The Accidental Time Machine

14

The Faculty Chapel was in Christ Hall, a big “old modern” building that used to house art exhibits in the old days. The part for general worship was roomy and bright, even at this late hour, but the Faculty Chapel was a side room, lit with flickering oil lamps. The homey smell of corn oil burning reminded Matt of the popcorn in theater foyers, and the attendant feeling of expectation.

There were two church pews with cushions for kneeling. Father Hogarty was the only one there, kneeling in quiet prayer. When Matt and Martha came in, he unfolded painfully and offered Matt his hand.

“This will be a wondrous time for you, my son. I envy you. The first is always the best.”

“You talk with Jesus often, Father?”

“Only when he needs to tell me something. Perhaps once every two years.”

“So how—”

“Please, please, take my place. He’ll only come to you alone. We’ll wait outside.” With Martha’s help, he pulled closed a door that must have been eight inches of solid oak.

Matt knelt where Hogarty had been and self-consciously put his hands together in an attitude of prayer, not sure what to expect. Belatedly, it occurred to him to be afraid.

Jesus cleared his throat. “Welcome to my house, Matthew. ”

He looked just like the pictures, which was no surprise. Handsome, thirtyish white guy with shoulder-length hair and a short beard, both neatly trimmed. White robe with a belt of rough rope. It made Matt think uncomfortably of Giordano Bruno.

“I’ve been expecting you,” the image said. It was definitely a holographic projection. “Ever since I saw you appear up in New Hampshire.”

“You were expecting me?”

“I see everything. But yes, you appeared less than two meters from where you were expected, and within about nine seconds of when.”

“So you knew I was coming. But nobody here did?”

He smiled. “I’m God, Matthew, or at least one aspect of Him. That you don’t believe in Him doesn’t alter the reality of His existence. Nor of His omniscience.”

“If you’re omniscient, tell me what I’m going to do next.”

“You have free will. But I suspect you’re going to throw something at me, which will pass through, exposing me as a hologram.”

Matthew loosened his grip on the piece of chalk he had taken out of his pocket, ready to throw. “You claim not to be a hologram?”

“I don’t make any claims.” Jesus picked up a paper clip and tossed it at Matthew. It bounced off his chest. “Maybe you need to see me as a hologram. I’m all things to all men.”

Matthew’s brain was spinning with trying to explain the paper clip. “Could you walk out into the sunlight? That’s what I really need to see.”

There was a sudden sharp pain in his chest, and he couldn’t breathe. He tried to rise, but some force held him down.

“Don’t be petty, Matthew. God doesn’t do your bidding, and He certainly doesn’t serve unbelief.”

“Okay,” he croaked. “Let … me … breathe?”

“Gladly.” Air seeped back into his lungs.

Nothing supernatural. A pressor field that thumped him over the heart, then squeezed his chest. Same thing that tossed the paper clip.

It could kill him faster than being burned at the stake. “Thank you … Jesus.”

“You do believe in me, then?”

“Of course I do. This world belongs to you.” With his breath, he was getting back his equilibrium. “But I’m curious … what happened between my time and yours, here? I can’t find an actual history.”

Jesus smiled indulgently. “There is no history. This is a world without end. Without beginning, so without history.”

Like a closed strange Gödelian loop. If he used the machine, which had never been invented, to jump out of this world, after affecting it. It would always be, without beginning or end.

“But I’ve read about the One Year War and the Adjustment. Those must have been real.”

“There’s only one book you have to believe.” Matt felt a gentle pressure on his ribs. “Everything else is in error.”

“I understand,” he said quickly. “But you allow those other histories to exist.”

“For moral instruction. Don’t mistake it for literal truth.”

Without moving his arm, Matt flicked the chalk toward the image. When it was inches away, it suddenly spun up toward the ceiling.

An invisible slap spun Matt’s head sideways so hard his neck cartilage popped. “Stop trying to prove that I’m not real. I’m more real than you are, here.”

“I know you’re real,” Matt said, rubbing his neck, “but I was just trying to find out whether you were material as well. I take it that you aren’t. That if I walked over and tried to touch you—”

“You would die.”

“I’m sure that’s true, and I wouldn’t try it in a million years. But I suspect that if I did try, my hand would be pushed away by a pressor field. We had those in my time, you know. They used them for security in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.” He swallowed hard, but continued. “And if the pressor field wasn’t turned on, my hand would go straight through your holographic image.”

“If that’s what you have to believe. As I say, it’s a manifestation of free will. When you come to judgment, your apostasy will be weighed along with all your other sins. Weighed against your good works; your service to God and man.”

The closest Matt had ever come to serving God was passing the plate at his aunt Naomi’s Seder table, which he never attended willingly. If you asked him, he would say the only connection between free will and religion in his life was the fact that he hadn’t set foot in a synagogue since he turned eighteen.

