Jesus Was a Time Traveler (WATT Book 1)

by D. J. Gelner

  “Take that you Nazi assmonsters!” He screamed above the roar of his weapons. Violette and the other resistance members hurriedly re-packed the very boxes that we had unpacked the day before. We hurried over to her side.

  “Status?” Corcoran asked coldly, efficiently, as only a true soldier might.

  “The Nazis—they found our hiding spot. One of the cabaret dancers gave us up to one of their operatives.”

  So the espionage went both ways, then, I thought.

  “Hey, little help over here?!” Bloomington shouted out in between volleys. “Commander! Doctor Templeton!”

  Corcoran ran to Bloomington’s side, and I followed closely behind. The Commander grabbed the machine gun from our portly companion and fired at the upstairs door whenever it opened.

  I decided that I had enough gunplay over the previous several days, and instead jogged back over to Violette to see if there was anything further I could do to help.

  “No! You’ve done more than enough already, Doctor. Take the Commander and make your way back to the ship through the tunnels.” She handed me a hand-drawn map on a sheet of loose-leaf paper.

  I nodded and turned to get Corcoran before I thought for a moment and faced Violette once more.

  “What of Bloomington?”

  “What?” Violette barely heard me over all of the commotion.

  “Bloomington. My other…friend.”

  “He expressed his desire to stay here and help us fight.”

  “The hell he did!” I hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but for some reason it burst out.

  “You speak with him. We’re happy to have the manpower, but only he can make the choice.”

  I sprinted back to Bloomington and Corcoran’s position to find that the never-ending parade of Nazis (which, come to think of it, sounds like the worst possible theme park attraction ever) had momentarily halted. Corcoran and Bloomington both knelt on the ground and tried to catch their breath.

  “Come now, gents, quickly. We must be off to the ship,” I said.

  Bloomington shook his head, “I’m not goin’.”

  “Beg your pardon?” I asked him.

  “I’m not goin’. I’m staying here, with Marie.”

  “I hope you realise the full gravity of the situation, Steven. You will be placing yourself in mortal danger. There’s no guarantee that ChronoSaber will be able to ever retrieve you, let alone—”

  “He’s a soldier, Doc. No need to lecture him like a child,” Corcoran interrupted. He placed a hand on Bloomington’s shoulder, “But Doc’s right, Bloomy. I’ll try to come back for you and Marie when I get back, but there aren’t any promises that that’s gonna happen. You sure you can live the rest of your life here if need be?” Corcoran was more sincere and serious than I had seen him since dealing with that awful little freak Kayoss.

  Bloomington considered his superior officer’s entreaty for five seconds or so. He stared first into space, then at the bullet-riddled door atop the steps. Finally, his gaze turned toward Marie, who was helping the French-looking gentleman whom had let us into the hideout the previous day secure some articles of equipment.

  Finally, when I thought he would certainly reconsider and join us, he nodded.

  “I belong here,” he said. “With Marie. I’d rather die with her here than get whatever fame and fortune awaits back home.”

  Corcoran nodded gravely. I sat, utterly shocked, not only at Bloomington’s decision, but also at the fact that any woman would find him anything but utterly repulsive.

  “Steven, I—” I started to speak, but before I could get into any sort of a heartfelt “goodbye” or apology for maligning the man so much, he leapt to his feet, grasped my hand, and threw the other meaty arm around my back.

  “Thanks for everything, Doctor Templeton,” he said. “Nothing personal,” he patted me on the back several times.

  “Same to you, Steven,” I said. My back pats were nowhere near as vigorous as his, but I figured that after all we had been through, they were well-earned, nonetheless. And, for the record, I suppose I likewise no longer bore the man any ill will.

  The door atop the staircase opened once more, and Bloomington disengaged from our embrace to fire a fresh volley of laser fire at the incoming fascists.

  “Commander,” Bloomington offered Corcoran a nod. “I would hug you, but—”

  Corcoran held up a hand, “No need, Bloomy. Take care of these Nazi pricks now, ya’ hear?”

