance which indicated that he must be silent this instant, an unspoken request to which the tour guide impatiently, but readily acceded to.

"Do you recall," resumed the Emperor with a lilting tone, "how the other day the fine Governor remarked that there is one fate worse than a grisly death? What was that you said?"

The governor cleared his throat, "Sir, I cannot remember the exact words, but to rephrase the sentiment, I should rather prefer to be chained to a wall and eaten by those giant African insects your guests brought than work at some dullard's duty."

"Hah!" replied the Emperor, "so you saw the box our lofty guests from Africa brought, the collection of giant carnivorous beetles?"

"Yes, I knew that's why he brought them," said the Governor, "so some unlucky prisoner might be tied down and devoured alive by them."

"Precisely," confirmed the Emperor. "Just like our little construction project, the insect torture was to be a new experiment. Of course the insect experiment will be . . . well, you know. And, you see, my sweet things, I had planned for our priestess-turned-sexual-predator to be the first test victim."

Helen writhed in the chair in panic and muffled screams could be heard behind the Governor's hand.

"Well, you see, faithful Governor, I agree with you. A hideous job, served at for a lifetime — that could destroy one's soul more thoroughly than a mere-three day torture session ending in the most severely painful death. And so that's what I've chosen as Helen's punishment, a job I know she would detest. And her sentence — her sentence will be life, the entirety of her remaining life. That is the term she will serve at her new post."

The doctor interjected, "You deserve this, because Marcus Alexander was taking over his own body again, and you sexually traumatized him. If you hadn't done that, there would have been no St. John The Divine for the warring sects to battle over. You're a rapist and a murderer, and guilty of treason too, as far as I'm concerned."

"Enough of that," said the Emperor gently to the doctor. "Remember, you will both be working together on an almost daily basis for a while. So this kind of talk must stop."

"Yes sir," replied the doctor, now regaining his composure after having again spouted out his stock complaints against Helen.

"Good," said the Emperor. "We must all be civil, from here on in. Now Helen, don't panic. I believe the Governor has already informed you of your fate; but in the excitement of the past few days, you seemed to have forgotten, or maybe you believed you could get out of it. Well, you are not to be eaten by insects. Instead you are to marry St. John The Divine and serve as his wife, a duty I know you would cherish, except that the good doctor has also informed me that you've often taken leave of St. John when he becomes Marcus Alexander. But now, oh my tempting seductress, you are to become the wife of both St. John The Divine and your oh-so-boring friend, Marcus Alexander. You may no longer flee to your own home on the occasions when Marcus Alexander surfaces. You, my dear, are then sentenced, eternally, to be the wife of Marcus Alexander!"

Helen again went into hysterics and the soldiers had to redouble their effort to hold her down and the Governor had to push very hard to keep her screams to a muffled whine.

"Now soldiers, take her away to her wagon. Oh, and Helen, you are no longer licensed by the State to be a priestess of any kind. Your little temple on the island has already been cleared out. Another priestess is already there. You're out of business, young lady," concluded the Emperor.

"Okay, everyone out! Everyone to the wagons. We are to return home now!" asserted the Governor as the Emperor looked on silently, watching Helen being dragged away kicking and screaming as the others filed out forlornly.

As for that huge box with the thousand starving beetles, it would be opened soon; and some unlucky sex criminal would serve as the victim instead of Helen, who, at that moment, was not relieved at being spared this fate.

Helen was tied down into one of the wagons and cloth wrapped around her mouth and head to serve as a gag until she could regain her poise. The convoy moved back to the Governor's palace and ultimately to Athenodorus' island. To the little people of the world, all of these things may have seemed monumental, but to those who ran the Empire, the whole affair was just another notable inconvenience to be muddled through somehow.

St. John still could not comprehend who Marcus Alexander was, no matter how many times it would be explained to him, (and people were openly explaining it now). And furthermore, he was feeling a bit ill-at-ease about his connection to God. God felt just a bit remote to him, but not so much so that he could not scribble out another prose-poem on the way to his old island-home, which was being transformed into his new palace-home. When people read those lines, they worried a bit. The writing somehow didn't feel quite like the old St. John.

I used to believe great plagues were coming to overwhelm this ignorant, ruthless Earth, but now I see God has no wrath to unveil, no vendetta to settle with humankind. Such concerns with such negligible people are far beneath His dignity. He cannot forgive because He was never an aggrieved party. No mortal ever had the status to anger God.

The heavens rotate on their journeys through the cathedral of time and space. God regards the wicked and the saintly as two sides of a single Roman coin. He is not aided by our praise. Ours sins, laughable as they are, could not rise in importance beyond the buzzes of half-dead house-flies. We are simply free to go on our way.

The plagues, the tribulations, the end times — what in the world was I thinking? Nothing of what I preached before can come to pass. There is no day of reckoning. Rather, today, all we can do to serve the world is dispense a little love and such small gifts as we have to give.

16. Who Am I To Judge The World?

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The construction process went unbelievably fast. The new construction techniques worked wonders. To get the fort established, the workers hauled in barges full of logs in an almost endless stream. Nothing like it had ever been seen in terms of the style and speed of building. Within a few weeks the entire area that would eventually be a heavy stone palace was sealed off with high wooden walls covered over by some novel combination of mud and sand. These crude walls would not only serve as a temporary structure for the fortress, but would form the skeleton around which the stone palace was to be erected.

The sudden growth of the island's population, the number of people needing medical services, and the sheer chaos created by the continual docking and unloading of ships, was hard to comprehend. Boats and people were constantly entering the harbor and leaving by the harbor. A wide road the size of a central boulevard in a large city was put down with a new type of surface that more easily allowed for the speedy movement of all the construction supplies to be brought into the work site. Wagons continually streamed back and forth from the harbor as teams of men hustled around each conveyance in order to make sure the load remained safe and balanced and was moved along as quickly as possible.

Other than making sure that St. John took his medicines in a timely fashion, the resort owner and the doctor were not paying too much attention to St. John's daily affairs, (although the doctor was supposed to be dedicated solely to St. John). They were far too preoccupied with the throngs of other logistical matters they were beset with. In the course of the their work, some of the workers got sick and others were injured. Spiritual seekers were having their routines disrupted and were subjected to frequent moves and other inconveniences associated with the massive project happening around them. Amid the confusion, it seemed everyone had generally fallen into forgetting about or neglecting their duty to keep a sharp eye on the man over whom all this fuss was being made, falsely assuming Helen would promptly report any major problems that came up.

This, however, was not the true state of affairs. Helen was deeply depressed, more so than her appearance would have suggested. And, furthermore, St. John was undergoing subtle personality changes which, from the outside, might not even be noticeable, but which, when seen from a close-up and daily perspective, were substantial. And Helen was unhappy about what she was seeing.

In St. John, Helen had found a partner who could share her nearly bipolar outlook on the world. It was a world with very high and prolonged euphoric states, states of mind which could have been alternately labeled "God consciousness" or simply "delusional mania," and possibly even "nymphomania." St. John was the only one who could ever get as high as she did, and he was also the only one who shared her far-reaching sense of doom and emptiness. Without him, the planet seemed like a place full of mediocrity and bland sensibility. When she had been a sexual priest, she had found few clients who could go "all the way" with her. For her, "all the way" was for more than a sexual term. It was a profoundly psychological and religious phrase. In any case, it was rare enough that her clients could "go there" with her, and when they did, it was often a short-lived thing, a kind of lucky coincidence or freak accident, nothing to be counted on. Whereas with St. John, she had not only a friend who emotionally understood her extreme states and the wide range of her feelings, but one who could commune with her "at that level" sexually. It was a relationship she viewed as irreplaceable and non-negotiable. She simply "had to have it," and that was that.

What she did not bring up to the doctor was that since St. John had begun taking daily doses of the potion the "white Chinese monk" had delivered, he was not the same St. John at all. Their sex life was the first trouble sign, as far as Helen was concerned, but she was not about to announce such a complication to the doctor or the resort owner. And besides, it would be hard to describe to an "outsider." From the outside it merely appeared that St. John was settling into a healthy sexual routine. His sexuality, far from being "over," was simply moderate. After about forty-five minutes of making out and performing other normal sexual activities, St. John would have a pleasant orgasm and drift off to sleep. Gone were the days of tantric, multi-orgasmic, multi-hour intensity. Really, it was a sex life any normal man would be happy to have stumbled upon. But for Helen, it was like being the queen of a large European county who was now forced to live in a two-bedroom apartment. It was simply an unacceptable reduction in pleasure and privilege. Before, she was having sex with an incomparably-powerful prophet of God. Now she was having sex with someone she was not even certain she knew.

This new person who emerged, after the medication took hold, was still St. John, but a grumpier sort of St. John, one whose occasional prophetic outbursts seem to lack poetry. Frankly, when he tried to write "scriptures," he found himself uninspired and quitting half the way through the prose-poem. He might eventually finish the piece, but when he did, the results seemed turgid and lacking in life. Sometimes Helen, who was left alone in her mania, would, just for something fascinating to do, finish the half-written poem, or even rewrite whole poem, using his name, hoping to tap into some of their old life together.

On some days Marcus Alexander would emerge. She remained sexually uninspired by him and pushed him away, just as she had before, whenever he tried to get more intimate with her. And, to further make matters more abysmal for her, Marcus was not the same old Marcus. He had lost some of his easygoing nature. And he was not the pushover he had once been. Sometimes he would find himself arguing with Helen and was not particularly intimidated by her disapproval. He was no longer a wimp. In most cases this would be viewed as a positive thing. But Helen was a control freak around any man she viewed as weak, and she was used to being able to dominate the platonic friends she had, all of whom were usually so in awe of her sexual prowess that they bent over backwards to please her, and this was usually to the point of obsequiousness. The loss of this kind of authority over Marcus bothered her. Eventually, he stopped making passes at her and simply said, "Hey, I just wrote the Emperor, and he told me I can have a girlfriend on the side, so, you know, if you're just not into it, then let's just forget it and be buddies. No hard feelings."

The end of Marcus' sexual harassment of her should have been greeted with unfettered glee, but, in fact, it was his constant groping for her that debased him and therefore elevated her in terms of the power dynamics of the friendship. So she was not only bored with St. John, who was now far from the sexual animal he had been, but also bored with Marcus who, much to her dismay was becoming a real man who had to be respected. In essence, the potion had caused her to lose both relationships. St. John and Marcus Alexander were both blandly moderate versions of their old selves. The whole thing sent her into a spiral of depression, hence she reported little about St. John to the doctor or the resort owner; and she was perfectly taciturn when the Governor came around to inspect the progress of the fortress construction and to inquire of St. John's well being.

* * *

Further complicating matters were the constant barrage of attacks that were launched against the fledgling fortress. The fortress commander had sent word to the Governor and the Emperor to send more troops, but both replied that the whole point of this experiment was to see if such a fortress could be self-sustaining, militarily, with a minimum number of men. Hence, even the civilians on the island had to be battle-ready, they felt, in case the contingent of soldiers supplied by the government proved insufficient to meet the challenge of the enemies of the island.

The attacks were spearheaded by new converts to the faith of the late Paganon. These warriors were coming onto the island with the goal of "liberating" the prophet from the clutches of the "powers of the world." Additionally, other followers of the late Christos Christos came with the opposite mission. Rather than "liberate" the "supposed prophet" they sought to assassinate him such that their leader might not have died in vain.

In any case, the base commander and the resort owner were all inappropriately alarmed. Things had turned out as the architects had said they would. Flaming arrows were shot at the walls of the fortress from invading boats. But the new covering on the walls caused the arrows to fail to stick into the wood. Rather, the flaming arrows merely bounced off the walls and landed in the dirt, their fires dying out quickly. And the invaders, once on land, proved no match for well-trained Roman soldiers. They were quickly put to death and their bodies thrown into the sea. This had happened often enough that the island was not safe for swimmers. The sharks had gotten it into their heads that bloody carcasses were to be had in the vicinity, and they patrolled the sea around the island with intense interest.

Athenodorus had complained to the Governor that he was feeling pinched for cash and wanted his own private security force beefed up, so he and his tenants could feel secure, given the "unimpressive" size of the government's fighting contingent there. The Governor passed this complaint on to the Emperor himself. Much to everyone's horror, "the guy who cuts off heads and keeps them in jars in his office" decided to pay the island a visit, personally. Helen and Athenodorus were on the verge of panic upon hearing of this decision, however, St. John and the doctor were perfectly serene about the prospect.

One day the Governor's entourage pulled up in a large ship that was overly decorated with every sort of ornament and painted in a conspicuously-festive manner, all of which seemed out-of-character for the otherwise sober-minded Governor. Emerging first from the ship were fighting men of the most ominous and hulking sort. Their faces seemed carved of marble, and their eyes glinted like tempered steel. Their faces were expressionless, yet alert. They did not speak a word and looked as though prepared to begin, at any instant, slaughtering any and all comers.

The doctor sauntered out to the boat while Helen and Athenodorus met in Athenodorus' villa. They had not had a chance to catch up in a long time, and Helen had been quite withdrawn. In any case, they were both very ill-at-ease with the notion of the Emperor paying a visit to the island and decided to keep the lowest profile possible. But it was to no avail, since it was Athenodorus the Emperor was coming to visit first.

Instead of knocking, one of the monster-soldiers simply walked up to the door and smashed it open with a single, brutal kick. Athenodorus and Helen cowered toward the back of the living room. A moment later, after three or four of the behemoths had occupied the residence, the voice of the doctor, the Governor and the Emperor could be heard. They were clearly caught up in joking and bantering among each other and had not even noticed the brutal and rude behavior of the soldiers toward Athenodorus' home.

