Centurion 1

With acknowledgement to Griscom who recently published LEGION. Thank you for the inspiration.

"It's not as if your wife has been fucked by an entire Roman Legion or even a Maniple," Larry taunted.

"No. Jezebel has only been fucked by an entire Century," Jeff retorted. "I guess that makes me a Centurion rather than a Legatus Legionis. Of course my wife had been fucked by more than a Century. One-hundred-and-thirty-one was almost two Centuries during the Imperial era."

"One-hundred-and-thirty-one," Larry mumbled to himself. "That's a really big number. It's also a special number."

Jeff touched icons on his phone to ensure he wasn't making a mathematical mistake. He'd suffered enough humiliation last night then today. "Yes, it's a prime number."

Larry said as he touched icons on his own phone. "It's not just a prime number." He continued to touch more icons on his phone. "It's actually a circular prime number."

"What in the Hell is a 'circular prime number," Jeff retorted indignantly. He put his phone back into his pocket so that he could load another armload of firewood into a wheelbarrow as he waited for an answer. Aside from almost being finished cutting and splitting the logs that they'd skidded up to the barn that afternoon, they had three wheelbarrow loads of finely split firewood and kindling ready to take up to the house.

As if to emphasize the need for firewood, the heavy timbers of the barn creaked as yet another, near hurricane force, gust of wind stressed the structure. Jeff took comfort in the knowledge that the barn had been built back in the eighteen-hundreds. The structure had withstood the elements for well over a century. The archaic, mortise and tenon joinery held. Jeff wasn't certain that modern framing methods using bolts, even with timber washers, wouldn't have failed.

"A 'circular prime number' is a member of a group of prime numbers that can be generated by cyclically permuting their digits. One, three, eleven, thirteen, thirty-one, and three-hundred-and-eleven are the circular prime numbers related to one-hundred-and-thirty-one." Larry explained patiently.

Jeff was an engineer by vocation as well as education. He wasn't stupid. However; he'd never gotten into mathematical games like his younger brother had. While Jeff had also downloaded an emulator application for a Hewlett-Packard G-forty-eight calculator onto his smartphone, he had programed it to perform useful calculations, not parlor tricks.

Larry on the other hand had programmed his calculator emulator with many programs and subroutines to perform myriads of esoteric calculations. Along with needing some of these programs for his vocation as an astrophysicist, he utilized them for his avocation. Aside from David Weber, he was one of the few authors of hard science fiction who'd survived the purge of the sad puppies by the politically correct, woke establishment. One couldn't find many books authored by Larry Niven at the few remaining bookstores much less Jerry Pournelle or John Ringo. Even Heinlein and Clark had been relegated to greatly reduced shelf space. The torching of Uncle Hugo's bookstore by BLM ANTIFA rioters had made many out of print books unattainable. Any bookstores that still stocked novels that had been written by John Norman had been systematically targeted by rabid feminist arsonists. An aspiring author couldn't break into publishing science fiction these days unless their main character was a queer of some permutation or another.

Jeff responded despondently, "the real issue is that one-hundred-and-thirty-one is an awfully high body count for a woman to have racked up before she decided to become a born again virgin so soon after graduating from college. That's just the men that she'd actually had sex with. Jezebel doesn't believe that blow jobs should count. Ditto for the women that she'd fooled around with. It's all the more embarrassing that she finally confessed during a drunken Truth or Dare game with our cousins, friends and in-laws.

Larry asked, "did Jezebel ever suggest that she was a virgin when you started courting her? Did you presume that she was a virgin because of her upbringing in a devoutly religious community?"

'No. Of course not. She was very up front about her determination to become a born again virgin," Jeff acknowledged. "The fact that she was so adept at performing fellatio on me during our courtship as well as coaching me on how to perform cunniliguis on her tipped me off that she'd been around the block more than a few times. I wasn't dissuaded by the fact that she was an experienced woman. However; I wish that she'd warned me that she'd been such a slut before I proposed to her much less married her. Now we even have a baby together. At least the baby is allegedly mine."

