by Lee Burvine
The
Kafir
Project
LEE BURVINE
Copyright© 2015 Lee Burvine
In association with and produced by,
The Atheist Republic
All rights reserved.
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“A thrilling roller coaster ride. Fast paced and riveting. I couldn’t put it down.”
Lawrence Krauss—award winning astrophysicist, and author of A Universe From Nothing
“Grips you from the first page ... seamlessly intertwines
sci-fi, applied physics, and a healthy dose of archaeology.”
Natalia Reagan—anthropologist, writer, TV animal expert (National Geographic Channel)
“A compelling read that weds scientific accuracy with an anti-scriptural plot.”
Peter Boghossian—philosopher and author of Street Epistemology
“With strong male and female characters. Everything a nerdy faithless feminist could want.”
Karen L. Garst—author of Women Beyond Belief: Discovering Life without Religion
“Burvine gives the world a new kind of hero, an intelligent science communicator in the mold of a Richard Dawkins or Neil deGrasse Tyson.”
Andrew L. Seidel—Constitutional and civil rights attorney for the Freedom From Religion Foundation
“Blends the breakneck pace of the best page-turning mysteries with genuine religious history.”
Emery Emery—film editor (Aristocrats), and host of the award winning podcast Ardent Atheist
“Historians and scientists have long known the Abrahamic religions are fiction. Who would have thought those findings could be turned into such an entertaining science fiction thriller?”
Dan Barker—author of GOD: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction
“Endless fun.”
Alexander Rosenberg—philosopher, novelist, and author of The Girl from Krakow
“Of note, Burvine forges two villains who are truly frightening in their drive, competence, and unpredictability. An impressive first novel.”
Ross Blocher—Co-host of the popular podcast Oh no, Ross and Carrie!
Author’s Note
I have made some leaps of imagination with the physics, as required by the narrative. I apologize to those scientists whose work I’ve mangled for the sake of story.
The archaeological research and textual criticism referenced in The Kafir Project are real and based on peer reviewed science. I invite skeptical readers to explore further for themselves.
Nullius in verba.
Lee Burvine
February 2016
DEDICATED TO
Asif Mohiuddin, Ahmed Rajib Haider, Sunnyur Rahaman, Shafiul Islam, Avijit Roy, Oyasiqur Rhaman, Ananta Bijoy Das, Niloy Neel, Faisal Abedin Deepan
The truth cannot be silenced with steel.
And to M.T.L. For all the times you saved my life and for all the ways you make it worth saving.
Foreword by Lawrence M. Krauss
I have to admit that when Lee Burvine came up to me after a lecture I gave in Pasadena and asked if I would look at his book, The Kafir Project, I agreed to do that expecting to glance at it later and send a polite note encouraging him to keep working. Then, a day after the meeting, he sent me an electronic copy of the book and it got buried in my inbox. A few weeks later I received a hard copy, but I departed almost immediately on a trip and left it in my office. Two months later he kindly asked me if I might write a blurb for the book, and I told him I would try to do that in the coming weeks.
Unfortunately I was close to finishing my new book, putting everything aside to complete it including outside travel and all other commitments. And once again Lee's book got short shrift. Showing remarkable patience, two months after that Lee wrote to ask if I might consider composing a foreword for the book, and took time to describe its contents.
By this point my new book was done, and I had time to respond to a backlog of requests. Something in Lee's description of his book struck a chord. I finally managed to download a copy of the draft onto my computer and started reading it on a plane. The problem then became that I couldn't put it down (because I had other pressing work to do before landing). In my spare time the next week I would open my computer and read. Eventually I wrote back to communicate with Lee with some thoughts about the book, in particular the main character, Gevin Rees, and the way he interacted with other scientists. Lee responded with thanks and asked for additional suggestions in order to make these interactions more realistic. It was particularly embarrassing when he then informed me that I had served as one of the models for that character.
Although flattered, I was initially skeptical about getting involved in contributing to what might be called science fiction, because I have a kind of love-hate relationship with sci-fi books. Clearly I have enjoyed the genre, but ever since The Physics of Star Trek I have been called on to comment on almost every new major sci-fi book or movie. And in fact while I read a lot of sci-fi as a young person, I quickly found as I got older that actual science interested me far more. In addition, most science fiction requires one to suspend disbelief, and the more one knows about science, the more suspension is required.