Eventually the Emperor came in with the doctor and the Governor trailing in behind him, and said, "So, Athenodorus — oh my — and has humankind ever seen such a half-man? I find it stunning that you managed to amass a small fortune. Were I an employer or a businessman, I'd have no dealings with such an irresolute little puppy as yourself. But who am I to judge the world and its tastes? Apparently you are a success in spite of your lack of merit. Ah, but how can I speak of such things? If merit were a thing the gods cared about, I should have been stabbed to death or boiled alive a dozen times by now; and yet, since the gods apparently have no love of good men and no contempt for remorseless killers, I remain, not only alive, but on my throne. It seems the Senators, slow deliberators that they are, have decided to adjourn for the season and take up the matter of my assassination during their next session some months from now. Ah, but how we cannot argue with the fates."

Helen tried to puff herself up a bit and put on some mock courage by inquiring loudly, "What do you want with us! Why have you come here? Haven't you tormented us enough? Isn't it enough you've ruined my life? Must you come here and bully your subjects just for amusement?"

The Emperor turned to the Governor and smiled and said, "Of course I have rather enjoyed bullying my subjects for amusement."

The soldiers and the Emperor's companions smiled at this admission as if they were not moved by the sight of pure evil in their midst. It seemed that perhaps they were gratified by it.

Turning to Helen, the Emperor announced, "It's not your pathetic face I've come to look at, you low-grade sex addict. I've come to talk to the owner of this island, who, while admittedly a mouse of a person, at least can boast that he's a resort owner. You, you are merely the petty servant of a discredited prophet under house arrest. So you can just go — in fact, I order you to go — and bow before him and utter the words, "Master, is there anything further I can do for you?"

"Oh, go to Hell!" shouted Helen as she stormed out the back door and stomped off toward the fortress to throw herself onto her bed and cry.

One of the giant soldiers made a move to chase her down and kill her on the spot for disrespecting the Emperor, but the Emperor stopped him with a wave of a hand.

"Let her go wallow in her own shit. She wishes you'd go kill her and put her out of her misery, but I am determined that her misery go on till she has the guts to kill herself, which, if I were her, I would have done long ago. You see, there's some kind of integrity in Athenodorus. He's simply and overtly a coward. That, in a way, is praiseworthy. At least he is not pretending to be something he's not. But she — I spotted her for a fake the minute I laid eyes on her — her and her sexual priestess act. What bullshit. But let's get down to business."

Athenodorus spoke up, apparently comforted by the back-handed compliment paid him by the Emperor and asked, "What do you require of us?"

"Relax," assured the Emperor, "I'm not in a self-indulgent mood today. In fact, I've not been so crazy lately."

Upon this last remark, the doctor smiled knowingly at Athenodorus and winked. Athenodorus now knew that the doctor was privy to some secret that he would eventually understand.

"So listen," continued the Emperor. "So my soldiers aren't good enough for you? And now you want a dozen extra guards at my expense?"

Athenodorus did not reply, but merely nodded in the affirmative, since he had no way to know how to behave in such a circumstance, just as he had not known the first day that he met the Emperor.

"Okay, dammit!" said the Emperor. "Here's what I'm going to do: For a year I'll give you enough money for a dozen more guards, and I'll have my soldiers train them. That way you and your superstitious clientele can carry on in your womanly ways of living. I find myself wondering if this island isn't degrading and unfit for Roman soldiers. But, my dear, I'm quite pleased with how my pet project is coming along. The fortress is just divine. I've heard how easily we've repelled our pathetic enemies, and how easily they die once in our hands. That's excellent. And now that will be all for you. Perhaps you can go and comfort your fraudulent little buddy, as she is, no doubt, in her chambers sobbing her eyes out because she can't engage in her crazy lifestyle anymore."

This angered Athenodorus to the point the he felt a burst of courage well up in him, and he defiantly said, "Look who's talking. You're the one with the craziest lifestyle of all! You hypocrite!"

Again a soldier drew out his sword to kill Athenodorus only to be waved off by the Emperor who chortled, "Look how the hamster squeaks when you piss him off. Cute. Cute. I'd be insulted, but to say that you could insult me would be to flatter you far more than you deserve."

The Governor turned to the Emperor and quietly reminded him of some additional matter to which the Emperor replied, "Oh yes, right."

Then the Emperor concluded, "Before we adjourn, as the Governor has just reminded me, I had one other matter to go over with you. Now I realize I've seized a quarter of this worthless island for my pet project here. And the Governor has been pestering me that, as a matter of principle, I really ought to give you better treatment, since you've lost a quarter of your holdings. So in addition to the extra security guards, I'm going to authorize the treasury to give you a good sack of gold. Apparently the military is very impressed with how hospitable you've been, and that counts for something. I guess they like you and want to see you handsomely rewarded. Fine. Fine. So there. You can retire in comfort; but knowing you, you'll be working this pitiful resort job till you keel over. How very sad it must be to have the mentality of an eternal businessman. The lack of dignity involved in working long past the point at which additional money is necessary never did strike me as anything but a kind of insanity."

"Well," added Athenodorus a little less assertively than before, "I guess we're all crazy in our own way."

The doctor again nodded and added, "Not as crazy as we used to be, not like that.;" and then he winked again and grinned, but said no more.

All the men in the room again smiled knowingly and then followed the Emperor out the door with his entourage. After they left, Athenodorus sneaked out the back door to go comfort Helen who was, indeed, as the Emperor predicted, face down on her bed, sobbing her eyes out. St. John was in the other room, seemingly indifferent to Helen's suffering. His aspect was distant, rather cold, and he had a look of impatience about him. Athenodours noticed this and was disconcerted, but he decided to go in and see if Helen could use some consoling.

After he left Helen's room, Athenodorus took another look at St. John and said, "You're not the same. Look at you, sitting there in that chair just passing the day away. You used to write poetry. You used to drive Helen crazy with love-making. Now what? You're less interesting than Marcus Alexander!"

"Athenodorus," said St. John, in his final utterance under that name, "I am Marcus Alexander. Maybe you should break the news to Helen. I'm sorry. I've been grumpy with everyone lately. That's because my mind is sorting itself out. I can remember it all now, all those years of being St. John. I can see who he was. St. John The Divine — he was just a part of me that took over so completely that I lost myself in him. St. John is still here, in a way, but he's only one voice in my mind, just like yours is, and Helen's is. St. John is just one aspect of myself and the world, nothing more. There is no separate person called Saint John The Divine any more. I'm sorry if that makes you feel like you've lost a friend. But, as I recall, we got along okay when I was just Marcus Alexander. I guess we just didn't see a lot of each other back then. But I think I learned a lot from St. John. I'm only sorry so many people had to die over the craziness. I feel real bad about that. Athenodorus, will you — will you please break the news to Helen?"

"Yes. I will, soon. Not today, okay? There's been too much going on today. I need a break. I'll come talk to her tomorrow. I'll bring her out for a walk around the island. I'll tell her then," said Athenodorus as he left the fortress.

On his way back to his villa, he noticed that all of the soldiers and hangers-on had already boarded the Emperor's ship and that the doctor was joking with the Emperor and his people quite casually. Something about this made him hate his old friend. Something seemed very wrong with everything, but he just could not put a finger on it.

Helen, meanwhile, was leaning against the wall of her room, scribbling madly on some paper. She had decided that she would take over where St. John had left off, since the man in the living room had not seemed quite like Saint John The Divine in a long while. She was driven to forge his name, to carry on the tradition of crazy scripture writing on her own. And perhaps it would come off, since she was now spiraling toward madness. And there was another thing she had begun to believe, something she'd not confided to anyone yet. She believed St. John's soul was transmigrating into her body and leaving the body of Marcus Alexander. Not only did she come to believe this, but the religious lunatics on the mainland would eventually believe it too. She composed her first verses using the "channeled" pen-name of Saint John The Divine:

The bowls of the bliss of the gods is poured upon the earth. Saint John The Divine has fled the body of Marcus Alexander.

And now, all ye saints of God, hear and understand that I, Helen, am possessed of his spirit and am his mouthpiece on earth.

All the world must read my words and hear my words. May you all be seared by the fire of love from Heaven.

Do not be deceived by celibates and renunciants and commoners. The only salvation for humans is that ultimate communion of celestial sex, bisexual sex, group sex, intoxicating sex. All hail polygamy and polyandry!

Yes, I have found Saint John's stash of divinely inebriating powders. And I have stolen his supply and tapped into the well of God's word. All you who live ordinary lives — know this:

The erotic fury of the Holy Ghost shall be upon each of you. Those of you still living in mediocrity will be met with the mighty force of sexual power such as you have never known.

Live now! Love now! Before it is too late, before the end time! Saint John The Divine, through his beloved Helen, is still with you!

17. The Wine Bill

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In Rome the goings on would have shocked the people on Athenodorus' island. Things were becoming more and more reasonably-managed in the Capital, and therefore throughout the Empire. What people throughout the Empire, and even those lofty souls who occupied the Senate, could never imagine was that power was rapidly being transferred away from the Emperor and to the Governor that the island-dwellers had come to know. The reasons for this could have been seen clearly when the Emperor visited the island to check on the progress of the fortress, had one been looking for the right clues. To be sure, Athenodorus and the others sensed a change of mood in the Emperor during his visit; and they might have felt he was not in the throes of any dangerous mania, and for that they would be grateful. What they didn't know was that his appearance contained a visible display of what were the seeds of deep, systemic changes going on within the Emperor himself, changes that were almost all for the better, changes brought about solely by the mysterious medicine left behind by the still-unidentified "white-Chinese" stranger.

Also, no one, but the doctor and the Governor, had known that both Saint John The Divine and the Emperor had gone on what would now be called "the medication" at the same time. This "medication" had what might now be called "antipsychotic" and "anti-bipolar" effects. Thus, at the same time Marcus Alexander started to assume full control over his body and mind and persona, the Emperor began to see that the life he had lived, up to that point, was nothing short of headlong madness. It would be some time before the doctor would make it clear to everyone that the "cure" of Marcus Alexander and the "improvement" in the Emperor's "condition" were not coincidental. The doctor not only had personal reasons, but real political reasons for not spelling everything out publicly. He was, after all, now a friend of the Emperor's, and his silence would buy the Emperor and the Governor time to make sure the Emperor's life was spared from what would otherwise certainly be a ghastly end orchestrated by a vengeful Senate.

Once the Emperor was sane enough to realize the full impact of the atrocities he had committed, he called the Governor in and announced that he no longer felt he had the credibility to lead the Roman people, let alone an Empire that spanned much of the known world. And too, he now realized that he did not want to die by attempting to forcefully occupy a throne he had no moral right to occupy. He also knew that he could not secure the Senate's forgiveness by abdicating his throne and announcing his full repentance. He had killed, tortured and otherwise humiliated too many people to expect a full pardon from them. There were some crimes that were just too horrible to forgive, and that was that.

And so the Emperor and the Governor began to summon every General and high-ranking officer who could be swayed, bribed, cajoled or pleaded with. Each military officer was told in the most secretive, but simple way that the Emperor had been cured of his insanity and that he now realized he had been a monster, and that he was now seeking their protection as he arranged to flee his throne. The vast majority of them were relieved to hear all of this, and most of them already knew the Governor and understood him to be a man of eminently-trustworthy character, a person they believed to be dedicated to something akin to selfless public service, one not given to egomania in the slightest, (though that would later change). Now in possession of this information, and also buttered up with huge bribes offered by the Governor-turned-incoming-Emperor, most of the military men went away happy to support the new regime and keep the new plans as secret as possible, knowing in advance that the changes would all be to their liking and meet with the approval of most of the aristocracy.

There was little doubt that, once a few months of the Governor's new rulership of the Empire had been experienced by most of the citizenry, most everyone would sympathize with the incoming Emperor and easily pressure the Senate to agree to the transition of power in due time. And all of this would be premised on the condition that the military would forgive the former Emperor and allow him safe passage from power into private life. With a peaceful transition secured, and with conditions in the country improving rapidly, the Senate would be made to look petty and destructive should it insist on the right to full legal sanctions against a former Emperor who had willingly stepped aside, confessed to his crimes and sued for pardon. Why, the military men would reason, risk plunging the country into civil war over a man who was no longer insane, no longer a threat, and who wished nothing more than to hide from the public. The Senate would not have a case that could reach the Roman public mind. And thus, by the time the transition was arranged, it would already be too late for the Senate to attempt to take real control of the country and/or put the former Emperor on trial. In short, everything was being accomplished to engineer a complete end-run around them.

The Emperor's plans for his future life had now become quite detailed. He knew what he wanted to be, where he wanted to go and how he should like to pass his days. No doubt he would put his future hosts in some discomfort at first, but, in time, they would understand a transformation had taken place and they would come to regard him as the ordinary man he had, in fact, become.

The Governor had summoned the tour guide, who was a very able assistant in many other administrative matters, and who had seen enough of the recent goings on to be able to be of service in several useful ways.

Popping sprightly into the Governor's office, which was now just next to the outgoing Emperor's office, the tour guide said something along the lines of, "So, what'll it be today big boss man?"

The Governor, at first ignoring this unnecessary display of over-familiarity and casualness, said in a thoughtful tone, "Do you remember that little, white, Chinese guy that came here a while back?"

"Do I?" replied the tour guide. "Hell yes! I'm amazed you didn't have that presumptuous brat skinned alive."

"That's funny," noted the Governor, "because we were just thinking that about you."

The tour guide bit his lip, not really knowing the Governor was just joking.

"Now," continued the Governor, "I want you to consult our best tailor, and I want you to describe as best you can the kind of Oriental garb that fellow was wearing. Then I want you to give him these measurements."

The tour guide looked at the slip of paper with the measurements on it and said, "But that matches the physique of the Emperor exactly. Are you telling me the Emperor is to walk about his domain like some feminine monk from China?"

Rising from his chair and puffing out his chest, the Governor grabbed the shirt of the tour guide and pulled him violently to his own face and quietly and firmly whispered, "If I hear that you've told a single soul about this, I'll have a dozen of my men stab you to death, starting from the hands and feet and moving inward until you're choking to death on your own blood."

