by Jeff Long
A small crowd was gathered in front of the building. In itself that wasn’t foreboding. Since the outset, wags in Los Alamos had been laying bets on how long it would take for someone to equate the Year Zero bones with the King of Kings. The city had its share of what Izzy called “queer fish,” crackpots, rebels, and the superstitious. Just because they were devoted to rational science didn’t guarantee against an irrational twitch now and then. Especially in these terrible times, a hysterical outburst was to be expected. But there was nothing hysterical about the crowd.
It was very early morning, black and cold. The sun wouldn’t come up for hours. People wore parkas and sweaters. There were a few East European matrons in scarves, the sort one might expect for a Jesus sighting. One toted a smoky Russian icon over her chest, which was almost too pat. Otherwise the crowd was mostly lab workers and night owls, and that was sobering.
“Hey, Miranda, Nathan Lee,” a young man called to them. He was a microbiologist from the office next door. He liked to play frisbee at lunch.
“What are you doing here?” Miranda asked him. It was a question for all of them.
“We heard the news.” The man was excited.
“You should be in bed,” she told them. “Or working.”
“When do we get to see him?”
Miranda gaped at him. “Are you crazy?” she said.
His face fell. He backed into the crowd.
Nathan Lee took her arm and continued inside. “Did you hear that?” she complained. “Look at them. Don’t they know it’s a hoax?”
“One thing at a time,” he said. “Let’s find out what happened. There’s an explanation, I’m sure.”
The Captain was waiting for them in his office. It overlooked the front lot where the crowd was gathering. Two of his guards were sitting side by side, a big Tejano and a slight man, Ross. Nathan Lee knew them both. He’d never seen Ross so pale.
“Tell them,” said the Captain. He was not pleased. A black Bible sat on his desk with a yellow pencil for a bookmark.
“We were sitting in the monitor room,” Ross started. He glanced at his partner, who clearly wanted nothing to do with this. “I heard one of the inmates call out. The incident occured at 0225 hours.”
“What incident?” said Miranda.
“He said El-ee, El-ee….” Ross paused and looked at Nathan Lee self-consciously. “And I can’t pronounce the rest. I may not speak the lingo, but I do know my Bible. It’s right there. I looked it up. He spoke it just like it’s written.”
“What are you talking about?” Miranda said.
“Laa-ma sabok-tamee,” quoted Nathan Lee.
“That’s it,” said Ross. “Just like that.”
Nathan Lee picked up the Bible and flipped it open to the pencil, and there was the passage. He handed it to Miranda. “Christ’s question from the cross,” he said. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Miranda glanced at the book. “So?” she said.
“He spoke it,” said Ross. “He spoke the words.”
“That’s convenient,” she said, flipping through another few pages. “It’s the one part I see that’s in Aramaic.” She lowered the book. “You read it to him.”
Ross looked horrified. “No, Dr. Abbot, I swear.” He leaned forward to put his hand on the open book.
“Sit back,” growled the Captain.
Ross pointed at his partner. “Ask Joe. He heard it, too.”
Joe looked off at the corner. But he didn’t deny it.
“Again,” she said, “so what?”
“Well,” said Ross, “how’d he know those words?”
“Because he heard them,” she said.
“Not from us, he didn’t.”
“Then from the other clones,” said Miranda. “They’re out there in the yard, day in, day out, polluting each other with ideas. Praying and sacrificing and preaching to each other. One of them quoted from the Bible, that’s all.”
“But the Bible wasn’t written yet,” said Ross. “Not back then.”
“It was being written,” said Nathan Lee. “There are all kinds of sects in the yard. Christians, pagans, Jews. The story was being shaped.”
Ross’s eyes went to the Bible. “He spoke the words. At 0225 hours.”
Nathan Lee glanced at the Captain, who seemed painfully aware of Ross’s limitations.
“Which one of the clones was it?” Nathan Lee asked. He already knew. It would be Ben. The crucifix had spooked them them all, bringing out their ghosts. And Izzy had all but invited Ben to declare himself the messiah when they were talking at the fire.
