Neom 5.0

Hocine Beghag put the processor away in his armored briefcase. He couldn't help but contemplate the object once again to make sure it was really there. This processor would allow him to comfortably secure the future of his entire family.

Beghag had to deliver his client at 9 o'clock that morning. The river shuttle ride from his hotel on the Egyptian border to the Saudi city of Neom, where his client's company, Al Hamd-Technologies, was located, would take twenty minutes. Hocine was in a hurry to deliver what he owed his clients.

He came out of his room. His three bodyguards were waiting for him at the door. They were all members of the security services of the former Algerian president, the one who had been lynched in Bejaia. In the anarchy that now reigned in the Maghreb, these guys were now selling their services privately. They were the ones who had organized and secured the exit of Hocine and his family from Algeria. They all looked like bullies, he thought, but they were professional, focused, impenetrable. They were perfect.

Beghag and his bodyguards descended into the lobby of Taba's magnificent Talaat Moustafa Resort. People turned around when they saw Hocine, surrounded by his bodyguards. They were trying to figure out who he was. The group moved quickly through the lobby.

Hocine thought that this should have been an important day for his company, RODNO3. And yet...

NUMIDIAN BLOODBATH

It had taken decades of effort for the Algerian company to make a modest place for itself in the telephone business. At the beginning, at the time of the founder of the company, his great-grandfather, it was content to assemble parts from China to copy Korean models. Then RODNO3 gradually developed its own technologies. It was not revolutionary, but, in the context of corruption and immobility of the country, it was already meritorious.

Algeria, which had been left to the crooks of the FLN, the party of independence, for too long, was now in chaos. The Islamic revolution had started in Algeria and spilled over to its neighbors. An Islamic state was being set up in the Maghreb, even in the Sahel, at this very moment. For the moment, gangs of looters were smashing things up, adding to the chaos of the millions of Sahelian migrants who were making their way north. There were still a few places, in Algiers and Constantine, that were somewhat resistant to disorder. But the rest of the region was left to loot. The police and army had fled police stations and barracks to go home. Some armed personnel had joined the service of large landowners or important people. Each one tried to control a territory, a neighborhood, a city. Armed men prevented looters from attacking the villas, before attacking them themselves.

Centuries of misery and corruption had led to the country ending up in the hands of Muslim fanatics. They were the only ones capable of gathering the masses. Now the country was entering an unprecedented period, with no visibility other than that of a caliphate, an Islamic state. We knew what was going to happen, heads would roll. Hocine's company was closed, its premises had been ransacked, the machines smashed, exploded with iron bars and sledgehammers. All the employees had been sent home after the death of a security guard.

Hocine Beghag was horrified to see people he didn't even know throwing stones at him, running after him to lynch him. He had closed his company, had not promised anything to his employees. He knew the business would not reopen. Many women worked at RODNO3, technicians, engineers. This did not please the mullahs and all their cohorts of morons.

It was one woman, in particular, who had made the fortune - and indirectly caused the loss - of RODNO3. The chief engineer Marika Olganov, a Bulgarian, had succeeded in developing a processor that did not consume energy. The RODNO3 processors no longer used batteries, no batteries, no wires to connect to a power source. And they could run continuously, for years.

It was a revolution in the world, an

worthy of Tesla's invention with its gasoline-free engine. Several companies around the world, hundreds of them, had worked on the problem in vain. Only RODNO3 had succeeded, thanks to Marika.

Unfortunately, Marika had to leave the country with her family in a hurry. She had been threatened with death, her Algerian apartment had been ransacked. Her country, Bulgaria, had taken her in under the condition that she would be discreet. The Bulgarians had, no doubt, the intention to recover the skills of their national. It was understandable, but it would take them years. Marika had had the theoretical intuition, but it was well the technicians of the laboratory of RODNO3, under the orders of Hocine Beghag, who had concretized the project, after many tests and trial and error. Hocine Beghag, also an engineer, had taken part in all the stages of the project. He was the only one able to understand all the stages of design and manufacture of this processor. And he intended to sell his skills at a high price.

The Islamists had persuaded the street that companies like RODNO3 were the work of the devil, that the promiscuity between men and women was scandalous. All the fantasies of the street were given free rein. There were even rumors that Jews were taking over the management. Hocine and his father had always talked with everyone, with the Israelites as with everyone else. But there was no domination by Israelites. The RODNO3 company was a family business.

Under the pressure of the demonstrators who were gathering in front of his door, the company had to close. Hocine and his family had to go into hiding. In general, intellectuals left the country in a hurry. They all knew that the time of the Islamic purge would come soon. Blood was already flowing, but it was nothing compared to what was to come.

Hocine Beghag could not believe his eyes. The discovery of his company was, better than an opportunity for the country, a miracle. Hocine would even have been ready to give the patent to his country. But the old government did not want it. All these parasites would have preferred to get their hands on the invention and share the profits. They had been swept away by the bearded ones, many had ended up with their heads cut off, tied to a pike. A century of frustration and anger had led to a bloodbath. And the bloodlust of the Numidian people was not quenched. The Salafist mullahs were designing targets, intellectuals, feminists, journalists, artists, singers. Now it was the turn of technology. Mosque preachers considered all this technology evil. The fanatical masses were looking for the scientists, ready to break everything. It was necessary to destroy these inaccessible laboratories, to destroy and plunder that very thing which could get them out of misery...

Hocine had tried to understand, to find a solution. Then he gave up. It was not in his power to educate people or to introduce a little reason into a system of thought that had been closed for over a thousand years. These people were morons. If it made them happy to go back to the 7th century... But there was no way Hocine was going to lose his life, and that of his family, for these morons. He had packed his bags, sent his family to Bulgaria, to Marika's house, and started making contacts.

Several multinationals had made offers to buy the patent from him. Al-Hamd Technologies, the Saudi giant, had made the most interesting offer, an offer that could not be refused. Not only was the sum offered gigantic, but Hocine was offered a percentage of the sales, a fabulous rent, for several decades. Al-Hamd Tech was one of the world's leading players in its field, and it was located in the heart of one of the most attractive centers of the technological world: Neom.

NEOM, THE HOPE

Neom was a vision of a hyper-technological world where the most creative people joined with the most advanced engineers to create the world of tomorrow. In Neom, all the superlatives were turned into projects. Like Dubai for business, entrepreneurs and engineers from all over the world came to Neom to realize a dream.

Hocine went out of the hotel, the heat was already important outside, but the misters made the atmosphere pleasant, in the middle of the rosebushes which framed the porch of the hotel. The establishment was on the edge of the Gulf of Aqaba, ideally located opposite Neom.

The entrepreneur still admired the panoramic view of the Saudi city whose towers shone under the sun. He had already visited the Saudi city several times. Each time, he was surprised and amazed. The skyscrapers of Neom were not only beautiful, but they were full of technological treasures. Everything was revolutionized almost every week. This city was unique, dizzying. Above all, Hocine appreciated the international atmosphere of the city. We were outside the kingdom, its mosques, its veiled women, its bearded men with flip-flops... The kingdom's leaders, often educated people who had attended universities around the world, were trying to bring the country out of its obscurantism.