He then set the tour guide down, inhaled a deep breath to relax himself, then regally sat at his desk chair and smiled cordially.

"Yes, sir. At once, sir," quipped the tour guide as he rapidly exited the Governor's temporary office with the measurements in hand.

But before he could quite complete his exit, the incoming Emperor said to him, "You can keep your job, but the attitude has to go. We're going to start demanding that civil servants be all-in-earnest about their jobs. Flippancy will not be a part of this government's future. Had you been working for any other Emperor, you'd have been dead long ago. Do I make myself clear?"

The tour guide turned and solemnly nodded in the affirmative and hurried off to do his task, all the while thinking that he might go ahead and put in for an early pension. He was already old enough to be considered for it, and perhaps, if his one-man attitude-party was really coming to an end, he should go while the going was easy. He'd had a chemistry with his mass-murdering former boss that he knew he could never have with the Governor. The Governor, for God's sake, wasn't even bisexual, and, if he were really going to take over day-to-day responsibilities around the palace, the orgy room would probably be closed down within weeks. The gravy train was over. Perhaps it would be best to run these last few errands and bow out, while bowing out gracefully was still possible.

On the day the Senate was surrounded completely by thousands of troops and dozens of generals loyal to the Governor-turned-Emperor, a shaved-headed little man in baggy, yellowish monk's garb was seen slipping quickly out of a side door in one of the walls toward the back of the palace. A few teenage students saw him open the never-opened portal then slam it forcefully shut again. He pulled out a huge iron key from the folds of his robe-like jump-suit and re-locked the neglected exit. And, after doing so, he unceremoniously tossed the key back over the wall and scurried away with a half-smile on his face, looking both anxious and childishly devious. It never occurred to the students, till many days later, what the significance of that scene might be. By then, of course, the whole Empire's political atmosphere had already been transformed, and that monkish-creature, who certainly must have been the former Emperor, had already vanished from Rome, not to be heard from for a little while.

Athenodorus, as the fates would have it, had just lost one of his favorite tenants, a young, but rapidly-aging woman who had forever struggled to find some divine connection, but just never quite got there. She was a good-hearted woman who was always doing nice things for her fellow seekers and never had anything but a smile and a nice word whenever she saw Athenodorus. She was not the most interesting soul, and she wound up spending most of her time tending a few small gardens on the island, her spiritual quest seeming to loose steam as time went on. Finally she could not pretend to herself any longer that her spiritual aspirations were coming true. The island would have been a perfect place for her to find "the ultimate reality," but alas, she was just not cut out for the austere life of the spiritual seeker. In the end, she sadly informed Athenodorus that she would return to the mainland and seek a husband, if it were not already too late to find one, and perhaps, if the gods were kind, maybe she could bear a child if her body still had the capacity to do so. Her odds of finding a husband and starting a family this late in the game were remote, but perhaps it would be better to fail at something she felt she could possibly do than to continue on in a pursuit that just wasn't yielding any fruit.

* * *

The resort owner, even after multiple attacks on his island, and even after having his guard staff beefed up, still had the bad habit of leaving the doors to his villa wide open. It was almost as if he'd rather risk death than be a paranoid door-locker. He was a gregarious person and having an open house said something about his person and his view of life. While his sentiments were certainly praiseworthy, his habit of leaving his doors open made for some awkward moments from time to time.

Currently, he was continuing to complain to the doctor about the fact that a personable tenant was hard to find and that he would have to resort to going to the mainland and posting signs in an attempt to secure lodgers for his monk cells. And as Christianity, however persecuted it may have been, was spreading, it was getting harder and harder to find certain types of mystics who felt the seclusion of the island was conducive to a highly-individualistic spiritual path. In short, he worried his traditional client base was shrinking; and this was all the more ironic, since he himself had no spiritual pretensions of any kind. (It would later turn out that many Christians would indeed inhabit the island and turn out to be good renters, but he would always want Pagan seekers to be the core of his business.)

As he complained about the loss of this tenant, he had no way of knowing an uninvited guest had sneaked his way into the house and had found himself slinking along the kitchen wall which separated the cooking area from the living room. The guest moved in perfect silence in his soft sandals as he drew closer and closer to the living room portal. Before he entered the living room, he listened carefully for a while and heard all about the travails the resort owner fretted about when it came to recruiting new tenants in this rapidly-Christianizing world. He found that the narrative of Athenodorus was a perfect segue, a series of perfect set-up lines that would make his practical joke all the more fitting.

At the first natural break in the discussion over the vacancy, the former Emperor, nearly unrecognizable with his shaven head and his monk's gear, stepped out into the living room and said to Athenodorus and the doctor, "Would you fellows happen to know where a genuine contemplative might go to rent a room on this island?"

Helen, upon hearing of the former Emperor's arrival on the island and his decision to rent a room in the monk's dorms was stirred to write the following passage of scripture in St. John's name:

I am the Great Prostitute of which the prophets spoke, and through me the world can find final sexual and spiritual peace! May all kings, peasants, soldiers and prisoners, find solace in my all-embracing arms.

How great is the act of sex! How wondrous the intoxications of the gods. May love fill this Universe. Monsters, beasts, mutants, and all you who live in filth and poverty and despair, come and suck on my burning breasts.

Find for yourselves the very essence of the life force, and come to me for nourishment and erotic relaxation. Do not on any account follow the doctrines preached at any of the houses of worship, including houses of worship dedicated to me. All doctrines are snares of words, and chains of scripture, and dungeons of theology. They are all of The Great Beast of The Hell of Man's Ego.

Please do not spurn the pleasures of God's creation. Come all you who suffer and lick every inch of my blessed body which is always bathed in sensual spices from every corner of The Creator's world. Today I call home all the prudes and invite them into the full glories of every part of The Kingdom of God.

The audience at Athenodorus' villa applauded loudly when Helen finished reciting her poem. In truth, she had taken St. John's place in his life. And he had the adroitness to see that his primary source of entertainment had merely moved from one body to another and that, indeed, he still had full access to the joy of St. John's spoken-word rantings.

Although he would not admit it to himself or to the doctor, he was glad when Helen would not ingest the anti-mental-illness medicines, even when they attempted, under the Emperor's orders, to force the medicines down her throat. In the end she would always vomit up the medicines and go on in her madness, carrying the torch of Saint John The Divine.

When the Emperor found out that Saint John had moved into Helen's body, he ordered that she never be allowed to go anywhere without a full armed escort to protect her from her friends and her foes, all of whom were far too passionate about her. This entourage that always followed her and surrounded her ensured that any room she entered was always full to capacity with people. And the soldiers, over time, grew crazy about her poetry and her raging enthusiasms. Any of them would have gladly died defending her if an attack came. Although the Emperor felt Helen deserved to be tossed in prison, he did not want the fortress the Empire had just built to be under-utilized, and so he permitted the Helen to be the subject of the Empire's ongoing guard-the-prophet game on Athenodorus' island.

Athenodorus was now wealthier than ever, and so he did not mind the burden of feeding all of the soldiers who came with Helen every time she was summoned to read her latest outburst. Helen also drank quite a bit, along with her soldiers who were borderline alcoholics; and so Athenodorus was forced to contract out with a few high-quality wineries on the mainland to send in more boats with the latest in "good grapes." However important or unimportant a guest was, Athenodorus could not bear to serve cheap wine after his wealth became far beyond substantial. And too, he probably drank far more than the average citizen; plus Marcus Alexander and the former Emperor were not shy when it came to inviting themselves over for a drink. The wine bill on the island would have broken the financial back of most successful businessmen, but Athenodorus was reaping all kinds of indirect economic rewards that come from housing a military complex on one's land. Contractors from the mainland were now stationed permanently on the island in order to run twenty-four hour supply houses for the fortress, the renters and the villa guests.

As the percentage of Pagan renters on the island gradually diminished, eventually more Christians were allowed on the island in order to be in Helen's presence. They called her, "The Living Embodiment of Saint John The Divine." Their tenancy there was contingent on their agreement not to evangelize nor to start theological arguments with the polytheists and other seekers who, though decreasing in numbers on the mainland, were still a majority on the island. The Christians' presence there, and their rental fees, increased Athenodorus' wealth considerably, but also they reminded him of his old friend and enemy Paganon. Every so often he wept a tear for him and raised a wine glass and toasted his memory.

The others, used to seeing Athenodorus in a light-hearted mood, were always moved to silence when his voice would break and he would say, "Paganon, though he thought I was going to Hell, still offered up his life to fight for this island. He would have died to protect any of us. Remember that. God rest his soul, if there even are gods or souls."

The Christians, there in strong numbers whenever Helen was to speak, continually felt she was their prophet. They somehow never grasped the fact that she was arguing against their religion at every turn. Their feelings were never hurt when she insulted their austere morality. Athenodorus found it all completely confusing, but he was too wise to force his sense of consistency on anyone at this stage of the game. For him life was nothing but contradictions anyway. Besides, he'd come to love the former Emperor too. And he and the doctor were great friends again. St. John lived on in Helen, and thus all was right with the world.

The new Emperor came by from time to time, (although everyone still called him the Governor). Strangely, he seemed to prefer that title much more, for a while anyways, and was not insulted that none of his subjects could get it into their heads that he was far beyond being a mere provincial Governor. (No one predicted that he would not be a humble ruler for much longer.) Oddly, he and the former Emperor had little to say to each other, at first. For a time, the former Emperor was utterly disinterested in affairs of state and completely content living within the rhythms of island life, (though that too would change). He even managed to get along with the Christians who, in this neutral environment, never seemed to despise him for formerly murdering them in huge numbers. They even kept his presence there a secret in order to protect him from formerly-persecuted families who might be seeking vengeance. The place was a kind of Switzerland of the Mediterranean. People carried on disputes and wars elsewhere, and, regardless of their persuasion, used Athenodorus' realm as a place of sectarian truce and ideological cease-fire. As Helen said:

Whether clothed or unclothed, whether celibate or polyamorous, we are all here naked, naked in spirit, naked at heart, fully naked.

Our home here is holy ground. Only remember to worship the divine impulse to intoxicating love, and you will then be worshipping the gods who sent me to you all.

Such proclamations filled the soldiers and heathen with glee. The Christians winced at bit, but somehow, in their minds, managed to turn the words into "hidden meanings," and those "hidden meanings" were generally the opposite of what Helen intended to say. And it irked secular people and pagans that pious Christians would be seen rewriting Helen's words, "translating" those words into the "true scripture God intended." But, Athenodorus would not allow running arguments about this, and ordered everyone to practice their faith without cajoling the others to join them. And thus, the protocols of pluralism were strictly enforced in what had essentially become a kind of island state unto itself, a sort of protectorate of Rome, one which never declared independence, but quietly, and non-rebelliously operated under its own law, unless the new Emperor ordered otherwise, which he rarely did.

18. Are You Afraid of God?

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Marcus was winding up his day with a nice, long bath in the fortress. Helen now kept separate rooms from his on the opposite side of the structure. In spite of that, this evening was a special evening. It seems that Helen had gotten a revelation from the Almighty that Marcus Alexander was to be included among the people who could receive special favors from her, even though that thought had so consistently nauseated her previously.

Now that she was herself a prophet, she no longer found it necessary to have a prophet as a mate. In fact, she now began to think of the very uninspired Marcus Alexander as rather cute, and her new sexual feelings toward him took on a kind of freudian maternalism. She thought of him sucking on her breasts and felt as though she would be nourishing an orphaned soul.

It goes without saying that her feelings toward her erstwhile platonic friend were not of the submissive type, nor were they stereotypically feminine. Rather, she felt a dominant strain running through her affections. A bit of the old, perverse Helen still remained; and the idea of surprising Marcus with this sudden turn, even scaring him a little, stimulated her. She no longer ran the risk of being charged with abuse, since Marcus had not formally divorced her and she was she legally still his wife. In any case, Marcus had been declared fully sane and impervious to relapse into mental illness, so there seemed to be no additional legal peril. She felt at full liberty to blow his mind, just because she felt like it.

She liked the fact that these feelings came over her by surprise, and rather suddenly, because that meant that Marcus would have no way of seeing anything coming. She could have shown no subtle signs of a change in her feelings precisely because she did not know till just this day that her feelings would change. This would have all the thrill of the classic erotic ambush.

After getting her servants to scrub her down and rub olive oil all over her, she applied various exotic perfumes in all the right places. She remained naked, except for a see-through gown. She strode through the fortress hallways completely nude except for one see-through, paper-thin layer. Her nipples were already erect and see could feel herself moistening as she strode proudly forward. None of the fortress administrative workers paid any attention to this as they had already decided she was now a hopeless eccentric who was liable to do anything at any time. Hence, her brazen display of what was a most remarkable body was simply overlooked by the regular staffers who passed her in the hallway. Any of them who did see her had frankly hoped not to be engaged in conversation with her for fear of some crazy drama coming down upon them.

As Marcus rose from his very soothing bath, a scantily-clad servant girl of eighteen or nineteen rushed up to dry him off. He was rather embarrassed by this excessive service that apparently came standard for those under imperial protection. She was a perfect physical specimen, and her drying off of his naked body always left him with a partial erection that was always obvious to her. She always smiled and would initially pretend not to look down at his genitals. But she would add, as she finished drying him off, "That feels good, doesn't it?"

Usually, just as he was putting on his robe, his erection would become full. And, being rather fresh and impolite, the servant girl would linger just a moment longer in the bath chamber to see the bulge in his robe.

Then, just as sweat would begin to break out on Marcus' forehead, she'd say, with one hand on her hip and another pressed against the wall, "Will there be anything else, St. John?"

As always, Marcus would look down, wipe his forehead and say, "Um, no, not at all. Everything's fine. You may go now."

After this she would then look down at his bulging robe and just smile, then turn and leave with a chuckle.

