Apostasy Rising

by J A Bouma

  Alexander’s head was spinning from the unexpected move by Apollos and Weiss. He could only image what the others were feeling tucked away underneath the holy city of Nicea, the birthplace of the fundamentals of the Christian faith.

  The only question was: What could they do about it?

  What would he do about it?

  Chapter 14

  The room fell silent as the Solterra propaganda artist, Max Bacchus, continued commenting in the background. Sasha swished his glass, the ice clinking softly. Alexander stared at the floor considering Apollos’s words, while Father Jim sat in calm silence.

  With a sigh of resignation and defeat, the cardinal stood abruptly. “Alex, let’s go. Sasha, thank you for the nectar of Mother Ukrainski. Sorry we bothered you. Congratulations on your discoveries, but I’m afraid we must be on our way.”

  Alexander looked at Sasha and shrugged. He stood himself and said, “Good to see you, my friend. I’ll try to stay in touch more often. And like Padre said, congratulations.” The two embraced, and Alexander joined Father Jim, the two walking toward the door to exit Sasha’s study.

  As the old cardinal grasped the burnished bronze handle, Sasha shouted from behind, “Wait. Perhaps I could help.”

  Father Jim and Alexander exchanged glances, grinning before hustling back to Sasha and sitting down in the couches flanking their friend.

  Sasha sat back in his chair, head bobbing slightly from intoxication. “If I help, you need to be promising me two things.”

  “Alright,” Father Jim started, suppressing a smile. “And what are those two things we need to be promising you?”

  “First, you need to be making sure that I am protected. Once we pull the trigger and send whatever it is you will be retrieving from back in time out onto DiviNet, everybody will be knowing how it happened. Sure, I’ll put it on a secure site and encrypt it and do all the other things to make sure it’s hidden away for your people. But word will get out. And I am thinking I will be a hunted man.”

  Father Jim hadn’t considered this angle. Sure, Alexander was being asked to put his life on the line, not knowing how time travel would affect him. But so was Sasha. When word got out that a video appeared on the Republic network of people and places and events from ages past, everyone would know how it happened in light of the OWN report from the other day.

  He nodded. “Sasha, rest assured that the full resources of Ichthus will be at your disposal.”

  “Normally, I would be respecting your word, Padre. But you can’t seem to be protecting your own people of late. I’m a little concerned about the kind of resources that be at your disposal.”

  Father Jim huffed in irritation, though he understood Sasha’s concern. “Sasha, my boy, you’ve got my word that the Ministerium will shield you deep underground for your help. I’ll see to it personally and fall in front of the swinging sword if I must!”

  Sasha nodded, taking another sip of his vodka.

  “And your second request?” Father Jim asked with impatience.

  “Second, I want to be making sure my work continues. If I do this, I may have to leave all of this,” he said, waving his arms in the air. “But I won’t let my research suffer. I must be allowed to continue my work and have whatever it is I might be needing.”

  “Does that include a lifetime membership to Vodka of the Month club?” Alexander smiled.

  “It better. And none of that Muscovia crap. Only the sweet nectar of Mother Ukrainski.”

  “Deal,” Father Jim said.

  Sasha set down his glass and moved to the edge of his seat. He rested his elbows on his knees and folded his hands in front of him, his eyes narrowing with seriousness.

  “Now, you do understand the risks don’t you, my friends? I mean, like, they are being huge!”

  “Risks? What are you talking about?” Father Jim asked.

  “Time travel! Goodness, Padre, you need to be checking your noggin’. You are getting old, methinks. You want to be going back in time to retrieve the memory of the Church, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like right now?”

  “Sasha, you would do that for Ichthus?”

  “No,” Sasha replied, shaking his head. “I do it for you, Padre. And for you, Alex.”

  Alexander lifted his head and looked at Sasha, a smile curling at one end of his mouth.

  “But if you are going to be doing this, Father, you can’t go. I am sorry, but you are being too old. And I can’t go either. I need to be operating the device from this time dimension.” Sasha turned to Alexander, looking straight into his eyes. “It’s got to be you, bratishka.”

  “Me?” Alexander said, turning to Father Jim, his heart beginning to gallop forward from a ping of adrenalin. He shook his head. “No way, Father. I can’t do this.”

  “Yes you can, my boy.”

  “How do you expect me to pull this off?”

  “Alex, it makes perfect sense! You know Greek because of you mother and your training in the common tongue of the ancients in your studies. You look like someone would have looked in that region. Your clothes would probably fit that era, though you might be thought a dandy. Can he do that, Sasha?”

  “Whatever is part of you when the belt and electromagnetic sphere is activated will travel with you. So yes, you will not need to be going naked or anything, thank the gods!”

  Anxiety flooded Alexander; apprehension gripped his belly. But he knew it had to be him. Anger at Apollos would compel him as much as concern for the Church. But it was more than that. It was his chance to take his place in the annals of history. To fight for something and be part of something that was bigger than his own meager existence in Tripolitania. His hand subconsciously drifted to his left pocket, homing in on his tiny treasure box. He felt the urge to pop one, but resisted. Narcowafers wouldn’t carry him forward on this leg of life. Only the power of the Holy Spirit and comfort of Christ would aid him now.

