Ah, the Negev. The sands are blown around by the wind, but they never leave.
Like hyenas, mujaheddin creep across the desert, armed and cloaked. Afroasia will never be free of holy war. As far as many conservatives are concerned, Maltese Catholics, Abyssinian Orthodox Christians, Muslims, and Jews will NEVER be one. Jihad aims to make it stay that way...
There are actual hyenas, too. The mujaheddin mind these, as they creep here and there...
There are mongeese. They're a bit social. They travel here and there, in bands. As small as they are, it can be dangerous.
There are also meerkats. They're less mobile...and cuter. Anyone who's seen Meerkat Manor knows.
In a facility below the ground, fans blow incessantly. They can't seem to blow without sounding like wind tunnels.
And there are plenty of those down here, too. It's very secure, down here.
Most of the security is run by AI. President Ophir wouldn't dare trust her greatest treasure with other men. She's already found her man...AND her treasure.
Atop a bed, Elias likes. His hand is in his briefs. He's having an erection. He still can't believe this is real...
Here and there, a sorrel Abyssinian cat scurries, on the hunt for pests. The pests here can be even more dangerous than the security...
Trembling, Elias takes an elevator to a more nourishing room. Once there, he opens a reefer, and looks at all the food inside. He scoffs, and closes the door. He respects the President's food way too much to embezzle it...
He sits in a wheel-shaped chamber, alone, with a skylight spotlighting him. Through shafts above, the wind tunnels blow refreshing wind into where he is.
The floor descends towards the center. In the center, there's a hatch, for getting in and out.
The President sure is gone a lot. Elias almost prefers it. She sure loves rough sex. He, at least, no longer wonders why she's the first single president Afroasia's had in forever.
Elias isn't sure if he prefers rough sex. It sure beats the sex he's gotten from other women...which is none. North Rhine-Westphalian chicks don't exactly date a white guy who needs Turkish hip-hoppers to protect him without asking questions about it. Regardless of how Elias feels about sex with his new beloved...if he thinks it's overwhelming now...it's about to get MUCH worse.
As he broods in this wheel-shaped chamber, he wears a pair of headphones. They collect info from the EMS, and feed it to him.
"The Dassault Rafale," they say, "is a very reliable warplane. Despite this, Dassault has been unable to export it to very many countries whose air forces could use the firepower. The Rafale struggles to compete with bigger names, like the F-35, the J-20, and the Su-57. Countries that HAVE invested in the warplane, besides Dassault's own native France, include Afroasia, North India, and Dravidia. Possible buyers include the Swiss Cantons, the Malaysian States, and Finland. A sale to Quebec fell through when..."
An irritating smell reaches Elias's nose. He lifts his head, takes off the headphones, and looks around. He's alone.
He closes his eyes and smells again. He smiles, as he thinks he knows it's coming from one of the wind tunnels.
He crawls up to it, and into it. With luck, he won't have far to crawl.
Like a naked mole rat, he crawls in the dark. He's not quite naked...but he's underdressed enough. The President seems to prefer him that way. He often thinks about hiding down here from her, whenever she gets back. But then he decides against it, because her amazon spec-ops would probably find him in a heartbeat...and excessively punish him for it.
He crawls past a culvert, that overlooks part of the Negev. He stops, to take a look through it.
There's a mujahid out there. A cloud of shadow seems to surround him. Elias scoffs. He can't believe he's envying a mujahid...as much as that should mean nothing in North Rhine-Westphalia...a state that tends to vote against Angela Merkel in elections.
That cloud of shadow looks so shady... A handy power, in a desert climate...
The stink re-reaches Elias's nose. He blinks, and continues his quest up the tunnel.
Near the fan at the end of it, but not too close, a polecat lies. He seems asleep. He also seems to have incontinent musk glands. He's generating his stink incessantly, like a chimney. And the fan never helps, each time it turns on...
Elias isn't sure how...but he's got to get that thing out of here. But first, he must be sure that thing is dead. He crawls towards it...
He freezes, when it rolls over, on its underside. His heart freezes, when it peers at him...
His eyes glow yellow. So do Elias's. All around them, time slows. They can't stop staring at one another...
Behind the polecat, the fan's starting back up again. Alas, Elias can't tell, at first. The blades move so slow. He can't SEE at first; or at least, not directly. This yellow light has got his vision fixed...and it feels as if that's not all...
The polecat soon blinks, stands, and finds his own way out of the tunnel. Elias offers to show him the way out...only to realize he doesn't have the strength to do so.
Upwind, the fan's making a lot of white noise. To most, it's loud. To Elias, it's soothing. He falls asleep...while lying inside the wind tunnel. He won't be able to, when he wakes...
The polecat finds the way out, and leaves. First thing, he gets attacked by a hyena. He rears to spray...only to find that his musk glands have somehow been depleted of his family heirloom of a secret weapon. He ends up in the hyena's belly, of course.