by D. J. Gelner
“Sure thing, bro. So, after Commander Corcoran came back from his first time jump, it started to become clear that nothing had changed. At least, that’s what Commander Corcoran said. Everything was exactly as he had left it, no matter what he did, and this was, like, vericified by everyone that came after him. Whatever happened…happened.”
My head swirled as I began to feel faint, though not at Trent’s malapropism, “So you’re telling me that the timeline is static throughout history?”
“Eh, naw, it’s pretty clear, at least by 2038, where I’m from,” he said, his expression hopelessly vacant. “But no matter what any of the time travelers did, they would always come back to their time. They did all kindsa stuff to make sure they were right; they sent back stuff, buried it, and dug it up in the future. They took camcorders to make sure that the time travelers did what they said they were doing, but in the end, nothing changed. History was as it always, like, was.”
I cocked my head to the side, “So, you’re telling me that whatever happened happened?”
Trent nodded proudly, “You’re getting it, man!”
“So you’re telling me that if I were to kill you, right here, right now, history wouldn’t change at all?”
Trent was unfazed by my morbid thinking aloud, “No way, bro. Something would stop you from doing it. Either you couldn’t bear to do it, or a legionnaire would appear out of nowhere to stop you, or maybe you like, just…die before I do then. No matter what, it doesn’t happen that way.”
“But…I mean…you do realise…” I struggled for words before I decided to go another direction. “So how exactly did you become Jesus Christ?!”
Trent grinned, “Riiiight! So I was at Boulder, on a bit of an ‘extended studies’ plan since the old man was—”
“The old man?” I hoped perhaps he was referring to my Benefactor.
“You know—my dad? Pops? Anyway, pops is…was…will be…whatever…footing the bill, so I could afford to be a little…picky…as far as my major was concerned. I tried a bunch of stuff; earth sciences, theater, film studies, and even hard stuff like anthropology and history. But all of them just so epically blew.
“Then one day, in year like seven or nine or whatever, I saw this totally slammin’ chick, killer bod, you know? Ass like an Indian drum—”
I cleared my throat.
“Sorry, bro, Native American drum,” Trent replied. “Anyway, so I follow this smoking hot girl to her next class, and lo and behold, it was Aramaic. Now, I know what you’re thinking—”
You have no possible way to fathom, I thought. No concept, not even a shred of—
“I don’t seem like the ‘academic type.’ Well, this girl’s name was Madison, and I totally got in good with her, you know, on a personal tutoring basis.” I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. “Turns out she was actually pretty smart and…uh…good at teaching Aramaic, too and stuff. I graduated with a degree in Ancient Linguistics a few years ago.
“Unfortunately, it’s like, kinda tough to get a job with that degree, given, you know, the war and everything. So I decided to stick around Boulder and get my masters.
“Then, like my second year of my masters, the government decided to de-regulate time travel. And I thought that was totally, you know, cool and stuff. And this was before all of the historical tourism and stuff, so I came up with the idea: what if I went back in time and just lived? And then one night, I fired up the Brainenator, and—”
“The Brainenator?” I interrupted.
Trent stood up and walked over to the far left corner of the room and removed a worn, dirty linen cloth from along the floor, revealing an enormous cannabis water pipe contraption, as that’s the only way I can explain it.
“The Brainenator, bro—you know, ‘cuz it—” he hoisted an imaginary automatic weapon to his hip and “rattled off” a few imaginary rounds, “totally terminates brain cells, but in a good way. Anyway, my buddies and I were rockin’ this thing one night, and we were talking about time travel and we thought, ‘wouldn’t it be kinda cool to go back and like be somebody? Like, you know, take over for them, like their life and stuff?”
I marveled at the man’s articulation. “So you formed the basis for an entirely new industry while smoking copious amounts of cannabis with your degenerate friends one evening?”
“Exactly!” Trent lit up.
“So then why Jesus Christ Himself?” I asked.
