by Lee Burvine
"I heard a rumor they're extraditing Carl Truby from Hong Kong," she said.
Rees had heard it too. "Even the Chinese don't want him. It didn't help him that most of the non-extradition countries out there are Muslim theocracies."
"Gee, what rotten luck, huh?" Morgan didn't sound particularly disturbed by Truby's misfortune. "Maybe now we get to see farther up the food chain. Meet some of the mystery people he really works for."
The same idea had occurred to Rees. He thought the very possibility of that happening was probably a death sentence for Truby. So be it.
"Did they figure out who burned Truby?" Danni had her back to the mirror and she was peering over her shoulder at Rees's sewing job now.
Rees shook his head. "No. Except it's connected to the same shadow organization Truby hired to kill Fischer. And us. They turned on him for some reason. We'll probably never know exactly why."
Danni smiled at the back of her dress in the mirror. "Hey, that doesn't look half bad, Gevin."
"Neither do you two." He started for the door. "Can't wait to see you both walking down the aisle, paving the way for humans to marry dogs. That's what comes next, right?"
Danni shot back. "So says the man who's trying to discredit the world's great religions."
"Hey, I just want to rebuild the time-viewing technology. That's all. You know, Pat Robertson says it's actually a gift from God. He says it will prove everything he believes."
"That gays cause hurricanes?" Danni asked.
Rees laughed. "Something like that, yeah."
As he left them to make their final preparations, Rees's thoughts turned unexpectedly to his sister.
Anna loved weddings. She would have loved this one in particular. It still hurt. It always would. That was the price of risking intimacy. It was a price Rees was again willing to pay.
Just the week before he'd finally located the quote he'd been trying to remember for months. Bob Marley:
The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.
Rees was pretty sure he'd found them.
CHAPTER 66
outside the church it was a surprisingly warm April day for San Francisco. There were still a few minutes left to enjoy the sunshine before the ceremony began, and Rees had never been as fond of warm weather as he was these days.
He stood basking in the sun with a few of the other wedding guests who were chatting or grabbing a last cigarette, and took in the facade of the old brown brick building.
The Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist didn't look particularly impressive from the outside. The architecture was rather understated. But inside the structure, the airy, vaulted nave and magnificent stained-glass windows gave it a sense of venerated tradition.
They conducted formal high mass there on Sundays, he'd been told. Swinging incense censers and ringing bells. The priest made calls and the congregation chanted responses. And anyone at all could get up and take communion.
Anyone.
Gay or straight. Christian or not. Believer or skeptic.
That last part said it all to Rees. Inclusivity. No lines drawn in the sand. No theological walls to stand on and hurl rocks down upon the unbelievers. It was the kind of church Rees hoped would someday be much more commonplace. Because of what Fischer had done.
Danni picked it out. Her mother, it seems, had always dreamed of a Catholic wedding for her only daughter. Of course this wasn't quite that. But when Rees had seen the woman just a few minutes before, her eyes looked moist and she was clearly over the moon with joy.
Rees's thoughts were interrupted by the sight of a man walking toward him up the sidewalk. Walking with a pronounced limp.
"Hello, Dr. Rees." Randy Osborn smiled warmly. "Don't you clean up nicely."
Rees smiled back. "Randy. What a great surprise."
The two men shook hands and regarded each other silently for a few moments.
"I didn't know you were coming," Rees said. "Are you sticking around for the reception? There are a few things I'd really like to discuss with you."
"Yes, I heard about CERN. Replicating Fischer's work with the Large Hadron Collider. An ambitious idea. Sorry they rejected your proposal."
"It's the artifacts. Or rather the lack of them. I need something that shows a signature match to the time-recordings we recovered. That's evidence that can't be faked."
"And you think it would tip things your way?"
"That's why I'm assembling an expedition to revisit some of Joshua Amsel's digs. We'll be looking for a needle in a haystack without the guidance technology Fischer developed for him. But I think it's worth a shot."
"You are as ever the optimist."
"People want to know, Randy. In the end they just want to know. Is this real? Is this all true? You can't suppress human curiosity."
"Maybe not. But you can sure try," Osborn added with a hard smile.
Rees understood. There had been resistance to his efforts from behind the scenes. From influential people who wanted the world to remain forever in ignorance of its true past. Most likely the same powers Carl Truby had once represented.
"I have some ideas there too," Rees said. "I'll tell you more at the reception."
"Sorry, I'm not staying for the wedding. I just came to see you. I'm off to meet Professor Kazemi now."
Rees nodded. "How's he doing these days?"
"Better. Still has some bad nights. But overall, better."
"Give him my best," Rees said.
"I will." Osborn reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a little box wrapped in plain brown paper. "The other reason I came by." He held it out for Rees. "A gift."
Rees accepted it. Very light, whatever it was. "I'll put it with the other presents."
"That's for you, actually."
"For me?"
Osborn's expression grew serious. "Yes. For saving my life that night. I never really thanked you properly."
"Oh, well..." Rees felt his face flush and glanced away. He was surprised and strangely embarrassed too. He met the other man's eyes again and gave him a single nod.
"May I tell you a quick story before I go?" Osborn asked.
"Of course."
"The Apollo 11 astronauts undertook a goodwill tour back in 1969. Presenting moon rocks to foreign leaders. At the time these were the rarest stones on earth. Each one worth millions, at least. Well, a few years ago some geologist in Holland discovered the moon rock on display in the Rijksmuseum was just an ordinary piece of petrified wood."