Unfortunately, beyond the restraints of religious circles, several princes sought to seize power by stirring up street resentment. No revolution was made by the people. The people were ready to bite the hand of the king, the very hand that allowed them to live by doing little or nothing, even if, for the past few decades, the strings of the Saudi royal purse were no longer so deserted. Behind the religion, there was jealousy, one of the oldest feelings known to man.

In Neom, people came from all over the world, often passionate about their research or their business projects, and they found an enchanting setting, free from all political contingencies. In Neom, as in all these incubators of excellence that had sprung up on every continent, we were outside the world. This was a danger because the city was part of a country it did not know, in a potentially explosive region. But private security companies and the Saudi military were trying to keep a lid on it, not letting the Saudi street into Neom.

Hocine had given up on settling in Neom. He was tired of living under the threat of illiterates and fascists with uncontrolled hair. There was a choice, technological cities like Neom were everywhere now, on every continent. There was even a project for an orbital station that was taking shape.

The subject was topical, not only for Hocine, but for several collaborators and their families who were ready to follow him. This trip was going to allow to get the necessary funds to be able to decide serenely and to organize comfortably the installation of Hocine and his friends in a more "oxygenated" part of the world. This would probably be Asia, or South America.

Hocine and his bodyguards walked down a few steps to the dock, where a ship was sailing across the Gulf. They took their seats on board. Hocine looked at the approaching city all along the journey. To build such an architectural and technological project, such an innovation in this part of the world, had been very audacious, very visionary. Or maybe it had been a chimera born in the brains of billionaires too cut off from the realities of their kingdom.

In truth, Neom had acted like a magnet on a dying Middle East. Half the population of Egypt and Jordan had flocked to the shores of the Gulf of Aqaba or the Jordanian border to scrape together a few crumbs from the countless opportunities for business, tourism, and innovation that Neom's proximity offered.

Even on the Egyptian side, everything was modern on the shore. The local economy was thriving, and commerce was flourishing, while the rest of the country was in the grip of civil war. The army and the services were extremely active in preventing terrorists from killing their only golden goose.

At a deeper level, Neom had transformed the region. The insolent wealth of the Gulf Arabs had been observed for decades before, with a mixture of pride and envy. This opulence was the opulence of the oil that had flowed freely over these small and large kingdoms. With notable exceptions, few had benefited outside these privileged countries. Allah had been unjust, he had given Mecca and the oil to Saudi Arabia. For the others, there had been only the desert.

But the oil wealth had vanished. Neom had become much more than a new toy for princes, it was a vision, the idea of a possible future. For the first time in centuries, a great Arab nation was projecting itself into the future. This success had been the personal gamble of a young prince impatient to see his country emerge from the Middle Ages and the strategy of the globalist party to force open a rooted world that resisted it. It was a dangerous gamble. Many saw it as the work of the devil, and Neom as the capital of the Antichrist.

Yet no other territory, except Dubai, offered so much opportunity for business, freedom and intelligence as Neom. In this hyper-connected territory was concentrated all the great brains of the planet from all over the world. Researchers and businessmen were jostling to catch even a glimpse of the mirage of Neom. In the city, one always lived one step ahead.

The Saudi population remained at a distance, strangely silent. Hocine, strengthened by the experience he had just lived in Algeria, deduced that it would turn out badly. He did not want to be there when the Bedouin fury was going to explode

THE ROW

The Africans, on the other hand, had found hope in Neom. Suddenly, millions of young blacks had rushed in, creating a humanitarian emergency and a political danger. These hordes marched across the desert to take over this paradise on earth. They had run into walls, into the military, always ready to raise the guns.

This migration was, perhaps, a trap of the "friends" of Saudi Arabia. This devastating invasion could have been the work of another great kingdom, with equally messianic ideas: Israel. Israel's expansion, its annexation of territories in neighboring countries had provoked endless conflicts. 

Since the 1904 declarations of the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, repeated by Rabbi Fischmann, a member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, in an official declaration before the UN Special Committee on July 9, 1947, the Jewish State's ambition was to extend from "the stream of Egypt to the Euphrates". According to the plan clearly outlined by the journalist Oded Yinon in the newspaper Kivunim, the newspaper of the Information Department of the World Zionist Organization, the Zionist strategy in the Middle East consisted of methodically destabilizing all the Arab countries, getting them to succumb to internal confrontations and to be fragmented according to the ethnic or religious affiliations of their inhabitants. Thus, Israel could rule this part of the world without sharing.

Despite the Jewish origin of the Al Sauds, whose ancestor was from Basra, Iraq; despite the fact that they joined forces with Wahaab, a Jew of the Dönmeh sect, to eradicate all religious opposition in the territory they had appropriated, the Saudi kingdom was next on the list. The end of the Saudi kingdom was planned.

The king, knowing all this, had intervened. He spoke of the traditional hospitality of the desert people. He had opened the borders to the newcomers, and brought them to the valley surrounded by mountains, at the foot of Neom. Then, at the first overflow, he opened fire. The official figure was not known, but probably a million young people had been decimated. When the dead were evacuated, calm was restored among the survivors. Having restored order, the Saudi government took control of the situation. But the task was immense, far beyond the kingdom's capacity. With the help of several countries, Saudi Arabia had organized aid and assistance to this tide of idle youth. Numerous diplomatic missions had been sent to the migrants' countries of origin to educate and explain the rules. The king had finely avoided the worst, but the situation remained perilous. In fact, the worst was the most certain.

Arab-African youth continued to flock, as they lived in the age of social networks, fully aware of Neom's promises. The girls were pushed aside from the mirage of civilization that promised knowledge and freedom. There remained only frustrated young men, potential war-makers.

They had been put in dormitories under tents over hundreds of square kilometers, installing prefabs here and there to house barracks and administrative buildings. There, in the desert, the Arab-African youth was drying out in the shadow of the towers of Neom, which they could never visit.

Under the guard of the Saudi army, foreign private security companies had been hired to maintain a ruthless surveillance. Regularly, young people disappeared, those who were the most dangerous or the main activists. The atmosphere in this huge desert camp was extremely tense. It was a time bomb. Unless the whole valley was destroyed, there would never be any respite for the Saudi authorities.

The young people who spent some time there found it very difficult to return to their homeland or even to leave for other parts of the continent. Everywhere, these young people would find nothing but misery, famine and resource wars. There was no place for these children. The experience of Neom was convenient for those who clung to power, such as the generals of Hocine's homeland. They encouraged young people to go and try their luck. They knew that many would perish in the Sahel, in the jails of the countries they crossed. When these young people returned, they were the target of the security forces who destroyed any subversion.

It was therefore a matter of great concern that Neom should not give hope to the Arab-Muslim world. Jabal al-Lawz, the site where the city was built, had, the clerics said, been the place where the golden calf had been worshipped. So Neom was the new golden calf, a fucking robotic golden calf.

Initially, Neom was a refuge for people exhausted by bullshit, a world for those who could no longer tolerate living in the ignorance and stupidity of the countless mobsters, bearded or not, who terrified the Middle East, Africa and the entire continent in general. Unfortunately, the Muslim mob had come to drown the dissidents, the free spirits. Young and uneducated individuals drowned all hope.

