"I believe the time, your Most Sapient Highness, has not yet come for our session here to end."

The voice of the High Priest was serene, but any of his subordinates in the priesthood would have found the atmosphere in the arboretum anything but tranquil. Such a one would have felt the power arcing between the High Priest and his student as the latter tried to leave and the former tried to detain him.

Ultimately, the Crown Prince won, and replied to his teacher in a tone that tried to mimic the other's, but was in the end far too exultant at the victory to truly mock serenity, let alone convey it.

"Can it have slipped the mind of your Most Puissant Eminence that this is my palace? That here I am entitled to do as I please?"

"Hardly, just as I am sure that your Highness is aware that his Blessed Majesty, your Highness's father, has mandated that I instruct you in the ways of the talent that is your birthright for no fewer than three hours in each day."

"Your Eminence is famed for wisdom, therefore it cannot have escaped your Eminence that my father is a doddering, infuriating," here the Prince's voice rose in pitch until he sounded much younger than his twenty-eight years, "insane old fool!"

Far away from the palace of the Crown Prince, which was situated in the centre of an expansive forest estate on the outskirts of the new world capital of Megalopolis, his Most Blessed and Gracious Majesty, Ferdinand the First, known to his people (when they thought themselves unobserved) as Ferdinand the Polesitter, grinned at the naivete of his son. The poor boy thought that just because neither he nor the High Priest could read a mind further away than the next room, no-one could. To be fair to Prince Maximilian, Ferdinand had thought so himself, until he earned his popular epithet by making the discovery that it was all a question of altitude. From his seat on what the citizens down below called The Needle, he could reach into the minds of every human being within a hundred miles. If one of those should happen to be a telepath also, he could use his power to take over that telepath's mind and use him or her as a repeater, extending the range of his influence. One day, some forty years ago, he had arranged to have a web of his priests in moderately tall buildings spanning the entire globe, and had used them to broadcast his Message. He, and the priests who served him, were the messengers of the one true faith, the faith of which all religions were merely imperfect copies. Communicating in the language of pure thought meant that he could divert himself endlessly by watching the different ways people interpreted the Message. He was known variously as Messiah, Mahdi, avatar and occasionally The Reincarnated Lennon. The raw power necessary to send the Message, even inducing all his repeater-priests to re-transmit with all their strength, had left Ferdinand seriously weakened. He was impotent, prematurely grey and had started to walk with a cane at the age of thirty. Since he had not loved his long-time partner, the mother of his only son, enough to tell her about his talent, she had left him. He had loved her sufficiently, however, to allow her to go with her mind intact. So it had remained, by and large. Ferdinand tried not to think too hard about the measures the priests must have taken to induce her to let their son undergo the necessary training to succeed his father, without telling her exactly of what that training would consist. In fact, Ferdinand tried not to think too hard about his ex at all.

It would not do, Ferdinand decided for the umpteenth time, to let his loving people know what their godhead spent all those hours on the Needle doing. Notbeing able to satisfy his needs directly, the Emperor, now fifty-seven and looking over ninety, was in the habit of making a select few of his six-plus billion subjects' wildest dreams come true.

He stretched his awareness out through the minds of everyone within range, took subtle control over the minds of a few priests, causing them at the most to stutter briefly before co-opting their subconscious minds for use as repeaters and leaving the rest to get on with whatever it had been engaged with. He had a small inward chuckle, as he always did, over the sheer volume of sexual thought that he could hear from the inhabitants of Megalopolis and its environs. Teenagers had the funniest minds to listen in on. The sheer volume of their fantasies made it almost impossible for a telepath to ignore them when they were in range; it offered a handy barometer by which they could measure the entertainment value offered by their sermons. Opening his mind to all such thoughts within the extended range offered by the Needle and the depth of his talent offered Ferdinand an embarrassment of riches from which to choose. Usually he preferred fantasies that had a bit of substance to them, if only because it was fun to watch an ambitious teenager enter upon a daydream because he was horny, choose one that was too wordy, and end up skipping most of the exposition. Winnowing through the mass of hormonal fever available was just beginning to prove an impossible task when a new voice made itself audible above the hubbub.

"Hey, sweets. I missed you."

"Not like I missed you, cutie-pie. I'm sorry I had to step out, there."