“Well, you know, I’ve always admired his…my…gentle way, and how he preached love and not war, and how he was just a cool dude about the meek inheriting the Earth and all that stuff. So that’s cool. Plus I’m one of the few people that knew Aramaic, before the holotran came about, and—”
I cringed at the thought of asking for another explanation from this stoned hooligan.
“Holotran?” I could barely force myself to croak out.
“Yeah bro, the holotran, the patch that you put on your neck that translates what you’re saying and what you hear into whatever language you want, and synchs up a hologram with your mouth to make it look like you’re speaking the same language the other person is speaking? God—” he sighed with exasperation. “You really are from way back in the past, aren’t you?
“Anyway,” now he rolled his eyes. At me! “I knew the language, and I figured that I kind of looked like Jesus, at least the pictures I had seen and stuff, so I conned dad into loaning me some money for ‘books’ or ‘housing’ or something like that and went to the ChronoSaber branch office in Denver, and signed up to come back here, and so here I am.”
I rested my elbow on my knee, and my chin on my hand, unconsciously forming the “Thinker” pose.
“So what happened to the real Jesus?” I asked.
Trent shook his head, “You’re looking at him. He’s me.”
“No, you dolt—not you, the real one, the man whom you have replaced.”
He beamed, “That’s the beauty of it—there wasn’t one! Some of these poor dudes and chicks go back in time and have to try to kidnap the guy or chick they want to replace, or even try to kill them, but that’s always a risk because the universe sometimes has, like, its own ideas about stuff. People go back in time and disappear, never heard from again. Somebody gets to them before they can do what they want to do, or they flash around too much cash and get robbed and left in the gutter. Or, this one’s kinda popular now, the dinosaur eats them, and they don’t get to have, like, a stegosaurus dinner and come home with their T-Rex trophy.”
I didn’t even want to touch the last one for the moment.
“So you’re telling me that there never was a Jesus of Nazareth before you? No manger scene, no virgin birth, nothing of the sort?”
Trent shook his head, “Nope. Well…actually, sort of, if you mean that I tell them that stuff happened.”
“Huh?” My head began to throb.
“Like, it’s like I say it happened, so it happened, you know?” He opened the drawer with the headshots again and pulled out a leather-bound, hotel bible. “This is the perfect script, you know. I just, like, do what the book says for the most part. Except for that forty days in the desert part—that’s fucking bullshit, man. I just went off to Sepphoris and relaxed for a while, and told everyone here that I had, like wandered around the desert for forty days.”
“But that’s a paradox!” I shot out of my chair and turned away from Trent.
“No, man—it’s how it happened!”
I walked over to Trent, picked up the Bible, and shook it vigorously at his face.
“You are writing the Bible by reading the Bible! Where did the idea come from in the first place? Thin air? It’s a chicken-or-the-egg paradox! It simply can’t be!”
Trent laughed, “And yet here we are! Look, I don’t pretend to be a physi…physi…physics guy,” he frowned. “But all I know is that they said it’s fine to bring whatever I want, and do whatever I want. And it’s not like I’m gunning down people. I’m improving lives, performing miracles, for my s
ake! Now, granted, most of it is like technology and stuff, but whatever, I’m making a difference, and for good!”
“But…the water into wine?”
“Technology. Micro amino-acid synthesizer or something like that. Got it at Williams Sonoma.”
“The loaves into fishes?”
“Same deal.”
“Healing the sick? The lame? Raising the dead?”
Trent laughed, “Dude, that’s like the easiest thing, bro! Modern medicine is so far advanced compared to bleeding and leeches and shit. And I don’t even know if they’re that far along yet; all I know is one medigel or even a few Advil and these people think that I’m the Messiah.”
“Medi-what?” I asked.
Trent opened the drawer and tossed me a packet of greenish goo, with a red cross imprinted on the side.
“Medigel. This stuff’s the fu—this stuff’s the bomb, man. Heals anything: cuts, infections, even like broken bones and stuff. It’s, like, a disinfectant combined with something that, like, focuses your body’s own healing mechanisms and shit. Totally awesome. Go ahead—keep that one. I have tons of the stuff.”
