The Emmanuel Project

by Ronald Brueckmann

  “Pssst…friend…you better go back the way you came unless you want to join in and help us butcher some Roman pigs.”

  Viktor looked toward the sound. Four men, armed with pitted swords, stood pressed against the side wall of a low whitewashed dwelling. Others crouched inside the open doorway. Heads peeked over the edge of the roof. The voice spoke again.

  “Come join us. Spill some Roman blood.”

  With a toss of his head, the man indicated the far end of the block where two legionnaires appeared to be escorting a splendidly dressed Roman on a tour of the poor side of town. The tourist was about to have his day grievously ruined. Slowly backing away until he was out of sight of the ambush, Viktor took to his heels, retracing his route back into the crowded confusion where he immediately collided with an ancient bearded man, knocking him to the ground. Skidding to a stop, he bent down to help the old man to his feet.

  “I am sorry, Grandfather. I did not see you. Take my hand. Let me help you up.”

  The old man looked up, tears streaming down his tawny fissured cheeks.

  “Are you injured?”

  The old man shook his head.

  “Then why do you weep?”

  A hoarse voice answered from behind, and Viktor turned to face a group of elders clustered around the entrance to their modest synagogue. They were all old, stooped, and bearded. And they were all weeping. Praying and weeping.

  “Young man, have you not seen the signs? The earth…the sky. The dead have left their shrouds and walk among us. Chayim here saw the prophet Isaiah on the steps of the Temple. Aviram’s wife Keshet saw the rabbi Jesse Ben-Eben near the market. I myself saw the great rabbi Hillel standing at the podium, right here in our own synagogue. He was reading from the sacred scrolls. I saw him with my own two eyes, alive as you and me. At the time, I did not understand. I ran away in fear. Now it is clear. Our beloved departed have returned to us. It is surely the end of days. The God of Israel has come to deliver us from the pagans. Have you not seen the signs?” The teary-eyed man grasped the sleeve of Viktor’s dirty tunic, pulling him toward the open door. “Come pray with us, young man,” he sobbed. “It is the end of days. The Almighty has come. We are to be delivered.”

  From the alleyway next to the small synagogue, two Zealots staggered into the street, blood staining their robes, blood dripping from their swords. The elders took no notice. Viktor pulled himself free of the old man’s frantic grasp and ran in the opposite direction. Heading for the Temple Mount, he pushed his way through knots of merchants and mercenaries, through a writhing mass of townsfolk and foreigners, rabbis and Romans, princes and paupers, the faces and the places melting into a bewildering hallucinogenic blur. Near the Temple, the crowds were even thicker, the atmosphere charged like an approaching thunderstorm. Bone weary and lightheaded, he pushed himself onward, gasping for breath.

  Avoiding a bottleneck at the southern stair of the Temple Mount, Viktor continued along the Western Wall. He had prayed there many times with his grandfather. Back then it had brought him peace. Now he scurried past as fast as his tired legs would carry him. Passing under the arched footbridge, he followed the shallow Tyropoeon Valley. The crowd was thinning out at this end of the Temple Mount, supplanted by a large contingent of Roman legionnaires who stood guard at the entrance to the Antonia Fortress. They eyed him with hostility and he reacted automatically, veering away toward the relatively open space just inside the city wall. The sun was already slipping down and he was exhausted, his mind overloaded. He needed a place to rest. He desperately needed to pull himself together. His bandages were wet with fresh blood, his muscles ached. Legs trembling, he stumbled toward the fish market.

  With the Shabbat rapidly approaching, most of the market stalls were already shuttered, the remaining vendors busy closing up for the holiday. Remembering the coins Yehuda had given him, Viktor hurriedly purchased a dried fish, a wedge of bread, and a jar of Judean wine. The merchants did little to disguise their disgust with his bedraggled appearance and hustled him along. Out of sight behind an empty stall, he settled down onto piece of tent canvas and devoured his simple feast.

  CHAPTER 57

  Ancient Palestine (circa 30 CE)

  Viktor awoke to the sound of voices. The sun was low in the sky, the city wall casting a deep shadow across the market. He must have dozed. A pool of wine drying on his lap, a crust of bread still clutched in one hand, he fought the confusion swirling through his mind. Shaking his head, he listened. The voices were near. The deserted market was quiet and he could hear the voices clearly. But the words eluded him. Pushing himself off the ground, he staggered, grasping a tent rope for support. Squeezing his eyes shut, he waited until the earth stopped spinning around in his head. Then with his feet tolerably firm beneath him, he slowly made his way past the shuttered stalls toward the main concourse. Up ahead at the north wall, a procession trudged forlornly through the Fish Gate. It was an odd assortment of people. The flagrantly rich and painfully poor, the cultured and the coarse, men and women, all together, clinging to one another. They tread solemnly as if in a funeral cortege, faces downcast, weeping. He felt drawn to them. Fell in beside them. Asked them what troubled them.