She also thought Marcus was cute and would not have minded being one of his concubines. And, furthermore, although she knew he was just an ordinary man now that he had become sane, she was sexually excited about the power he used to wield over others' imaginations.

She admitted honestly to herself that she would have loved to say to her girlfriends, "I made love to Saint John The Divine."

Marcus knew he could take advantage of her, but felt that his position in relation to hers, and the difference in their ages, made it wrong somehow, even though she seemed perfectly willing. Perhaps he feared she might come to love him, and while he could be sexually attracted to someone much younger than himself, he knew he could not commit to such a relationship in the long term. And all this would lead to a broken heart, and probably then to the loss of her employment. He was a man who not only had reservations about certain actions, but let those reservations stop him from doing things most men might jump at the chance to do.

Today's bath ended like all the rest, and, as always, it ended with her sexual teasing. But just as she was exiting the foyer of Marcus Alexander's place, she found herself face to face with the nearly-naked Helen.

At first she looked up in shock and surprise, not only because she had not expected any unannounced visitors, but also because she had not worked at the fortress for that long and did not realize the full extent of Helen's capacity for outrageous behavior. After she caught her breath, she excused herself for not watching where she was going and attempted to walk to the left of Helen, but Helen blocked her exit. The servant thought this might just be a coincidence that they had both moved the same way, so she then began to walk to the right of Helen. But again Helen blocked her advance.

The servant became scared and looked up at Helen with big, frightened eyes and said, "What do you want from me?"

Helen took a step forward and put her silky hand on the servant's bare shoulder. The servant, whose name was Ocellina, pulled away and stepped back. Helen stepped forward again and would not be deterred, especially since she'd overheard some guards joking about Ocellina's sexual prowess.

Ocellina was now backed up against the wall as Helen moved in.

"I . . . I didn't do anything . . . didn't do anything with your husband!" exclaimed Ocellina, who was misinterpreting Helen's sexual advance as some kind of jealous rage.

"But," said Helen, as she cornered the servant, "you are sexually attracted to him, right?"

The servant desperately shook her head in denial and began to tremble with fear.

"And," said Helen, as she pushed Ocellina lightly to the wall, "you would have had an affair with him if he weren't such a gentle spirit. I know him. His scruples would forbid him from taking unfair advantage of anyone he perceived to be under his employ. Otherwise, my young, flirty tart, you would have been sleeping with him. Isn't that true?"

"Please . . . please," entreated Ocellina, "forgive my misbehavior. Nothing happened, nothing at all."

"Only because of Marcus' discipline, and not because of any virtue on your part," replied Helen.

Helen put her index finger on the chin of the servant now staring down at the floor and flushed red with shame, and lifted her face up gently with it.

Now Ocellina, who could see Helen was smiling, (which relieved her greatly), said, "Then may I be excused, mam?"

Helen then took Ocellinas face in her hands and planted a wet kiss on the young woman's lips.

"You could be excused," replied Helen who was now gently stroking the young woman's bare arms, "but why would you want to be? You know, the guards around here are big gossips, and . . . they say . . . they say you like girls too? Is that true, Ocellina?"

Ocellina again shook her head in denial and desperately replied, "Such things . . . such things are improper . . . that is . . . it would be improper to discuss . . ."

". . . improper to discuss the truth, Ocellina?" said Helen, before the young woman could finish her sentence.

"Yes mam, my lady . . . I mean . . . such truths . . . yes . . . are not . . ." Ocellina stammered awkwardly.

"Ocellina," inquired Helen as she now pressed her breasts against the servant, "do you find me . . . unattractive?"

The servant, while totally confused, was becoming aroused by the physical attention, and, almost weeping, replied, "Oh, Helen, of course I have always desired you, desired you from the instant I saw you. But . . . I am only . . . only a servant girl, you see; and you — you are a prophet of God, and I fear . . ."

"Are you afraid of God, Ocellina, afraid of communion with the divine, afraid of losing yourself in the ocean of eternal love?" continued Helen.

Finally the servant lost her nerve entirely and fell into Helen's arms and sobbed wet, hot tears on Helen's breasts. Helen looked up toward Heaven as she held the girl tightly to her chest with one hand and stroked her short, dark hair with the other, and proclaimed, "Come to me. Come to me, all of you — all of you who have sought in vain for God's glory, but have been unable to find it. Within my bosom you will find ample grace to save you."

And so it was that the promiscuous Ocellina was spiritually and sexually saved over the course of a long hour in Marcus' antechamber. Their orgasmic screams of pleasure could be heard in the hallways, and others shivered in fear at the awesome erotic power of Helen, and too, they both envied and pitied the servant girl, since they could not know if her experience was blissful or terrible.

Marcus Alexander, who had taken a nap and had fallen into a deep slumber, heard none of the goings on. And in his dreams, he dreamed of mundane things. In one dream he imagined himself running about the hills of the mainland, still a child, romping about with his friends, throwing stones and splashing about in streams. And in still other dreams he imagined himself as some businessman in a mid-sized town. He could picture himself stopping off at a tavern after work, joking loudly and getting buzzed along with the other workers. And indeed, it was ironic how such a normal man had not been able to connect with the world in a normal way for much of his life.

How unfair it was of life to make him a prophet and a madman, and then for him to become normal again, only to be permanently imprisoned in a palace-fortress with a mad-woman wife who thought herself to be some female messiah. How fun it might be, he often thought, just to live in a country town and raise horses or plough a field, or maybe to be a craftsman of some sort.

Little did he know that if he'd not been such a deep sleeper, he would have been able to join in on the crazed love making that had ensued just outside his bedroom door, but then again, perhaps he was lucky to have avoided such an intense scene. He had recovered his mental health, and probably could not easily be driven back to psychosis, but there was little doubt he would have been in for a roller coaster ride that would be a bit more than he could live with comfortably. And that was, perhaps, more than anything, what he most wanted, to live comfortably.

After hours of exhausting love-making, the pair of women wandered off to Helen's rooms to fall asleep in each others' arms.

News of the sapphic love affair had reached the new Emperor's ears, and he was not pleased. He thought, among other things, to have the young lady-servant beheaded for insubordination. And he had certainly resolved, at the very least, to have her dismissed from her employment and thrown into a cold prison cell for a while and made to live on a very sparse diet. In fact, she was dismissed from her job, but Helen said she regarded the young woman as her wife and would kill herself, or other people, if anyone tried to remove the former servant from the premises. The Emperor, not wanting any more craziness at that level, decided it best to just let the girl be a kept-woman of Helen's.

The pair spent a lot of time alone wandering the island together, talking gently and softly. Outside, one would hardly guess at the torrid nature of their love behind closed doors, the only clue being perhaps that both women looked a bit worn and rumpled, but not much worse for the wear otherwise.

Regarding her new-found lesbian love, Helen wrote a scripture poem which the Christians interpreted as a love poem to God, which, in one sense, it was. But all of the non-Christians on the island had an entirely different interpretation of the poem:

And all the hosts of whores in heaven were made glad and sang around a glowing orb of million-colored lights.

On the way to my man's house, what did God bring me? It was a maiden from Heaven, a nymph from God's loins. Oh, how we licked and sucked and kissed and caressed. As we made love, the whole Kingdom of Heaven was filled with brides and brides, women bound together in eternity, their love violently crashing against the shores of the boundless ocean or orgasm.

Oh, sons of men, do not condemn polygamists, fornicators, homosexual, bisexuals, sluts, nor perverts of any kind. Their holiness is counted as equal to that of the celibate monks of India. May you all partake of the divine mystery of human lust. No one truly knows from whence it springs and no one could guess its destination. All things are beyond logical contemplation and erudite speaking. I declare you all, in all states of imperfection and disarray, as living churches unto yourselves.

As for me and my love, we shall devour each other day and night until the end of time; and each time we do, we will be born again, with new bodies and new spirits. Know yet that every human body shall be resurrected, and resurrected again and again; and every heart shall be made whole again. All of the goddesses, known and unknown, will protect us day and night and nurture us with their immaculate bodies beyond the seeing of ordinary mortals.

And in that Kingdom that is to come, we shall all imbibe in celestial sex and procreate spirit children who shall journey from heaven to heaven, and from planet to planet, populating the cosmos with love and life and strong doses of divine elixir; and all souls will remain yet slightly imperfect, for only in imperfection do we need each other and wine to take the edge off of all temporary sufferings. God himself, (who does not call himself God, and who is not male nor female), is beyond gender, and is itself always growing and learning, hence progressive revelation continues forever into the infinite unknowing. All things, in their truest nature, are unknowable and beyond having any source.

19. One Man's Poison

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Marcus Alexander began having a nasty series of seizures. The seizures did not resemble the kind of "prophetic episodes" he'd had when living his life as Saint John The Divine. For one thing, he was not delusional during the episodes, but just violently ill, as though he'd had tremors due to a life-threatening disease. He became feverish and his clothes and sheets were soaked through. Nothing the doctor did could cure him. Within a couple of days it was apparent that he was terminally ill, though no one could figure out why.

Marcus' family was summoned from the mainland in order to say goodbye to him. Helen was at his side, and, oddly, during this time, she was extremely normal and not given to delusions, but rather seemed like an ordinary, dutiful wife. Athenodorus was beside himself with grief and could only bring himself to appear at the deathbed a couple of times. Panthoeonus was continually in attendance, but was bewildered by his inability to diagnose the condition or save the patient.

For his part, Marcus was perfectly brave. He'd gotten used to having no control over his life during all the time he spent doubling as Saint John The Divine. With regards to his own impending death, he was surprisingly poised. He reasoned that the time he'd spent getting to live an ordinary life had been so limited that it was probably too-good-to-be-true that a simple potion could reverse his fate for decades. It had always been his assumption, though he had not voiced it, that some terrible fate awaited him. Having been fully briefed about the forces that had previously prevailed in him, he figured those forces, whatever they were, would not simply go away peacefully just because some "miracle cure" had come along. In truth, as he died, he felt gratitude that he'd gotten to spend some unbroken streak of time as Marcus Alexander. He was not the poetic sort, but he said, in a manner of surrender not unlike that expressed by some of the Christians, "Some of us were only meant to stick around for a while. A brief time of happiness will have to do for me. We can't all be lucky enough to live a normal life for a long time. That's just the way it is, I suppose."

His serenity about the whole affair of his passing unnerved the doctor and Athenodorus. As for the doctor, he had been at the death beds of plenty of lofty mystics and mighty warriors, many of whom, so it turned out, were panic-stricken when the "time of truth" came. He knew death well, and knew that virtually anything the priests or philosophers said about it was mostly rubbish. Death was a nasty business that broke the hearts and minds and souls of most of the people it came to claim. It was an astonishingly-rare thing to see anyone leave the world with any dignity. Most had to be heavily-sedated with strong wine, if they could even drink it. And still others had to be tied to their beds to prevent them from smashing their own rooms to bits. And lastly, there were those whose families or doctors simply suffocated or strangled them to end the ordeal, if things were going very badly. (And this kind of homicide was quite often forgiven by the local authorities who, having to be the ones to tend to the dying when their families abandoned them, had no illusions about the true unfolding of such matters.)

In some sense, reasoned the doctor, Marcus was fortunate, for although he was dying young, he was dying extremely well. The waves of seizures themselves were not easy to watch. But in between them, Marcus' remarkable attitude of acceptance was uncanny. Later, sometime after Marcus' death, the doctor further thought that perhaps Marcus' body was more tired than it appeared to be. Perhaps the constant changing from one personality to the other had taken more of a toll than anyone knew. The cure, although seemingly quite efficacious, perhaps came too late. It may be that the body rebels against normality when it appears as an afterthought to years and years of surreal living.

In any case, Marcus passed away peacefully in his bed holding Helen's hand. He was initially buried in a plain box in a rather shallow grave near the water's edge in the shade of a very healthy tree, bursting with bright green leaves.

The doctor said grimly to everyone he reported the case to, "Trust me, very few us will die so well. And I don't count myself among those who will probably be fortunate in such things. I know myself well enough to know the cowardice that runs through my veins. Maybe that was one of the benefits of Marcus being cured before his early death, that he ended up dying with such nobility. I'd bet anything that Saint John The Divine would not have taken death so well, for all the bravado in his speaking and writing."

* * *

The former Governor, now the Emperor, would not accept the simple explanation provided by Pantheonus regarding Marcus Alexander's death. And, furthermore, it was not the Emperor's plan to simply let the former Saint John The Divine rest peacefully beneath a tree on a resort island. He had other plans.

Within the week a staff of Imperial doctors had been sent along with a contingent of soldiers and priests in three ships. Marcus Alexander's body was to be exhumed and brought back to Rome for analysis. Additionally, he was to be given a State burial as Saint John The Divine. The old Governor now had plans to integrate Christianity into the State religion, slowly, almost imperceptibly. The first step was to play off the desperation believers would feel to make a pilgrimage to Saint John The Divine's tomb. In exchange for access to the "sacred chamber" where Saint John The Divine was to lie encased in an enormous stone tomb, the Emperor would demand certain concessions and certain pledges of loyalty to the Empire. He had already managed to secure many alliances by manipulating believers who were sympathetic to the old doctrines of Christos Christos. They would be permitted to view his pickled head, formerly kept in the former Emperor's office, in exchange for certain doctrinal compromises. The melding of Pagan and Christian religions was to go on slowly, methodically, and as cleverly as possible.

Once they had the corpse in Rome, the State doctors cut open the body of Marcus Alexander in several places. And also, they drilled through the skull and examined tissues in there as well. They noticed that the brain tissues were swollen and discolored in a way that was not typical of people who had died of natural causes or ordinary diseases. The conclusion they arrived at stunned Pantheonus.