In Arabia, in the mosques, Neom was seen as a wart, a new Sodom imposed by the West and the Jews in the heart of Islam. Anger was rumbling, but the Saudis were invaded by an immigrant wave a thousand times more numerous than they were. They were no longer masters of their destiny.

A POUDRIERE

If, in the early days, many young Muslims had chosen the future, more were too dumb to discern. The numerous scholarships, initially offered by the Saudi kingdom and humanitarian organizations to students from the Muslim world, had initially acted as purifying rivers. But these rivers were soon drowned by oceans of ignorance. Nepotisms, mafias and Islam took over. The Arab street cried impiety or indecency. The Third World did not understand that if it wanted to give its children a chance, it had to get rid of the parasites that kept themselves in power through fear, shame or barbaric traditions. The Muslim mob always ended up choosing violence and destruction.

Little by little, a huge ghetto was built in the desert, at a distance from Neom. This system mobilized hundreds of thousands of transportation, road and engineering professionals, but the crowds were coming in greater numbers every day. Thousands of association personnel were unable to educate, train or refine this impatient stream of the world's damned. The task was abysmal. Young people came, destitute, uncivilized, with no other education than fatwas. Neom and its suburbs were one of the largest concentrations of people in the world. The result had become a nightmare, for in these countless, too quickly aged barracks, hateful activists were constantly infiltrating, determined to destroy this "western enterprise". There had been many clashes, plots, attacks. Police raids and military operations were a daily occurrence in these suburbs. The intelligence services were very active there. Leaders were suppressed in an attempt to dry up the flow of would-be Islamic martyrs.

The enormous expenses of running the city had emptied the kingdom's treasury, which was now completely bankrupt. It was hoped that the profits generated by the discoveries made almost daily in the city's laboratories and universities would compensate for this madness. It was a gamble we were losing.

Yet knowledge, a limitless energy, was a far more promising resource than the stinking oil that had brought the kingdom out of the sterile silence of the desert. The whole of Arabia hoped, despite its handicaps, to become a pivot of the world.

Hocine always saw the young people of his country being consumed in the Arab desert, as he observed them losing hope in an illusory survival in Algeria, victims of all the profiteers embedded in the corridors of the palaces. For decades, the anger had been rumbling every day, until the explosion and collapse of the FLN system, which was immediately replaced by the Salafists, who had infiltrated the country. 

Today, Hocine lived in a country where people were dying of hunger. The economy had been at a standstill for too long, hope no longer existed. The genius of his race had been lost from the moment the doors of Islam had closed on the Berber people. 

The investments in education and infrastructures would not come anymore. Hocine thought about his family's business, about all those efforts. The researchers had lost their jobs, the state-of-the-art laboratories had been destroyed by the mob. The wheel would no longer turn for Numidia.

DIE ?

Hocine was lost in his reveries on the ferry deck and in the contemplation of Neom. He came out of his dream as he approached the dock on the Saudi shore. He and his guards got into a long limousine that was waiting for them just past customs, at the VIP exit. The sign of Al Hamd-Technologies was displayed in discreet golden letters on the doors of the vehicle.

The car was without a driver, almost nobody was driving in Neom anymore. Hocine and his escort were, nevertheless, greeted by a synthetic voice that welcomed them: "Hello, gentlemen. We hope you had a good trip. Al Hamd-Technologies welcomes you to Neom. We will be pleased to welcome you to our headquarters in about ten minutes."

Hocine was surprised that he was not greeted by a human, but Neom had stripped itself of all those ancient rules. Machines took care of the physical tasks, time was precious. What was the point of wasting time mobilizing an employee for a drive?

Hocine Beghag did not have time to pursue his conscious thought. He soon slumped to the side, like everyone else inside the car.

"Fuck, a trap, I should have chosen the Australian offer..." He had time to say to himself before sinking into an anguished dream.

A powerful gas had asphyxiated them all, gently, leaving them no chance to react. The limousine quietly drove away from the landing dock, in the indifference of a deserted street under the sun.

A CHINESE MAN LOST IN ARABIA

Hocine and his men were not found. The briefcase containing the processor had disappeared. There was no trace of it. No one had seen anything, except Liang.

He was there, waiting on the ship's dock for his contact to pick up the goods. He had just arrived the day before from a cargo ship that had stopped at the port of Yanbu. From there he had found a dhow that sailed up the Red Sea to the gates of Neom. Liang was tired, he was hungry. He was burning on the dock under the sun, not being allowed to enter Neom to take shelter. So he had to wait on this transit platform. Cao, his boss, had told him to stand there, as soon as he had sent the signal for his arrival at the gates of Neom. The customer would come, there was no telling when. All he had to do was wait.

So Liang had collapsed there, at the edge of the platform, crushed by the sun. He didn't like the sun, much less the sun in this desert. He hoped that the customer would come soon, that he could take the first boat back south, to Djibouti or Gwadar, the Pakistani port where he could take a truck back to mainland China, to "home.

So it was under these circumstances that he had vaguely watched these men get off the boat and into the limousine. He had been impressed by the bodyguards who were searching the space with their eyes, ready to draw. When they had passed him, he had buried his head in his shoulders, perfectly still, his breathing instinctively held. He was used to taking the blows, without knowing why. When the group had moved away, he had turned his head and then turned away, the better to forget the memory. He had barely registered the fact that the limousine had disappeared down the boulevard on the other side.

Liang hated coming to Africa. It was hot, and those black, Semitic populations were scary. He usually made endless trips between Chongqing, his base, and Eurabia, landing in Duisburg, Madrid, or London, the rail terminals of the Yuxinou, the train that connected Europe to Asia. Liang complained continuously about the boring journeys that broke his back, about the cold of those uncomfortable third-class cars where he slept at night because he had no money to pay for a hotel. But, at least, he stayed, during most of the journey, with other couriers, Chinese like him. They all knew each other, forming a brotherhood of professional couriers on these very long journeys. In the wagons reserved for them, the guys drank tea, smoked the same contraband cigarettes, yelled at each other and laughed among fellow travelers. Often born in the same countryside around Chongqing, one of the biggest cities in the world. There, among the Chinese, everything was fine, among the spitting, the insults, the Sichuan music, they felt at home, even in the train stations of Eurabia.

But there always came the dreaded moment when they had to leave these smoky cars, damp with sweat and human odors. There, the Hans entered barbaric worlds, exposed to foreign peoples with disgusting smells. Many of these Chinese did not speak a word of the languages of the countries they visited. They did not understand the road signs.

Recently, Cao, the boss, had decided to send Liang to the southern sea routes where Liang faced regions abandoned to chaos and pillage. Liang was sure that this was to punish him for something. But he didn't know what. Perhaps someone had spoken ill of Liang. 

If Liang's cargo was stolen, in this land of misery and riots, he could just go into exile until he died. There was never any excuse.

