[ WP ] Our prosperity can be traced to the arrival of our Emperor 1200 years ago , Long may he live ...

[ Part Two Here ] ( https: //www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/3vmuuu/pi_long_may_he_live_part_ii/ ) 
 
 Our prosperity can be traced to the arrival of our Emperor 1200 years ago, Long may he live... 
 
 So begins history as it is taught to every child in the empire. Such a long time it has been, but I remember it like it was yesterday. 
 
 I was born in the year 1912, making me about 1300 years old. The place of my birth, as classified as information gets, was a small town in Southern Ohio. I had an unremarkable childhood besides being recognized as unusually bright and healthy. As a kid I never realized how much turmoil there was in the world, the war and all that. We were sheltered back then. As a young man, though, I became interested in leadership, strategy, business, all that kind of stuff. Started in the Boy Scouts and ended up at Annapolis. Did pretty well and had command of a small ship in the Pacific Fleet. After the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor, we deployed, and it all became real. I did my best to keep my men safe, but war is hell, and while we gave better than we got, we were sank during the fight over an island whose name I've honestly forgotten. One moment I was standing on deck bellowing orders, then next everything was fire and water and blood. 
 
 I woke up in a cage, tiny metal box. I started trying to find a way out, kept at it for fifteen minutes before I noticed I was missing a leg. Boy, how I screamed. They did n't bother me too much on account of how fucked up I was, it's amazing that nobody put a bullet in my brain. The other guys, my men, though, were tortured. One by one, they died. Not one gave me up as the only one who knew anything important. But I did n't die. 
 
 Instead, my leg started to *grow back*. Nothing unusual these days, but boy was I surprised. Hid it from the Japs until they surrendered and turned me back over, then I dropped off the map for a while. It took me two months to regrow the leg, another two to get back up to strength, and then a good year before I stopped feeling like a psychotic lunatic. It was around then that I realized that I was n't aging. For all intents and purposes I was a twenty year old man who had never been wounded, not a thirty year old who had his leg blown off. A regenerator, quite something for old Earth. My folks had already passed so I laid low for decades after that, drifting around and learning different languages, different skills, different ways of living, living other people's lives. 
 
 When I turned one hundred, the world was just beginning to enter the Great Turmoil. Even I could n't see the signs until the Islamic State began to rise in power. Smelled just like old toothbrush stache to me, and I was right in more ways than one. When the first dirty bomb went off in Baghdad, I knew I had to do something. Funny enough, I had been in Morocco for the last ten years. It was getting increasingly difficult to avoid detection in the western world, passports getting harder to forge. 
 
 I'm half Greek, so with a beard and flawless Arabic I can play a pretty convincing Arab. I went to Syria, joined a rebel group fighting a losing fight against both Assad and the IS. Told them I had been chosen by God to aid them. They laughed at me until I chopped off my pinky finger with a meat cleaver. I may have spent a few weeks locked up and derided as a madman, but when I waggled ten complete fingers at them, the idolatry began. 
 
 By that time I was fluent in ten languages, black belt in who knows how many martial arts, had half a billion dollars stashed in various accounts, and had generally experienced a lot of crazy shit. With my money channelled into black market guns and explosives, my group began to enjoy success. I told them that we were to embody the mercy and all-encompassing love of all-mighty Allah, while smiting the heretics who profane his name with violence against the innocent. Was n't long before civilians were flocking to us to protection, and when I publicly captured Assad alive and granted him the mercy of prison, the country rallied around me. When the Western governments realized that they were witnessing a new brand of peaceful, liberal radical Islam, the aid started to pour in. My popularity took a hit when I made some agreements with Israel, but our incursions into IS territory started to turn things around. I was even able to get some fighters and bombers from US suppliers, and the whole world cheered when we liberated Baghdad from the IS. 
 
 Months later, I had the Saudi premier assassinated, but made it look like the work of terrorists. The country dissolved into chaos, and my new government stepped in with aid. When it was put to a vote the following year, the nation voted in a only slightly fraudulent election to join our burgeoning Caliphate. 
 
 The world was beginning to have doubts about me, but my reign truly was benevolent. My new Arabian Caliphate maintained the peace for ten years, ten years of prosperity and development through the judicious investing of oil wealth. The international press generally does n't love theocratic dictators, but the unprecedented freedoms my citizens enjoyed, our 25 % annual economic growth rate, and the multitude of trade deals I signed all led to a favorable opinion. 
 
 I thought I had things well in hand, until, one rainy August day, both Jerusalem and Tehran were consumed by thermonuclear explosions.