  He heaved a heavy breath, then closed his eyes and nodded. “OK, let’s do this thing.”

  Father Jim nodded, somber and satisfied. He embraced his former student and whispered a simple, “Thank you.”

  Sasha sprang to his feet and darted back to his laboratory. “Come on! Let’s get started.”

  “Padre, what have I gotten myself into?” Alexander moaned.

  “The very best thing you could, my boy,” Father Jim replied. “A battle for the Bride of Christ.”

  Alexander nodded, steadied by this realization.

  The two followed Sasha back into his laboratory. He was already fast at work making the arrangements for Alexander’s transportation to the world beyond. He had wheeled out from a closet a cart with three monitors attached to three workstations underneath, lights blinking and fans whirling with techno purpose. He was busy attaching wires to the belt that would presumably be used as the time machine. Another box sat off to the side, with a small disk and microbes attached to the underside.

  Eyeing these items, Alexander began to perspire thinking about what he was about to endure. How would it feel? Would it hurt? Would he get sick? He hated most forms of transportation, getting queasy from anything that moved. So why he thought he could endure travel through time was beyond him.

  “So how does this whole thing work?” Alexander asked Sasha.

  The man looked up from his furious movements and arrangements. He held out the belt and said, “The device is powered by four small fusion reactors—”

  “Fusion reactors?” Alexander interrupted, stepping away. “As in, nuclear?”

  Sasha sputtered his lips. “Oh stop it! No worries at all. They no hurt you. They’re enclosed in graphite in these rings here.” He pointed to four donut-looking things that sat on the front, back, and sides of the belt. “Nano nuclear technology, it is called. Has come a long way the past few years, that for sure. We’re able to use just a milligrams of refined nuclear fuel to generate almost unlimited amounts of high-voltage energy. Which is a good thing, too, because jumpin
g phases requires a large amount of power.”

  “How on earth did you get refined nuclear material?”

  Sasha shrugged. “I am world-class scientist. I got connections.”

  Alexander rolled his eyes. “So then how do the…reactors, as you call them, work?”

  “Remember the story about the time crystals?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, basically their positioning creates an electromagnetic force field like the original experiment back at Berkeley University in California. They injected calcium ions into a small chamber surrounded by electrodes. The electric field generated by the electrodes then corralled the ions in a sort of trap which—”

  “Sasha, my boy,” Father Jim interrupted with a chuckle. “I appreciate your thoroughness in teaching us the tricks of the time travel trade, but let’s move it along.”

  “Right, Padre. Basically, the rings create an electrical field that changes an object’s subatomic structure, like the crystals, while also generating a localized wormhole, warping the local region of the space-time continuum by focusing the energy stored in the belt onto a single point. This not only transforms the matter of the host into a new phase of matter that transcends the continuum, but also envelopes them inside the warped region of the continuum, the wormhole—a thin tube of space-time that flattens the phases of history into a next-door region you can just zip into through to the other side.”

  Alexander’s face sank, his eyes bugged out. “These things rearrange my atomic structure? Is it safe? Why would I agree to this?”

  “Alex, don’t be a sissy. It’s perfectly fine and dandy. My rabbits didn’t come apart for Pete’s sake!”

  “How do you know? They’re supposedly somewhere back in time. What if they travelled along the fourth dimension and ended up in a rearranged pile of goop? What if I travel along the fourth dimension and end up in a rearranged pile of goop?”

  “I don’t think that will be happening. By my calculations—”

  “But you don’t know for sure,” Alexander pressed, forcing Sasha to answer his objection.

  Sasha sat down on a stool and sighed, staring at Alexander in silence. “No. I’m not knowing for sure.”

  He threw his hands on his head in frustration and turned his back to Sasha. “Just great!”

  “Alex,” Father Jim said, placing a hand on his shoulder to try to calm his agitated former student. “I need you to do this. The Church needs you to do this!”

  “But what if—”

  “All things worth fighting for demand a leap of faith. They’re all fraught with risk. And all things worth fighting for demand sacrifice. When the early fathers of Ichthus travelled to the first ecumenical council at Nicea, the town we just travelled from. When they arrived, most of them came looking like the rearranged pile of goop you speak of. They were missing arms and legs and eyeballs and pieces of their face and skull because of the immense persecution of Empire Rome. They risked and risked big, all to contend for and preserve the once-for-all faith entrusted to them by Christ himself.”

  Alexander considered this, considered the ancient people from his own region who travelled hundreds of miles to the small town to preserve the Christian faith. Was Alexander being asked to give more than they themselves were asked to give? They risked life and limb to guard the faith. How was his moment any different from theirs—any less demanding?