Cao's henchmen always made examples, filming the killing of errant couriers and broadcasting it widely on social networks. Liang had watched many of these executions. He was haunted by them for weeks, his head filled with the cries of pain, horror and agony of his comrades, tortured, begging for mercy from their executioners who mutilated them. This was Liang's ultimate fear. It was the same for the customs. If Liang was caught with forbidden goods, he alone was responsible. Fortunately, the customs officers turned a blind eye. And Cao and his associates knew how to make customs officials more accommodating. At a time when states had lost all power and the free flow of goods was the dogma, everyone knew that this traffic was the best guarantee that everyone would keep quiet.

Until now, Liang had always succeeded in his missions. Only once had he been robbed. He had gone into debt for years to buy back the goods, so that Cao would not notice. Few couriers made it through the years without a hitch. Liang was one of the oldest, with more than seven years of experience.

He had a cold all the time, like everyone else since the pandemics. The nights in the cold, his poor hygiene, had made things worse. Yet Liang was still pretty much functional. At thirty-five, he looked ten years older. But everyone had aged, no one expected to live a healthy, old life.

While he continually complained about his meager salary, Liang almost always had enough to buy his own contraband cigarettes and to buy a hooker now and then. He preferred to fuck Chinese women, Asian women at the most. The others he hadn't even tried, except for a Slav once.

In Chongqing, he had his bunk in one of the big dormitories of Hongya Dong. For years, he didn't even have to share it with anyone else. For guys like him, the guys from the Guizhou mountains, there wasn't much of a future outside the fields. But working in the fields meant misery, starvation in some years, and premature fatigue of the body.

That's why Liang and his fellow peddlers wanted to keep their jobs as international couriers. On the trains, on the roads, they were free. The work was not hard, they were mostly seated. To avoid going through customs detection systems, to avoid countless thefts in the few remaining postal services, to escort whores, they used "trusted guys" like Liang. He transported expensive medicines, drugs, precision parts, whores. Most of the time, he didn't know what was in the packages he was given. No matter what the goods were, he was told not to ask questions and to deliver the packages. Cao and his sponsors were respected and feared mafiosi. It was best not to upset them.

Finally, the customer arrived in the early afternoon, a haughty Arab woman. She only gave him a vague glance, he did not look at her, did not greet her. Often, customers preferred absolute anonymity. He took advantage of this to make them understand that he despised them. He registered the transfer on his cell phone, waited for confirmation, handed over the package and went back down to the platform. All that was left to do was to go back across the river to Egypt to find a boat that would come back down.

LIEUTENANT ABDULWAHED

Police Lieutenant Abdulwahed, from the 14th district, was entrusted with the investigation. He was very surprised. It was an unusual case for a young investigator. He was not even used to working in Neom itself, where cases were more often matters of white-collar fraud than crime.

Abdulwahed was, however, glad for the change. He was tired of working on sordid stories between immigrants straight out of prehistory. The reception camps were meant for humans, not for these bipeds with the IQ of goats. There was still a lot of violence in the world and these primates still thought they could solve everything with a punch or a knife.

None of these frustrated beings understood that in Neom everything was connected, filmed, archived. Most cases were solved by watching the surveillance films, listening to the audio tapes or checking the billions of data collected automatically by the Artificial Intelligence of Neom's central system. Every transaction, every word, every writing, everything was recorded in the city. For the righteous, this was already a problem, but for the rest of us... Since he had joined the Saudi police, Abdulwahed had spent his time chasing guys, fighting. He had no pity or sympathy for the packs that swarmed at Neom's feet. These people brought nothing but trouble. Abdulwahed didn't feel like a cop, but he didn't feel like a humanitarian either.

Abdulwahed was a Saudi from abroad. He had spent his entire youth among the educated children of international diplomacy. His parents were sophisticated people. They had hardly ever lived in Saudi Arabia. The father was a former diplomat. His mother belonged to the Saud family. After Abdulwahed's father retired, the young police officer's parents chose to stay in Canada where they had their friends. Their youngest daughter, Abdulwahed's sister, was finishing her studies in Canada, happy with her parents' choice. As a dual citizen, she would never live in Saudi Arabia, nor, probably, marry an Arab. She was dating Karl, a Canadian doctor.

Abdulwahed's entire family was surprised that he chose to join the Saudi police force. For him, it was an adventure to be had. Abdulwahed had been working in Saudi Arabia for almost two years. He was seriously beginning to regret his choice. Abroad, he felt like an Arab, even though he had no problems integrating into international circles. So he had wanted to return to his country, to understand who he was.

Now he knew that Saudi Arabia was not his country. He loved dance music. He composed music that was successful on social networks and in oriental nightclubs. But, his contacts with the dance floors of the world were frowned upon by his superiors. He never talked to most of his colleagues. Most of them were obtuse jerks.

He couldn't stand the fate of women in Saudi Arabia, the religious hypocrisy, the privileges reserved for the princes. Since he was a cop, it seemed to him that everything was rotten in Arabia.

He was, in fact, about to give up, to resign and go back to live a normal life at home, abroad, when this case was forced upon him. He had been tempted to tell them to piss off and leave, but that would have put his parents in an awkward position.

He realized that there was a problem. Abdulwahed was in trouble with his superiors every day. They thought Abdulwahed took too much initiative. They especially disapproved of his taste for Western music, his connections with Westerners outside the kingdom, and his absence from the mosques. Abdulwahed was not a good Muslim, and not even a good Saudi. He owed the moderation of his hierarchy only to his mother's membership in the tens of thousands of members of the royal family. Several of his uncles were high ranking government officials. One of his cousins was even a minister. The latter wanted Abdulwahed to introduce him to the beauties one met on the dance floor. Abdulwahed did not like this obsessed man. It was excluded that he introduced his friends to him. So he answered his invitations as little as possible.

LIANG, EYEWITNESS

Abdulwahed continued his investigation. He had spotted the Chinese man, Liang, on the surveillance videos of the landing pier. The guy was waiting on the dock. He was the only witness who had physically encountered Beghag and his men. He didn't seem to have planned to be there in the middle of this abduction. But it was worth checking.

The Saudi woman to whom he had given the package, a few hours later, was a woman from the Saudi high society. She had not seen anything, having arrived much later. She was nervous when the young police officer summoned her. But Abdulwahed soon realized that she was simply afraid that he would try to find out what was in the package Liang had given her. Abdulwahed didn't care. Rich Saudi women who used such delivery men usually ordered sex toys or ecstasy pills or some other substance to escape from the Saudi shackles. Abdulwahed let her go without asking her any more questions. She said, "Don't hesitate to call me back if you have any more questions, Lieutenant. "She gave him little smiles, which he returned. She was kind of cute, he would call her one of these nights.

The Chinese man, he found him outside Taba, in Egypt. The poor guy was looking for a truck to take him to a port of embarkation, and then leave for Asia. He didn't speak a word of Arabic, only a few words of English, which he dabbled in with his accent. He seemed desperate when Abdulwahed took him back to Neom. But Abdulwahed had no choice. This investigation had to be done. He promised to take Liang back to one of the ports of embarkation if necessary.

The entire conversation was conducted through an automatic translator. It turned out that Liang had no connection with this case; he was just one of those poor guys who acted as ants for the Chinese Triads.

