They had entered through a small dark chapel on the ground floor and climbed a set of curving stairs that wound its way up the inside of a narrow tower, opening up into a larger chapel above which was completely surrounded by enormous, beautifully coloured stained glass windows, each about fifteen metres tall.
The light from the outside world flooded through the windows and exploded into a myriad of bright colours, casting beautiful sets of coloured shadows onto the floor. It was fantastic. Neither Lydia or Jason had seen anything like it before.
When the rest of the tour party moved on, Jason caught Lydia’s arm and motioned her to a seat in the corner of the chapel so that they could sit for a while longer and absorb the beauty of the place.
“Here”, said Lydia leaning across to one of the empty chairs beside her, where someone had left a tourist leaflet giving information on the church.
They looked at it together, discovering that they were in the church of Sainte Chapelle. The leaflet explained about its history and described the stained glass windows, outlining what the pictures in each of them represented.
Bored with reading, Lydia handed the leaflet to Jason and started to wander around the chapel again.
When she returned five minutes later, Jason was looking directly at her, an excited look on his face. But Lydia also recognised another emotion, one that surprised her.
She saw fear in his eyes.
“What’s the matter. Are you okay?” she asked concerned.
“Lydia, I’ve just had an idea. For my doctor’s DPhil thesis…”
“So why are you shaking? You should be happy!” She asked, reaching out to touch his arm reassuringly and sitting down beside him.
“I’ve just had an idea…and if I’m right and it works, not only will I get my doctorate, but the world will never be the same again!”
.
Chapter Nine
.
“What do you mean?” Lydia asked, reaching out to take his other hand. His pupils were tiny pinpricks in the centre of his eyes and beads of cold sweat had appeared on his forehead.
“Read this, the last paragraph...” he said, handing the tourist leaflet about the Sainte Chapelle back to Lydia.
She took the pamphlet and read the words through slowly. It described how long ago in the thirteenth century the French church had become aware of the existence of the Crown of Thorns, the wreath of thorns that Jesus Christ had worn on his head during his crucifixion. Sometime during the Middle Ages the French Catholic Church had raised an enormous sum of money, the equivalent of billions of euros nowadays, and had bought the Crown and built the Sainte Chapelle to house it in. Not grasping the significance of the words, she looked up at Jason questioningly.
“So…I don’t get it?.”
“Last week I met with the Professor and he told me about the progress they have made in the past few months, developing and further refining the cloning process,” Jason started to explain.
“Although the Professor didn’t say so explicitly, I believe that by combining his latest work with some recent discoveries made by one of his colleagues in Sweden, it may be possible to take a sample of ancient blood residue, and treat it with a variety of newly developed genetic processes, so that we can regenerate fresh genetic samples containing the original genetic coding of the blood’s owner…effectively regenerating the original blood, and from that genetic material we could clone the person the blood came from…even if that person died thousands of years ago!”
Jason studied Lydia’s face to see if she had grasped the natural conclusion of what he was saying. She hadn’t.
“But where does that take us…? What’s the connection?” she asked, angry and frustrated with herself that she couldn’t see what he was getting at.
“Sorry, maybe I’m going too fast…” he said, leaning forward and clasping his hands over hers.
“Well, first of all, essentially my idea is that by combining the two sets of work from Sweden and Oxford, I may be able to develop an entirely new process to create a clone from ancient blood samples. No one else has done that before. That would be original work which could get me my DPhil. at Oxford!” He paused to take a breath.
“…but, okay, and this is the thing, this whole church was built in the middle ages to house the Crown of Thorns. The Crown of Thorns was a crown made out of thorn bushes that was stuck on Jesus Christ’s head by those mocking him when he was crucified.”
“Think of it! In all the pictures you see of Christ on the Cross, he’s bleeding from his head. Now just imagine for one moment that the thorns of the Crown penetrated his skin and drew actual blood, which they almost certainly did, I mean, that would be unavoidable, and imagine just for a moment that the Crown of Thorns that the Sainte Chapelle church had bought was the REAL one, I mean the ACTUAL one that had been on Christ’s head at his crucifixion! Well, if I could get my hands on it, then I may still be able to find some traces of Christ’s own blood on the thorns…and with that…” Jason paused, looking up at the stained glass pictures above and looking directly at a picture of Christ on the Cross.
“…and with that I could clone Jesus Christ himself! Don’t you see? I could help bring Jesus Christ back…the Second Coming of Jesus Christ…the return of your Messiah!”
.
Chapter Ten
“So where is it now?” Jason asked nervously, holding Lydia’s hand as he questioned the tourist guide with the umbrella.
It was lucky that they had found her again. The lady behind the information desk at the entrance to the chapel hadn’t been able to speak much English, and they had raced out into the street trying to find and catch up with the tour they'd been following. Hopefully the guide would know something about the Crown of Thorns.
They found the group a few blocks away, and impatiently Jason had listened to the tour guide drone on about the French revolution and the Louvre museum, before she had let the group take a thirty-minute tea break at a café overlooking the river Seine.