  “He is gone… Dead… Murdered…by the Romans,” they said.

  “Who?” Viktor asked.

  “The only one who mattered… The Master… The blessed one… The Romans crucified our rabbi… Nailed him to a tree,” they sobbed.

  “Who was this rabbi?”

  “Yeshua… Yeshua of Nazareth… Our Master… The Lord,” they answered.

  “Where?”

  The group turned as one, pointing back toward the city wall. The ruddy light of the setting sun streamed through the open gate, magnifying the anguish etched deeply into their faces.

  “Golgotha,” they cried.

  Viktor rushed through the gate and stumbled blindly up the road. The busy route was silent now as sunset brought the Sabbath and the mournful call of the shofar. There in the gathering dusk, atop a raised slab of exposed bedrock, stood three large wooden crosses.

  CHAPTER 58

  Present-Day Israel

  As Jump day approached, the Team continued to stress the importance of fulfilling the mission, reminding Viktor again and again that he must not allow anything to jeopardize the successful completion of his Primary Objective. The monotonous repetition was wearing thin. From his military training, he knew it to be a type of mind control. Nothing heavy, not like some of the stuff he had witnessed with the Mossad. Still, the Team was implanting the idea deep enough into his psyche that it would require a conscious act of will to ignore his responsibility. It was to be expected. But he was shocked and sadly disappointed to hear Allison repeating the same company line. It had happened more than once, and in bed no less. He began to wonder if she might be a plant, an undercover mole sent to keep an eye on him, to keep him happy and distracted. It was a disturbing thought. Were her feelings for him only a ruse? He was tempted to challenge her. But with time growing short, what purpose would it serve? And much to his surprise, he realized he didn’t really care to know the truth anyway. Soon, his current life would be just a memory, a very distant memory.

  The constant repetition was wearing thin for the Team, too. But they couldn’t help themselves. They obsessed over every detail, controlling what they could while they could. After the Jump, with the time traveler completely beyond their influence, only the subject’s commitment and personal discipline would ensure the successful completion of their mission. So many things could go wrong. Any breakdown in the physiological or psychological state of the subject had the potential to thwart the entire venture. They still worried whether a living organism could even survive a Jump into the past. And they worried that a subject who survived the Jump might be so busy trying to stay alive that their obligation to the Project would be compromised. Or that a subject who successfully assimilated into a new life might become so comfortable that the mission would lose its relevance. Or tha
t a subject, isolated and alienated in a strange place, might feel abandoned and resentful of the Project. Or that viruses, eradicated decades ago by modern medicine, might steal the subject’s vitality. Or that a latent health problem, or loneliness, or unhappiness, or even plain bad luck might send the subject off on an errant path. So much was left to chance. It certainly didn’t meet the scientific criteria of a controlled experiment. So they obsessed and they repeated themselves until even they began to feel a bit foolish.

  The Team also continued to agonize over time paradoxes, continually cautioning Viktor to tread lightly in the past, to affect as little as possible. The usual theories were reiterated. They reminded him of how the most trivial change to the past could have enormous unforeseen ramifications on the future. How his actions might even generate a parallel universe, or an alternate dimension, or…or maybe nothing at all. They really didn’t know.

  Despite all their warnings, the scientists realized that they were asking the impossible. How could they expect a subject to have no effect on their surroundings when they might be spending an entire lifetime in the past? They were playing with fire and they knew it. The best they could do is to caution the test subjects to be careful, and hope for the best. Once again, not any scientist’s idea of a controlled experiment. A few hard-liners suggested that the safest strategy would be for the test subjects to self-terminate immediately following the successful completion of their Primary Objective. It was a compelling idea, a safe and sound idea. But for obvious reasons, no one dared present the suggestion to the time travelers.

  By now, Viktor was well prepared for the mission. Still, his father wanted to use the remaining time wisely, wanting to give his son every advantage for survival. So at Robert’s insistence, the Team assembled a distinguished group of scholars from universities across the Middle East. Unaware of the Project’s intent, their task was to augment Viktor’s already substantial knowledge of ancient Palestine, to fill in any blanks in his comprehension of their particular field of study. Having already mastered the principal ancient languages, linguists tutored him in various regional dialects. Historians expanded his general knowledge of ancient politics. Anthropologists coached him in the nuance of custom and taboo. Geographers mapped ancient trade routes and roads and trails. Philosophers even tried to get him to think like an ancient. He already had a broad base of knowledge. What was new to him, he soaked up like a dry sponge.

  Two weeks before Jump day, Victor and Robert met with the Team principals to present their final mission plan, outlining the various contingencies based on exactly when Viktor’s Jump would place him. Justifying their preferred method of communication, Robert explained how most media was ephemeral, seldom surviving the passage of time, so they would be relying on the old standby…stone. Sure, there were some parchment scrolls and shreds of textiles that had endured the millennia, but it was extremely rare and unlikely. So Viktor’s task was to etch a short inscription into the bedrock at one of the burial sites, preferably in a modern language, so there would be no doubt that a contemporary individual had left the message. The Team approved.