The Abdulwahed chief, however, insisted on re-interviewing this Chinese man himself. The lieutenant did not see Liang again. When he asked what had happened to him, he was abruptly told that he was being taken care of. He realized that it was useless to insist. It was obvious that he was being watched very closely. There was definitely something fishy behind this abduction.

Liang understood that this was a strange story and instinctively felt that he should not stay there. The young Arab officer had been correct, he had done his job. Liang was used to traveling and assessing who he was dealing with. This young man was not your usual Saudi, he had the energy and habits of a wealthy Westerner.

Those who had taken over after Abdulwahed, however, were different. Several men had asked him questions rudely. What they were interested in was just whether he had seen anything. No, he had not seen anything. 

Well, nothing, except for two guys in the car who were strangely collapsing as the car was being started. And two guys, two Saudis, who were watching the scene from the boulevard and had left as soon as the Al Hamd-Technologies car disappeared around the corner. Liang was used to seeing without seeming to look. He had played the fool who didn't understand anything. He had claimed that he had seen nothing and heard nothing. 

But he was not released. He had not seen the young lieutenant again. Some guys had come to the police station, had taken him to a kind of prison. He had been pushed into a windowless cell. He had no papers, no phone. This did not bode well. 

A DELICATE CASE

The story that had happened to this foreign businessman posed endless problems: there was no trace, no film, no sound, nothing to indicate the movement of the four people. In Neom, this was theoretically and technically impossible.

However, there was only a trace of the Algerian engineer and his bodyguards entering Neom at the docks. That was all. We saw them going towards limousines. Then nothing more.

If one tried to get a close-up of the vehicles, access was blocked, encrypted by internal security. Abdulwahed had sent the film for decryption and was still waiting for the veto to be lifted by the army's intelligence services. This never came.

Abdulwahed had also telephoned the leaders of Al-Hamd Tech. The managers were waiting for the arrival of their partners, but for the next day! They did not understand what was going on. The contacts with the company RODNO3 had been intense for a month, Beghag had come several times for talks before the signature and the delivery of the processor. This had always gone smoothly. The disappearance of Beghag and the processor was a catastrophe.

The next day's meeting had been confirmed by online exchanges. Who had sent the messages instead of Hocine Beghag? The processor was probably in the hands of the wrong people.

One day, Lieutenant Abdulwahed was summoned to the office of his superior, Major Fayyad. He was ordered to stop questioning the employees of Al-Hamd Tech. The case was economically sensitive, and the prince, who was in charge of the economy, did not want the matter to be made public. The counter-intelligence services were now in charge of this aspect.

There were still plenty of options. The computers of both companies could have been hacked. But hacking into a company like Al-Hamd Tech was really a high-profile exercise. There weren't many specialists on the planet who could do it. Abdulwahed could have started looking there, contacting the hackers he knew abroad. But everything he did, every breakthrough he contributed to, was cancelled by an intervention of his superiors. He didn't want to get his friends in trouble.

As for the story of the erasure of the videotapes, of the tracks of a vehicle in the city of Neom, it was far more disturbing. Abdulwahed had to immediately refer to his hierarchy, because to erase all traces of people and vehicles in a city as connected as Neom could be was a matter for the highest levels of the State.

At his request, the director of Abdulwahed had received him urgently. The latter seemed extremely concerned. He listened in silence to his investigator summarize the initial elements of the investigation. Still silent, he dismissed Abdulwahed without looking at him. The lieutenant had difficulty to define if his director was annoyed or irritated, or had pity of this small that one sacrificed in a matter of state. Abdulwahed had understood that the director knew his father. They had never spoken of this together, as Abdulwahed did not want to embarrass his superiors with considerations extraneous to his service.

There were times when Abdulwahed preferred to be subordinate. Only the highest authorities in the state could afford this kind of manipulation. His director would have to proceed very carefully, very carefully. But, on the other hand, if Abdulwahed, a "bad element", was entrusted with the investigation, it looked like a poisoned gift, a case that he would fail miserably and that would allow him to be demoted. 

He didn't give a shit, it was decided, this would be his last investigation in this country of assholes. It was only to protect his parents that he did not leave immediately. He knew he would never set foot in Saudi Arabia again. He had acquired British citizenship, and he could become a Canadian, like his sister. But his parents came back from time to time to visit their family. He restrained himself, he had to get out of this mess alone.

As he left the police station, Abdulwahed reviewed the investigation. Four strangers had disappeared in broad daylight, a businessman and his three armed bodyguards. There was no trace of the vehicle or its occupants. It was a professional job, with a lot of staff involved and access to the control circuits.

Since their stay at the Egyptian hotel, where they had spent the night before returning to their Saudi clients, the Algerians had hardly been seen. Normal, they were not there for tourism or fun.

The processor could have disappeared in Egypt, even if this seemed unlikely, since Hocine Beghag had taken the trouble to go to Neom. Abdulwahed had contacted his Egyptian colleagues to check all the available information on the Algerians' stay in Taba. They had nothing. Or they said nothing.

Abdulwahed was convinced that there was little chance that anything would have gone wrong before they entered Saudi territory. According to the video tapes, Beghag's behavior, arriving on the platform, was serene, triumphant, as if delivered. He had the demeanor of a man who had left to meet his clients and become immensely rich.

Now it was urgent to find these men and the stolen processor. Identifying the perpetrators of this theft was difficult. Apparently, given the strategic importance of this invention, thousands of companies, hundreds of thousands of individuals could have coveted it. The means employed allowed the investigation to be directed towards the top of the political-criminal hierarchy. And there he was prevented from going.

Why steal the processor from a city as secure as Neom? It would probably have been easier to neutralize the travelers on their way from Algeria to Egypt. Neom was home to hundreds of laboratories of companies that developed cures, formulated solutions for the planet. These companies set up their headquarters in Neom because the city offered a unique environment, a mixture of intellectual emulation and absolute security. Technological secrets were considered safe in Neom, until this case.

This case was beyond the scope of a simple investigator like Abdulwahed. He knew that his investigation was being monitored in high places. The Neom Project had cost hundreds of billions of dollars and cost almost as much every year in maintenance. The success of the Neom Project was highly uncertain, but Abdulwahed didn't care anymore.

CULTURAL DITCH

At first, the young investigator had hoped that Neom would succeed. He was more than tired of seeing the kingdom bogged down in 7th century debates. Abdulwahed was born with the Internet, with free girls, with social networks and international pop music. He was lucky enough to accompany his diplomat father on his years of posting around the world. When he came back to Saudi Arabia, he had a hard time living in such a backward country, where the relations between men and women were still so caricatured. He was tired of not being able to kiss a darling or hold her hand to go for a drink. Especially, that next to that, these hypocrites were committing the worst perversions. He didn't only count the propositions of orgies and adulteries, but also the immoral homosexual advances that were made to him, even within the framework of his work as a police officer. These people accused others of perversions when they were a hundred times worse.

Abdulwahed had joined the Saudi police force partly out of a sense of adventure, partly out of provocation, but he was prevented from working by the countless politico-religious considerations that plagued the daily life of the kingdom. When a Saud prince attended a party, everything was allowed, while people in the street were severely controlled. Asian immigrants were sometimes tortured, and women were raped. Their Saudi masters, depending on their positions or relations in the hierarchy of the princes, could act with impunity. The country was an unhealthy mixture of factual modernity and crass ignorance under the hypocritical cover of tradition and religion.