"Stolen from the museum and replaced with a fake?"
Osborn shook his head. "No. The chunk of petrified wood precisely matched photos of the stone presented by the astronauts. It's the very same rock."
"Well that's ... odd, to say the least."
"The thing is," Osborn said, "all those moon rocks passed through the hands of dozens of NASA scientists. Men who were not at all times supervised. Men scraping by on government salaries." Osborn's serious expression melted away. He smiled and offered Rees his hand. "Good luck with your quest, Gevin. And give my best wishes to the new couple."
"I will do that." Rees said, as they shook hands good-bye.
* * *
REES HAD JUST seated himself back in the nave when Louis plopped down next to him. The ceremony would be starting any moment now.
Louis leaned in close. "Was that Randy Osborn I saw out there leaving?"
"Yes, he's in town to see Kazemi."
"Another present for the ladies?" Louis was looking down at the little box still in Rees's hand.
"Uh, no. Osborn gave it to me."
"Really. Well, what is it?"
"I have no idea, Louis. I haven't opened it yet."
Louis rolled his eyes. "Well, then open it already. I want to see what it is."
"Of course," Rees said apologetically. "How rude of me."
He peeled off the tape a
nd pulled back the wrapping paper, revealing a white cardboard box. About the right size for a small piece of jewelry.
He lifted off the top.
Cotton packing inside there. Rees pulled that out. The little box was empty. Was this supposed to be a joke?
"At least he didn't spend too much," Louis said.
The organist switched tunes and began playing a march by Tchaikovsky. Heads turned toward the back of the church. Rees turned to look too.
Danni and her father entered the church first, followed by Morgan and her father.
Morgan was smiling, making eye-contact with friends and family.
Danni's eyes sparkled with tears. And her own smile could have ignited that fusion reactor back at Livermore.
Rees realized he was still holding the little gift box and its cotton packing. He started to reassemble it all, to tuck it into his coat pocket.
His fingers felt something hard there within the cotton. He looked more closely at it.
He must have accidentally taken two pieces of cotton packing out of the box together, with something solid sandwiched between them.
He peeled the two pieces of cotton apart.
There on the bottom layer sat a small, gray stone. Porous. It looked volcanic. Pumice maybe?
A crazy thought passed through Rees's head, that he was holding the missing moon rock from Osborn's story.
Then his breath caught. With a rush of excitement, he understood what Osborn had been telling him. The low-salaried scientists handling priceless materials. How one of them appeared to have stashed away a piece of the treasure for himself.
Rees looked up at the life-sized crucifix mounted on the wall up behind the altar, at the figure of the man suspended there in agony. Then he looked back down at the little gray shard nestled within the cotton batting.
That wasn't pumice.
It wasn't any kind of rock at all.
It was an ancient fragment of bone.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Kafir Project is a work of speculative fiction. However, the history and science portrayed herein are all based on peer-reviewed, academic research. The most significant of these titles have been listed below.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Braun, S., J. P. Ronzheimer, M. Schreiber, S. S. Hodgman, T. Rom, I. Bloch, and U. Schneider. "Negative Absolute Temperature for Motional Degrees of Freedom." Science 339, no. 6115 (2013): 52-55.
Church, George M., Yuan Gao, and Sriram Kosuri. Next-Generation Digital Information Storage in DNA. Science 337, no. 6102, pg. 1628. August 16, 2012.
Coote, Robert B., and Mary P. Coote. Power, Politics, and the Making of the Bible: An Introduction. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990.
Cross, Frank Moore. Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic; Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973.
Crossan, John Dominic. Who Killed Jesus?: Exposing the Roots of Anti-semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995.
Dever, William G. Who Were the Early Israelites, and Where Did They Come From? Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub., 2003.
Ehrman, Bart D. How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee. New York: HarperCollins, 2014.
Eissfeldt, Otto. El And Yahweh. Journal of Semitic Studies 1, no. 1 (1956): 25-37.
Finkelstein, Israel, and Neil Asher Silberman. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. New York: Free Press, 2001.
Festinger, Leon. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1962.
Komarnitsky, Kris D. Doubting Jesus' Resurrection: What Happened in the Black Box? Drapper, Utah: Stone Arrow Books, 2009.
Luxenberg, Christoph. The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran: A Contribution to the Decoding of the Language of the Koran. Verlag Hans Schiler, 2007.
Lüling, Günter. A Challenge to Islam for Reformation: The Rediscovery and Reliable Reconstruction of a Comprehensive Pre-Islamic Christian Hymnal Hidden in the Koran under Earliest Islamic Reinterpretations. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2003.
Mullen, E. Theodore. The Divine Council in Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature. Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1980.
Ohlig, Karl. The Hidden Origins of Islam: New Research into Its Early History. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2010.
Price, Robert M. The Empty Tomb: Jesus beyond the Grave. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2005.
Redford,Donald B. Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancienttimes. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992.
ADDENDUM
For updated research and news about the book or the author, and burnings of the book (or the author) go to:
kafirproject.com
or
https://www.facebook.com/thekafirproject
And if you enjoyed The Kafir Project, please take a few minutes to stop by Amazon.com and/or goodreads.com to put up an embarrassingly glowing review.
Many thanks,
Lee Burvine
