Iditarod Jonas awoke with a throbbing headache and tried to sit up even before opening his eyes. He found himself completely immobilised. He could raise his head, however, and, opening his eyes, found that he was secured to a slab of stone with work-hardened copper straps crossing his ankles, his thighs just above the knees. his wrists, his arms just above the elbows, and his belly just above the hips.

Looking about as best he could, he found that he was in a very small room lighted only by a blindingly intense beam of sunlight, no thicker than a knitting needle which lanced down from a dimly perceived metal cylinder in the ceiling. On his thighs and lower belly rested a sheet of hammered gold roughly conforming to the shape of his body. Through a hole in this sheet protruded his sex organs. The intensely hot pencil of concentrated sunlight impinged on the gold sheet about an inch from his scrotum.

The surface of the gold had been roughened, perhaps by beating it on leather covered with sand. Thus, it scattered the light, preventing the development of a hot spot at the tip of the beam where the temperature might well be in the thousands of degrees. Even so, Idy could feel the heat under the gold sheet. The beam was crawling along imperceptibly from left to right. Eventually, of course, it would reach his scrotum and begin to burn through it and then through his left spermatic cord before it reached his penis.

Idy calculated that the beam would move about one cm. in four minutes, and would reach his scrotum in about ten minutes. He had no watch, couldn't have seen it if he had, and didn't really see any point in timing the approach of the searing light beam.

Though he was not gagged, there was also no point in crying for help. There was

no one within 200 miles who would have any interest in helping him. No one knew exactly where he was. None of his friends would come galloping to the rescue. All he could do was lie there and let a beam of sunlight nullify him. Thus would the Sun God be avenged for a presumptuous American 's pretending to be a god just because he had white skin and golden facial hair.

An old habit of his, most inappropriate for a god, had betrayed his feet of clay. Iditarod Jonas had been masturbating five to six times a day for the past twenty years. Some one had seen him indulging in it out in back of the priestly dwelling which he had been given until something more suitable for a god could be prepared.

They had already been suspicious because he could not speak to them in their own language . Idy knew three dialects of Mayan, none of which resembled the speech of these natives of the jungle of Belize, though their culture seemed obviously Mayan.

Their knowledge of astronomy, mathematics, surveying, and civil engineering was very impressive. That they should also be master opticians should not have surprised him. He wondered, though, at the nature of the optical system which could gather sunlight with a large objective lens, possibly with a coelostat, and somehow collimate it into an extremely narrow, laser-like beam of extreme intensity. Under other circumstances, he would greatly have admired it.

Now, however, all he could think of was the inexorable progress of the beam which would deprive him of his manhood. If it had been just his balls, he wouldn't have worried much. When he played rugby in college, he had made deposits in a sperm bank, "just in case." HRT would take care of the rest. All of that, however, was useless without a penis. He could clearly see that the beam would cross his penis less than an inch from the base, before and after which, it would sever his left and right spermatic cords, neatly castrating him and cauterising the cut as it was made.

What the disillusioned natives intended to do with him afterward, he couldn't imagine. He knew that they had eunuch slaves, so it was likely that he would be enslaved. They probably wouldn't worry much about his attempting to escape. Why bother ? What would he be good for to anyone without his sex ?

Well, evidently, somebody'd seen him jerking off and reported the fact. He'd been seized in his bed and dragged out of the house. Somebody hit him on the back of the head when he struggled, and he woke up here. It was probably morning, so there'd be plenty of sunlight , much more than would be needed. Idy thought briefly of praying for rain, but this was the dry season in Belize and rain was very unlikely. Furthermore, Iditarod Jonas was an atheist and very unconvinced of the efficacy of prayer.

Finally, of course, the searing beam touched his scrotum, just barely touched it at first, yet the agony was well-nigh unendurable. The pain was incredible, and the beam wasn't anywhere near his spermatic cord yet. At this point, a priest entered the tiny room carrying what Idy immediately recognised as a gag. Idy was puzzled, what possible difference could it make if he screamed ? Well, anyhow, it relieved him of the need to try NOT to scream.

The agony escalated. The nearer the solar beam got to the left spermatic cord, the worse the pain became . He had begun to think it could become no worse when the beam touched the cord. Idy's entire body, restrained though it was, convulsed. He screamed through his nose, neither very effectively nor very audibly, and he felt as if his chest would burst with the effort.

Idy hurt all over. It seemed as if every nerve in his body was occupied with transmitting one message to his tormented brain: PAIN!!! He was sweating and shaking. To his surprise, a priest came in and bathed his brow and his wrists with cool water and spoke soothingly to him ! His torturers were showing kindness and compassion to him. Idy was utterly nonplussed. What the hell was going on here ?

After the beam had passed through the spermatic cord, the pain diminished for a short while, Idy guessed that it was about two minutes, before the light beam began cutting into the left side of his penis. Idy began to cry; he couldn't help himself. He was almost inordinately fond of his penis. He was proud of its size and loved the wonderful pleasure it had given him. It would take at least ten minutes for that intensely hot beam of sunlight to cut slowly through Idy's most treasured possession.

As Idy wept, the priest put his arm around Idy's shoulders and brushed his hair out of his eyes and dried his tears with a cloth. Then he stepped back and lifted the front of his kilt, exposing himself, and Idy could see the shape of things to come.

The priest had only a short stump with nothing hanging below it. He gave Idy a sad look and nodded.

Protracted though it was, the pain of the amputation of Idy's penis by the solar beam was not as intense as that of the burning of his left spermatic cord, a pain which he knew would soon be repeated. At length, though, Iditarod Jonas' pride and joy fell away, rolled off the gold sheet and fell onto the top of the altar, between his thighs. Idy gave a long muffled howl of sorrow and dismay. It was gone....forever. Of course, his left ball was disconnected also, but enough remained of the scrotum to keep it to from falling off.

Still, the pain continued. At 2.5 mm./minute, the beam ever so slowly burned its way across the scrotum toward the right spermatic cord. Idy was too exhausted to scream or cry any longer, he merely softly whimpered. Until, that is, the searing heat touched his right spermatic cord, then he managed a weak muffled shriek. It had taken the beam a full two minutes to sear its way through his left spermatic cord, and the right took no less.

Idy fainted from pain and exhaustion and, so, never did see his balls slither across the sheet of gold and drop off the end of it, plopping onto the altar between his thighs, where his penis already rested. When Idy woke, he was dimly aware that someone was applying an ointment to his stump and the burn between his thighs and that the gag was out and the priest was offering him a cup of liquid to drink. It was mildly bitter like beer, relieved his pain, and made him sleepy.

When Idy awoke again, he found himself in a comfortable bed in a luxurious bedroom. Soon afterward, a servant came in, drew back the covers, and helped Idy up. Other servants came and washed and perfumed him and arrayed him in a multi-coloured cotton tunic, a gold pectoral, a gold headdress, and white sandals with golden straps. One of the servants held up a polished silver mirror and Iditarod Jonas beheld the very image of the Sun God, whose incarnation on Earth he now was, having been purified by his ordeal.

He was led out onto a balcony before which the entire population of the city was gathered. Seeing him, they all covered their eyes and prostrated themselves on the ground. Thus, he was introduced to his new life as a god.