Abdulwahed missed his life as a diplomat's son in Asia and the West. The cultural resistance and the massive adherence of the Saudi population to the salafist theses made him more and more uncomfortable. He regularly exchanged with people his own age and with his friends who lived in other countries. They did not understand what he could still do in this country. They all advised him to get out of there, and fast.

A DISTURBING PROFILE

He was closely watched and rather badly seen by his hierarchy who found him a little too atypical in the Saudi system.

He had been summoned several times. He was not really reproached, but the "advice" he was given

He was not really reproached, but the "advice" he was given was to prevent him from taking too much initiative, to maintain a modest social life, etc. Fortunately, he did not openly make any suggestions.

Fortunately, he was not overtly political and did not formally mention the Saud family in his music videos. He remained the son of a diplomat. But it was becoming increasingly clear that he did not belong in Saudi Arabia.

That's why he didn't see anything good in being entrusted with such a case. He suspected that the royal power, perhaps not the king, was not foreign to the disappearance of Hocine Beghag and his processor.

He was therefore not surprised that he was summoned, one evening, to the Ministry of the Interior. After several searches, he was taken to a secure office in the basement of the building. The young investigator found his director, visibly silenced, in the midst of a group of men who greeted him silently, almost with hostility.

Abdulwahed thought he recognized the one man sitting in the shadows as a senior military official, a prince.

The young officer had heard hints of a possible future coup. This pervert in a dress was just the right profile for this kind of twisted coup. He had a bad feeling about what was going to happen in the country.

A man in the group spoke up:

"Lieutenant, we have summoned you, because the initial investigation shows that the operation was conducted in a fancy way. The video is gone. All recordings of Mr. Beghag's movements have been erased. We have no evidence, nothing! It's strange, don't you think? We did our investigation, His Highness, here, made it a personal story. These manipulations are, in no way, the work of Saudi individuals. We know that the coup came from foreign services and traitors infiltrated in our ranks.

This room is secure, without electronics. You will be questioned, subjected to our tests. We are taking you off the case. You will be held incommunicado until everything is cleared up."

When he had finished, the man dismissed Abdulwahed, without prompting him to respond. He had sensed that all these people were tense, worried perhaps. Some were in league with the people who had kidnapped Beghag, others were not. But all of them knew that the others knew, and they pretended they did, smiling at each other. It was really a country of duplicity, full of tricks and dirty tricks. It seemed to be a common thing among the Arabs. Abdulwahed knew now that he had not inherited anything from his parents' country. He did not understand these people.

THE INSPECTOR IS UNDER SUSPICION.

Abdulwahed saluted in the proper manner. He wanted to make a lie of his boss, Fayyad, who had to present him as an insubordinate. He was immediately taken to another wing of the ministry where he was subjected to several interrogations. He had the impression that the questions he was asked were only meant to verify what he knew exactly, or what his intuitions might be. Outside the building, he heard bombing noises and thuds. He didn't know what it meant, but the people who were questioning him were getting confused. Some of them would walk out of the interrogation room and not come back. Something was going on.

Abdulwahed did not suffer any violence, but he seemed to be accused of something. It was strong, he was given an investigation. He was prevented from carrying it out and was accused of hiding facts from the authorities, who imprisoned him! What a shitty country...

Abdulwahed's conviction was now that elements of the government were involved in this affair to the highest degree. Of course, he tried not to lead the investigators on to his hunches...

Eventually, the questioning stopped. There was not much in the file, the questions were not precise enough. Abdulwahed, used to interrogations, felt that the guys who were interrogating him did not really know what to look for. They did not give him back his personal belongings, his phone, or his credit cards.

When he came out of his interrogation late at night, he was exhausted and worried. He had to get out of there, too bad for his parents.

IMPRISONMENT

Major Fayyad, his direct superior, was waiting for him. Abdulwahed greeted him in the proper way, the man returned his greeting with an annoyed look and silently pointed to a car that was coming. Fayyad and Abdulwahed had never gotten along. Fayyad was the classic profile of the little shit who hid behind his stripes, the kind Abdulwahed would have liked to smash in a place without witnesses. But again, this was not the time. Some men got out of the car, they came forward. Immediately they wanted to handcuff Abdulwahed.

As he stiffened, they hit him and handcuffed him. When Abdulwahed was subdued, Fayyad opened the door of the car and said to Abdulwahed: "You bastard, we know that you are an apostate. You go to the nightlife, you party with sodomites and prostitutes. You are going to jail, waiting to hear what the Islamic court decides about your fate." Abdulwahed did not answer and even refrained from laughing. This guy was so heartbreaking.

So that was it! The dreaded coup had taken place. Abdulwahed could only shudder. He now regretted returning to Saudi Arabia, not staying in Montreal or Madrid while he still could.

The car drove a few miles into the night. When the car pulled away, Abdulwahed looked at the beautiful buildings of the city that shone in the distance. He had enjoyed the lavish apartments, some of which had real gardens, even golf courses, on the floors of the towers. In other buildings, high-tech companies were guarded day and night. Abdulwahed had hosted many parties there for the golden youth of the upper class. They all lived there, in those sublime towers that rose like science-fiction ships in the night. What would happen to them if the crowd invaded Neom?

In Neom, the young people lived their lives in peace. Boys and girls could joke with each other, have fun, and sometimes fall in love, just like anywhere else in the civilized world. These places were protected from the people, and even from ordinary police officers. Abdulwahed had had the opportunity to live more or less correctly in this country of fools. Now it was over. He didn't really want to see what would happen when the massacre started. He could tell and he was not comfortable with the idea that he would have to suffer the unenviable fate of people who were supposed to be "Sodomites and prostitutes". In these countries of vicious perverts, this was not good...

The car slowed down. It seemed to have arrived at its destination, in front of a completely blind building, a barracks of the internal police perhaps. The surroundings were deserted, Abdulwahed did not know the place, but he did not like it.

The guards were not in uniform. He was led, rather roughly, inside, to a first office. The room opened onto a long corridor. The place was guarded by armed men, all in civilian clothes. Their energy and their looks did not announce anything good...

What was going on in the country?

They undressed him without a word, leaving only his underwear and handcuffs on. He was taken to another windowless room, a jail. Once the door was closed, the light was turned off. Abdulwahed had reason to be concerned. The blows were about to come...

A few hours later, the light was turned back on. A few hours later, the lights were turned back on. Men were brought into the room. They were all beaten up, covered in blood, tied up. They collapsed, moaning in pain, on the floor. The light was turned off.

It was difficult for Abdulwahed to know what time it was. The lack of light, the inability to communicate with the newcomers, made it all very confusing. Guards came in. Some of the new arrivals were beaten again, in front of him. He was ignored. The lieutenant was afraid. He, who was of a rather courageous temperament, felt sick to his stomach. To find himself tied up, in front of guys who were hitting him, really scared him. He almost prayed that he would be spared, while cursing himself for being so weak. 