But he had to admit that this apparition was totally believable in a world that didn’t even have words for hologram and pressor. And since they evidently had total control over education and research, there was no way that was going to change.

Unless he did it.

After half a minute of silence, Jesus spoke. “You should now ask, ‘How may I serve you, my Lord?’ ”

“All right. What do you want me to do? Since you can obviously hurt me at any whim. Kill me, I suppose. I’ll do whatever you want.” He almost said, “within reason,” but that would be meaningless.

“Bring the time machine here in one hour. I want you to destroy it in front of me.” Jesus flickered and disappeared.

Well, that was interesting. Jesus didn’t know the time machine was right here in Matt’s bag. So he was all-seeing except when there was a roof in the way.

Matt put his shoulder to the heavy door and pushed out into the light, dazed and dazzled.

Father Hogarty and Martha were waiting expectantly. “You saw Him?” she said.

“Uh … yes. Yes, I did.”

“What did he ask you to do?” Father Hogarty’s eyes were bright.

“You were listening?”

“No, no. Whenever He talks to someone here, He asks him to do something. To prove his faith, usually.” He touched his face. “Every mark of rank I have, past the first, was at his request. Did he require that of you?”

“No, not yet. Father, does he always appear here?”

“Yes, of course.”

“In the chapel? Not in the other parts of the church here?”

He nodded. “Only the Elect may see him. And you,” he added quickly.

That made sense. The room was wired for the pressor field and the holograph projector.

“But He sees all,” Hogarty continued. “He knew you had come before you arrived here. He told me.”

“He mentioned that,” Matt said. “He saw me appear when I came from the past, up in New Hampshire.” He didn’t appear there because he couldn’t. But any spy satellite could home in and read the taxi’s license plate.

“If not a mark, what did he require of you?”

“Nothing yet. He’ll see me later.”

The old man studied him. “Matthew, don’t be afraid of the pain. It is fleeting, but the joy of service is eternal.”

It took him a moment to decode that. “He didn’t say anything about getting a scar. That will come later, I suppose. ”

Hogarty and Martha both touched their cheek scars. “The first one doesn’t require a command. Only a calling. We can take care of that anytime.” He stepped toward the chapel door. “I will pray for guidance.”

They watched him ease the heavy door shut. “Let’s go back to the cottage, Martha. I have to take care of some stuff.”

He thought furiously. He had one hour. If that room was wired up for a pressor generator, it would topologically be an enclosed volume of wires, and work as a Faraday cage. So he could go back in one hour, but instead of smashing the machine, he’d press the RESET button and carry the chapel with him up into the forty-fifth century. See whether Jesus came with him.

Or he could smash the machine and stay here, where at least some parts of the world were still familiar.

No. Whoever the man behind the curtain was, he was dangerous. That had to be the last time Matt would risk setting foot in that chapel.

“What was Jesus like?” Martha asked as they hurried across campus.

“Scary,” Matthew said. “I mean, he looked like all the pictures. But he can hurt you. Do anything he wants.”

“Why would He hurt you?”

“Power. Making sure I feared him.”

“Why would He do that? Everyone knows He’s all-powerful. ”

“Yeah, well, we have to talk about that.” They got to the cottage and Matthew checked his watch. “We have about fifty minutes.” He unlocked the door and went straight to the cupboard. “Give me the bag, please.” He put the cheese and bread in it, and a stoppered bottle of water. An unopened bottle of MIT wine.

“Professor? What are you doing?”

“This will all be clear later, Martha,” he said, knowing it wouldn’t be. “I have to run downtown, down to the bank, but you can stay here.”

“No, I’ll come with you.” She took the bag back. “But I don’t understand.”

“I don’t quite have it all figured out myself,” he said. “We used to call it ‘flying by the seat of your pants.’ ”

“Well, that sounds … it doesn’t sound nice.”

He led her out of the door and locked it behind them. “We used to have flying machines, all right? ‘Flying by the seat of your pants’ meant propelling one of those machines by instinct.”

“All right. Now I’m totally confused.”

“I’m just not sure what’s going to happen next. I think … well, I know. I can’t stay here. I’ll have to leave. Jump into the next future.”

“That’s what Jesus said to you?”

“Yeah. In a way. So I have to be prepared. I don’t know what it’s going to be like a couple of thousand years from now, in New Mexico, so I—”

“That’s a place? One of the Godless states?”

“Right. That’s where they calculated I’d wind up next.” After a few moments of silence, she said, “I can’t go with you.”

“I wouldn’t want you to.”

“No, I mean I should. But I’m afraid.”

“You couldn’t come back. Being a graduate assistant doesn’t require throwing your life away.”

“I think I would have to,” she said slowly, “if your life were in danger.”

Matt laughed. “I hereby relieve you of the responsibility. ”

“You can’t, Professor. I swore to God and Jesus that I would stay by you, and serve you.”

