Chapter 19 – An Underperforming Big Guy
The Lesser Ayatollahs knew something was bothering The Big Guy. The Lessers are like the Cardinals of the Catholic Church, big in their own right, in their own realms, but nothing in terms of power compared to you know who. The Big Guys rules, and now something was distracting him from the affairs of state. All kinds of things were going on in the country that needed his wisdom and attention, but he had his mind on something else, though none of the Lessers knew what. The gossip mill was in full production mode.
The inspectors from the UN were camped outside the gates of the main nuclear complex, the one that said Allah’s Power and Light on the huge sign out front. They had been there for three weeks, sleeping outside the chain-link fence, vowing to stay until they were allowed in. Of course, they all earned about $300,000 a year from the UN treasury, meaning the US Treasury, and getting paid whether they produced results or not. Plus they each were granted a $300 per diem, which added up to a nice perk considering the daily rates they paid for the sleeping bag on the ground outside the fence, and the pita bread and goat cheese sandwiches they had delivered to them from town. The Lessers wondered what to do?
Then there were the constant incursions by the Mossad commandos, underground, through the air, in the water, everywhere. The Rev Guard Corps guys swore the Israelis had developed stealth clothing that rendered the wearer invisible. When they did catch a commando, and they had no idea what their capture rate was, it could have been 10% or 80%, they were all for just killing him or her on the spot and burying him or her in the flower beds, but the Ayatollah’s policy was to exchange them for their guys who had been caught in Tel Aviv. The problem was that sometimes The Big Guy violated his own policy and had them executed, and other times he didn’t, so the Guard guys were confused. The flunky that served The Big Guy had this figured it out, but never told anyone. If The Big Guy had a good session with one of the terrestrial virgins, he felt benevolent towards his enemies, and exchanged them. On the other hand, if he had a so-so session, which was occurring more and more often the older he got, then he tended to deal with those captured more severely.
The other thing he was ignoring was the mounting toll the world-wide sanctions were having on the economy. The oil revenue simply was not enough to keep the store shelves stocked, and people were getting more and more pissed. A lot of important people were saying, let the inspectors in. Let them see what there is to see. Who cares? We need imports. But The Big Guy wasn’t interested in making any policy changes on that score. He didn’t seem to listen to anyone about that, or anything else, for that matter. Even the Lessers were starting to grumble, wondering where his mind was these days, and they were having more and more trouble keeping their constituents under their thumbs. All they heard from them was, “I want an IPhone, I want tickets to the soccer match, I want a car that has four wheels instead of three, I want the latest Spielberg DVD, I want I want.”
The Lessers weren’t the only ones grumbling. So was the flunky. In addition to making tea eight times a day, and making the bed eight times a day, and waking The Big Guy up from his nap eight times a day, he was out scouring the streets for virgins, more and more. The Big Guy was running through them like Sherman through Dixie. Like Tiger Woods through his groupies. First he had to find a woman who had the parts that matched The Big Guys specifications, then he had to negotiate the monetary terms of the engagement, and then he had to train her how to act like a virgin, or at least act the way The Big Guy thought a virgin should act, considering he never actually had had a virgin. All this was running the poor flunky ragged, and with no increase in compensation. In this, he was like a lot of people these days around the world, doing more work for the same pay. But it was better than being one of the guys or gals who got to go down into the reactors and change out the fuel rods every couple of months.
Still, even with all this work, the flunky wondered what was on his boss’s mind. Something was nagging at him, and nagging at him bad. What was it? It all had seemed to start that day two weeks ago when The Big Guy had had him turn the computer on for him. Yes, that was it. Something on the computer. Something had happened then.