“The prophecies, yes,” Tamara mused. “So much depended upon making them come true. If Jesus truly believed in them, why did he feel he had to cheat? I mean, he admitted that he arranged for the ass or colt or whatever it was to be where he sent his disciples to find it. And a great deal more of the story was also deliberate planning on his part with the prophecies in mind.”
Myers turned to a side table and turned on a small, automatic coffee maker.
“You have to keep in mind the times and beliefs. Many Jews believed in the coming of a Messiah and the Kingdom of God. And the only ‘proof’ they had to back up that belief is the words of the old prophets.
“Now, Jesus could not read, he told me so himself. Very few of his time could, especially among the poor farmers such as lived in Nazareth. The Torah was mostly handed down as an oral tradition, to be learned by listening to the rabbi. Jesus, being very religiously inclined, listened well. He knew the old prophets by heart. They formed an integral part of his religious upbringing. If the Messiah were to come, it had to be as the prophecies proclaimed it would be. It could be no other way.”
“They why didn’t he simply sit back and let them happen? If God were really manipulating behind the scenes...”
“For the same reason many people today do things in the belief God wants them to. He thought of himself as an instrument of God. That it was God guiding his hand and actions.”
Tamara shook her head. “It gets confusing.”
“God moves in mysterious ways...” quoted Myers. “And people believe.”
“And the words that Jesus said while on the cross,” she said, “they were sort of the same as what the Gospels say, but different.”
“Again, remember, the Gospels were written down only years after the events they speak of. Until that point they were only oral traditions.”
For almost a full minute they were silent, until Tamara spoke. “That pretty much solves the problem. Answers the question.”
“You mean about the resurrection? And his divinity?”
“Yes. If your Machine did not see him arise, then he simply died and all else was made up by those who followed him.”
“So it would appear,” was Myers’ only comment.
“That’s going to upset a lot of people when it gets out.”
“If it gets out...” he said quietly.
“If...? You mean you would hide it from the world? I thought that what you and Fielding and Juliette wanted was the truth? That’s what I have always wished for: the absolute truth.”
Myers clasped his hands together. “But what is the truth? I saw the video showing him dying, the failing to revive him, and the taking away of his body from the tomb he was supposed to be buried in. But did we see everything?”
“What do you mean?”
“There are a few in the project who believe that what we created was only the shell of the man. It may be a perfect automaton and perform exactly as the real man would, but it would not contain that part which is not made of protons and neutrons and quarks. That there is something that the Machine could not bring through. Call it the soul. Call it the spirit. If Jesus was the Son of God, as so many proclaim, then maybe we did not get that part of him. If we could, maybe our copy could walk on water and raise the dead.”
“But you said you saw the recordings showing that he died and it was human hands that took him from that tomb.”
“That is true. But what if he was placed in another tomb and did arise from that one on the third day?
Tamara was shocked by that idea. “But couldn’t you use the Machine again to follow his body to where it was taken? Follow it for days until you’re certain he did not arise?”
He sighed. “Perhaps. But would it prove anything? There are those who maintain that the arisen Jesus was not the physical body, but the spirit of Jesus who came back to talk to his disciples. Our Machine could not record that.”
“Then you’re saying that we can’t be sure we have the truth?”
“I’m just a humble Jewish historian. What do I know of God’s mysterious ways?”
Chapter 35: Danger from Within
They returned to Jesus that afternoon. He was willing to have some lunch with them, and seemed much closer to normal than he had been. It was raining, so they sat in a small conference room near to his apartment to eat and talk.
“All those things I saw in that picture thing, they are true?” he asked when they were settled and the lunch begun.
“I have seen it and it is a record of true facts. It is a biased presentation, but an accurate one,” Myers told him. “But, understand that it is only part of history. There is much, much more since your time.”
“I know that you have hidden facts from me,” he told them. “Will you now be truthful? Will you answer any question I ask and not lie?”
“Yes, I will, rabbi. What we say may be hard for you to understand sometimes, but I... we will try our best.”
He seemed to think about that as he took a piece of melon. Finally, he said, “This church, the one called Catholic, is it as the pictures showed? It is filled with golden images and fine robes? Do crowds of people worship the high priest, the one called Pope?”
“Parts of the Catholic Church has much wealth,” she told him. “But some parts are like the small synagogues of your time: humble people meeting to worship God. There are many religions in the world today.”
Please, let’s not get into Islam and the crusades and things like that, Tamara wished silently.
“The priests in the Temple wore fine robes,” Jesus said slowly. “And they defiled the temple with their greed for mammon. They made a sacrifice to God not what it should be.”