One day a simple note was delivered to Pantheonus by a courier who had ridden all the way from Rome on horseback before boarding the boat to the resort island. The note, which was on official Roman stationery said simply, "We have concluded that Marcus Alexander, known to the people as Saint John The Divine, died of poisoning. Our investigation shows no evidence of assassination, and we can only conclude that the so-called "medicine" delivered by the unknown man, apparently from Asia, and subsequently manufactured by Patheonus and his staff, was the cause of death. We strongly advise that the former Emperor discontinue use of this potion lest he suffer the same fate."

The doctor rushed out to find the former Emperor, who was peacefully taking a walk along the shore, and exclaimed "Are you feeling okay, my friend!"

The former Emperor looked back confusedly and replied, "Why shouldn't I be feeling fine? In fact, I've never felt better in my life. Why are you looking at me with such concern?"

"Rome has just written us! They say that the medicine we've been giving you and Marcus Alexander was the cause of Marcus' death!" said Pantheonus.

"So these drugs have the potential to be lethal?" inquired the former Emperor incredulously. "Oh my, this does present us with a dilemma."

"No!," asserted the doctor. "There's no dilemma at all. You simply must stop taking the medicine now before it's too late, if it's not too late already!"

The former Emperor stopped walking and gazed up at some passing clouds that let through mottled sunlight, as though he felt no alarm whatsoever, and said thoughtfully, as he shook his head, "No, no. Absolutely not. I won't discontinue the medicine. That's out of the question."

"But I don't understand," protested the doctor. "Why would you knowingly take poison? We've already lost a good friend. We don't want to lose you too."

The former Emperor put his hand on the doctor's shoulder in an effort to calm him down, and explained: "In my time as Emperor, I saw many soldiers die from consuming too much wine. And yet, some of the men who'd drank just as greedily never suffered any consequences. It's clear that one man's poison is another man's medicine.

"Let's use our heads here. We cannot go concluding that just because Marcus Alexander died from the anti-insanity medicine, that I would die from it too. And even if that were true, do you realize the danger my discontinuing the medicine would pose to the population? The madman that lurks inside me would believe he should be Emperor once more. I'm sure thousands of soldiers were unhappy when I stepped down from my office. Those same soldiers would surely support me if I changed my mind and wanted my old palace in Rome back. We'd have a civil war on our hands. Tens of thousands of people would die. And that would only be the beginning. Then, once back on the throne, what might I do? Probably I'd begin wantonly killing and torturing anyone I chose, and I'd do it just for sport, like I did before. No, no. Even if the medicine should kill me in exactly the way it killed Marcus Alexander, at least it would only be me that died, and not countless other innocent men, women and children. For me to go off the medicine would truly be madness. No, my friend, I'll insist on staying my course with this potion. I'll take life or death, whichever I'm granted, but I will not expose the Empire to the risk of the return of my old self, the self-indulgent tyrant. No such thing can be risked. Surely, you, of all people, having known me during those days, would know the danger involved."

The doctor, seized with guilt over administering a fatal drug to Marcus Alexander, had first thought only of his seeming incompetence in the death of the former Saint John The Divine. And in his rush to prevent the former Emperor from dying too, he had overlooked the simple logic the former Emperor had presented so convincingly. In the end, he had to admit that eliminating the risk of one man dying could not justify risking an Empire-wide civil war which would result in countless deaths, especially when it was not even certain that the medicine would kill the former Emperor in the way it had Marcus Alexander.

As it all turned out, the former Emperor had made the right call on both fronts. Firstly, he never suffered any noticeable side-effects from continued use of the medicine. And secondly, the Empire was indeed much safer with their being almost no risk of the former Emperor reacquiring his old personality. In thinking clearly in that one moment, the former Emperor had probably saved more lives than he had taken away when he was a brutal dictator. He remained on the medicine the rest of his natural life. He died of natural causes at a very old age, having simply failed to wake up from a nap he had taken one day. The remainder of his life was entirely devoid of drama.

* * *

After Marcus Alexander's interment in Rome, and as the stream of pilgrims came there to see both the tomb of Saint John The Divine and the pickled head of Christos Christos, Helen returned to her old state of madness. She had refused the anti-insanity medicine that Marcus Alexander had been taking, and it had occurred to the doctor, before Marcus Alexander's death, to try again to force the medicine on her against her will. But now that the risks of the medicine were known, the doctor could not ethically force that medicine on anyone. And although the secret formula for the medicine had leaked out and was being duplicated throughout the Empire, no doctor ever administered it without sternly warning his patients that taking the drug was akin to gambling. One might reap the jackpot of mental health or incur the wild-card of premature death. Each patient, and each patient's family would have to decide for themselves how to weigh the risks. Was it best to leave someone to their insanity? Did the insanity take a form that was harmless? Would the supposed cure be far more lethal than the mental disease? There would never be a firm consensus; and everyone concerned was left to simply guess for themselves what the best course of action would be. Sometimes they guessed right, and were given the gift of a normal life, and other times they guessed wrong and lost their lives entirely. It would be a mystery that would never end.

As Helen's madness, and her belief that she was the incarnated spirit of Saint John The Divine, resumed, so did the ardor of those who believed in her; and thus she continued to assert that the prose-poems she wrote were really being written by the spirit of Saint John The Divine. Hence, as the "Book of Revelations" continued to be "revealed," the old Governor firmly decided that the fortress formerly used to protect St. John against both his admirers and his enemies would continue to remain in place to protect Helen from those same dangerous believers and detractors. And so life on the island continued as before. And the island remained a renowned spiritual resort for the seekers of all faiths, and those of no particular faith; and it also remained a military compound with a luxurious palace housing a lunatic who issued "sacred text."

Marcus Alexander was not missed as much as folks thought he might be. After all, they had mostly known him as Saint John The Divine. Their time with Marcus was brief, and while they had become close friends with him, something like Saint John The Divine remained with them in the form of the now-insane Helen. (They also did not miss the "former Helen" as much as they thought they might, since she'd been the cause of many mixed feelings on account of her perceived treachery. They rather preferred her now, not only because she differed greatly from her former self, but also because having her around lessened their loneliness for the original Saint John The Divine.)

The soldiers at the fortress were all quite amused with Helen and her lesbian lover who, within the confines of the fortress had taken to walking around nude most of the time. And they had sex whenever and wherever they liked. If they felt romantic urges during dinner, they would begin having sex on the floor in front of all the guests. If anyone in attendance became unduly aroused by such activity, they were often invited to join in. Those of a more modest nature excused themselves while those of a more intrepid bent joined in. After news of these indiscretions reached the Emperor's ears, he would routinely reassign the "undisciplined" soldiers. But later he realized there was no use in doing this, since whoever took their place, if they had much of a libido at all, would, in the end, "fall prey to irresistible temptation." Finally the Emperor decided that as long as the fortress was kept secure and all intruders were kept at bay, he would not attempt to enforce sexual order in the palace of those "sexual sirens."

Helen, after St. John's death, wrote a passage of "holy scripture" to commemorate the passing of her "spiritual father:"

Glory, glory! All are to shout in praise of my romantic lover, Saint John The Divine who exalted me, the holiest of prostitutes, to a level beyond the angels in heaven before himself ascending to paradise after paradise. Hallowed is Saint John!

All you women of Athens and Rome, weep. For now there will be no more orgies, no more indulgences with that great man, as he has passed into the heavenly realms where the sacred fervor of love is unending and unmeasurable.

And now, I go to be with that master of bliss into his eternity. Forever shall I, the Most Blessed Whore, make love before God's throne.

Saved, saved, saved until the end of the age, and always thereafter, are those who follow the living God, and not the God of Books. Oh holy believers and holy disbelievers, seek for yourselves the highest and most transcendent truth beyond the scriptures.

Even this scripture is itself temporary, fleeting, merely a shadow of the divine experience behind it. I set you all free for forever from all dogmas, doctrines and authorities. There never were, nor ever will be, men who hold the keys to any everlasting covenant. Oh, sons and daughters of The Most High, know that our God does not enter into human contracts.

I leave you now with one last command: Never let a ravishingly-beautiful woman or man slip by you without passionately propositioning them. To do otherwise is a most vile sin. I love you all, in body, mind and spirit. Farewell!

20. Chanting The Funereal Hymns

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Helen's lesbian lover woke up alone and knew something was terribly wrong. Helen had been distant and distracted and had not been sexually-responsive for days, which was inconceivable for anyone so widely-accused of nymphomania. Something inside her had always told her that her love affair with Helen was too good to be true, too miraculous to last. The gods, she figured, jealous as they were said to be, could probably not endure watching such ecstasy endure indefinitely, especially in the life of one born to menial servitude. There was nothing Olympian in her upbringing, no part of Greco-Roman immortality in her life story, till Helen came along. It was fine enough by the Immortals that Helen and Saint John were allowed to carry on for a considerable time. After all, they were high priests, prophets, famous, and wealthy beyond imagining, (at least in terms of lifestyle and social connections, and, of course, in terms of Saint John's bank account on the mainland).

The warm Mediterranean sun shone brightly through the open patio door. A light wind off the sea flicked at the edges of her hair. She sobbed for a while, with her head in her hands; but she did not carry on this way for long, as she had determined, since their first night together, that she should not drive herself mad with grief when the affair ended. Sure, Helen had made all kinds of crazy statements about "eternal love" and "an everlasting bond," but this high-flown language made little impact upon her heart. She simply loved Helen as a woman, quite aside from her religious, poetic or hyper-romantic flights of fancy. Frankly, it was not even the wild sex that had moved her to love Helen so much, rather it was the quiet times, the ordinary days, the time spent just walking along the shore together talking, the evenings spent on the patio silently watching the sun set and the moon rise. She recalled all of the meals they took together and what it was like to open her eyes in the morning and see Helen staring into her face with a naïve schoolgirl-crush expression. As for life in the palace and all the prestige that came with being associated with Helen, and thereby with Saint John The Divine — she could have done without all that, not that those things were without their good points.

After she stopped crying, a melancholy peace came over her. She was not hysterical, nor was she to be undone by extreme mourning. She took a deep breath, reminded herself that this was all inevitable and that the time she knew was coming had simply come. Granted, she had not known exactly how the relationship would end, but she always knew it could not end well, and she figured the ending, whenever it came, and however it came, would take her by surprise. Had she no ominous premonitions, she would simply go out to the patio, figuring Helen had woken up first and would be waiting for her. But she knew there was only one reason why Helen should be absent from the bed and the patio door would be open today. There was no way either she or Saint John would leave this world enduring some long, consumptive-type death. No, each of their ends must be quick.

She strode through the open door, almost gliding with grace and went out to the ledge of the patio. At first she looked up at the bright blue sky, the sky that, to people the world over, was too blue to be real, too perfect to be anything but divine. In some sense, without coming right out and saying it, every Greco-Roman Polytheist believed this sky itself was evidence of the reality of their religion, and it was as if foreign visitors, while under the sway of this sky, would not even bother to question this belief until they had left for the interior of the continent. She leaned with her arms on the heavy stone parapet and breathed in the pure breeze and filled her lungs to capacity. Then she leveled her gaze out at the glistening small wavelets that filled the entire panorama. At last, when she felt she was ready, she looked downward.

Helen's body lay broken over the rocks. Surprisingly, only a little blood was visible from this height. Her form, clearly outlined beneath a sheer nightgown, was still ravishingly beautiful. Even in death, she was a sexual tease. She was not concerned about being accused of murder, since everyone was aware of Helen's instability. A mania-driven suicide was the very first assumption any rational investigator would have. And anyway, Helen, when in hysterics, was so strong that it took several people to hold her down. The authorities would never believe a meek and small person such as herself could really throw a nearly-wild beast like Helen over a wall, and that was that. And so she took in another deep breath, sighed heavily, shed another tear or two, reminded herself that she had vowed to be strong when the end came, and turned to go back into the apartment.

The rocks on the shore below the cliff, over which the palace-fortress stood, were large and slippery and hard to navigate, hence many of the night guards shirked their patrol duties at that point and simply resumed their patrols where the ground was more level. But the day crew was more punctilious, probably because they suffered more scrutiny than the overly-casual night crew; and it was clear enough that within the hour they would discover the body and straightaway begin taking care of the endless details involved in such a massive event. It went without saying that they would not need to consult her on such high-level matters. And thus she saw no need to go running to the security guards with the news at that moment. It would be far less stressful for her to pretend to have slept in, to remain in her night-clothes, and allow the others to "break the news to her." It would all be so much more simple that way.

Helen's lover had also been clear, since the morning after they first made love, that when she and Helen separated, for whatever reason, she would leave the island almost immediately. She would not attend the funeral, nor suffer through being treated as the bereaved spouse of a prophet, nor any such thing. Her interlude with Helen was a gift from the gods. That gift was to be short-lived, and she would not act now as if she took seriously any of Helen's grand proclamations of their "growing old together." All of that drama would just detract from the elegantly-wonderful joy they had shared. In fact, a week after she and Helen became "an item," she had already taken a very short leave of absence, ostensibly to see to a sick relative. In reality, she'd used the time to secure another promise of employment from an employer on the mainland who, upon learning that she had been working at the prestigious resort-palace-fortress complex, told her, "You just let me know anytime you need work, and if there's not an opening at that time, I'll make an opening."

Clearly she would have to stay till mid-evening. The local authorities would first have to interview her and clear her of all suspicion and make formal what everyone would know, that Helen had committed suicide to follow Saint John The Divine into the next world. Helen's lover was never greatly convinced about the existence of "the next world;" and although she believed firmly in the gods, her belief in the afterlife had always been tepid, at best. She turned to pack her things just as a knock came at the door. It was the doctor.

The doctor looked her over from head to toe and said, "You know, don't you?"

Helen's lover simply shook her head in the affirmative as a few more tears broke loose.

"Okay then," said the doctor. "I already figured out what happened and why, so if you're not up to speaking to the authorities, then I can arrange for you to be excused from . . .

"No, no," she replied, "that's fine. Don't worry about me. I already figured a long time ago that . . ."

". . . that something like this would happen," said the doctor, completing her sentence. "Alright; and I take it that you won't be sticking around either. You're too humble for the kind of scenes that will be going down over this, right?"