“I’ve never seen it personally,” she said, taking off a pair of brown horn-rimmed glasses and fluttering her eyelashes at the young man standing before her, “but I’m reliably informed that the Crown of Thorns is now kept in the vaults of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. It’s brought out once a year and paraded around the cathedral and the city. Quite a spectacle, or so I’m told…but you just missed it…it was last month. You’ll have to wait another year to see it, I’m afraid.”
“Is it actually the real one?”
“I should hope so young man. The French paid a fortune to buy it. The modern equivalent of billions of euros. If it’s not the real thing, then it would be the biggest fraud in history!” she smiled back, laughing slightly.
Jason’s heart was pounding. He had to think. Could he really clone Jesus Christ? Would the artefact in Notre Dame be the real Crown of Thorns or just some elaborate hoax? What would be the possibility that there could actually still be minute traces of blood residue on the thorns? How could he get hold of it for examination and to take a sample from it? Was it really in storage in the Cathedral of Notre Dame?
He thrust a twenty Euro note into the lady's hand and thanked her profusely.
“Thanks. You’ve been most helpful!”
He turned to Lydia nodding towards the nearest Metro station.
“Let’s go back to the hotel. I need to think.”
.
When they got back to their hotel room Jason’s heart was still pounding. He had hardly said a word to Lydia on the Metro ride back, but she could see that he needed time to think in peace.
After a quick shower and a cup of tea Jason started to relax a little. He lay on the bed beside Lydia. For a while neither of them spoke, then Lydia broke the silence.
"Jason, I don't understand why you want to clone Jesus Christ. You're Jewish! Jews don't believe in Christ!"
"True. I am Jewish. My mother came from a good Jewish family in England, but my dad was a Christian, Church of E
ngland actually. Although he pretty much didn't bother about the church, or respect anything it stood for. I suppose you could say he was an agnostic, or just very disillusioned. I was brought up by mum to be a good little Jewish boy, and she forced me to go to the Synagogue twice a week. But when she left my dad, I never went back, and at school I got a lot of Christian religious education. Anyway, the thing is, I've grown up with both sides of the argument. Christians believe that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, and blame the Jews for killing him…"
"…But the Jews just think he was another prophet. We don't doubt that he existed, but we don't believe he was the Messiah. But think what an opportunity this would be to end all the thousands of years of arguing. We could clone him, bring him back, and then see, once and for all, if he is the Messiah or not!…"
"…And if he was? Just imagine it!!! After two thousand years of persecution, war and hatred, the Jews and the Christians will come together, and worship the same Messiah! It'll be the dawning of a new age…"
"And if you're wrong?" Lydia asked softly.
“Lydia, I mean,... even if I’m wrong and it’s not possible, just having the thought that it might be possible is dangerous enough in its own right. Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, part of the Holy Trinity…God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. To them, Jesus Christ is not just the Son of God...in some ways, He is God…”
“…Imagine that it got out that we were working on a project to clone Jesus Christ, to bring back the Messiah? There would be world-wide international outcry…”
“… Of course, you’d get some religious groups who would be totally against it, but others would look forward to and encourage it …Just imagine, whole new religious sects would be created awaiting the appearance of the cloned Christ! And that’s not to mention what the various Christian superpowers around the world would do…”
“…Think about it…they clone Jesus Christ, bring him up in their country, make him part of ‘their team’, the leader of their country or the leader of their army. Imagine fighting a war with Jesus Christ on your side? You couldn’t lose! You’d be invincible…”
Jason was lying with his back on the bed, his hands behind his head, speaking freely as a myriad of thoughts flooded his mind. Lydia propped herself up on an elbow and looked down at him, listening as he spoke. Both were very calm, but what he was saying stirred fear in them both.
“But if you did have Jesus Christ on your side…as a clone…you couldn’t brain wash him into doing what you wanted…he’d be the 'Son of God' for goodness sake. He wouldn’t take sides! He wouldn’t lead you into battle or help kill people. He’d bring peace, not war…and he’d do whatever was best for humanity!” Lydia tried to argue.
“Come on, you and I might see that, rational human beings who might believe in God, but try explaining that to a military General …he’d just see a Christ clone as a weapon of war! Think about the Crusades in the Middle Ages, about most of the wars throughout history. Soldiers always marched into battle carrying religious relics at the head of their army, or praying that God would help kill their enemies. It didn’t matter that the other side was doing exactly the same. Everyone wanted God on their side…it’ll be the same again…honestly. I know how they think! My dad was in the army, and I spent four years living on a military base.”
“..but what if it’s not possible to make a clone…I mean, I know you think you might be able to, but what if it’s not possible…It’ll be okay then won’t it?” Lydia asked again, almost innocently.