  “Yes, sir!” Bloomington said, with perhaps a bit too much sarcastic enthusiasm.

  “And Bloomy?” Corcoran paused for a moment, “That’s an order.”

  Bloomington forced a small smirk before he opened up on the Germans once more. He must have found several targets, as only a hail of curse words descended down the staircase.

  “Oh, wait, Commander?” Bloomington asked. “Can you leave the machine gun? We’re kind of low on weapons.”

  Corcoran laid the automatic weapon down and took several steps toward me.

  “Marie, honey,” Bloomington yelled at the far side of the room. “Can you take the Commander’s machine gun and help me MOW DOWN THESE NAZI ASSHOLES!” he screamed toward the top of the staircase. Marie scurried over to the portly scientist’s side and picked up the dormant gun. The last glimpse I caught of them, both laughed with glee as they fired at the stream of Nazis that poured through the door atop the staircase.

  Corcoran and I nodded a quick goodbye to Violette, and triggered the secret door that led to the catacombs.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I’ll spare you the details of most of our journey through the “catacombs,” as this section of the tunnels underneath the city was little more than an open sewer. It is worth noting, though, that for all of her virtues, Violette forgot to supply us with a light source, meaning that we generally had to navigate by whatever light we could glean from the tiny “skylights” in manhole covers and open sewer drains.

  We didn’t speak much on the way, other than to perhaps blow up at one another several times regarding forks in the road and that sort of thing. Eventually, though, the subject of Bloomington came up.

  “Let it go, Doc,” Corcoran said.

  “It’s just unfathomable to me that you’d want to stay in a time period devoid of so many wondrous technological advances for a woman that you met that very morning.”

  “Hey, the guy’s in love—what can I say?” Corcoran replied. I was shocked by his nonchalant attitude about the whole matter.

  “You just lost your chief scientist and colleague!” I said.

  “What’s the big deal? You’re the one who runs the ship, and once we get all square, I can come back and get him ‘tomorrow,’ if need be. It’s not like he’s lost somewhere in time, unknown to the rest of history.”

  “Haven’t you paid any attention at all? Time travel is a tricky business! Rather inexact, what with all of the quantum computations and—”

  “He made a decision, Doc. Now he has to live with it.” A solitary ray of light streaked the Commander’s face. Though I expected a pronounced scowl, he merely leveled his eyes at mine.

  We continued more or less undisturbed until we came to an outtake grate perhaps two or three hours later. We had no way to pass it other than dive under, which would have been far more unpleasant if I hadn’t already been coated in roughly fifteen different kinds of shit.

  As I plunged in, I discovered that we had veered away from the sewer some time before, and I found the cool, relatively clean water to be rather refreshing on my weary, filth-caked skin.

  We emerged from what was little more than a glorified creek on the far side of the park from whence we had landed. Though the park was as barren of Nazis as it had been upon our arrival, Corcoran and I both thought the better of arousing the suspicions of any onlookers by sprinting through the park in waterlogged three piece suits on an otherwise sunny, pleasant Parisian day.

  We reached the clearing that housed the ship, and I pressed the b
utton on the temple of my smart spectacles (which I was grateful for now more than ever) to reveal the craft’s location. There it was, undisturbed; it sat blissfully silent in the warm, fragrant air of Paris in springtime.

  I placed my hand upon the plate to lower the gangway, and we both hurried up the ramp and into the ship, whereupon I shut the door straightaway.

  I allowed the Commander the first shower, and followed soon thereafter. As I towelled off my hair, and dressed in a fresh, crisp suit, provided by the QC, I checked the power levels, which read “Nominal—Ready for Time Travel.” I jokingly keyed in the coordinates for the jump back to my time—

  Then I realised it; this time, it was no joke. The display read those fantastic numbers that had guided me to so much hatred and sorrow, so many jumps to exotic locales. At that moment, they were the three most hated and loved numbers I had seen in my life:

  “99.9%”

  Home! I thought. In all of the action over the past two jumps, I had forgotten that it was finally time to return to my “given” time. I didn’t dare to check to see if Corcoran’s time would come up similarly; I was worried that even the slightest change would erase those wondrous numbers from the screen, and trap me in this awful little piece of history.