"That's not really fair," Larry argued. "Has Jezebel ever given you any reason to question her marital fidelity? Have you had DNA tests done that might justify doubts about paternity? Of course you live in a state with not only no fault divorce laws but presumptive paternity on the books. Even if you could prove beyond any reasonable doubt that you're not Justine's biological father, you'd get reamed for child support."

"How many women had you had sex with before you started dating my daughter," Gabriel interjected with amazing calm. However; the force with which the grandfather then swung his splitting maul to split yet another block of wood suggested that his anger was about to boil over. The fact that the older man's right arm was in a cast and that he had swung the eight pound tool on a three foot long handle with only one, massively muscled arm made the sudden sundering of the two foot diameter block of fir all the more intimidating. Jeff knew that the fracture toughness of wood was not inconsequential. He could quietly calculate the amount of energy that had been required to split the block. The prospect of his father-in-law becoming violent was daunting.

"Six," Jeff said proudly. "I might not have been a saint, but I wasn't promiscuous. I had developed relationships, or at least I thought that I had developed relationships, with all of the girls that I had ever had sex with before I had sex with them."

"How many times did you have sex with each of those girls before your relationship broke up?" Gabriel continued to question him. "Were you the one who broke up with them or did they break up with you?"

"I never had sex that many times with any of those other girls. Most were just a few times. Maybe a dozen times each at most with two girls. They were always the ones who broke up with me," Jeff asserted piously. To give himself an excuse to avoid the older man's eyes, he stood up a row of split halves in a nice, even row.

"So in other words, you'd had sex about a total of seventy-two times, at most, before you started courting my daughter? You then condemn her for having had sex with one-hundred-and-thirty-one men prior to her courting you?" The old man then proceeded to walk down the line of wood blocks, swinging the splitting maul, with only one arm, in a metronome rhythm, splitting each half into quarters with each swing of the maul.

"It's more than just how many men that Jezebel had been with prior to our courtship that upsets me. The thought of how many times she must have had sex with those men that freaks me out," Jeff explained.

Larry commented unhelpfully. "If you really think about it, Jezebel might have been able to rack up that body count by having sex only once every couple of weeks during the four years she was in college. Then again, if she was as eager to have sex as she confessed, then she might have been having sex a few times a day.". Larry pulled out his smartphone to touch more icons. "Assuming that your wife was having sex every day while she was in college, and three times a day, that works out to four-thousand-three-hundred-and-eighty times she had sex."

"You forgot about leap year," Gabriel interjected. "That works out to four-thousand-three-hundred-and-eighty-three times my daughter had had sex before you started courting her. She wasn't a virgin when she left home to attend college either. Of course your mother-in-law and I beat that total during the first four years we were married. That's even with post partum abstinence."

"It gets even more interesting if you do more detailed calculations," Larry offered as he touched more icons on his phone. "Assuming that the guys had reasonable stamina, that might have been about a thousand hours of fucking. Assuming a reciprocation rate of one Hertz and a stroke length of six inches, that works out to almost four million fucking feet of fucking! Of course the really interesting calculations relate to the volume of semen involved. Jezebel said that she never used condoms because of her religious beliefs. She complained that she'd dumped many guys because they were unwilling or unable to abstain or restrain themselves when it was risky. Assuming an average ejaculation volume of ten cubic centimeters, that works out to about forty-three liters of semen that your wife has had pumped into her!"

Jeff made no reply. He was sullenly silent.

Gabriel had paused to rest from his exertions. The condensation of his breath was visible, attesting to the cold. He then said, "all of those girls broke up with you because you were a disappointment. You must have been inadequate." Jeff winced as the butt of the handle of the splitting maul suddenly swung up between his legs to not to gently smack his scrotum through his denim pants.

"I'm no porn star," Jeff conceded as he backed away while cradling his wounded genitals. "However; I have nothing to be ashamed of." He turned away to load another armload of firewood into the wheelbarrow. It was fortunate because the handle of the splitting maul poked him in the buttocks rather than his groin.

"Maybe that was your problem? You were to focused on your penis and hence your own pleasure to pleasure those other girls." Gabriel continued, "stick out your tongue."