“He’s one of them that didn’t have a name.”
“Not Ben?”
“Not him.”
Miranda cut in. “But now he has a name.”
“Yes, ma’am. He told me. Jesus Christ. He said it to my face.”
“To your face? You spoke to him?”
Ross didn’t answer. Beside him, Joe gave a bull snort. “I couldn’t stop him in time. Little pendejo.”
“You went in his cell?” Miranda demanded.
Ross’s eyes dodged away.
Joe said, “That’s what he did.”
They sat for a minute. Nathan Lee looked out the window. The crowd was swelling down there.
“So you went into the man’s cell,” Miranda said to Ross. “What did you say?”
“I asked him if his name is Jesus.”
“You asked him?” Miranda closed the book. “And what does that tell you?”
Ross’s jaw set. “That he’s Jesus Christ.”
“Ipso facto,” Miranda expelled.
Nathan Lee watched the fancy Latin close Ross down, and out. His awe was still there, but it excluded them.
“You know that’s not possible,” Miranda said after a minute.
“But it’s written,” Ross replied.
Nathan Lee felt a tightening in his gut. He’d figured this was a midnight prank, but Ross was in earnest, and the crowd was multiplying beneath the parking lot lights.
Miranda patted the Bible. “For a minute, let’s forget what’s written, okay? Think about it. These clones come from a Roman landfill. Even if Jesus ever existed, do you know the odds against us finding his remains?”
Now was Ross’s turn to pity their limitations. “He existed all right. Because otherwise there wouldn’t be the Word. And your odds don’t matter, not if He wanted us to find him. This is how He chose to come to us. And I was there.”
Miranda said, “Then let’s talk about the remains. If Christ rose into heaven, he wouldn’t have left any remains. And he did rise, right? It’s written in the Word.”
Years ago, Nathan Lee had listened to Ochs use this very argument to disarm detractors of the Year Zero project. The problem now was that Ross was not a detractor. “He didn’t leave bones,” Ross said. “Just blood. Smeared all over. It’s right there. Written fact.”
Miranda flipped the Bible back and forth, as if looking for a hole in one side or the other. “I’ve only read it once,” she said, “but I don’t recall that version.”
“Not in there,” said Ross. He pointed at the Captain’s desktop. “There.”
Nathan Lee had seen the manila folder when he entered. It was his own handiwork, one of the bios he’d amassed on each clone. He reached for the folder with that rock in his gut. Ross was easy to dismiss as a gullible cracker. But he hadn’t neglected to challenge his belief. And to buttress it. Obviously he’d gone straight to the Necro Archives and rooted for some further proof. Nathan Lee flipped the folder open, and it was there in black and white.
Clone 2YZ-87 had been born thirteen months ago, the second in a batch of nine identical others. His DNA had been processed from the 87th Year Zero specimen, a sliver of wood impregnated with blood. A blood relic, not one of the Golgotha bones. His genetic archaeology report was unexceptional. There were two methods for dating genetic samples. The most reliable method used mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA, which was passed down onl
y through the maternal line. According to that, the clone’s mother had been born fifteen to thirty years before the first millenium. That placed his birth, logically, around the year zero. His blood phenotype was classic Levantine. He had a predisposition to Tay-Sachs and other genetic diseases that afflicted Semitic populations. None of his nine brothers had survived the labs of South Sector.
“Miranda,” said Nathan Lee. He handed her the folder. She barely glanced at it.
“That doesn’t prove your claim,” Nathan Lee said to Ross. Unfortunately, it didn’t disprove it either, which left Ross more latitude than them. “We’ve got a man who was born in the first century, just like three dozen other clones sitting down in the basement. And none of the others is saying he’s the son of God.”
“That’s exactly right,” said Ross.
Izzy arrived just then, bleary eyed, hair spiky. “Sorry. Got here fast as I could. Looks like a rock concert out there. What’s up?”
When they told him, Izzy said, “Oh, that’s rich.”
Ross’s jaw grew another inch.