  “How’s it goin’?” Corcoran’s voice startled me.

  I tried to hide my enthusiasm as best as I could, “Fine, thank you. Are you ready to see the future, Commander?”

  “Beats the hell outta all the places in the past we’ve been,” Corcoran said with a tight smile.

  “Despite the devastating, ‘ended,’ yet on-going World War, I think you’ll find America to be quite pleasant in 2032.”

  “Here’s hopin’,” Corcoran nodded. A sly smile crept across his face, “Any chance I could pick the victory music?”

  I considered his request for several moments. I was ready to blast the latest technorock hit from Clive Henrickson, but I figured that since the Commander would be able to avail himself of all the modern classics soon enough, I’d throw him a bit of a bone on the way back.

  “Very well,” I said. I hit the “music” icon on my tablet and allowed him to scroll through the catalogue, which I must admit was quite extensive.

  “Okay…okay…no…no…let’s see…HERE WE GO!” Corcoran exclaimed as he tapped the tablet’s surface with great force.

  As the first few notes started playing, I realised I had made an egregious error. A song that I would later learn was called “The Show Goes On,” by some fellow named “Lupe Fiasco” blared over the loudspeakers.

  “What in the devil—?” I asked.

  “Hey, they used to play this after Rams games,” Corcoran said with a wink.

  “Why were you a fan of the Los Angeles…oh, that’s right. They were in St. Louis for a few years there, weren’t they?”

  “And you claim to not be a sports fan,” Corcoran said with a grin.

  “Living in Baltimore, it’s hard not to know who the Ravens beat up on every weekend,” I replied. It was true; inevitably during my “office hours” with my colleagues, some neanderthal dolt or another would bring up the American football contest in town that weekend and (I imagine to wind me up a bit) try to solicit my opinion on the ultimate victor.

  “There’s a little bit of autotune in this one, but I like that it’s not overproduced, you know?” Corcoran said.

  “Commander, forgive me if I don’t discuss the various merits of using autotune or not in—”

  “Isn’t it nice to hear the artist’s natural voice, though?” Corcoran said. “There’s somethin’ pure about it, you know? You can really hear the raw emotion—”

  “If I wanted to hear emotion in a singer’s voice, I would listen to something from…oh, I don’t know…Barbara Streisand?” Corcoran smirked and I realised that being from 2012, his attitudes toward the stereotypes accompanying listeners of Barbara Streisand may not have been as “enlightened” as most people in my time, “or…err…Frank Sinatra?”

  Corcoran smiled, “agree on the Chairman. No one could quite belt ‘em out like him.” Suddenly, Corcoran furrowed his brow as he scrolled through the contents of my playlist and jabbed at another icon. “Maybe this is a bit more your speed, Doc.”

  Thankfully, that “noise” that had been on the loudspeakers was replaced by the beginning of “I’ve Got the World on a String.” I breathed a sigh of relief as I unconsciously began to bob my head with the music.

  To my shock, Corcoran followed suit. We caught each other’s glances and broke into a smile as we began to sing the words together. As we got into the song more, I couldn’t help but be a bit touched. The Commander and I had struck up quite the little friendship over the past who-knows-how-many days. Two men, who couldn’t be any more apart, brought together by these ridiculous errands, this wild goose chase. Somehow we found some common ground in all of the travails and awfulness through which we had been. I chuckled a bit at the absurdity of it all, though Corcoran must have realised that he was in an even more absurd position; about to experience the future, first-hand!

  I hit the red “Engage” icon and we continued to belt out the song, all pretenses at modesty thrown to the wayside. We ascended through the clouds and into the heavens above just as the song crescendoed into the thrilling climax. As it came to an end, we hadn’t made the jump yet, which allowed the Commander and I a couple of rather awkward moments.

  After several seconds of uncomfortable silence, Corcoran pointed back toward his quarters, “I’ll…uh…go work on my report some more,” he said.