  Then somewhat hesitantly, Robert began to explain their personal objective. To his surprise, the Team was uninterested, abruptly cutting him off in mid-sentence. Reverting back to their standard spiel, they reminded Viktor that his Primary Objective was to obtain entrance to the appropriate tomb and provide the appropriate inscription that included his name and the date of his arrival in ancient Palestine using the Hebrew calendar. Anything else he wanted to provide for his father was fine with them, as long as it did not interfere with the successful completion of that Primary Objective.

  With only a few days remaining, Dr. Robert Jankowski went out into the field to review the progress of several excavations being administered by Tel Aviv and Hebrew Universities. With data generated by ground-penetrating radar and his personal observations, he selected the optimal placement for the TMC at each site. If all went well, his graduate students would be uncovering a peculiar inscription in the coming months. A very peculiar inscription indeed.

  CHAPTER 59

  Ancient Palestine (circa 30 CE)

  Viktor climbed up onto the limestone platform. Elevated above the pathway, the outcropping rose sharply before leveling off, its top surface worn flat and smooth. The rustic stage was spattered with gore. Sorrow hung heavy in the air. And something else. He could feel it weighing down on him. Something powerful. Light-headed, he stood at the foot of one cross. It was different from the others. Something had been attached to the top of the post. Like the other two, blood streaked the crossbar and dark stripes stained the shaft. He stood transfixed, his mind a whirlwind of impressions and emotions.

  The setting sun was touching the distant hilltops. Crimson clouds raced across a crimson sky, the cross standing in stark silhouette against the feverish heavens. His heart racing, Viktor struggled to focus on the splintered plank that was nailed above the crossbar. Something had been scrawled there. But obscured by the glare, he couldn’t make out what it said. Knowing that the inscription was significant, yet unable to remember why, he strained to make sense of it. Still the message eluded him, its meaning far beyond the capacity of his bleary eyes and overtaxed brain. With the plaintive strains of the shofar in his ear and dark motes swarming across his vision, Viktor teetered on faltering legs and crumpled to the cold bedrock of Golgotha, his unconscious form lying like a pile of rags at the foot of the empty cross.

  As the rock leached the last trace of heat from his body, Viktor began to stir. Slowly he opened his eyes. The darkness that surrounded him was absolute, no moon, no stars, and no sound except for the wind. It sighed across the rocky outcropping, whispering unfathomable secrets into his ear. He lay there listening as the cold soaked through his flesh and pierced deep into the marrow of his bones. When he could stand it no longer, he marshaled the flagging remnants of his strength and sat up, hanging his head between his knees until the bright starbursts faded from his vision. The night around him felt thick and desolate, the blackness bearing down like an oxen’s yoke across his shoulders. With great effort, he climbed to his feet, the ground unsteady beneath him. Stumbling across the rocky platform and down the jagged incline, he gratefully felt his feet touch the level surface of the roadway and staggered back toward the city. Up ahead, a faint glow filtered through the Fish Gate where a sputtering torch inside the wall cast a fitful light upon the road. At the gate he stopped and rested, leaning heavily against the stone wall, shivering as the breeze penetrated his filthy cloak. When the bone-chilling cold once again outweighed his fatigue, he pushed off and plodded past the market, back toward the Temple Mount. Illuminated with blazing torches, the Sanctuary floated above the hushed city. The sight drew him like a moth to a flame. But before he had gotten far, a voice barked out of the darkness.

  “Halt! In the name of Rome, stop where you are or I will run you through.”

  A burly legionnaire materialized out of the gloom. Through an open doorway, Viktor could see several more soldiers squatting on the floor, playing some kind of dice game.

  “What are you doing out at this time of night? Do you not know that it is the Shabbat? Are you not a Jew? You sure look like a Jew. You sure smell like one, too. Hey Antonius, come out here. Come take a look at this tramp.”

  Another soldier emerged from the guardhouse, not happy to be called away from his gambling. Roughly dragging Viktor toward the light, the soldier spun him around before pushing him to the ground.

  “Well, what have we got here?” he sneered. “What have you been up to? Looks like you have been in a fight. Are you one of those Zealots? Have you been out butchering innocent Roman citizens? Is that how you celebrate your holy days, you Hebrew pig? We have been looking for you and your friends. We have something special planned for you.” Turning to the open doorway, he shouted, “You three, get out here right now. Take this filth to the garrison. Have him put in the cage with the rest of them. Let him stink up Pilate’s castl
e. Show our precious governor what kind of rabble we are dealing with in this accursed place. Nothing but a race of troublemakers and thieves and murderers. Look at him. He sickens me. I cannot stand the sight of him. Take him away!”