The voices were coming from the same mind. The first one, the female, was almost the archetype of the cheesecake fantasy bombshell, but with nuances that spoke of intellect, and, which is more, wisdom. The second voice was the regular internal monologue of the hapless individual that had come under Ferdinand's mental inspection. Intrigued, he rooted around in the young man's psyche: he was nineteen, was named Monty Edwards and had given up on finding love. Or rather, he had given up on finding another human being to love. Instead he had constructed an ideal mate using his unusually powerful imagination: she was busty, blonde and had a butt that just wouldn't quit, but more importantly she had wisdom beyond her years (her birthdate, celebrated religiously by Monty, was March the 3rd, 2012, making her a year younger than him), and a fundamental kindness of spirit which had been lovingly formed under the influence of an equally imaginary doting grandfather.

Ferdinand was fascinated; he had been searching for something new for some time, and this was original in his experience. What was most piquant about the situation was that Monty couldn't quite picture his mate's face. Her smooth, vanilla ice-cream thighs, her hourglass curves and generous bosom; her waist-length hair the colour of sunlight shining through clear honey, even her dainty feet were all readily visible in his mind's eye, but her face eluded him. He knew facts about it: that her eyes were a little close-set and a bright blue the colour of flax flowers, that her nose had a habit of twitching, and that overall her countenance reminded him of an unbearably cute bunnyrabbit were known; he had told her so on more than one occasion. But the immediate impression her face was apt to make on the eye, beyond its surpassing cuteness, was a mystery.

For the moment, Ferdinand remained an undetected and passive observer, listening to the imagined conversation between the two love-birds.

"I think I may have to put my arms around you, squeezy hubby."

"Oh, good. That way you won't notice that I have to put my arms around you and squeeze you until you've only just got enough room to breathe."

"Suits me, big teddy bear."

"I love you, Bunny."

"I love you too."

Ugh, he hasn't actually named her 'Bunny', has he? Ferdinand thought to himself, before digging about to find the answer: in fact she was named Antonia, but the saccharine nicknames and baby-talk were a part of their relationship that they both recognised as a necessary and comforting reminder of the blissful status quo within their marriage.

Ferdinand decided to get proactive. He put Monty into a mild comatose state and cast around the immediate neighbourhood for someone close enough.

He found her, sitting alone in front of the TV, enjoying an hour's brainless relaxation whilst contemplating what to do with the rest of the evening. It was only half past nine.

Her name was Laura Sachsen. Her hair was the wrong colour, but that wouldn't matter. She had the boobs and the body, and she lived in the same apartment building as Monty. Ferdinand had Monty get up and sleepwalk to the front door when she got there. He let her in, and she followed him to his bedroom. As soon as the door had shut behind them Ferdinand put the finishing touches on their temporary mental re-programming, and opened their eyes. They kissed with passion, Monty believing he was playing tongue-hockey with his love, and Laura's submerged self not thinking very much of anything.

"Mmmm," Monty murmured in pleasure, "let's see these boobs."

He and Bunny undressed each other slowly, sensually, stopping to drop light kisses on each other's revealed bodies. When her breasts were free, he began nuzzling them overenergetically, like a blind rabbit, before latching on to her nipples and running his tongue around them.

He kept this up for a while before his lover disengaged him and said "Naughty teddy bear! You know you're not supposed to do this unless you've got something..." she placed a hand on his shaft, "for me." He was harder than he could ever remember being, and thinking that this fantasy was a doozy.

Bunny bent over in front of him and looked back with lust in her eyes. "Stick it to me, big teddy bear."

He didn't need to be told twice. Ferdinand felt the walls of her slick tunnel welcoming Monty in, felt the delicious heft of her big breasts in Monty's hands as he thrust into her. He took her lovingly, as Ferdinand sensed that he was trying to get an idea of her wants, he began feeding him a stream of feedback that Monty assumed was coming from her pussy. He worked with it, and they both moaned with the heightened pleasure. He didn't, couldn't last long under those conditions, and shot his load into her as he felt her own orgasm. They lay down, relaxed in one another's arms, and Antonia purred softly as he fell asleep.

When he woke, he was alone, but he thought he heard a voice, the tail end of a dream he couldn't remember. He was dimly aware that the voice was the Emperor's, but he couldn't have reacted even if he'd known how.

"Thanks, kid," the voice said, "that was good stuff. You've made an old man very happy. Here's a little something by way of thanks." The voice faded away like the grin of the Cheshire cat, and Monty found that he could see the face of his love clearly in his mind's eye for the first time in his life.