For some reason, Jeff complied. The handle of the splitting maul didn't punish him again. "Can you touch your nose with your tongue?" Jeff quietly demonstrated that his tongue measured up to the older man's standards. "I bet that at least one of those six girls that you'd had sex with wouldn't have been so eager to break up with you if you'd been as eager to use your tongue to pleasure those girls as you were to use your pecker to pleasure yourself."

With the wheelbarrows loaded and the logs that they'd skidded into the alleyway sawn and split, Gabriel led Jeff and Larry to the ladder that lead to the hay loft. The hay was baled rather than loose, and piled over twenty feet high. The archaic structure withstood the load. It was impressive engineering for a bunch of ignorant, religious fanatics.

Larry and Jeff followed the old man's instructions as they fed his cows. The hay was dropped down openings in the floor to land in the manger that ran along the length of the barn. A hundred cows were lined up along either side of the manger, waiting to eat. A brisk stroll down the length of the trough with a pitchfork was all that was needed to serve a late night supper to the two-hundred, hungry Holsteins. All told, it took barely a dozen minutes to feed them. Of course even with milking machines, milking the ornery, uppity bovines had required hours of hard labor. Thank God these cows didn't have guns!

Finished with the chores, the three men grabbed the wheelbarrows. Gabriel used a cleverly rigged rope to compensate for his broken arm. The simple act of flipping a switch to turn off the lights reminded Jeff of how anachronistic his in-laws really were. While they eschewed trucks, tractors, telephones and the public power grid, they had no qualms about using solar panels with battery backup. Compressed air might be God's electricity, but you couldn't light your home or your barn with it. Having to rely on their English neighbors for kerosene, gasoline and diesel violated their imperative to be self reliant.

The snowstorm had abated for the moment. However; the temperature had plunged below zero Fahrenheit. The sky was clear to reveal the stars. It would soon get even colder.

Jeff watched quietly as Gabriel paused to admire God's creation. The view of the heavens was even more spectacular than it had been the night before. Thanks to the increasingly overloaded power grid combined with storm damage, the nearby English town was dark again. The English would remain in the cold and the dark for days if not weeks. Few were prepared to survive on their own.

The three men carried slings loaded with firewood into the house. Although the lights had been turned off to conserve battery power, the fire burning in the fireplace provided adequate light. When combined with the fire that was burning in the woodstove in the kitchen, the modest house was warm and cozy.

Jeff and Larry as well as Gabriel took down chairs that were hanging on the wall when not in use to sit across from the womenfolk. Jezebel was sitting next to Ruth. Mother and daughter both had the bodices of their dresses unhooked, not unbuttoned, to reveal their bare breasts. Each had an infant contentedly nursing at a breast. Neither made an effort to conceal themselves from the men. Jeff noticed that their two, teenaged sons were absent. He suspected that they were off courting. They'd spend the night of course, tarrying with their girlfriends. They wouldn't be home until mid morning or even noon.

Sara, Jezebel's younger sister, brought bowls of hearty stew to the men. Their main meal had been served hours earlier. Jeff noticed how Sara moved her chair so she could sit close to Larry. The two had met a year and a half earlier at Jeff and Jezebel's wedding. They'd seemed to be cordial to each other but to the best of his knowledge, they hadn't seen each other since. Their in-laws didn't use phones or email. Perhaps they'd been communicating by snail mail. This day had been a reunion of sorts. Now Sara was leaning against Larry with her head resting on his shoulder as he ate. The affection was undeniable.

Ruth repositioned her baby so that she could nurse from her left breast rather than her right. Just like her eldest daughter's breasts, her breasts were large but they sagged when they were depleted. There was obviously not Silicone valley.

The sight reminded Jeff that his mother-in-law remained a beautiful woman even though she was a forty-something year old grandmother. That observation had encouraged him to propose to Jezebel soon after she had informed her family that she was pregnant. Ruth was unconcerned about nursing her baby as Larry as well as Jeff were watching. Gabriel was also sanguine about his wife revealing herself to other men. This was as God had intended. Rather than nervously avert her gaze from the men, Ruth looked Jeff in the eye as she asked, "did your brother and my husband talk some sense into you?"

