Jesus Was a Time Traveler (WATT Book 1)

by D. J. Gelner

  Several moments later, Bloomington huffed and wheezed his way through the maze of rows of olive trees.

  “Oh my God,” he choked out several heaving breaths.”Seriously, Ricky, next time you’re planning on doing that, remember that I practically died two days ago.”

  “I’m sure that’s the reason for the fifty extra pounds of visceral fat you’re carrying around.” I clasped a hand over my mouth; I had only meant to think the sentiments, not allow them to escape into the wild.

  “What the fuck, man? I thought we were cool now?” Bloomington said.

  “I…uh…good natured ribbing and whatnot!” I tried to cover my own betraying thoughts. “Like we’re old chums now, you know?” I chuckled in an exceedingly phony manner and delivered what apparently was a fully unconvincing smile as Bloomington remained stone-faced. “What the devil was that?” I asked Corcoran in an attempt to change the subject.

  “Beats the shit outta me!” Corcoran finally let his guard down.

  “They just…ran him through like a cocktail weenie,” Bloomington chimed in.

  “Yeah, no shit, buddy.” Corcoran’s anger built.

  “Was that…it?” I asked. “FEC…that was clearly some sort of Council. First…”

  “Ecumenical?” Corcoran offered.

  “Beg your pardon?” I narrowed my eyes.

  “What? That’s what that weirdo said, ain’t it?” Corcoran’s tone was near-apologetic. “Plus, I just remembered from Catholic school, Constantine and a bunch of priests got together and figured out what was supposed to be in the Bible and what wasn’t. That’s the Cliff’s Notes, at least.”

  “And you just remembered this now?” my own frustration simmered to a boil, perhaps partially at my momentary forgetfulness as to what the unfortunate time traveller had said, in large part because such lapses rarely occurred.

  “Hey, it all clicked when I heard what that poor guy who got run through said, okay?”

  “You didn’t find it prudent to speak up at the time?” I asked.

  “Not when we were so close to those pikemen. Sorry, Doc, but whatever you may think of me, one thing I’m not particularly good at is quick-draw. Never really practiced it. By the time I would’ve cut down one of ‘em, the other two could’ve taken us out no sweat. Then there’d be four time traveler ‘kebabs’ instead of one. Not to mention, you did stop me, Doc.”

  I recalled the hand on the shoulder and shake of the head I gave Ricky in the Council Chamber as he reached for his weapon. It was another odd lapse in memory for my usually hyper vigilant, recorder-like brain. For the moment, I attributed the problem to too much scotch and not enough sleep.

  Additionally, I suppose Corcoran had given me no reason not to trust him to this point. If anything, the opposite was true; aside from the drunken escapades from the previous evening, he hadn’t shown many lapses in judgment. Even then, I’d say that the previous night had worked out well for all parties involved; even Bloomington was functioning on a much more “normal” level than before.

  For these reasons, I simply nodded. “So…what now?”

  Corcoran shrugged. “I don’t know. I think that counted as ‘witnessing Constantine’s skepticism,’ didn’t it? I’m not too keen on trying to head back into that place, so maybe that was all we were supposed to do.”

  “I’m inclined to agree with you,” I said.

  “Fine by me,” Bloomington nodded.

  “Well, it’s settled then. Back in the ship, we wait to jump again.” I said.

  “For what? Like eighteen hours? What the hell are we gonna do?” Bloomington asked.

  “We’re fresh outta books,” Corcoran nodded at his companion.

  “I swear to God, I am going to get my hands on a gun—”

  Corcoran smirked, “Relax. Like Doc said, just teasin’ ya a bit, Bloomy. I’m sure Doc has a few ideas. And you brought your iPod along, right?” Corcoran nodded at Bloomington’s pocket, and Bloomington returned the nod. “Then what’s the problem? Hell, we could even get some work done, write something up—a report. Memorialize the trip.”

  I opened my mouth, but Corcoran preempted me, “I promise, Doc, I’ll put you in there. We’ll get you in the history books yet.”

  “Thank you,” I nodded at Corcoran. Though everything in my logical mind told me that it was an empty gesture, since history had no knowledge of me or my deeds, I was still touched by the Commander’s generosity.