I pocketed the souvenir as I furrowed my brow, “So you’re a Charlatan! An utter fraud?”
Trent shook his head, “I am Jesus, bro. I help people, I do heal the sick, I do all of the good stuff. Why’s it such a bad thing that I’m from the future?”
“You parade around as the Son of God, for one thing,” I shot at him.
“But aren’t we all sons of God? Daughters of God? That’s Jesus’s message in a nutshell, and now it’s, like, mine too.”
“Let me ask you this, though, Mr. Albertson—”
“Whoa bro—Trent, please. Mr. Albertson is my father.”
“Uh…yes…Trent…aren’t there other individuals that would later have the same idea that you did? That would try to come back in time and kill you and take your spot as Christ?”
Trent laughed, “I guess so, but for whatever reason, that’s how the universe shook out this time. I am Jesus. If anyone else had come back to try to be Jesus before me, then, like, something happened to them. If they would come here now, then something would happen to them. I know it’s a mindfuck, but that’s the way the universe operates—there’s something totally elegant and awesome about it, don’t you think?”
“But that’s my point—history remembers it as—”
“Ultimately, however history remembers it is how it happened, from the future dude’s point of view.”
I was caught off guard by the harsh poeticism of the man’s statement.
“So history …doesn’t remember me then?”
He shook his head, “Sorry man, can’t say it does. Maybe you decided to live your life here with me for the rest of your days. I only have like ten apostles right now—that means there are a couple of openings left…”
The day I follow this wretched asshole is the day I’d just as soon go back and be eaten by a dinosaur!, I thought.
“No, thank you,” I said. Damn my British manners!
“Well, anyway, maybe you found another time to chill in, or destroyed your machine for all of the ‘evil’ you think it can do. Maybe you decided to jump ahead of my time, though that can be, like, a problem.”
“What in the hell do you mean?” I asked, my eyes narrowed.
“Well...it’s like this,” he sat down and motioned for me to re-take my seat, which I did. “It’s not always just so easy to get to go exactly where—when—you want to go, especially over long stretches of time.”
“But that’s impossible! I designed the program myself, the quantum computer will—”
“Again, I’m like, not a computer guy, but quantum computers have some limitations, as you know. It turns out that even in my time, a few years after yours, quantum computers throw a wrench in the works sometimes. They use like, probability and stuff to make calculations, but whatever genius set up the things didn’t properly account for…uh…’frame of reference,’ or something like that, whenever they coded it out or whatever. So the further you go back or forward in time, the wonkier things get, and the lower the chance that you end up where you want to.”
My heart sank into my bowels. Of course. It was the one variable for which I hadn’t accounted. My Benefactor was so adamant that I get the machine ready to go to this time, this one specific moment, that I hadn’t considered the cascading effect of multiple quantum computer calculations on one another! How could I be so stupid?
To put it in relatively understandable terms for the layperson, think of the space-time continuum as a pond, and time travel as a rock cast into that pond. After the rock enters the pond, though you may be able to see the ripples on the surface, you have no real idea of where the rock ended up under the water. The ripples give you an approximation of where the rock is, but the quantum computer itself is an imperfect device that relies on some assumptions. The further you throw the rock, the more likely it is that it ended up somewhere away from the initial ripples, and the less the quantum computer has to go on to get you safely back to your time period.
I had made it safely to the year 31 A.D. because I had programmed the computer to get me to this point in time. Sadly, even the short time I had already spent in this period would have an adverse effect on the computer’s ability to return me home.
It was so clear now, but I damned my haste and my willingness to blindly follow my Benefactor’s advice; though I can’t recall whether I questioned his intentions at that moment, at some point it became clear that perhaps his own motives may be to blame for my not receiving proper credit for the invention of time travel.