Nathan Lee hitched up a chair and got down at eye level with Ross. The man was a little stubborn, that was all. “Let’s walk through this again,” he said. All they needed was to have Ross impeach himself, and it would be over. It would be embarrassing for the guard, but he’d brought it on himself. “You asked the man if his name is Jesus Christ.”
“No,” Ross was specific.
“But you just told us you did.”
“I asked him, I said, Jesus? That’s all.”
“And what did he say?”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Christ?” asked Izzy from the side. “You’re sure about that?”
“That’s what he said,” said Ross.
“Anything else?”
“A whole string of stuff. I didn’t understand a word of it.”
“There it is then,” Izzy announced. “Stone soup.” He looked around at them triumphantly.
“Stone soup,” Miranda slowly repeated.
“You know the old story. A penniless soldier goes into a village. He promises everybody a feast with his magic stone. Puts a rock in a kettle and gets every house to add some vegetables and meat and spices. Before long, he’s got a feast!”
They stared at him, waiting.
“A little of this, a little of that,” Izzy expanded. “Our clone hears some of the Christian lads in the yard telling tales, puts it together, and Ross here baptizes him Jesus Christ.”
“I only said Jesus,” Ross reminded them.
“Well somebody handed him the word Christ. Because it didn’t exist back then.”
Ross narrowed his eyes at Izzy.
“Jesus was a common name back then, like Bob or John today,” Izzy went on. “But the honorific Christ didn’t exist, see. It’s an Old English abbreviation for Christus, which is Latin for Christos, which is Greek for the Hebrew meshiah. The annointed one. Christos wasn’t used until the New Testament started to be written…decades after the crucifixion. The short form Christ didn’t arrive for centuries. The historical Jesus would never have had the vocabulary to call himself Christ. To say nothing of the fact that there’s no place in the Bible where he ever called himself Messiah. Do you see? If he calls himself Christ then he’s not Christ. It’s simple. The clone’s an impostor. Someone set him up. He’s not real.”
“Why would someone do that?” said Miranda.
“I don’t know. A prank?”
“Who could have gotten to him, though?” said Nathan Lee. “We’ve been so careful.”
“Not that careful. Somebody got into the yard and left that crucifix in the tree, remember? For all we know it could be the same merry prankster. Somebody with access to the place. Somebody inside.”
They looked at Ross again. “What about it,” said Nathan Lee. “Did you put the cross in the tree? Did you put the clone up to this?”
“No, sir,” Ross swore. Then he added, “Not that I see the harm.”
“Why is that, Ross?”
Ross looked at Nathan Lee like he was a little slow. “They are Christians.”
Nathan Lee slapped his knees. “Right,” he said.
“What I want to know is who leaked this nonsense?” said Miranda. “Look at that crowd out there.”
Ross fell silent. Joe provided. “Pendejo,” he rumbled.
“Is that true?” Miranda demanded.
Ross confessed. “I called my wife. I told her not to call her sister.”
“But he’s not real,” Miranda groaned.
Ross glanced up at her. “Why not?” he said.
“We just told you.”
Ross thought about that. His jaw looked like petrified wood. Nathan Lee sighed.
The Captain said, “Get him out of here.”
“Where to, Captain?” Joe said.
“Give him a mop. Have him change lightbulbs. I don’t know. Just keep him away from the Pound. And any telephones. And do not let him go out there. Those people do not need anymore of this brilliant display.”
After the two guards left, Miranda said, “Unbelievable.”
They went to the window. The vigil had grown from a few dozen to several hundred. Candle flames glittered in the night.
“But these are sophisticated people,” Izzy protested. “They can’t honestly believe we’ve got the son of God in our basement.”
Miranda gestured at the window. “Then what are they doing out there?”
“Human curiosity.”
“It’s three in the morning.”
“I don’t like it,” the Captain said. “These things can blow up. I want some breathing room.” He picked up his phone and called Pro Force. They were the shock troops, armed and menacing. “Keep it polite,” he ordered. “Ask them to disperse. They probably won’t, so just escort the crowd down the hill. Let’s set our perimeter at the road. They need to know our borders.”