After nodding again in the affirmative, she added, "Do me one favor and just book me a seat on the last boat out to shore later in the evening, if you don't mind. And, if you could have one of the soldiers send up an extra trunk. I'm afraid Helen gave me so many things that . . ."

". . . that you'll be leaving the island with twice as much as you came onto it with," said the doctor, again completing her sentence. "Consider everything handled. I figure the authorities will arrive in the early afternoon. There's already someone on the way there to get them. Obviously you'll have to notify us where you'll be staying and working, since the folks from Rome will want to talk to you once they get here."

"Yes, yes," she agreed. "Our lives will all fall into place, just as they once were, but . . ."

The doctor shook his head and said, "I know, there'll never be anyone in your life like her again. That's the hateful part of this business. For years and years, I scoured the land, (and it was a humiliating business which played havoc with my health), looking for someone to replace my last love. But at some point I got . . ."

". . . a revelation from Heaven that there was to be no replacement. I know. I know," she added, this time completing the doctor's sentence.

"Hmm," noted the doctor shaking his head and letting out an ironic chuckle. "It seems we think very much alike. Ah, then we may have been compatible ourselves, maybe lovers, were we not already . . ."

". . . already ruined by the losses we've incurred, doctor?" she said, again thinking the doctor's thought out loud.

The doctor looked at the ground and reddened a bit. She could not tell if it was from sadness, anger or embarrassment, but she surmised it was a good mix of all three.

The doctor looked up at her again with a smirk and concluded, "Then shall we just shake hands and say it's been a pleasure?"

She extended her hand and he shook it firmly and warmly. He almost turned to leave, then paused. He resolutely took her hand once more and bowed as a humble servant might do, and kissed it, then, just as resolutely, turned to leave without a word.

As she watched the doctor walk briskly down the hallway, she called out to him, another very large tear emerging from her eye, which she wiped away, as she called out, "Doctor!"

He turned suddenly, looked at her directly and silently, and waited for whatever she would say.

"Doctor," she continued, "it really has been a pleasure. It's too bad our time came and went and we never had the chance. You're a kind man, a good man. Maybe in the next life, if only . . ."

". . . if only we could know if there is a next life," said the doctor in a decisive tone as he again continued to walk away without turning back.

She waited at the door and watched till he turned down another hallway to begin his long day of work.

* * *

The first couple of days after Helen's suicide were routine, as far as governmental matters go. The regular inspections were made, the usual questions were asked, and all of the bureaucratic formalities were seen to. A room in the basement of the fortress was made into a morgue and a guard was stationed outside it. Knowing that the provincial government would have an interest in the matter, the doctor and Athenodorus immediately acted to preserve the body as well as possible until the go-ahead was given for burial by the new Governor.

After most of the provincial officials had left the island, the new Governor sent word that no one was to bury to bury the body or hold memorial services until he sent a courier back with final instructions. However, before the permission came, an armada of five war ships arrived bearing their old friend, the former Governor, now Emperor.

One of the security guards interrupted Athenodorus in his office as he attempted to clear away some paperwork from his desk. "Sir!" he exclaimed, "there are two hundred soldiers disembarking from ships in the harbor. The Emperor is here! What is the meaning of this?"

Athenodorus looked up incredulously, "Why, I have no idea. What one earth? Well, there is nothing to do but go out and see what he wants."

The two men rose and hurried to the harbor. Already the Emperor, in full regalia, surrounded by a huge entourage, was striding quickly toward Athenodorus. Athenodorus would have been worried, but he saw the Emperor's face, and it was beaming with a broad grin.

As the pair met, they heartily shook hands and exchanged greetings after which Athenodorus said, "Mr. Governor . . . I mean, Emperor . . . how may I be of service?"

"There is nothing at all more that you'll need to do. You are a free man, a wealthy man; and, my friend, you're about to become more free and more wealthy than you've ever been. Good tidings to you!"

Athenodorus' brow wrinkled with suspicion and he rather inappropriately tugged on the Emperor's arm to coax him into stepping away from the others as he inquired, "What is really happening today? This is not like you. No offense intended, but you are not one to make such a show of things. And what's with the grin? I thought that your position was almost a burden to you. Why would you now suddenly revel in all this pomp? Who are all these banner-carrying servants and horn-blowing musicians? Why are these men so over-dressed? This sort of celebratory show — this is not the old Governor I remember. What's gotten into you?"

The Emperor whispered into Athenodorus' ear, "Okay, I'll tell it to you straight. Since Saint John died, and the Capital has been filled with awe-stricken pilgrims, I've rather started to get a kick out of the power, the glory, the fame. May the gods forgive me, but I'm starting to have fun with notoriety and wealth. In fact, that's why I'm here, to consolidate my power over all the Christian cults and the polytheists too. They all have some theory as to why Helen is a saint, a goddess, a holy virgin, a divine prostitute. I can't even keep track of all the theology. All I know is that she's coming to Rome to get entombed right next to Saint John The Divine; and anyone who wants near either of their final resting places is going to have to get right with Rome. You may not keep track of what's going on inside the mainland, but we've been expanding our territory, and I plan to keep a tight grip on everything."

"But I'm sure Helen would have wanted to be buried here," protested Athnodorus.

"True," agreed the Emperor, "very true. But we'll not be able to honor her wishes in that way. Rome is everything."

"Spoken like a true Roman Emperor mad with power!" called out the formerly-crazed Emperor as he approached the two men. "So I see," said the former crazy-man and former ruler, "that one doesn't need to be a madman like I was to be swept up in the headiness of it all, eh?"

"Ah, my old boss!" chuckled the new Emperor as he warmly embraced the former Emperor. "Yes, I have no shame about it. I'm loving seeing people star-struck over me. I'm guilty on all charges and haven't an ounce of repentance about it."

After they shared a hearty laugh, the old Emperor turned to Athenodorus and said, "He's right, you know. This idea of having both Helen and St. John enshrined in Rome — it's political savvy, a brilliant move for the Empire. Were I to be Emperor again, and were I to be in my right mind at the time, I'd surely make the same move. Don't take it personally. The implications of this are enormous. Your sentiments, your wanting to have Helen's grave here — none of that can be taken into account now. This is world politics. We're non-political men. There's no way we can have a say in this matter."

Athenodorus, having come to trust the old Emperor very much, and having gotten closer and closer, after many fine evenings of wine on the patio at sunset, was made to see things clearly, and turned to the new Emperor and said, "Of course. Yes, obviously. Okay then, you can take her. But we . . . we'll miss her so much."

To his dismay, Athenodorus began to involuntarily shed a tear, but before it could roll down his face, the new Emperor wiped it away and embraced Athenodorus warmly, then held him back at arm's-length and looked into his face, and pronounced, "You do know, don't you, that you will be ordered to Rome several times a year to come dine with us? We'll pay our respects to Saint John The Divine and Helen each time. I promise you, I'll never forget what you've done for them, and for me, and for our former Emperor here. You've handled things quite magnanimously. True, you'll always be a bit of a coward, but, as cowards go, not at all the worst of them — an honorable man and a good citizen of the Empire, all-in-all. You'll be presented with some medals when the funeral is over. And, in fact, (and this is not an order but a request from one friend to another), I must ask you if you would do us the sacred honor of accompanying the body to Rome with us and attending the memorial service. It would mean a lot to me. Of course the doctor will be coming' so you'll ride together."

Pulling himself together, and wanting to avoid any public disgrace, Athenodorus quickly wiped away a second tear and stopped grieving for the moment, and silently and severely nodded in the affirmative.

The Emperor then turned away and addressed the entourage: "Then it's all settled. The doctor will be leading you to the holding chamber. The priests shall all follow the morticians and see to it that every detail of the movements of the body are done with respect to every tradition we can think of. And the scribes are to record every move in precise detail, as we discussed before. The soldiers are to follow, marching in solemn formation, chanting the funereal hymns like they do at all State funerals. The resort owner and I shall be convening in his quarters as we have another matter to conclude. Now let's get to it, shall we, gentlemen?"

A loud and enthusiastic salute came from all the soldiers at once, and they began to move, each going about their appointed task with precision and poise. All of the actions that were to come about were rehearsed and rehearsed again before the ships had ever arrived on the island. Everyone was confident as to their duties and inspired about doing their work.

* * *

As Athenodorus and the Emperor entered the villa, Athenodorus said, "I'm sorry that there's nothing ready for you to eat. I had no idea you were coming, otherwise I'd have told the chef."

The Emperor waved off this remark and said, "I've brought three cooks with us and they've already been cooking our meal on the ship. They timed it just right, so they'll be arriving with our food and wine. You just relax."

And, just exactly as the Emperor had said, right as they took their seats at the main table, servants began pouring into the room to set up the meal. Both men were quite hungry, and so they quickly devoured their meat and wine and appetizers. Then they began to offer up many toasts to the late Saint John The Divine and to the late Helen, and, just for form's sake, they toasted to the Empire many times. Both men were soon quite sated with food and drink. It was then that the Emperor announced the good news to Athenodorus.

The Emperor leaned back in his chair and let out a satisfied sigh, having enjoyed his lunch very much, and said, "So here's the way it's going to go. Now that there's no sacred personage to guard, we'll not need to fully staff the fort in order to fend off attacks from crazed religious people. We'll keep a small contingent here because I think the fortress is a great lookout location. We'll have men stationed on the top floor and the roof, watching day and night for approaching armadas, just in case anything hostile should come our way. We'll vacate the rest of the floors and leave them to you to rent out to all those odd sorts that like to come here.

"Since, technically, the fortress will remain a military base, we can't give it to you outright. Rome must retain legal possession of it. I consulted with my interior ministers and they've come upon the scheme of leasing it to you for one piece of silver per year, per room. Anything you make beyond that is yours to keep. And, in fact, you can decorate the rooms any way you like. The profits will be enormous. Congratulations, Rome has brought you a future filled with even more riches!

Athenodorus was just grasping the import of all this when the old Emperor entered the room. He too was smiling a bit more than usual, and he was holding hands with a gorgeous woman from the mainland. She was a widow. Although she was a bit older and bereaved, nature had been good to her. In fact, when she entered the room, she looked so good that the somewhat asexual Athenodorus noticed an ache in the center of his chest.

Being highly intuitive, the former Emperor saw immediately that Athenodorus was, out of politeness, trying to hide this unusually-charged emotion.

"What's the matter, boss," said the former Emperor with a smirk, "suffering from palpitations? Do I need to call the doctor in?"

Leaning forward and assuming a more formal air, Athenodorus said, "Oh, it's nothing at all, just a little indigestion from all this rich food. I've perhaps eaten a bit too much. All this excitement must have overstimulated my appetite."

"Nice try," replied the former Emperor mockingly. "Admit it. It's love at first sight."

"I'm . . . I'm sorry gentlemen, but I must excuse myself . . ." stuttered Athenodorus as he attempted to rise and make an exit.

But before he get up, the new Emperor leaned forward and caught his arm and said, "You're not going anywhere."

Just then the lovely, mature woman bounded into Athenodorus' lap. As she did so, his head began to swim and he began to get a quite-involuntary erection.

The Emperor then stood up and said, "You see, this woman will be your wife throughout the high State funeral to be held in honor of Helen. And we'll not have you standing up there alone like someone who can't get a date with a fair lady. We'll handle the divorce paperwork afterwards, as the marriage is just for ceremonial purposes. I've told her all about you, and she wants to give you a good going over. She'll be free to leave after her duty is done. She's lived on islands before, and well, rich men who own islands — that's her thing, sexually, so I imagine you two will have a little fun for a while. The priests will be in with the wedding papers shortly. You are to sign them, for now. After Helen's funeral, you can both do as you like. We leave for Rome this evening."

With that, the two Emperors, old and new, slammed the door behind them. A sentry was posted at the front door so that none should enter until the widow and Athenodorus had concluded their activities.

Athenodorus made a cursory attempt at escape, but the lithe creature he was paired with had been a female wrestler in her youth, and thus she pinned him to the floor. After a few further attempts to wriggle away, he finally accepted the total stranger's deep, wet kisses. Apparently he'd had more pent up sexual energy than he knew, as they continued on quite a while in this tryst. And although he was not the most creative lover she'd ever had, he amused her well enough.

After his second orgasm he rolled onto the floor in exhaustion and let out a long sigh and asked, "So who are you?"

"Darling," she said, holding his hand tenderly as she lay next to him naked, "I was one of Helen's sex-priestess assistants back when she was working on the mainland. It was all I could think of to do for a living after my husband passed away."

"Why, of course!" replied Athenodorus. "I knew you seemed familiar. Your movements. Your energy. It felt so like her."

"I didn't fall far from the tree, sweetheart," she replied with a smile. "So, you see, a little bit of Helen will always remain in the world. And, by the way, why didn't you ever have sex with Helen?"

"Who told you that I didn't," inquired Athenodorus.

"The Emperor, silly. Who else do you think would tell me?" she replied.

"I suppose," said Athenodorus, "I didn't want to . . . impose."

"Right," she replied as she kissed him again. "You would never want to impose, which is why you were on the road to slowly turning into an old celibate. The Emperor decided, effective immediately, that this tendency should cease. He is a man of the gods these days, you know. We should do what he says."

Athenodorus smirked and concluded, "Yeah, whatever the Emperor says."

Just then the former Emperor banged on the door and exclaimed, "Okay, kids! Enough horse-play! Start packing soon! We'll be pulling up anchor in a few hours!"