“Yeah, it kind of sucks, bro. ChronoSaber has the most advanced computers ever, and even then they can only give you an idea of when and where you’ll end up, and a percentage of likelihood of success. My chance to get back was supposed to be a month ago or so, and they said it would be, like, eighty percent, or something like that. Bastards never showed.”
He sighed, “That’s why I’m just going to stick around and ride this one out. Who knows if I’d be able to ever make it back? There’s another chance for me to hitch a ride in India, but it’s like decades away.”
My eyes bulged, “So you’re going to die on the cross?”
Trent nodded, “Yeah, I suppose so. Though,” he pulled another package of the fluorescent turquoise goop out of the drawer and held it up, “I think the resurrection is going to be pretty epic, bro.”
I put my head in my hands. Here I was, facing eternity damned to wonder through time, searching for my way home like Dr. Samuel fucking Beckett on Quantum Leap (though sadly it didn’t appear as if I’d enjoy many of his sexual exploits, nor did I particularly care to with any of our shorter, more troll-like and disease-ridden ancestors).
I stood up and offered a curt smile toward Jesus, “Thank you for your hospitality, sir, but I simply must get going.”
“What’s the rush, man? After all, you did, like, invent time travel, right?”
I considered backhanding the Son of God in the face.
“That may be, but I’ve clearly made a mistake, and I must simply be going. Another wasted minute and I may never be able to return home.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa—slow down, bro.” Trent clasped a hand on my shoulder. “You need to relax. So your time machine may not make it all the way back right now. Big deal, man. Learn to enjoy the past, enjoy the ride, man. If you want to do something interesting, then do it. If you spend the rest of your life trying to create a perfect wormhole to make it to just the right time, what good is that going to do? What good is it to live life if it’s a life with no purpose other than an end?”
Again, I reeled from the stoner’s apparent poeticism. You know what, though? He might be right, Finn, I thought. You’ve spent two solid decades building this damned thing. Why not enjoy it a little? Why not visit your heroes and some important time periods along the way?
And suddenly, I had an idea.
“My dear C
hrist,” I said, as I clasped an arm around Jesus. “You said that getting exactly where I wanted to go could be problematic for the quantum computer, correct?”
“Yeah. Totally.”
“But even though the computer relies on probability to create some of its calculations, some destinations will be easier to reach than others, correct?”
Trent smiled, “Yeah bro—that’s exactly right.”
“So indulge me for a moment—might there be a way for the quantum computer to chart a course through several different time periods, each jump alone highly probable, but designed to ultimately arrive me at my home time period?”
I looked at Trent, but he had already cast his eyes skyward.
“Uh…sure, man. Whatever. Like I said, I’m not really a computer guy. I don’t think ChronoSaber does that sort of thing, but hey, if you did invent time travel, then maybe you could, like, be smarter than them…and stuff.”
I beamed, finally happy to hear what came out of the degenerate’s mouth. I stuck out my hand.
“Wondrous! I mean, wonderful! Thank you Trent…err…Jesus—”
“Whatever,” he shrugged and offered his own smile. “Thank you, man—you’ve, like, totally blown my mind.”
“Quite. Cheerio.” I took a couple of brisk steps toward the doorframe before I turned back to Jesus once more. “One other thing; when I first came here, you flashed me the Vulcan ‘Live Long and Prosper’ sign from Star Trek.”
Trent grinned, “Yeah bro.”
“What’s that all about?”
“Well, you see, ChronoSaber had to come up with a way for time travelers to recognize each other if they cross paths in the past, you know, so we can look out for each other and stuff. They settled on the Vulcan symbol for some reason—I don’t know, maybe because, like, it’s new and recognizable and stuff. Anyway, if someone flashes that at you,” he winked and gave me a thumbs up while making an odd clicking/sucking sound with his mouth, “you’re golden.”
I couldn’t help but smile. At least these “ChronoSaber” folks involved Star Trek in these bizarre expeditions in some manner. It was heartening to know that such a quaint little show could serve as such an inspiration across time.