He settled back in the chair and sighed. “You know, I had come to realize that the sacrifices of animals may not be what God wanted. I know that was what God asked for, according to the prophets, but I came to doubt. It is right to pay homage to God, but was a sacrifice the only way? I thought upon that. Could we not honor God in other ways? In our hearts? Each time we ate or drank? It came to me that a prayer each time we took bread, or each time we drank wine, a quiet, private dedication to God, might well be more pleasing to Him than the noise, confusion and almost impersonal way that the priests slaughtered so many animals. I told those who followed me to make the meal a sacrifice to God. At the end, when I knew that I was the Son of Man, the Appointed One, through whom God would work his wonders, I told them to remember God each time they took up bread or wine, that the bread was my body and the wine my blood. That was because the spirit of God had entered into me, and the blood that I would spill and the body that I was to give up were as the body and blood of God.”
He sighed again. “I do not believe they understood.” Then he straightened up and changed the subject.
“Now tell me of what happened after I died? What became of my friends? My wife, Mariam, what happened to her? And my children, Judas and Deborah? Where did my followers go?”
Myers sighed, and began to talk of history. And he was honest. Some of the facts shocked Jesus, such as the disciple Judas killing himself. Judas was his close friend, so much so that he even named his firstborn son after him. And he was both glad and saddened at the fates of his followers. He seemed particularly interested in how the Jewish faith fared after his time, and in the beginnings of the church that came to bear his name. Some of the news depressed him, some seemed to lift his spirits. He was depressed that nothing was known of his children, or his wife. That his mother was now revered by millions seemed to amuse him. He said that it would also amuse her no end. That his disciples were now saints, installed in heaven and prayed to by many seemed to confuse him. “I told them they would sit on twelve thrones and rule over the twelve tribes when the Kingdom of God came to the earth, not to be taken up to heaven and be prayed to by people.”
Also confusing was the importance to the new religion of a man named Saul, then renamed Paul. He had never heard of this Paul, but seemed to grasp that it
was he who had changed much of the direction of the early church and installed some principles that Jesus never intended.
A few times, Jesus muttered words mostly to himself, words that Myers did not always translate. Later, he told Tamara that Jesus was saying that he did not understand. To her, however, it sounded more as though he was praying. Or maybe cursing in that quiet voice of his.
The afternoon wore on, and when they departed Jesus was much as he had been before the disclosures of the tablet. “He’s coping with a massive amount of information rather well,” Myers said later when the two were having a dinner meeting with other members of the team.
“I agree,” Tamara told them. “He’s pretty much gotten over the shock of what he saw and heard on that tablet.”
Myers shook his head. “Maybe. I still feel that he has yet to come to grips with all that he saw.”
“Either of you two have any idea who gave him that tablet?” asked Fielding. When they both replied that they did not, he went on, “I’ll talk with Manhusen. He’ll be investigating.” He was looking at the innocent looking device as it sat on the table. “Maybe he can get some fingerprints off it. Or maybe trace the serial number and find out who bought it.”
“It had to be someone within the project,” Juliette said. “Who else could get into his room?”
“I’m wondering why this was done, rather than something stronger,” said Fielding. “I mean, if someone could sneak into his room at night, they could have done much worse than leave a tablet that would upset him. They could have killed him.”
Each of the six people in the room looked at each other. The idea that someone would want to kill the most famous man in history was at first a shock, but then it slowly sank into their minds that the very type of thing had happened so often before to so many famous men, and had happened to Jesus himself two thousand years prior. Almost as strong was the shocking idea that it had to be someone connected with Project J, or maybe one of the other projects. A lot had happened over the last few days and their little secret was not very secret any longer. Many of those who should not have even known of his existence had come forward asking if they could meet Jesus in person.
“So, what do you intend to do next?” asked Tamara.
“Just continue as before,” was Fielding’s reply. “We have ongoing research into improving the Machine. Dr. Myers will continue his interviews with Jesus. I thank you, by the way, Miss Graves, for your help with our guest. Seymour seems to think that Jesus is strongly attracted to you and opens up more to you.
“I will, of course,” he went on, “ask that security be increased. It may be good to limit access to Jesus. Maybe it would be best were I to install rules to the effect that no single person should be alone with him. It would be better that there always be a second person present. Except, of course, Dr. Myers. I will also add more security cameras. I don’t want any more such problems.”
The meeting continued for a while longer, the others anxious to know what Dr. Myers and Tamara had learned when Jesus finally opened up and talked about those crucial last days.