  As I lacked my spectacles, I felt around the empty air and searched for the panel to let us in. One of the little pastie trolls may have wandered by as I was doing so and thought we were positively mental, but if that was the case, neither Corcoran or Bloomington alerted me to as much.

  Finally, my hand came into contact with the cool, brushed alloy exterior, and worked my way around until I located the hand panel, which recognised my handprint and opened the door. Still a bit dazed by the events of the quick stop, the others followed my lead inside.

  And we waited.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Surprisingly, our idle time passed rather quickly. Bloomington and I somehow struck up a conversation about all things Star Trek: The Next Generation, and we actually had a (mostly) civil, engaging debate about various topics that may bore you, such as “what if Captain Picard secretly had an insatiable bloodlust that was only kept in check by virtue of the holodeck?” and, of course, “Troi or Crusher?” Predictably, I took up for the lovely Counselor played by Marina Sirtis, while Bloomington apparently had a bit of a thing for redheads.

  “Are you serious? Are you really gonna sit here with your dumb Limey face and tell me that Marina Sirtis is hotter than Gates McFadden, douchenozzle?” Bloomington asked, ever the charmer.

  I was nearly ready to pop him once more, but instead I decided to change the subject with an affected smile.

  “Let’s discuss something else. For example, despite your clearly misguided take on Star Trek: The Next Generation,” Bloomington bit his lip as I said the words, “It seems like otherwise you’re an intelligent enough fellow.”

  “Uh…yeah, ya’ think?” he said in that grating, nasally whine of his. “I was only the youngest person to ever graduate from MIT.”

  “Really?” I arched an eyebrow, legitimately surprised.

  He nodded, “My favorite show growing up was Doogie Howser, and I told my folks, I said, ‘Mom, Dad, I’m gonna be just like Doogie Howser some day.’

  “So they tell me, ‘Well, Stevie, you better study hard and apply yourself,’ and so I did. And I kept doing better than all of the other dickfaces I was in school with, and I—”

  “And so you retreated to the lab, the only place you felt comfortable?” I asked, perhaps in hindsight figuring that I had met a like-minded soul.

  “What? Fuck no. I got into science because I wanted to be a doctor, like Doogie. I thought Wanda was like the hottest chick ever. And since I couldn’t compete with the jocks or even the drama nerds, I figured if I became a doctor, I could find a girl like that.”

  “But you’re not a doctor!” I half tried to make the statement sound like a question.

  “No shit, Sherlock,” he chortled. “Nope; I was on track to do it. Got into MIT at fifteen, went pre-med, the whole deal, and then I took my intro to physics class, and found that I’m really good at it.”

  “And so that’s how you fell in love with physics! The mad scientist, furiously scribbling out equations on the whiteboard, long after everyone else had retired to their keggers and—”

  “I hated it,” Bloomington interrupted my romantic diatribe. “Let me rephrase that; I hate it. It’s not nearly as fun for me as being a doctor was, but my assymouthed professors kept telling me how they’d never seen a physics mind like mine. I could pull things…equations and stuff…out of thin air that some of ‘em had devoted their pathetic, worthless little lives to figuring out.

  “So they pushed me more and more toward physics, and I just kinda followed, you know? Eventually, close to graduation,
I guess the Army caught word of how kick ass I was doing, and offered me a shitload of money to do what I do now. It sucks, but what’re you gonna do? The worst part is, it doesn’t even help me get chicks. Not like I can go to a bar, ‘oh, and what do YOU do?’ ‘Oh, I’m building a fucking time machine for the dumbshit government.’ Nope—that’s ‘top secret.’ Fucking blows.”

  “But…you invented a time machine!” I hit my forehead with my palm.

  Bloomington shook his head, “It’s not like it was just me,” he looked over at Corcoran, lounging in a chair nearby. “We had…help. Lots of help.”

  “Yes, yes, I know, but still…you have no sense of achievement? No feeling of, ‘I built this?’”

  Bloomington shook his head, “I’d give it all up to be a kick-ass doctor with a hot-ass wife…and tons of money. And…you know…I guess helping people and stuff.”