  The words of Christ came racing from his memory from the Gospel of Matthew: ‘Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.’ He swallowed hard at the truth of those words, at what they meant for him and his life with Christ.

  He folded his arms, his throbbing head aching for a translucent wafer to take away the weight of Father Jim’s ask. He thought about his parish back in Tripolitania, about Zakaria who was readying the bread and wine for evening Mass. He hoped he remembered that it was bread before cup. He sometimes mixed up the order in his excitement of leading the Holy Eucharist. He thought about Simon and Amelia and their teenage twin boys, knowing how concerned they were for their faith. Salud was especially prone to fits of doubt and had little interest in attending church services with his parents.

  Then his mind leapt to the victims in the latest bombing, the coordinated attacks against his brothers and sisters in the faith. They had been warned before it happened, a messenger got wind of the plot by Mohammedans to decimate the Libyan church. Yet they met, they sang and read Scripture, and they shared the love feast of bread and wine. And then they were blown to pieces. When he surveyed the damage as an emissary of the Church, Alexander recalled the head of a cloth doll resting amidst the ruins, separated from its body just like its owner. The memory of slipping on overlooked brain matter still haunted him.

  The words of Father Jim continued clamoring for attention: All things worth fighting for demand sacrifice. The early fathers risked and risked big. Alexander’s brothers and sisters from Tripolitania risked and risked big. Their memory would serve as the fuel for his own mission.

  “Padre,” Alexander finally said.

  Father Jim turned, even more downcast than after the broadcast, looking to his young student for hope.

  “I will fight. I want to fight.” He took a breath, then added, “So I will go test this crazy idea of yours. But just this once. Because I’m not so sure about jumping phases of time, even if it is to retrieve the memory of Ichthus.”

  Father Jim grinned and nodded. “Completely understand. And thank you, my boy, for risking big for the Church.”

  Alexander nodded. “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.”

  “Amen,” Father Jim replied to the ancient Latin Trinitarian formula. “In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, indeed.”

  The cardinal crossed himself and smiled with renewed vigor. He clapped his hands together then embraced Alexander, just as a father would embrace his son before a major expedition.

  Sasha joined the group embrace, as excited for the revelations as he was for the discoveries that awaited his own scientific inquiries into human time travel.

  Chapter 15

  After the group embraced, Sasha wasted no time readying Alexander for his travels. He grabbed the belt and attached it around Alexander’s waist.

  “Sasha, just wait a minute,” Alexander pleaded, lifting his arms as his friend secured the device. “We don’t even know where I’m going.”

  He stopped and furrowed his brow at Alexander, then shifted to Father Jim. “You are being right. And this is important. Because for now I am only being able to transport you from a fixed location.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning,” Father Jim interjected, “apparently you have to be in the exact spot where you need to go back in time in order for this scheme to work.”

  Sasha snapped his fingers at the cardinal. “Exactly.”

  Alexander sighed, annoyed at the added complexity. “Lord knows there’s nothing in Kiev worth retrieving for Ichthus!”

  “Hey, don’t be messing with Mother Ukrainski!” Sasha protested.

  “No, I’m just saying. The early Church wasn’t formed here. So where should we go for this trial run of yours, Padre?”

  Father Jim was deep in thought, considering where he should send his former student. Carthage, to go pester Saint Augustine? No, that would come later. Perhaps back at Nicea to attend the first of the great Church councils. Too early. The journey had to progress from the beginning.

  Yes, from the beginning...

  “I got it.” He smiled knowingly, thinking it over once more and settling on the location. “Yes, that will do splendidly!”

  “Padre...” Alexander said, seeking information.

  The man looked off and mumbled something under his breath, then smiled again with satisfaction.

  “Where are you sending me?”

  He snapped his head toward Alexander and grinned widely. “Why, Patm
os.”

  Alexander furrowed his brow with confusion. He couldn’t remember anything from the early Church that had anything to do with that Aegean island.

  Except…Then it hit him.

  “Saint John’s island?”

  “Yes, my boy! The island where John the Beloved, the youngest apostle of Jesus, was exiled by Emperor Domitian after surviving the boiling cauldron of oil.”

  “Interesting choice, Father. But why Patmos?”

  “Because he was the last of the apostles, my boy. With him, or rather with his death, the story of Ichthus enters a whole new chapter. After him, it was no longer possible for the Church to settle disputes about issues of faith and practice by appealing to an apostle for firsthand guidance. While John was still alive, there was no need for formal theology and doctrine as it was afterwards. Sure, there were basic prayers and rituals, like the Lord’s Prayer and Eucharist that Christ gave his disciples. There were the core creeds and teachings, like the one Saint Paul mentions in his first letter to the Church of Corinth, ‘Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve,’ and all. But until the last of the apostles were no longer accessible by the faithful, there wasn’t any need for formal doctrine.”

  Alexander considered this. “Alright, but why not visit him at his death then? Why the island?”

  “Because at Patmos, the Church received one of the most important letters she has ever been given by Christ, not to mention one of the most misunderstood.”