Ultimately what makes such suspension possible is not the plausibility of the imagined science, or lack thereof, it is the quality of the story. As a famous sci-fi writer once told me when we were on a TV panel together, the operative word in science fiction is not science, but fiction. A good story allows one to forgive the speculative or even the impossible science that one might encounter in the story, either because one wants to find out what is going to happen next, or because the characters are particularly gripping. This latter aspect is what usually grates on me the strongest in sci-fi, because the representation of scientists and their interactions with one another is often stereotypical or stilted. Too often they simply don't sound like the people I have worked with throughout my professional career.
Happily, reading The Kafir Project I had no problem suspending any disbelief. The story is fast paced and riveting with unexpected plot twists at every turn. The characters are likable and believable-even the scientists and engineers! And the science touches on subjects, like quantum computing, which while very speculative nevertheless build on legitimate, current research.
But the most fascinating thing about this exciting story is the premise on which it is based. Anyone who has read even lightly about the history of the world's religions knows that the sacred books, as usually represented, are essentially fraudulent. The New Testament, written by various authors at best decades after any actual events took place, helped to deify someone who at the time made no such claims. The Qur'an is highly derivative of earlier myths, and Mohammed never visited a Mosque in Jerusalem on a winged horse because (for one thing) there were no Mosques there at the time. And the Old Testament refers to the use of camels in a
period when camels had not yet been domesticated in that region of the world. All of this, of course, is independent of the numerous miracles described in all three books which undoubtedly never happened.
While modern scholarship has already largely dispensed with the myths on which all three of the world's major religions are based, wouldn't it be nice to have more direct evidence contradicting them? Of course, I suspect that even if such evidence did exist, the guardians of theology would find ways for the doctrines based on the myths to persevere. Too much money and power rides on the institutions created to propagate them.
Ah, but The Kafir Project is a work of fiction, and in the fictional world we can sometimes live out our fantasies. While I would certainly not relish living through any of Gevin Rees's experiences in the book, it was a thrilling roller coaster ride to read them. For those of you who just bought a ticket for the ride, enjoy the trip, and I hope you come out the other end thinking a little differently about the real world.
Lawrence M. Krauss, 2016
CHAPTER 1
The Qur'an which We sent down to you is the fountainhead of divine knowledge and the chief source of divine information. It elucidates every aspect of every thought and it is a guide into all truth
― Surah An-Nahl 16:89
"I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the hearts of the youth.
― Martin Luther
"Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves.
― Richard Feynman
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
THE FACE TO face meeting came as a huge surprise to Gevin Rees. To begin with, Edward Fischer was notoriously reclusive. The world's most celebrated physicist never granted personal interviews to a science communicator like Rees, let alone asked for one.
Additionally, he was dead.
Or he was supposed to be anyway. Rees leaned into the salt mist blowing cold off San Francisco Bay and stared at Fischer. He was looking very much alive in dark sunglasses and a red and gold '49ers hoodie as he continued to scour the waterfront.
"Are we expecting someone else?" Rees asked.
"Our muscle."
"Muscle?"
"Yes, but we can't wait any longer. Gevin, you're in serious danger. You weren't directly involved in the research, so I wasn't as discreet with your identity as I was with the others. That was a mistake."
"Others? Wait, what kind of danger?"
"You didn't tell anyone you were coming out here to meet me?"
"No. I did exactly as you asked." Rees was trying his best to look calm. Given how he really felt, that amounted to lying with his face. "Can you just tell me what the ... what's going on here, please? Everyone thinks you died in the explosion at Fermilab. They're saying they found you. Pieces of you."
"And that's good. I want them to believe they succeeded in killing me. They think they've destroyed all my data too, but it's still right here in my DNA. Oddly enough we owe that one to church. Herodotus will have it all soon if not already. Five hundred exabytes. He'll be contacting you."
"Herodotus?"
"An alias. For his protection. Another man we're calling Anaximander is bringing the artifacts. The science I'm entrusting to you." Fischer dug into a beaten up leather pouch he had slung over one shoulder and mumbled to himself. "It's all coming together. The end of their authority."
Artifacts? Jesus, he's lost his mind. Rees wondered if the shock of the explosion had thrown the man into some kind of psychotic episode. By reputation he wasn't all that mentally stable to begin with.
At thirty-three, Fischer was ten years younger than Rees, but right now, shaky and slump-shouldered, he actually looked the older of the two men.
He began to pull a notebook of some kind out of the pouch, but stopped in mid-motion. He was looking over Rees's right shoulder, eyes tracking something back there.
Rees turned and looked too.
A middle-aged Japanese couple-tourists, judging by the guidebook they were consulting-strolled close by. Apart from them, this stretch of Fisherman's Wharf near Pier 35 was mostly deserted. Swept clear by dark skies and the imminent threat of a chilling December rainstorm.