  I thought about debating Bloomington further, but instead just shook my head. I turned my attention to the Commander, who fiddled with what looked to be a hopelessly quaint and out-of-date “mp3 player,” like the ones featured in the horribly kitschy and painfully-hoping-to-seem-retro “museums of the future” that had begun to pop up all over the country, which generally served as ironic locales for hipsters to deride the culture of the early century and make out with one another.

  Though I assumed that the Commander’s taste in music was somewhat eclectic, I didn’t know the extent of his music ADD. Headphones in, facing us, he manipulated the touchscreen multiple times per minute, which was only off-putting due to my own hyper-vigilance.

  “Impatient, are we?” I strolled over to the Commander and, for once, startled him.

  He removed one earbud. “Huh?”

  “You’re going through quite a bit of music there.”

  He was unfazed, “Typing up some notes for my report. Also, trying to find some Kanye that’s not ‘808s and Heartbreak.’”

  I smiled and shook my head, “I never took you for a rap fan.” I said.

  He looked as if I had told him to fuck right off, “First of all, it’s not rap, it’s hip-hop. And second, just ‘cause I may have a bit of a Southern twang and grew up outside of a big city doesn’t mean I listen to Skynyrd while shotgunning Natty Light in front of my ‘Stars and Bars’ curtains.”

  I shook my head, “Of course not.”

  In fact, that was precisely the image of the Commander that I had developed over the past few days.

  “I can like rap—hip hop—too, ya’ know.”

  “Quite right.” I offered him as kind of a smile as I could muster. Confident that I had perhaps rattled his cage for once, I prepared for “bed” in the command chair.

  I awoke after precisely eight hours of uninterrupted sleep to the sounds of Bloomington cursing and shaving in the head, door open. I stretched and half-dazedly walked over to him.

  “New at this, are we?” I asked.

  “Now I know why Riker went with the beard from season three on. What a pain in the ass,” Bloomington said.

  I smiled at the reference. Was I actually becoming friends with this ugly little man? Isn’t that what friends did? Share little inside jokes with one another? I must admit, though I simply hadn’t the time for many friends while building the time machine, even in my Eton days. I was painfully shy and aloof. As I was advanced several grades above my own, I was also prone more to teasing than the other boys.

  As my only confidant, my father took me aside during one Christmas holiday and told me in no uncertain terms, “Look Fin, sometimes you have to fight fire with fire. Give it back to ‘em a bit, stir up the pot. Pop a guy in the face and tell him to fuck right off, you know? And I don’t mean tell him to ‘bugger off,’ or whatever dumbshit British slang you’ve picked up, tell him to go fuck himself. Show ‘em who’s boss.”

  So I did. The next time Aaron Hardy or Andrew Percival called me “Finny Four-Eyes” or some other hilariously witty slur, I hit him right in the face and told him to fuck right off; needless to say, the Headmaster wasn’t impressed. I, however, was ecstatic when the dour old headmaster called my father on speakerphone, and after he relayed the events of the day to dear old dad, my father paused for a moment before he let out an enthusiastic, “Fuck yeah! That’s my boy—way to go Finny!”

  Along the way, the troublemakers stopped making so much trouble, and I was able to develop my sunny, winning personality and wit without further interference.

  I smiled as my reminiscent moment ended, and shuffled to the kitchen to fix myself a cup of Earl Grey before I sank back into the command chair.

  The primary console read “Full Power—Time Travel Possible.” As was customary by now, I once more entered my home coordinates and those of Corcoran and Bloomington, to no avail.

  Why do I even bother anymore? I thought. I pulled up the list and found the next stop on our slip-shod journey through time:

  “18-4-1738: Leipzig, Germany: See the only show in town”

  Ah, Leipzig in springtime! Granted, it was a Leipzig filled with stunted, dirty, troll-like, foul-smelling Germans, each potentially carrying the plague or some other horrific infectious disease, but it would be Leipzig, damn it, and good to be back on the continent. I pinched and pulled and dialed the coordinates in, and the computer predictably spat back the “99.9%” confidence interval I was becoming so used to seeing when keying in my Benefactor’s coordinates.