The event was escalating before their eyes. People saw their lighted window and waved at them expectantly. They started singing “Rock of Ages.”
“They’re harmless,” Izzy insisted. “We know those people.”
They did look peaceful enough standing there. Mostly they were intent on keeping their candles from blowing out.
“Mobs aren’t people,” the Captain said.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Izzy said. “That’s all I’m saying.”
Miranda rubbed her temples.
“Pro Force,” said Nathan Lee. “They’re going to give it the stamp of reality, you know. Just their presence will legitimize the event.”
The Captain puffed out his cheeks. He looked out the window. “Damned if I do, damned if I don’t. It’s running out of control. Walking. Whatever it’s doing.”
“The Captain’s right,” Miranda said to Nathan Lee. “He has his job. You have yours. We need damage control. Fast.”
Nathan Lee got to his feet. “All right,” he said to Izzy. “Let’s go to the source.”
JOE WAS BACK on duty in the monitor booth. Ross was hanging by his thumbs somewhere, out of sight. Joe pointed at one of the screens. “Him,” he said.
Nathan Lee pulled up a chair and leaned close to the screen. “So,” he said, “finally.” It was the clone who’d cried Egypt. He never had given a name.
The man was sitting erect on the edge of his bed, as if awaiting visitors. His shoulder bones were set wide like a yoke, but he was thin. He had long feet and big hands, and his burr of hair and beard were black. He had seemed tentative and withdrawn ever since his outburst about the bronze sky, as if he’d misstepped. But his eyes were perfectly ferocious now. He’d made his move, no going back.
“What do you know about him?” Nathan Lee asked Izzy.
“Bit of a prig, you ask me. Keeps his own company. Put me off the few times I tried to chat him up.” Izzy summarized. “Don’t know a thing about him.”
“Let’s play back the tape,” Nathan Lee said to Joe. “I want to hear that ‘string of st
uff’ Ross mentioned.”
They watched the replay. There was Ross, opening the door. He entered the cell timidly, and crossed himself. “Perfect,” said Izzy. The clone stood watching him. Studying him. He didn’t appear distressed or anguished, though only a minute earlier he’d groaned about God forsaking him. Are you Jesus? Ross asked in English. Very clearly, the clone answered Jesus Christ.
Ross was right about the string of stuff. It was delivered so rapidly in Aramaic that Nathan Lee didn’t catch a word of it. Then Joe appeared at the edge of the frame, in the open doorway, and Ross was yanked from the cell. The door slammed shut.
“Again,” said Izzy. After the second replay, he said, “Oh, you’ll love this. Straight from Revelation. I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, who is and who was and who is to come. Then he goes on with something about suffering and repentance.”
Nathan Lee tried to remember the history of the New Testament. “Revelation,” he said. “But that wasn’t written until near the second century. This guy’s all over the place. Egypt. Revelation. Old Testament. New.”
“Doesn’t look like a Jesus to me anyhow,” said Izzy.
Nathan Lee knew what he meant. Jesus was an idol, a Shroud negative, a movie star…not a man. He had long blond tresses with a faint goatee, or dark curlicue forelocks and a ZZ Top beard. He came with blue eyes or black ones, with a straight nose and a crown of thorns. He belonged in Christmas mangers and Byzantine mosaics and on Mexican prayer cards, in stained glass, in marble statues. He was a figment of art, a creature of monks and Michelangelo and Mapplethorpe. Intellectually Nathan Lee knew this could not be the Christian godhead. But a deep, prehistoric part of him could not shake the outside chance of it. What if this was God in a burr cut?
“Fishing for attention,” said Izzy. “A stunt.”
Nathan Lee agreed. “But why now?”
“That crucifix in the tree, I’d say. Nothing to lose?”
Nathan Lee frowned. “Looking back, that crucifix in the tree seems almost like a signal. Like a green light to go into action.”
“Well, he’s come out of the closet now,” said Izzy.
“Let’s finish him off,” said Nathan Lee. “This won’t take long. Then everybody can go back to bed again.”