For a few days, things settled back to normal. A part of the Project B team was relocated to another laboratory in a distant city where they could show off their “cloned” extinct animals. As predicted, Smiley, the growing Saber-Tooth Cat cub was a great hit and filled the news for a few days. The team was constantly asked if they were cloning any dinosaurs, but Dr. Brown would laugh and tell them that was impossible. In private, he was lobbying for a chance to bring back a few dinosaurs – small, harmless ones at first, he said. Seems he had gotten the notion that a real Jurassic Park would be a great idea.
The Chronodyne Project Director spent a lot of time with some high-ups from three security agencies trying to convince them that their work with the Machine would continue uninterrupted. The terrorist attack had them very upset. They seemed to think that it was aimed at shutting down the Machine. But, of course, they did not know of Project J, and Jesus. Secrets hidden from the secret masters, as it were.
So life went on within Project Dry Wells, the shock of the terrorist attack and the revealing of the future to Jesus fading, but leaving him in a much more communicative mood.
Chapter 36: Tamara Stays
Tamara turned in a report on her audit of the Chronodyne facility. It said nothing of Project J, and attributed all the misuse of the Machine to one employee using it for personal gain.
Normally, Tamara would have returned for reassignment, but she wanted so to learn more that she drew upon some of the vacation time she had coming to stay at the site and continue working with Dr. Myers. Fielding and the others accepted her as part of their team, Myers even going so far as to ask if she might be hired on. Jesus seemed to prefer working with her, even with the language difficulties.
A strict policy of not having any single person alone with Jesus was put into effect. It was unlikely that it would be perfect, but it was a good attempt at protecting him. It was the accepted idea that there was a single person within the project who had tried to sabotage it. Until they found out who that was, caution was the watchword of the day.
All was going smoothly, and no one noticed the slight signs of change in one of the team members.
Tamara was the one who pushed the idea that Jesus should be allowed more freedom, even if it meant security problems. She argued that the man had been confined like a prisoner for weeks, constrained to the courtyard and a couple indoor rooms, and should be allowed to see more of the world.
It was almost like watching your child’s first visit to Disneyland or the zoo. There were so many things that were new to Jesus. It was as if he were discovering a whole new world, as, indeed, he was.
At first, he was allowed outside the Project J building for short periods, accompanied by Dr. Myers and Tamara. The first time he saw a car being driven, he was amazed, so Tamara arranged for him to be given a ride. It was only around a couple buildings, and he was filled with wonder that something could move without animals.
Then they introduced him to CD players and music. Not that he had not known of music, but even the simplest pieces of modern music were far beyond anything he had ever heard. They were careful to not overwhelm him with too much, and kept his CD collection to carefully selected music. He seemed to love classical music so long as it was melodic.
After a few days of sunshine, another summer storm moved in, curtailing his walks outside the building. Jesus was in his room, taking an after lunch nap. Tamara was in Dr. Myers’ office, writing some notes about a small talk she had had with Jesus that morning. She had asked him about who was present during the Crucifixion. Did he notice his mother watching? And who else did he recognize?
She suggested that they could use the Machine’s viewing capabilities to simply look at the scene, but Myers laughed at the idea and asked her if she could recognize the people there. They had figured no way to get sounds from the past, only vision. They discussed, for a while, letting Jesus see a recording of the scene, but decided it might be too much for him. So they settled for asking him questions.
That morning meeting, as did most of the meetings, included a lot of time answering questions of his own. There were times that his inquires could simply not be answered. For example, when he wanted to know what had become of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. But on the whole he seemed to be accepting what they could tell him.
Afterwards, in a debriefing that had become a standard part of their routine, Tamara asked how hard it would be to get some time on the Machine.
Myers told her, “I believe Dr. Stryker has stated that the Machine’s usage was to be very limited and under much stricter control. Any time on the Machine would have to be approved by him. What did you have in mind?”
“Well,” she said slowly, “why couldn’t we use the Machine to make a recording of the Crucifixion, but only of the spectators? Keep the viewer trained away from the crosses?”
“I guess that would be possible. Ah, you�
�re thinking that then we can show them to Jesus and he can identify the people. That would clear up a lot of controversy about who was there.”
“Yes. Once again, the Gospels are contradictory, or at least incomplete.”
“Well, let’s ask the good doctor,” Myers said with a smile. “Worst he would do is say no.”
* * * * *
“No!”
Stryker was adamant about it. “I do not want you using the Machine to play more games with Jesus. You’ve created enough of a headache for me already.”
Myers only smiled faintly. Tamara wanted to argue with him about the historical value of the information gained, but was only forming the argument in her head when Myers spoke quietly. “That is your prerogative, of course. But you do agree that since we have Jesus here, shouldn’t we learn as much from him as possible?”
“I wish you could send him back, but that’s not possible. Yes, I guess learning about history is part of our main goal.”
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