  The “Engage” button flashed on the console, and without warning Corcoran or Bloomington, I hit it.

  “Motherfuck!” Bloomington yelled from the head.

  I tilted my head back toward the W.C., “Sorry.” Though, in hindsight, the motion of the ship should have been, nay was imperceptible to the man, thus any shaving mishaps must have been due solely to his usual clumsiness.

  Corcoran emerged from the bunk. He wore his comfortable eighties clothes and rubbed his eyes.

  “We leavin’ already?” he asked with perhaps a touch too much sarcasm.

  I nodded curtly at him, “Pleasure, as usual, Commander.”

  “Don’t you have another one of your ‘classic’ rock bands to play for the jump?”

  He was quite right. I mentally went through all of the music I had loaded on to the ship before we had left, but found none appropriate for this jump.

  “Computer, play a suitable ‘classic rock’ song, won’t you?” I looked sideways at Corcoran as I said the words “classic rock.”

  Almost immediately, U2’s “New Year’s Day” blared over the loudspeakers. Corcoran and I looked at each other, somewhat befuddled.

  “Wouldn’t this song fit better last jump?” Corcoran asked.

  “Yes, but we didn’t play music last jump,” I replied.

  Corcoran raised an eyebrow, “You don’t think that it’s a bit suspicious that a computer more powerful than I can even fathom messed up something this simple?”

  “It is curious, but not without precedent. Remember the doors outside of Chichen Itza? Quantum computers aren’t necessarily one hundred percent reliable. Do you want the quick lesson?”

  Corcoran considered the offer for a couple of seconds, but wisely declined.

  “All I’m sayin’, Doc, is it seems like one hell of a coincidence, like we went off-script.”

  “And…?”

  “Isn’t whoever’s running the show supposed to know the script ahead of time?”

  A light finally clicked on as I understood what the Commander was getting at. Instead of nodding or challenging him, I merely fixed my eyes on his, and hoped that genuine concern shone through my steely gaze.

  “Be that as it may, there are any number of reasons why ‘the script’ could be ‘off.’ Perhaps precisely so that we have this conversation now, or to push me over the line into utter madness.”

  I thought this comment may elicit a smile from the Commander, but he just shook his head as he walked over to the dining area, presumably to clean his firearm once more. I swear, that weapon was so spotless it could have been us
ed as an eating utensil.

  The tunneling lasers did their thing, and as the U2 song blared through the loudspeakers, I don’t think any of us stopped for more than a moment to view the otherwise wondrous colours and shapes inherent to time travel. I suppose that’s an exaggeration; I stared at “the show” for a bit, but only in consideration of the fact that much like travel by rail and air before it, time travel had already become routine, even for three “pioneers” such as ourselves.

  We emerged from the wormhole to the familiar sight of the Earth hanging in the distance. I sighed with discontent as I thought about what needed to be accomplished as the computer guided us in.

  “Computer, three pairs of clothing for this time period, please.” The glove box opened and the odd little rolodex of vacuum-sealed clothing yielded two packages. I couldn’t help but smile; they were much like the fancy getup that I had worn back during my visit with Hank Fleener and Sir Isaac, but one was an ugly, pale pea green silk-like material, festooned with various gold leaf shapes. The other was dare I say a subtle rose colour, and similarly adorned with gold. The pink getup, especially tucked away in the package, seemed more fit for a geisha than for either the alpha male Corcoran or slovenly Bloomington, though I secretly hoped that the portly scientist would draw the salmon ensemble.

  I was not to be disappointed.

  “Costumes, gentlemen,” I yelled toward the back of the craft. Bloomington waddled forward, almost like a giddy child on Christmas morning. Despite our positive chat hours before, I delighted in seeing the panic slowly wash over his face.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Eloquent, as always,” I said with a chuckle. I shrugged, “I didn’t package these outfits up. I’m afraid the person to blame is the same one who sent us on this wild goose chase through history in the first place. Hopefully you’ll have a chance to meet him at some point, and then you’ll be able to ask him all of the wardrobe-related questions that your heart may desire.”