* * *

One of the Emperor's inspectors decided to rummage through Helen's old quarters one more time, just to make sure there was nothing missed by the local authorities sent by the new Governor. He found another scriptural passage stuffed in the lower drawer of a desk. It was allegedly signed by Helen who was allegedly inspired by the spirit of Saint John The Divine who was allegedly inspired by God. However, being versed in handwriting analysis as he was, he knew to compare other letters in the room to this document. He saw straightaway that the document was an amateur forgery. Furthermore, finding a few notes written long ago by Helen's lover, notes she had inadvertently left behind in her haste to leave the island, he quickly saw what had happened. Helen's lover, before leaving the island, had wanted to add her own input to the Book of Revelations, and so she did her best to forge Helen's handwriting. A commoner might fall for such a ruse, but any expert could tell immediately what had been done.

The inspector went to the Emperor and explained what had happened. The Emperor gave a wide grin and sarcastically proclaimed, "Glory to God! Another chapter of Saint John The Divine's Book of Revelations has been revealed. Glory to God in the highest!"

The investigator, annoyed at this "lack of professionalism" crossly said to the Emperor, "You can't be serious, can you?"

"As serious as I can be. So you will shut your mouth about the forgery. Now give me that," snapped the Emperor as he grabbed the note from the investigator's hand. "I'll turn this over to the high priests and they shall add it to the cannon. If you ever utter a word of this to anyone, even your wife, you won't live to see the next day."

The disgusted investigator nodded his head in submission, his face now completely overtaken by a frown, and waddled away, deeply hurt that his precision and honesty had not been met with due respect.

Before he bounded toward the priests with the "new revelation," the Emperor overtook the forlorn investigator and said, "Your service to the Empire will not go unrewarded. I'll order the Governor to triple your salary. You'll live in luxury from here on. There'll be no more scrimping by on a functionary's salary."

The inspector was slightly consoled by this, and by the Emperor's beseeching him to see that a little fib, here and there, could sometimes be of great benefit to the Greater Empire. And so he managed to get control over his anger and think, "I suppose the money could do me some good, and there's no use always being a perfectionist."

The priests all crowded around one another to get a look at this latest addition to "The Word of God:"

Lo, an angel was sent to men and women from Heaven. I, Helen, am that angel. And I declare that a millennium of lesbian love shall wash over the earth in the days to come.

And at that time many luxurious couches will be erected in Heaven; and there all of the Great Lesbians shall convene, and God shall reward them with many crowns of glory.

It shall come to pass that in those times the end of all romantic tyrannies shall be revealed. No more will women be slaves to men, nor men slaves to women. The cessation of all gender wars shall be complete. And men and women shall cease judging one another, but rather will convene as brothers and sisters, neither seeking to capture nor dominate the other.

Since the Universe shall unveil Itself as all one body, all one mind, and all one soul, the idea of owning people, selling people and buying people shall fade from the cosmos. No longer will people seek, through guilt, fear, trickery, intimidation or manipulation, nor any other such device, to obligate people to interpersonal servitude.

Let this be the beginning of the end of all supremacism. I, Helen, the very voice of Saint John The Divine, ask, even now, that all human beings make every effort to usher in this era of sexual, social and economic liberty. Let us now look, with earnest anticipation, to a day when all labors are voluntary and no one is compelled to live falsely or violate their own conscience.

At the end of the old world, The Heavenly Mother will give each entity the gift of being sexually-attracted to all other beings. They shall, eternally, engage in celestial sex and the drinking of divine elixirs and intoxicants which will fill the rivers, lakes and oceans of that new world.

And thus will commence millennium after millennium of Pure Pleasure. And again, all the holy books that every existed will be tossed into a vast pit and set ablaze and forever forgotten.

For as humble and non-intellectual as Helen's lover had seemed to be, clearly she'd clearly become familiar with the doctrines of both Helen and Saint John, and took the liberty of adding a few words to the canon before resuming her nearly-anonymous life. After leaving the island, she never attempted anything public or prophetic again.

21. The Ungrateful Wretches

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As their carriage headed toward Rome, they inevitably got to that long part of the journey where the landscape became dull and the road seemingly endless. At the beginning of their journey, the new couple, (however temporary their time together might prove to be), were swept up in logistics and practical thoughts. They talked for hours about how to handle all of the transitions they were going through and what they might like to do in Rome after the State funeral was over. But, as the miles rolled on and the scenery flattened out, and there came to be fewer interruptions for things like meals and horse-feeding, and as the notable towns faded into the distance, the strange couple, who'd only had a single sexual escapade, and little else to do with each other, had to confront each other as strangers.

"Athenodorus," she said bluntly. "What now? Where do you go from here?"

"What do you mean?" he replied. "What else is there to do but what I've always done? I'll have to go back and run my resort, which, I understand, will be a lot bigger now. I'll probably have to hire more assistant managers and delegate more authority. I'm sure there'll be more taxes to pay and a lot more hiring and firing to do. Things will be crazy for a while, but everything will settle down into the usual routines."

"That's what I mean," she pressed. "How can you really go back to your old routines? You were living with Saint John The Divine and Helen on your property. Sure, people may think that's crazy. But crazy or not, you were used to a pretty colorful life with those folks around. How will you ever come across the likes of them again?"

"I suppose I won't," replied Athenodorus cooly. "No two people are alike, right? No one can replace anyone else. What can I say? People take their losses and move on."

His wife crossed her arms and said, "No, I don't believe it," as she turned her head to look out at the flat landscape dotted with a few trees here and there and an occasional outcropping of dry rock. "That sounds like the kind of thinking people say was taught by that crazy Chinese white guy, that strange priest of legend who crashed the former Emperor's lunch and was excused for having the Emperor's guards killed. There's all kinds of talk about the things he said to people as he came and went. He kept trying to tell people he was above human feelings, but I don't buy it."

Athenodurus was just not sure what she was getting at and became a bit disconcerted. "What are you saying, that I'm claiming to have no feelings, that I'm pretending nothing bothers me?"

"Yes," she protested. "I think you're doing that, in your own way, not exactly like the white Chinese guy, but you're playing some kind of game with your emotions, trying to pass off everything you've been through as just grist for the mill. But the stories of what went on at that Island — those stories are talked about everywhere. You were friends with a Christian high priest. What was his name — Paganon? Right? And they executed him. There were assassination attempts, invasions of your island. And people said you had to sit in a room full of pickled human heads. How can you talk of ordinary matters so glibly when people you know have jumped off of buildings and ships have been sunk in front of you. Aren't you wounded?"

Athenodorus was silent. He looked down, then turned his head and looked back out at the sparse scenery. The noncommittal look, that look which had carried him through most of the years of his life, that look which seemed to rarely leave his face, except in more extreme circumstances, was now gone. He looked somber and uncertain. She did not push him any further for an answer to her questions. Those were not exactly questions anyway, but more like statements, impertinent complaints about his character from a new-comer in his life. It irritated him, at first, that she'd known so much about his life, but, upon further reflection, he realized that hundreds of stories must have leaked out about his life and the lives of his friends. It was probably all common public knowledge now.

And he too wondered at how unsentimental he'd been about it all. Sure, he'd shown valor or devotion at certain points, cowardice and lack of resolve at other times; but all-in-all, he realized, he'd still treated it all like a big game, like an illusion, or some story that he'd had to live through. Maybe that was his attraction to Saint John The Divine in the first place. With him around, all of life could be boiled down to a heroic myth, a theological comedy where everything, in the end, is little more than a farcical revue put on by the gods, or the fates, or by sheer chance. If he understood what she was getting at, she must be implying that in the few short hours she'd known him, she'd already seen deeply into his character and was pushing for something more authentic.

Finally, he broke the silence and said, "You know, you're probably right. I've not really lived the way other people have. I've usually had quite a bit of money and so I was sheltered from having to reveal much about what goes on inside me. And, you see, I set myself up as 'the boss' as soon as I could, and I suppose I played that role and just got used to it. Maybe that was part of my strategy in opening up a resort that caters to spiritual freaks and assorted cultists. They could act out the extremes of human emotion around me, live in the mysteries of gods and sex and madness, and somehow I guess I felt that I wouldn't have to. By making my social life a kind of circus, I suppose it made me look normal by contrast, took the attention away from me. Me and my workers were so busy taking care of this odd crew that we could pass by the question of what those things meant to us."

She looked over at this man who was to play the role of her husband for a while and then said, in a less prosecutorial tone, "But how have you been, Athenodorus, now that Saint John and Helen are gone? Who will you vicariously live through? How strange it should be to return to your island with your loved ones gone and so many new tenants moving in. Who shall be your refuge, your light, your life-raft?"

Athenodorus exhaled deeply and his whole body relaxed. In all of this drama, he'd not had a chance to return to himself, which now seemed important, even though he had no way of grasping what that self might be. Far from being angry with his interlocutor, he felt relieved. It was one thing to note that he'd not taken off his mask in quite some time, and quite another thing to be invited to take that mask off. He did not know why this strange courtesan should care about a temporary husband. He'd thought that she, like he, would just play a role for a while and then move on. But she was making it clear that she was capable of having a real relationship, (not that either had truly promised any such thing to each other), and that she truly wanted to know him, whatever the status of their marriage might end up being.

He looked at her directly, and spoke straightforwardly, in a way that he hadn't spoke to anyone in a long time, not since he could remember, "Well, to tell you the truth, when my friends leave for the night, and the servants have gone to their quarters, I cry like a child to myself almost every night. There's no way I can lie to myself about it. I'm like a lost soul these days."

He paused and then smiled, and added, "You know, it's even kind of sad that the old Emperor has got his wits about him now and is just another kind of quasi-monkish sort on the grounds. He may have scared the life half out of me when he was a madman, but, as Saint John said, there was something super-human about him, something from Heaven. Now that he's on this medicine, he's perfectly happy just walking around the island, fishing in the harbor, sneaking off to the mainland in disguise to do a little gambling. Don't get me wrong, he's a nice fellow now, and interesting enough to hang out with, but something irreplaceable has been lost. And the old Governor, now the Emperor, who is he? He seems just like a regular governor who rose to power in the ordinary way, a hand-picked successor. Where's the magic in that?"

Again he took a moment to collect his thoughts and concluded, "And as for Saint John and Helen, I don't kid myself about losing them. How often do people like that come into one's world? I think, in some way, I'm not ever going to be a truly happy person again. Oh sure, there'll be moments of satisfaction, some times of fulfillment and contentment. But those people, Saint John and Helen — they were like shooting stars, blazing through the sky. You can't hold on to that kind of thing. God only knows you can't control them. You stare on in awe, and then, after they're gone, it's darkness, emptiness, a cold night sky.

"I kind of envy some of those monks and priests I rent rooms to. They're believers, you know, and they tell me, in all sincerity that they're okay on their own. They say stuff to me like, 'I can feel the presence of Apollo all through my life, as though all the gods on Olympus are walking with me through my days.' The Christians say things, in their own way, that remind me of that. Ah, but faithless me — I'm not much of a believer, am I?"

Then he turned the tables on her for a moment and inquired, "And you? Are you a believer? Do you believe in people, in the gods, in the forces of life? Where does your strength come from? Do you weep at your bedside like I do? What brings light into your life?"

Rather surprised at having to be on the answering end of such hard questions, she swallowed a bit nervously and it seemed to her that her throat suddenly went dry. She coughed and reached for some water.

After wetting her lips and taking a few gulps, she gathered her thoughts and said, "God if I know. I'm just an actress too, going from ceremonial marriage to ceremonial marriage. Of course the State would allow me to stay with any one of these fellows, if I wanted to, if they wanted me to stay. But, so you see, it hasn't happened yet."

"And does that make you sad?" inquired Athenodorus now lowering his eyes to hers and staring directly into her face for the first time, in a serious way.

Suddenly she turned her head quickly from his gaze and shed an unexpected tear and muffled a sob, then turned to him with hurt and anger on her face and said, "Well, I started it, so I guess this is what happens . . ."

". . . what happens when you mix your personal life and professional life?" added Athenodorus with an arched eyebrow, looking more severe than his friends had ever seen him look.

There was a tense silence as they looked into each other's faces, Athenodorus being uncharacteristically severe and his partner in this arranged marriage being caught off guard and on the defensive.

"So," she finally said, "do you think you might love me, or what? I told the Emperor I want to settle down somewhere."

Athenodorus replied to her as he leaned back thoughtfully, "Really? You said that to him? What did he say?"

"What do you think? He laughed at me . . . laughed at me and said: Good luck with that, honey," she bitterly replied while leaning back in frustrated resignation.

"And was he," inquired Athenodorus, "at all insulted that you should want to leave . . . um . . . civil service, shall we say?"

"Oh no, no, nothing like that. You know him. He's a good sport. He patted me on the back and said, 'Look, don't worry about your job after he dumps you. We'll always need good actresses in our employ. And anyway, some of those old widowed Senators prefer more seasoned ladies. Consider that we're always holding your old position open for you.' Then, before he leaves the room, he throws out the parting shot, 'Don't get your heart broken. I hate to see a great gal like you all heart-sick for a month.' That's what the rascal said."

"There, there," said Athenodorus, moving next to her and giving her a fatherly hug as she began to openly sob. "We can't have you falling apart on the job. What if they stopped for a meal break and found you in here weeping? You'd be in all kinds of trouble."

"Oh, you're right, quite right," she agreed, suddenly dabbing the tears from her face and straightening her hair. "This is inexcusable. I can't be laying this on you. The Emperor would skin me alive if he saw me behaving this way."

"Well, now, see here," said Athenodorus in his usual avuncular way. "I've got no idea how things will turn out, us being perfect strangers and all. But would it make you feel any better if I promised to give the marriage an honest try?"

"You would?" she said with a bit of surprise and wispy happiness in her voice. "I'm sorry. I'm so embarrassed. I must have come off . . ."

Athenodorus raised his hand to silence her and concluded, "Now there'll be no more of this worry and self-doubt. Besides, I'm all talked out. You've worn yourself out too. Let's both lay on our benches and take a nap. The cushions are nice and the road is smooth here. You'll get in a good nap and look fresh for our dinner stop.

After dinner, after the carriage had been rolling for a while, they sat side by side just cuddling. He felt content and his face had no particular expression. For her part, she was smiling softly.