"Maybe. I'm still surprised that you and your husband don't seem to understand my point of view. I expect that given your religious beliefs, you'd be even more judgmental about Jezebel's promiscuity than I am. After all, you were both virgins when you married."

Gabriel laughed. "You English are so foolish. You're far to presumptive. You don't understand our religious beliefs. You also refuse to understand that we to are human. There is a reason why we have the tradition of rumspringa. Some ordnungs are more lenient than others about that tradition. I wasn't a virgin when I married Ruth. She wasn't a virgin bride."

Jeff asked, "how many women had you had sex with before you were married?"

"Seven," Gabriel replied without hesitation.

"How many men do you think Ruth had had sex with before you were married? I use word 'think' because a man can't really know," Jeff explained.

"That I know of? Ruth had been with two times seven men before we were married. There might have been more that she didn't tell me about. I wasn't the only man who was courting her when we became engaged either," Gabriel explained.

Ruth interjected, "I socialized with the English quite a bit during my rumspringa. You can add a half dozen more men to my body count." That was twenty!

Jeff asked, "if Ruth was courting other men, why did you marry her?"

"Simple. She got pregnant," Gabriel admitted.

Astonished by the response, Jeff asked "if you knew that Ruth was not only dating other men but having sex with them, how could you be certain that she was pregnant with your baby rather than the other man's? Did you presume that she was using birth control with them?"

"No! Of course I wasn't that foolish. Our Ordnung forbids the use of English contraceptives. If a woman doesn't want to have a baby, she either abstains when she suspects that her womb is fertile or asks the man to restrain himself. Ruth wasn't abstaining when she got pregnant with our first child and she wasn't expecting either of her suitors to restrain themselves. Our Ordnung encourages men to not marry women unless they are confident that they are fertile."

Jeff asked, "so you married Ruth because one of you had to?"

"We didn't have to marry her. Both of us wanted to marry her. I was the lucky one because she chose to marry me," Gabriel explained.

Ruth's baby had fallen asleep at the boob during the conversation. She made no effort to conceal her breasts as she gently rocked her toddler into a deeper slumber. She finally spoke up. "I was very flattered to have two suitors that wanted to marry me. I married Gabriel because my parents felt that he would be the best husband for me. My other suitor was also courting another woman at the same time while Gabriel was courting only me. She was pregnant as well. It would not have been fair for me to marry the father of her child and thus deny her a husband."

Gabriel looked at the clock. It was almost nine o'clock!. An electronic weather station revealed that the temperature had dropped to minus five. Radiative heat transfer was at work. "It's getting late. It's going to be a long, cold night. There's no sense in squandering precious firewood so we can stay up late. Why don't we all, except for Larry and Sarah, go to bed. Those two seem to be interested in each other. Perhaps Sara will invite Larry to tarry with her rather than spend another cold, lonely night in the barn?"

No one, especially Sara and Larry, objected to the suggestion. Jeff took the baby from Jezebel and carried her upstairs to Sara's old room. The familiar ritual reminded him of their courtship. Many times she had invited him to tarry with her under her parents' roof.

Jeff had been surprised that Jezebel's mother hadn't sewn him up in a sack that first time that they'd tarried together. There had been no bundling board between them. There had been no lack of cuddling and petting under the covers as they shared her bed together. She'd surprised him by not being shy because her parents were in the next room. She'd satisfied his obvious lust with her mouth. He'd not resisted when she implored him to pleasure her. Her moans of ecstasy had been unrestrained.

Only when the sun was rising did Jezebel allow Jeff to enter her that very first time. Although he'd tarried a bit to long, Jezebel hadn't chastised him for spilling only the few, final spurts of his semen in her pubic hair rather than safely on her belly. She'd even allowed him a second chance to prove that he could restrain himself. In spite of the exquisite sensation of his semen lubricating their lovemaking, he'd resolutely withdrawn, almost in time.

Jeff felt his penis swelling with anticipation as they opened the door. Whatever her body count might be, Jezebel remained a desirable woman. More importantly, she was his wife. He'd vowed to keep her, in sickness and in health, and for better or for worse.