What was going on in the country? It seemed to Abdulwahed that he heard more bangs in the distance.

More men came in. They all looked very tired. Some had been beaten.

Abdulwahed thought he recognized one of them. But he did not know exactly who he was. The man seemed to have a facial injury.

Suddenly, Abdulwahed understood: it was Hocine Beghag! The man was the foreigner who had been kidnapped when he arrived in Neom! He and Abdulwahed could not communicate, but there was not much to guess. The people who had taken power did not like Abdulwahed or this Hocine Beghag, or anything that represented a hint of modernity. The prince Abdulwahed had seen in the security office was reputed to be conservative, close to fundamentalist clerics. If this guy and his friends came to power, the future in Saudi Arabia became problematic.

Armed men were coming in and out, beating up the men they were taking. Apparently, one of the leaders realized that the prisoners had been put in the same room and he was not happy about it. Abdulwahed stood in a corner, trying not to move. He hoped he would not be taken away.

The door was closed and he was left alone. He heard one of the men yell, "Why are you doing this?

Abdulwahed heard nothing but banging and shouting. Abdulwahed had tears in his eyes. He was going to die there, in his underwear. What a shitty country!

LIBERATING EXPLOSION

A few hours later, a new prisoner was brought into the lieutenant's cell. Abdulwahed recognized his friend Meshal, also in his underwear. Meshal was an official at the Ministry of New Technologies. He was also surprised to see his friend there. Both were gagged, in their underwear. Abdulwahed signaled to Meshal not to speak. It was possible that they were being listened to or observed. Perhaps this was all a set-up. They had brought all these people into the room to find out who knew each other.

Meshal was shocked, he had probably taken a few blows, but nothing serious. Abdulwahed wanted to know what was going on outside, but he didn't want Meshal to compromise himself. It was better for them to pretend not to know each other.

The hours passed, agonizing. Explosions could now be heard regularly, more or less close together, the sound of cannons, planes razing the buildings, men shouting orders inside the building. There was a lot of noise outside.

Suddenly, several explosions, enormous, overturned the building. The walls moved, dust filled the room. The door was shaken, almost bursting open. A bomb had fallen on the building. Fortunately, the wall had protected Abdulwahed and Meshal. Their eardrums were ringing, however. They had become half deaf.

In the buildings you could hear people screaming, cries of pain, cars starting up, and then nothing. 

Abdulwahed struggled to his feet and tried to open the door. The lock barely held.

Abdulwahed waited for a new noise that could distract him. When it didn't come, he kicked the handle. So much for discretion, he had to escape from this place. The door came off the frame. He picked up his buddy Meshal and they went out.

When they got to the hallway, they realized that half the ceiling had collapsed. You could see the sky! The building had literally been blown up by bombs. Abdulwahed and Meshal had miraculously escaped the disaster. They were in the only part of the building that was still standing!

Abdulwahed saw an automatic revolver lying in the rubble. He did not notice the boots of the owner of the gun sticking out of the rubble a little further away. The guy was wounded. To each his own.

He pulled on Meshal's handcuffs to free him, then Meshal awkwardly did the same for him.

In the next cells, they found Hocine Beghal and his bodyguards, as well as other prisoners.

In a last cell, Abdulwahed came across Liang, the Chinese! The poor guy was shaking with all his limbs. He seemed unharmed, no one had hit him. He had been forgotten. Abdulwahed could not afford to translate the situation into Chinese. He pulled Liang by the arm, without arguing.

There was no sign of life in the area, despite the sounds of fighting and the columns of smoke in the vicinity. Abdulwahed asked the question that was burning in his mind: "What the hell is going on here? What's going on here? Do you know?"

Meshal replied, "It's the war, my friend. I heard they shot the king. They're hunting down all the princes of the kingdom and anyone they suspect of representing vice: like us."

Who wins?

The Islamists, you know, everyone is for them. They are forming an Islamic state, from east to west. The army, the police and the people in the streets are all with them. They are executing people in the streets.

Why are you here, my poor Meshal?

It seems that I am a debauchee, that I frequent "sodomites" and...

prostitutes"! Yes, I know, they blame me for the same thing. They don't like musicians and party people, I think...

They kill everybody, Abdulwahed, foreigners, high officials, rich people. They are in Neom, they break all the robots and slaughter everyone. They say that it is a satanic work. It stinks, Abdulwahed, we have to get out!

Well, we'll try to get away to Jordan.

Who are these people?

People I'm going to help. They are innocent.

And the Chinese?

The same.

Hocine Beghag and his bodyguards looked at Abdulwahed without understanding. Abdulwahed briefly explained to them who he was, why he knew them and how he was going to help them. One of the bodyguards was injured, but he could walk.

They found a 4x4 vehicle not too far away. The doors were open, but there were no keys in sight. While Abdulwahed searched around, Meshal opened the hood directly, fiddled with the wires and started the vehicle.

Abdulwahed hissed: "I didn't know you were a thief, in addition to being a lover of Sodomites and prostitutes!"

- I'm just a mechanical and technological enthusiast, Lieutenant!

Abdulwahed led his little world through the desert to the Jordanian border. He knew the desert well, as did Meshal. Both of them often went to the desert with friends, to party and push the sound system in the desert. The desert was a good place to listen to a good sound, to flirt with girlfriends, far from the eyes and ears of the Islamic police.

They listened to the radio. All the programs offered hadiths from the Koran! Only one radio station called on the population to support the prince, listing all that had been achieved, giving security instructions.

Abdulwahed carefully avoided passing people, cutting across the desert when a vehicle came the other way. He thought with relief that his parents and younger sister were in Canada, where they lived half the year. He asked Meshal, "What about your family, do you know where they are?"

- My parents are in Egypt. They were supposed to be back this weekend. I don't think they're going to rush back. My father was afraid this would happen. What about you?

My parents live in Canada, you know. My sister is studying there.

Cool. We got to get out of this, Abdulwahed.

Yeah, I know, buddy.

The Algerians and the Chinese were silent. The latter, Liang, really didn't understand what was happening to him. They had brought him to this building, they had not asked him any questions, they had just left him there. At first they brought him food and drink. But he hadn't eaten since the day before and he didn't have his phone. That was bad, because he had no money and no way to contact his boss, Cao.

He was glad to have been found by the young police lieutenant. He was confident. Liang was hungry. They had "forgotten" to feed him since the day before...

FAWAD THE YEMENITE

They drove to the border, which they reached at nightfall. Abdulwahed wanted to see a certain Fawad, who lived on the Saudi side of the border, in a remote hamlet. The man, a Yemeni by birth, was the author of a number of border deals. He would certainly know how to get them across the border...

Abdulwahed walked around the streets for a while before finding his way in the night. Eventually he found the yellow-walled house of the smuggler, and occasional informant. He knocked on the green door. He heard music inside, but no one was coming. He knocked again. A man opened. His asshole face announced an average welcome. He opened his mouth to find Abdulwahed half naked in the night. The young lieutenant chose to ignore the problem, "Is Fawad there?"

The man did not answer, Abdulwahed walked past him and forced his way to the source of the music.