“Well, I don’t know about God, but the Jesus I saw and talked to was no more holy than that bird there.” He pointed at a mockingbird that was scolding something. “Less. It was just a product of technology”—she winced at the word—“that was old when I was born. A holographic projection; a moving hologram.”

“Holy gram?”

He wrestled with the robe and extracted his wallet and showed her the MIT card with the three-dimensional picture. “Like this, but moving and talking.”

She stared at it and, like the dean, tried to push a finger into the card.

“Somewhere there’s an actor made up to look like the historical Jesus. He watches me on a camera—you know what a camera is?”

“Sure. My Bible has pictures in it.”

“Well, he watches from a distant location and makes appropriate responses to what his audience does and says.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” she said, hurt and reluctance in her voice. “Why wouldn’t they just use the actor? ”

“He’d be vulnerable. This Jesus can’t be stabbed or shot or crucified. And he can do things that look like miracles.”

“How do you know they aren’t miracles?”

“Because I know how they’re done. I mean, I couldn’t duplicate them without help, but the science behind them is clear enough, simple enough.”

“They could still be miracles, though. Even though you could do some science that looked the same. Like turning water into wine; you could do something like that with a powder. I saw that when I was a child.”

“Phenolphthalein. Big deal.” They were walking up Charity, approaching Mass Ave. The intersection was a hopeless knot of people and animals and carts, so they cut diagonally across what used to be a parking lot, and was now a crowded, crazy quilt of merchants displaying their wares on makeshift tables or arranged on blankets.

“Look. Do you know Occam’s Razor?”

“I do. Basically it says the simplest explanation is usually the right one.”

“So there you are. You don’t need to invoke miracles.”

She looked genuinely perplexed. “But you have someone who looks like Jesus, who says He is Jesus, and He performs miracles—I would say that Occam’s Razor says that He is Jesus.”

“Oh … Jesus.” The bank was half a block away, and there was a line out onto the sidewalk. Matt really had to pee, and they were passing a public toilet. “Look, I’d love to continue this argument, but nature calls.”

“Nature what?”

“I mean …” He gestured toward the toilet door.

“Oh, you have to go do. I’ll get us a place in that line.”

The latrine was dark, just a small skylight, but it had pretty good ventilation, and didn’t quite reek.

It had a piss-tube like the ones at MIT. He went through the complicated business of holding his robe out of the way and unzipping his jeans one-handed, and gratefully let fly.

“What’s that?” someone said in the murk. He could see two men sitting on toilets, and one was pointing at his dick. “He’s not cut!”

Well, that was beyond irony. The only Jew in Boston, and he was attracting attention because his parents had been New Reform and didn’t believe in circumcision.

“Can you explain that?” said a voice with the gravel of authority.

“I’m sorry,” Matt said inanely. “Where I come from—”

“He’s a spy from Gomorrah!” came a high-pitched voice. “Got to be!”

“No! I’m a professor at MIT!”

“You wait until I’m finished here,” said the authority voice. “I’m a policeman. We can talk to MIT.”

“Okay—I’ll wait outside.” Matt almost caught himself in the zipper, fleeing.

“Wait! I command you to wait! In the name of the Lord!”

Matt ran clumsily down the street, clomping in sandals, and was breathing hard when he came up to Martha, a couple of yards from the bank entrance. “Give me … the bag,” he wheezed, and pulled at it.

She resisted instinctively. “Professor? What—” A black-robed policeman with a staff had covered half the distance from the latrine.

“The safe. Have to—” He pulled it free and staggered through the door.

The clerk in front of the vault looked up with a quizzical smile. Matt strode up and reached into the bag and put the pistol straight into his face. “Drop it!” he yelled to the guard by the vault door, “or I’ll shoot him, I swear to God!”

The lone guard had a pump shotgun. He set it on the floor and stood with his hands up. Outside, someone yelled, “Stop that man! He’s a heathen spy!”

“Up!” Matt shouted. “Up! Into the vault!”

“All right,” the clerk said, almost falling over backward as he stood. Matt jammed the pistol’s muzzle into the man’s temple and started walking him toward the big enclosure, the largest Faraday cage on the block.

Martha ran to his side. “Professor?”

“Stay away, Martha. Everything inside the vault is going to go.”

Once he was inside the metal walls, he shoved the clerk back out, and kept the gun on him while he reached into the bag for the time machine. “Get out, Martha!”

There was a loud bang and a bullet whined, ricocheting around inside the vault. The cop from the latrine was at the door, holding his staff like a rifle.

Martha stood in front of Matt with her arms spread wide. “Put that down! He’s a holy man!”

Everybody else, now including Matt, was flat on the floor as the cop swung left and right, trying to get a clear shot past Martha. He fired, and a bullet spanged off the floor and a couple of walls.

Matt ignored his own gun and pressed the alligator clip to the metal floor and pried the protective plastic dome off. “Jesus fucking”—he mashed the RESET button—