  “Indeed—I had better focus on piloting this damned thing,” I said, even though I had every intention of allowing the computer to handle those duties unless the moon decided to make another surprise appearance.

  After another ten minutes, the tunneling lasers engaged, and sent us into the wormhole for what I thought was to be my final time.

  There was no boredom during the jump this time; I was as giddy as a child on Christmas morning. We emerged from the tunnel of wondrous colour as the Earth hung, as it always did, in the distance.

  The ship approached the blue marble at a much faster rate than that to which I was accustomed. Keep in mind, this was in spite of all of the space junk and debris that surrounded the planet, so forgive me if I was more than a bit “on edge” as we approached the Western Hemisphere.

  Apparently, the computer was on a mission, as it expertly dodged every obstacle that modern Earth threw at it. I looked down at what I expected to be a sick planet in my time. A decent chunk of its surface rendered useless by nuclear war and fallout. Warring nations constantly threatening to finish the job. The Middle East a—

  Patch of lush, green life? I thought as I surveyed the familiar shape of the rhinoceros’s head butting into the Indian subcontinent. I wiped my glasses and blinked my eyes to ensure that my senses didn’t presently deceive me, but it was true; that “barren wasteland” looked now vibrant and verdant, even if from thousands of miles away.

  “That’s odd,” I muttered. I allowed myself the possibility that it was simply the “fallout scrubbing” that was going on in the area, using various encouraging genetically-modified crops to take in and process the nuclear waste and replace it with oxygen, but that program had only begun a year ago, and was constantly being sabotaged by all three sides of the conflict.

  The craft continued to build up speed toward the east coast. Though we felt no momentum, I was beginning to feel rather alarmed at our approach. The ship continued to dodge satellites, aircraft, and other time machines, which performed their own—

  “Other time machines!?” I couldn’t help but exclaim.

  “What’s that, Doc?” Corcoran asked from his quarters.

  “Uh…nothing, Ricky. Nothing at all.” I hoped my fake grin showed in my tone.

  The ship flew in amazingly quick spurts and bursts. It changed directions on a dime without slowing down. Eventually, the Chesapeake Bay came into focus, though I was shocked by the dozen or s
o other saucers outside of my window.

  “Dear God,” I whispered to no one in particular. “What have we done?”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  As we hurtled toward the ground, I was sure that my Benefactor had played one final cruel joke on us. “Nothing personal, Fin,” he would say. “Just had to tie up the loose ends.”

  I gripped the armrests of the command chair with white-knuckles and prepared for the inevitable crash. We descended toward a garish, glass-and-stainless-steel eyesore of a building that was some eighty stories high in the middle of what only vaguely reminded me of downtown Baltimore.

  The ChronoSaber tower from the video in Dinosaur times! I thought. I was certain it would be one of my last.

  At the very last moment, as my survival instincts kicked in, and I shut my eyes and tensed all of the muscles in my body, I felt…nothing. I slowly opened one eye, then another, and saw that we had landed in a field across from the new stainless steel-and-glass building. I checked the readouts on the dash: “Time Jump Successful,” the screen flashed, though I wanted nothing more than to put a fist through the panel since something had obviously gone very wrong.

  Corcoran picked one hell of a time to emerge from his quarters. He cocked his pistol and placed it in his holster, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred in the slightest.

  “Miss anything?” he asked.

  “I’m…uh…not quite sure…” I replied. I fumbled for my own sidearm and was shocked to find that it was of the conventional variety, and not my prototype laser pistol.

  Damn! Bloomington has it! I cursed my own carelessness at my oversight. I attempted to hide my frustration as I casually chambered a round and placed the Baretta in my own holster.

  “What is it?” Corcoran asked.

  “Let’s take a look around, shall we?” I said, hopefully more “British Indiana Jones” than “inept Marcus Brody,” as brilliantly portrayed by Denholm Elliot. Though I somewhat preferred his turn as “Coleman” in Trading Places, but I suppose that’s neither here nor there at the moment.