He found Fawad in one of the green-walled rooms, drinking Sadiqi, a moonshine, with a few people. Fawad was in a bad mood, obviously drunk. He shouted, "What are you doing, policeman? I didn't invite you! You don't belong here!"

The men looked at the policeman in his underwear with astonishment and disapproval. The man who had opened the door was standing right behind Abdulwahed, threatening. Abdulwahed wanted to laugh: "My friend, Fawad, is this how you receive people who ask for hospitality?

- You are not my friend. You are a cop! Besides, you're not even dressed, you faggot...

The man at the door put his hand on Abdulwahed to make him leave. "Go on, get out, you've got..." Abdulwahed turned around and sent his knee into his stomach. The other man bent in half to better receive the knee of the police investigator in the face. The man slid to the ground with a grunt. Abdulwahed sent two vicious kicks to finish what he had to say. Then he rushed at Fawad, grabbing him by the collar.

Hocine Beghag's bodyguards entered the room, silent and threatening.

Fawad and his friends changed their minds.

"Calm down, my friend! You mustn't get angry!"

I'm not mad, but I need you now. Okay?"

Yes, yes. Yes, yes. Okay!

All right, everybody out. We need to speak privately with our friend Fawad. Come on, out, out!

The bodyguards handed out a few doughnuts to hasten the movement, forcing the guests to take the stunned "doorman" with them.

When they were alone with Fawad, Abdulwahed took Fawad by the collar. "Well, now... No, wait, pass us some clothes first..."

Fawad was panicked, he really didn't understand anything about these guys barging into his house in the middle of the night. Abdulwahed was already in his room and was taking clothes for Meshal and himself. 

Fawad tried to understand: "What's going on? What do you want to talk to me about?"

Jordan. Are they in a revolution, too?

I don't think so. Why not?

Because we all have to run, my friend. I need your help. You owe me for the number of times I've fixed you up!

Abdulwahed saw the incomprehension that persisted in Fawad's eyes. The police lieutenant suddenly realized: "What, you don't know? Don't you know that there is a revolution in Saudi Arabia?"

No !!! I was celebrating the arrival of some comrades, we've been partying for four days, quietly. Here, we are far away...

Well, open your eyes because it's shooting from all sides and I intend to stay alive. You too, by the way. Meshal told me they were after foreigners. Maybe take some money, because when they come all the way out here to impale liquor dealers like you...

Fawad had now completely recovered his senses. He rushed back to his room and came out after five minutes. He had a radio with him. He was listening to Jordanian radio.

This vicious drunk had often annoyed Abdulwahed, but he was a good man at times. Above all, he was the man who would save them.

Fawad told them, "Leave your car here, we'll take my car. I have Jordanian license plates..."

ESCAPE TO JORDAN

Thanks to Fawad, and after a thousand precautions, they managed to reach Jordan without encountering a military roadblock. The Yemeni knew the area perfectly. They stopped in a hamlet where a friend of Fawad's, on his instructions, drove them all to Amman.

They thanked Fawad warmly, even Liang who understood that the man had allowed him to leave a war zone. In the end, the dirty man had been a great help. As he left, Abdulwahed said mischievously, "I'll give you the car, buddy!" Fawad blinked sadly. He didn't seem convinced that he would be able to set foot in Saudi Arabia again anytime soon. In any case, Abdulwahed and his friends had probably saved his life. They had warned him before a jihadist patrol picked him and his smuggling friends up drinking Sadiqi.

According to news channels, the Islamic State was officially proclaimed in Riyadh, as it was throughout the Sahel as far as Mauritania. The countries bordering Saudi Arabia were on the warpath. The first reports were chilling, the crowd had invaded all the palaces and the houses of the princes. It was a butchery. Foreigners from Neom and diplomats were systematically disemboweled, raped and burned.

Israel had mobilized its army and threatened to retaliate very severely against any aggression on its territory. It was going to be complicated for the Zionists to use the nuclear bomb against the Saudis who had acquired it themselves, as well as Pakistan and Iran.

When they arrived in the Jordanian capital, Abdulwahed, Meshal and his friends went directly to the Saudi Arabian embassy. The ambassador was a personal friend of Abdulwahed's father. He took care of everything for everyone. By the following week, Abdulwahed and his friends each had their passports and visas. Meshal left for Egypt, Abdulwaheb for Canada. Hocine's bodyguards had chosen to go to Morocco, hoping to be able to cross the border discreetly to return to Algeria. Hocine Beghag was able to contact his wife. She was still in London, he was leaving to join her. He had spoken with his wife and contacted the Australian company. The Australians were willing to accept him and his Algerian collaborators to work on a processor in Australia.

As for Liang, the deal ended better than expected. Abdulwahed's ambassador friend gave him money from Abdulwahed to compensate him. The Chinese embassy was organizing the repatriation of its citizens, and he was given a direct flight to Chongqing. Finally, Liang, after three days of imprisonment, would return faster and richer than before. He knew from experience that the hardest trials were sometimes preludes to moments of euphoria. And vice versa.

Everyone was able to call their families or contacts. Eventually, Meshal would go to London to be with his family. His parents preferred to move away from the region, now under the threat of a nuclear apocalypse.

Abdulwahed's and Meshal's respective flights left Amman on the same day. Their last conversation at the airport was pleasant. Meshal recited some of al-Farazdaq's poems, as he used to do on their previous trips to the desert.

They watched the looping images of the events in Saudi Arabia. The religious authorities were lashing out at Neom, who represented exactly what they hated. They had requisitioned tanks and aircraft to quickly destroy the buildings. There were pictures of morons going about destroying unwilling robots. This did not speak well of human intelligence...

A HAPPY CHINESE

The fanatical morons had taken Sophia, the humanoid robot that had won Saudi citizenship, out of its museum. The humanoid had been decapitated, its head stuck on a spike... Abdulwahed kept for a long time the memory of this face, "of European type", decapitated. They had found a way to mutilate a machine because it imitated a human form.

Sophia, like Neom, had been created with great hope, the hope of an Arab world made better by knowledge, by progress and an end to war and suffering.

The secret of Mr. Beghag's processor was lost in Arabia. It did not reappear, in any case. This processor, which could have brought comfort and progress to all, was lost. Hocine and his team of technicians and researchers were able to find refuge in Australia, where the Bulgarian Marika Olganov and her family had joined them.

After Meshal left, whose plane was leaving early, Abdulwahed listened to Helly Luv's songs on a phone until he was on the plane. The Finnish singer of Kurdish origin had found the courage to fight openly, in her own way, against the Islamic State. Pop culture was a very good weapon against these lunatics.

Liang was the happiest of all. His country was a haven of peace, compared to the hell that reigned in this part of the world. He boarded a Chinese cargo plane, one of the few still flying in the region. As soon as he boarded, the crew offered him to share a hearty Kung Pao Chicken, Huo Guo, the famous Chinese fondue, and Mapo Doufu with ground pork, his favorite. The crew was from Sichuan, Liang was at home! As soon as he got home, he could enjoy his little nest egg before contacting Cao again, who wouldn't expect him back anytime soon. Saudi Arabia being in the midst of anarchy, it was unlikely that Cao would send him back.