“No! That’s the whole point! It almost doesn’t matter whether it’s possible or not. As soon as any other geneticists or government officials hear about the idea, they’ll all react the same way. They’ll think to themselves -‘wow, I wonder if it is possible? With the most recent advances in genetics either it’s already possible now, or it will definitely become possible in the near future…’ - The geneticists will do their best to get hold of the Crown of Thorns to find out if there’s any blood residue on it or not, and if they find any, then they’ll keep the blood samples until that point in the future…either today or tomorrow, in ten, twenty or fifty years...when it will be possible to make a clone using the genetic material that can be extracted from it …”
“…I’ll bet you a million euros that if the idea ever got out, the Americans, the British …we’d all be sending in secret agents trying to steal the Crown from the French…and if I were the French...I’d bloody well hide the Crown somewhere good, so that no one will ever find it again...but only after first letting their own scientists go to town on it and start working on a cloning programme for themselves!”
They were silent now, thoughts racing through both their heads. Then Jason spoke again.
“So what do I do? Maybe I’m the only person to have ever thought about this…but if I do nothing now, it’s surely just a matter of time before someone else has the same idea. It might not be the Crown of Thorns…maybe there could be another artefact in the world that also has Jesus Christ’s blood on it, and once my discovery is public, other people will be able to do what I can …”
“ Which means that now I’ve had the idea, even if I am Jewish, that means I have to do something about it…In fact, maybe even more so because I am Jewish. I have to develop the technology and do it first, before anyone else does! And we have to get hold of the Crown of Thorns before anyone else has a chance to take samples of any blood residue that Jesus Christ may have spilt on it when he was crucified!”
They lay on the bed in the darkness, the light from the world outside dimming fast now as the evening drew on and the sun went down.
They both knew that their lives had changed course that afternoon. Something had happened that they could not walk away from.
Instinctively Jason knew that his destiny had been laid before him.
.
Chapter Eleven
Professor Wainright stared at him with a look of total astonishment on his face. For the first time since Jason had met him, the Old Prof. was actually speechless.
For a good few minutes the Professor said nothing. He raised himself carefully out of his seat beside one of the benches in the laboratory and walked slowly towards the window. He looked down into the public park at the back of the I.G.E.G.G.M. laboratory beside the Pitt Rivers museum in the Parks Road in Oxford. It was a Monday afternoon and some children were playing on the swings, and a young father was in the field on the opposite side of the river flying a kite with his small son. Without turning the Professor spoke slowly and sternly.
“You realise that you can’t tell anyone about this idea, and I mean no one. For Pete’s sake Jason, I sent you away to get some air, to think of an idea for a PhD project. I didn’t expect you to come back with a bloody revelation and a plan to change the world!”
At first Jason thought the Professor was angry, and he was beginning to wonder if the Professor was going to turn him down. If he did, it wouldn't be for technical reasons. Since returning to Oxford from Paris two weeks before, he had contacted the Professor’s colleagues in the University of Stockholm, and had integrated their recent findings into the new work the Professor had completed in the past few months. He had worked all day and late into the night for ten days straight, before concluding that his idea was sound. In those ten days he had outlined a new genetic process which combined the Stockholm developments with those from Oxford, and all his calculations seemed to confirm his ideas. It should work.
Then through contacts in the Department of Theology he had confirmed that the Crown of Thorns was indeed still in the vaults of Notre Dame. Even the most respected theologians in Oxford believed that there was every possibility that ‘it’ was real.
The only problem that remained now was how they were going to get hold of it. That had been a stumbling block for the last few days, but as fate sometimes has a habit of doing, the solution was thrown in front of Jason's face, materialising as if from nowhere.
In
yesterday’s copy of the “ISIS” university magazine, there had been a photograph of a French Priest called Cardinal Laurentin, with the caption underneath running “Christ Church welcomes back a former student!”. In two weeks time there was going to be the Conference of the World Religions taking place at Christ Church College, and religious leaders from all over the world would be attending. Excitedly, Jason went on to read that Cardinal Laurentin, now one of the top Catholic priests in France and responsible for the catholic church in Paris, was a former student at Christ Church and would be attending the conference in two weeks time. Which immediately gave Jason an excellent idea, but while Jason was still rehearsing the next part of his little speech in his mind for the nth time that day, the Professor turned round and looked at Jason with a massive smile on his face.
“Genius. Genius my boy. Nothing short of pure Genius.” The professor moved slowly towards him, his hand outstretched. “Let me shake your hand, young man. It’s the best idea I’ve heard in years…” the Professor paused and Jason’s heart almost stopped. “..but one which will probably bloody work! Incredible! And the process you outlined is first class stuff...fantastic....we have to patent it immediately...or rather…you should patent it immediately. The new process is your idea lad, and it could just make you a fortune.”
The Professor was thrilled and pleased. He had always known that Jason had the potential for great things and now he had proved it. Only one month into his DPhil. Jason had come up with a new genetic process that no one had ever thought of before. True, given the new pieces of the jigsaw puzzle someone else would have thought about it in the next year or two, but the fact was that Jason had done it. All by himself. It was maybe even Nobel prize winning stuff.
And the idea of cloning Jesus Christ himself was a stroke of genius.
The Messiah Conspiracy - A gripping page-turning Medical Thriller - [Omnibus Edition containing Book 1 & Book 2] Page 4