Athenodorus broached a question that involved his own insecurities, "By the way, was I any good in bed? I'm rather uncertain how I'd hold up that way in a marriage. I'm older, and, as you see, not so very passionate."

She turned to smile into his face and said as lovingly and honestly as she could, "Darling, whatever we have, it's not based on sex. The sex was just okay. But it doesn't matter so much. We can do it if we're in the mood and skip it when we're not. I like you for other reasons. You're not so hot-blooded, but that crazy-passion stuff comes with a bit too much instability and drama. I need a break! Do you know what I mean? Your sex — it's not so much like sex, but more like being really close friends. And that's what I think I need right now in a husband, a best friend, with benefits."

Not one to easily take offense at things that might leave other people red-faced with anger, Athenodorus shook his head in agreement and said, "Fair enough. Fair enough. Then, why not?"

When they got to Rome, the Emperor made sure he took a light lunch with them. They talked about ceremonial matters involving the massive State funeral the next day and chit-chatted about other governmental affairs and life at the resort island.

As he got up to leave, he studied each of their faces and said, "Ah, I see what's happened. So you silly people are going to try to stay together?"

Athenodorus lied on her behalf, "It's not her fault, boss. It was me. I lost my head. You know, became overly sentimental, said crazy things. It's all my doing. Didn't mean to steal one of your best ceremonial wives. What can I say? Can you blame a guy for getting a crush?"

"You?" the Emperor replied sarcastically, "a crush? Oh yeah, sure."

Then turning to her, he said, "And you? What have you got to say for yourself?"

"Just trying to be a cooperative employee, boss. I swear I didn't pressure him or anything," she said with a pleading smile.

The Emperor just patted them both on the head and turned away in disgust, mumbling to himself, "No wonder the last Emperor lost his mind. You give people everything and all they do is lie to you. The ungrateful wretches. No wonder he killed half the people he met. You go through all the trouble to run an empire, and what? Everyone bullshits you the whole time."

As he was thus plodding away with his fist clenched carrying on in this manner, Athenodorus turned to his wife and said, "Has he begun talking to himself this way often?"

"Yes, yes," she replied. "Like all the rest of the Emperors, he's slowly losing his mind. And if your loyal servants don't drive you mad, then the Senate will. Poor fellow. He's getting to be as frustrated as we are. I'm starting to think there isn't a happy person in the Empire."

"Hmmph," said Athenodorus, hoisting another glass of wine with one hand as he wrapped the other around the beautiful waist of his wife. "Let's you and me give it a go. We'll try to be happy."

"Yes, let's!" replied his wife enthusiastically as she clinked her own glass with his to toast his proclamation.

As they were celebrating the possibility of happiness together, suddenly two palace staffers came up and said, "If the lady and the gentleman would please excuse our presumption — but we are moving your possessions from your guest quarters to the Imperial Ambassador Suite.

"You mean where they keep the visiting African kings and people like that?" asked Athenodorus disconcertedly. "Why?"

"Please do not be offended, sir. But the Emperor just came to us and said, 'Those stupid people really think they're falling in love. Just give them the best room you've got tonight. They'll regret it later, but let them have their little fantasy. Good for them, I suppose.' So we've already begun moving you over, and your care-takers are already in-waiting to bring you anything you might require throughout the evening. He's very moody these days, sir. We're just following orders. We ourselves don't understand," said the lead concierge with a humble bow.

Meanwhile the new Emperor slept in a kind of sleeping nook on a day bed. He frowned as he slept. His servants were anxious that he return to his normal quarters and not be sleeping in an alcove bed in a hallway. But he waved them away and told them to mind their own business. Against his will, they posted extra guards in the hallway so that the Emperor might not be unduly exposed to attack. (His staff would tell on the Emperor whenever they felt he was not behaving safely; and the security detail, even under threat of death for not leaving the Emperor alone when he asked to be left alone, simply overrode him when they felt he was not being rational.)

As the Emperor faded to sleep, he mused crossly, "Why can the lowest ranking maid get me in trouble with my security chief? And how is it that he gets to scold an Emperor and disobey my orders? How is it that I am feared the world over, but can't get a middle-ranking security guard to fear me? I just don't get it. Why must the gods always pick on me?"

* * *

The Emperor would have a bit of good news the next day, in spite of his current frustrations. It seems Athenodorus had brought an unpublished poem by Saint John The Divine. He had been going through some old papers and stumbled across it just days before. Apparently, in one of his bouts of divine madness, Saint John had read the poem to Athenodorus and his guests, then bolted from the room, letting the poem slip from his hand. Athenodorus picked up the poem, but did not bother to chase Saint John to return the poem to him. Rather, he had decided to just give it to him later after he calmed down. As it turned out, the paper had ended up being thrown in a pile of contracts and other business documentation. Being himself a bit tipsy by the evening's end, he'd wandered off to bed not giving the poetic note any more thought. By morning the whole affair was forgotten. And now, months later, it had reappeared as Athenodorus sought to clean up his desk a bit:

Behold the Old Jerusalem has passed away, and there will be no New Jerusalem on Earth, Earth itself being only a concept, or a collection of concepts, or simply the manifestation of an echo.

The Final Jerusalem will only be in the hearts and minds of men and women, and those who do not know if they are men or women.

All races of people, all manner of heathens, pagans and idol worshippers, will sit in glory with the Christian saints and the saints of all religions and the saints of non-religion.

They shall, as one body, gorge on the very flesh of the universe and drink the blood of the universe from the veins of all the capillaries within all the mineral deposits within all planets.

The cosmos will remain in a state of blissful feasting for epoch upon ephoc, and there will never again be any hunger nor thirst nor greed for anything needed, wanted or desired.

Humans and angelic beings will no longer seek out sex, because every entity in all worlds will exist in a state of continual orgasm which shall last one billion years;

Then all formed objects and all aggregated beings shall fade and merge until they are all a pinpoint; and even that pinpoint shall vanish because time and space and matter will have been exhausted.

Bodiless, mindless and spiritless, all will dwell in utter quiescence, even while the vast void roils with the one primordial sound which is the Father and Mother.

22. This Immortal City

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The new Emperor sat in his office. It was the office of his old boss, now living out a sane retirement on Athenodorus' mega-resort island. After several changes of mind on the subject, he'd decided to keep most of the severed heads in jars just where they used to be, there in the Emperor's office. Frankly, he'd gotten used to them. Claiming that they were not left in there to instill fear in his rivals, he opted to excuse the indulgence by claiming the heads were left in place out of respect for his former leader. It went without saying that he shut down the orgy rooms and torture chambers, although the gallows rooms were left intact as there were still plenty of dissidents and criminals to deal with.

The enshrinement of Helen's body next to Saint John The Divine's had come off as planned. The Emperor, having decided to interpolate his own poetry into the Book of Revelations, (which would change so much that no one would recognize it anyway), looked back fondly on how he'd had the crowd eating out of his hand. He knew this last bit of trickery would leave the whole Empire trembling at his might, as he now stood as the unofficial head of both the Pagan and Christian worlds as they began to slowly merge into something neither the original Pagans nor the original Christians would even recognize. How true any of those religions were, and how authentic or forged their documents might be — all of that was merely "interesting" and "circumstantial" to him. As in the beginning, his only interest was in the "immortal legacy and growth of our Empire, which is the will of all the gods." (Privately he'd admitted to his confidants that he'd added "all of the gods" to his speeches to further intimidate and captivate his audience, even as he himself had become, secretly, the most Agnostic of men.)

His thoughts drifted back to Athenodorus and his island. He laughed when he mused on how the forced marriage he'd arranged was still holding together, apparently quite agreeably. Oddly, the old Emperor was spending more and more time in Rome, his misdeeds, and even his appearance, having already faded in people's memory. Furthermore, he was dressed so modestly now and wore such an ordinary expression that he was indistinguishable from the average Roman worker. The two of them, in spite of constant reprimands from the Emperor's security officers, were given to walking the streets of Rome talking the evening away. Sometimes the new Emperor would himself take on the appearance of a mere cipher, and the two of them, perhaps with only a few soldiers walking a half-block behind, would stumble from tavern to tavern pretending to be commoners.

Saint John's old doctor sometimes paid a visit. It was perhaps he who was the loneliest now, having no patients presenting anything but the most ordinary injuries and illnesses. There would never be anyone under his care like Saint John or Helen, not for the duration of his life. His existence was, for him, rather dull and anticlimactic. He would occasionally ask the Emperor if any unusual cases in Rome called for his attention, but he would receive the reply that there were already too many world-class doctors streaming into Rome looking to make a name for themselves. In the end, he gave up his practice and, having been paid a handsome retirement by Rome, decided to rent a cell on the island and see if there might be anything to what all the spiritual seekers had been doing. It was, by his own admission, a desperate move for a man of science to begin to explore mystery religions. But frankly, he was out of ideas as to how to amuse his lively intellect and curiosity. If nothing else, perhaps one of the sex priestesses who'd taken over Helen's sanctuary might, under cover of religious exploration, grant him some carnal joys of the sort he'd been sorely lacking for many years.

After long days at his desk, the new Emperor would walk out to the mausoleum that held the giant stone crypts in which Saint John and Helen were entombed. Often he'd just stand there and inhale deep, self-satisfied breaths, then he'd turn to the men with him and say, "Gentlemen, we have the people of the world right where we want them. I believe it will not be long before no one will be able to make a political, financial, military or religious decision without consulting us in Rome."

One day, as he and his retinue were doing their usual walking tour of the center of The City, the new Emperor remarked, "Gentlemen, I am pleased to announce that there will soon be an heir. I've privately eloped. In fact, me and my new bride consummated our relationship in one of the grand suites on that sweet, little island Athenodorus owns. The bride is already pregnant."

One of his political consultants asked, "How do you believe the Senate will take this news? I believe they were hoping to put one of their own in charge after you fell from power?"

"Things have changed since the days of the old, crazy Emperor. He did not know how to consolidate power," proclaimed the new Emperor. "In fact, none of the divisions of the army that used to be loyal to the Senate are in their camp anymore. They've all defected to me, whether for religious, political or financial reasons. You could say I've made more judicious use of the treasury than my predecessors who did not know how to properly apportion bribes, nor did they offer the kinds of incentives I offer to any powerful priest who tows the Roman line.

"It's a superstitious country now, (not that it wasn't always); but we've reached new levels of religious delusion, and I plan to play that game for all its worth. You know, you can't really wield proper religious authority unless you're a cynical non-believer. Real believers loose track of their objectives, get caught up in petty disputes. It takes a true non-believer to know how to manipulate the masses with mumbo-jumbo. I admit it fellows. I'm shameless about it now."

* * *

The forged poem that had the crowd on edge, while rewritten primarily by the Emperor, had been submitted to his political consultants and rewritten by them several times until all of them felt each line of it created some advantage for the new Emperor. During Helen's funeral, in the most Senatorial voice he could muster, the new Emperor bellowed the poem to the chaotic mix of believers, non-believers, and those simply driven wild by the display of raw power:

My dear countrymen, oh glorious companions, lovers of Rome, I, Saint John The Divine, along with my Divine Consort, The Incomprehensible Helen, bear this testimony to you all.

Our City, this Immortal City, shall be the very hallowed ground where The King of Kings and The Lord of Lords shall build The Capital of both Heaven and Earth.

Whether anyone shall come here seeking fame, fortune, victory, sex or wine, they shall, hence forth, find the best of all these things here on these sacred streets.

It shall be here that all believers, all seekers of truth, shall come from all parts of the world, and none shall leave disappointed at the glory and majesty of this vast Empire.

Take heed that no man mislead you to follow any other Emperor than the Emperor of Rome itself.

Verily, our Emperor shall be a true Heavenly Father, and His Son, shall be The Sun lighting The Earth, both day and night for numberless years.

Behold, none of the gods of the Pantheon have come down from any other Heaven, nor has any other god-man returned to occupy any throne on Earth. Trust in the living gods you can see and hear.

Indeed, he, your Emperor, and His Son, shall appoint bishops, and archbishops, and mighty preachers who shall bring The Word of God from this very metropolis to the rest of the world which awaits The Final Revelation.

Do not wait for the coming of The Lord, for The Lord is here. Do not wait for the day of Heaven, for Heaven is upon you. You yourselves are living in it.

The Emperor is the incarnation of Saint John The Divine; and The Emperor's Wife is the new form of Helen, if you care to receive it, if you have the ears to hear our God.

He who deviates from the decrees that arise from the heart of this Divine City, shall be in defiance of the decrees of The Almighty, and he shall have no part in the endless feast that is to come upon this planet. Thus sayeth The Lord of Hosts!

* * *

Athenodours and Pantheonus were angry with the Emperor for quite some time after he performed the forged poem. Both, at the risk of their own lives, insisted that Saint John would never write anything advising human beings to bow so cravenly to anything or anyone. The Emperor, however, was too secure in his own decisions to be offended by this initial scolding.

He simply told them both, "I have an Empire to run. Do you imagine dozens of nations and hundreds of provinces can be run without deception? If you think so, you're both completely juvenile and innocent of the real world that surrounds you."

Both the doctor and the resort owner found this brazen admission to be quite disarming and agreed to forgive the Emperor for misrepresenting their old friend Saint John.

"And besides," added Athenodorus, as he hoisted a glass to toast the eventual abatement of his initial anger, "Saint John's work has mutated beyond belief out in the provinces. None of what he originally wrote when he was here is even popular anymore. God knows who's been writing in his name. But, I guess, the lies coming out of Rome are no worse than the lies coming out of everywhere else."

"That is true! And I'll toast to that!" agreed the Emperor, as he smiled to Athenodorus and Pantheonus. "And I have the advantage of actually knowing I'm lying, so that at least I, perhaps alone among alleged prophets and god-men, am not deceived by my own publicity. I'm just a benevolent dictator with a job to do."

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