Behind the two tourists, a white van pulled up to the curb nearby and stopped.
As Rees turned back toward Fischer, the scientist jerked the pouch off his shoulder. "No! They can't have it." He heaved it over a nearby railing, into the bay. Then he turned back to Rees. "Run!"
Before Rees could even move, he heard a loud pop. Fischer dropped in place like someone had just flipped off his master power switch.
A man in sunglasses and billed cap, wearing a Jimmy Buffett T-shirt, stood outside the van now, maybe a hundred feet away. He held a gun in front of him in a two-handed grip. A fat, black cylinder stuck out from the end of the barrel.
Rees tried to run and couldn't. His feet seemed bolted to the walkway.
The two Japanese tourists didn't have the same problem, apparently. They turned and fled up the waterfront.
The gun popped again. Once, twice.
As Rees watched, the man and woman both dropped. The man lay there quietly. The woman screamed as she tried to crawl away.
A third shot silenced her.
Rees, meanwhile, had finally come unstuck.
Survival instinct kicked in and the rest was automatic. Without looking back he took a single long step and launched himself headfirst over the railing.
Another pop behind him.
Gray sky and green water rotated, trading places while he tumbled.
Cold shock as he plunged into the bay. The taste of salt water in his mouth.
Rees reopened his eyes underwater, fighting the sting after shutting them reflexively. Disoriented, twisting this way and that, he hunted for the surface, having already formed the intention to swim the hell away from it.
There...
He spotted the green glow of daylight filtering through the murky waters. Above and below suddenly fell into place again in this weightless and featureless expanse.
Making his best guess, Rees swam downward and in the direction that he fervently hoped would take him back under the walkway. He couldn't see much farther than the tips of his fingers, though. For all he knew he would be forced to resurface in full view of the gunman.
He swam using breaststroke and frog kick. On and on. The green emptiness all around killed any sense of forward progress. His lungs felt about to burst.
This had to be too far. If he were going the right way, he'd have reached-
Something materialized out of the haze in front of him. A pylon encrusted with barnacles and marine algae.
His lungs burned as he let himself float upward alongside it. It looked dark above him, so he was coming up under some kind of structure, thank God.
Rees broke the surface, purged his lungs explosively, gulped briny air, then dove right back down. He held his breath as long as he could, and then floated up again for another quick lungful of air.
He repeated this process maybe twenty times.
Eventually, Rees reasoned that if the man with the gun were coming for him, he would probably have been discovered by now. The next time he came up for air, he stayed on the surface and looked around.
He was under the walkway from which he'd jumped. No sign of the shooter.
After another five minutes or so of waiting, he decided to risk a move. The situation merited an abundance of caution, so he planned to swim from pylon to pylon, staying under the walkway wherever possible, and to head for Pier 39. There was a marina over there. And people. He could call for help.
Rees had just started out when his hand bumped something floating half-submerged in the water.
Fischer's leather pouch.
He pulled the strap over his shoulder and began to swim.
Making good on its threat, the sky finally le
t loose torrents of frigid rain. The splashes of thousands of heavy drops hissed loudly around him as Rees slogged toward Pier 39 and that marina. The swim seemed to take forever.
When they pulled him from the water, his teeth chattered so violently he couldn't make himself understood.
Finally, he managed to get out two words.
Police and murder.
CHAPTER 2
"SOMETIMES REGULAR PEOPLE look a lot like famous people," the officer whose nametag identified him as Honeycutt explained. "We have an ID kit that works on exactly that principle. Some guy's got Brad Pitt's eyes, John Travolta's chin, or what have you."
Within minutes of Rees being hauled out of the bay, Honeycutt and his partner had arrived at the marina in a patrol car, siren wailing and lights flashing. A rescue vehicle followed another minute later, repeating the noisy show.
"No, it wasn't a lookalike," Rees said. "Okay? Edward Fischer asked me to meet him here. I flew out here to meet him. He said someone was trying to kill him. He wanted them to think he was dead. But he isn't. I mean, he may be now, but..."
It sounded insane even to Rees. And that was without the bit about the ancient Greek code names he'd intentionally left out. Nevertheless, the officers called it in. From what he could make out, a police unit was dispatched to the scene near Pier 35.
Honeycutt rode in the back of the ambulance with him for the short trip to San Francisco General.
Hospital staff in the ER stripped off Rees's wet clothes and buried him under layers of warm blankets.
