I, Judas

by Bob Mayer

  Copyright © 2012 Bob Mayer

  http://coolgus.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance of fictional characters to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author and publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  ISBN 978-1-935712-93-0

  I, Judas

  The 5th Gospel

  By Bob Mayer

  Jerusalem: 33 A.D.

  “In very truth I tell you, one of you is going to betray me.” Jesus looked about the room at the twelve disciples gathered around the table. His eyes did not pause on any one person, and he ignored the cries of protest from several.

  Jesus stood at one end of the narrow table, six of his followers on either side, all staring at him, almost all surprised by his pronouncement. All but one. The man who sat to Jesus’s right was silent, his face impassive.

  It was early evening, the last rays of the sun cutting across the room through the high windows set in the brick wall. The room where they were dining was built along the side of an inn at the base of the Mount of Olives. The smell of the meal permeated the air. The sounds of the family that ran the inn echoed into the room, mixing with the noise of passersby in the street outside heading home for their own late meals. It was Passover and there were many more people in Jerusalem than normal.

  Jesus leaned forward, the slight movement causing all to fall silent. It was his presence that had drawn most of the Apostles to him from the very beginning. None had ever been around a man who commanded such implicit attention. His skin was dark from both birth and sun, his short beard prematurely tinged with gray. His hair was also cut short, tight to his skull. His eyes were dark, and those who felt their gaze sensed that he could see into their very essence.

  Jesus’s voice was low but easily carried over the background noise. “Until now I have been using figures of speech; there will be a time, the Second Coming, when I will return and shall no longer use figures, but tell you of the Father in plain words.”

  Frowns creased the brows of most in the room; except, once again, the man to Jesus’s right who nodded ever so slightly, as if he perfectly understood the cryptic statement. He was similar in appearance to Jesus, with short black hair, dark skin, and a trimmed beard. He had a gnarled scar above his right eye from a cut that had mended poorly years ago.

  As if he had made all totally clear, Jesus promptly sat down. He ignored the questions that came his way, focusing on finishing the remainder of his meal. The Apostles were used to this—the way their master would just withdraw at times, as if he had expended his energy and needed to build it back up. The world, and those in it, would cease to exist for him. He had been doing it more and more lately.

  Several began bickering, arguing over the meaning of their master’s words, another thing that was growing more and more common as Jesus said less and less. As he picked up the last morsel of food, Jesus glanced to his right. “Eat, Judas. You will need your strength.”

  Judas leaned close so that only Jesus could hear. “We should talk.”

  “We’ve talked.” Jesus raised a single finger, silencing the other man. “And there is no choice. It is as our Father has decreed.”

  To forestall any more argument, Jesus stood once more, a cup of wine in his hand. The room fell silent. Jesus held the cup up in toast, to what the others could only guess, as he said nothing, and then placed it to his lips and quickly drained it. He put it down on the table, a little too forcefully, the echo of metal on wood reverberating through the room.

  “Who will betray you, Master?” Peter asked the question that was on the minds of almost all of the Apostles. “Tell us and we will guard you.”

  “There are many types of betrayal. The worst of all is when you betray yourself.” Jesus picked up his cloak from the back of his chair and walked to the door. “I’m going to the garden.” And then he was gone into the darkening evening.

  The startled twelve gathered their own possessions and followed him. They walked through the narrow stone streets, Jesus silent and in the lead, the twelve following and arguing amongst themselves, all save Judas who was last in the column of disciples. He moved slowly, shoulders slumped as if bearing a great weight. He didn’t talk with any of the others, which was not unusual. He had always been a bit distant from the rest of the followers, yet, surprisingly, he was the one in whom Jesus confided most. And he had been at Jesus’s side before any of the others. The first Apostle.

  Jesus passed through an opening in a wall of loose stone and then between two rows of hedges, into the Garden of Gethsemane. The garden was on the western slope of the Mount of Olives, a quiet oasis among the bustle of the city on the eve of Passover. It was a place they had been to numerous times before, as it was Jesus who would go there to get away from the crowds that besieged him during the day. In concert with the fewer words spoken, he was going to the garden more and more lately.

  They wound their way to a small clearing where several large stones were scattered. Upon which several of the weary Apostles promptly sat. It had been a very long day that did not look like it was going to end any time soon. In addition to Jesus’s cryptic words, there was an unsettled feeling in the pungent air of the city. Rumors were rampant about the Romans, the Pharisees, the High Priests and the many other groups that made up the city’s human mass. Rumors were common in Jerusalem, but lately there were more than anyone living could remember. And most of the rumors had something to do with Jesus.

  There were those who wanted to use him as a figurehead for a revolt against the Romans, a course of action that those close to Jesus knew he would never be part of, although some still urged him to reconsider. Those in power saw him as a threat to the established order of things. Many saw him as a false prophet and others believed he was the long-promised Messiah. Passions brewed.

  Judas did not sit, but stood on the opposite side of the clearing from Jesus. Beyond the clearing was a small stone grotto where Jesus liked to go alone and meditate. They expected him to leave them, but as he reached the entrance to the grotto, Jesus turned to face the twelve.

  “You will desert me this night. Like sheep, you will scatter. But you will come together again after my resurrection.”

  Peter sprang to his feet in protest. “Even though all doubt you and fail you, Lord, I will never fail you.”

  A slight smile crept across Jesus’s face because Peter had focused on the first sentence of what he had said and not the last, which was of much more importance. “Before the cock crows with the rising sun, you will deny knowing me,” Jesus told Peter. “I am going to pray,” he added as he turned to the grotto.

  As soon as Jesus was gone, intense debate raged among the disciples. Unnoticed, Judas slipped through the men and followed Jesus. He found Jesus standing underneath an olive tree, looking up through the leaves and branches at the stars overhead. In one hand, Jesus held a small black stone, which he was tumbling through his fingers from pinkie to thumb and back again. He had had the stone as long as Judas had known him. The surface was worn smooth from years of being tumbled through his fingers.

  “You should do it soon,” Jesus said.

  “There is no other way?”

  Jesus took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “I wish there was, my brother. However, we knew it would not be easy. Words are not enough. There must be action. Action that people will remember. Otherwise the words will fade from memory.”

  “They will remember if we do this,” Judas said bit
terly. “And it is I who will have to bear the pressures of those memories long beyond what anyone should have to.”

  “Would you switch places with me?”

  Judas looked up sharply, and then shook his head. “That cannot be.”

  Jesus nodded. “I know. It is as it was meant to be.”

  “You go to a better place.”

  “My suffering will be deep but brief,” Jesus said. “Yours will be shallow but long.” He tossed the stone to Judas. “As our Father has foretold, it will be for you to bear witness for the Second Coming.”

  “How long will that be?” Judas asked, not expecting an answer. He looked at the black stone in his palm. “Will the world ever really be ready for that?”

  “That is why we are going to do this. That is the entire purpose of everything we have given our lives to.” Jesus took another deep breath. He walked to Judas and wrapped his arms around him. “You have my love.”

  “And you mine,” Judas replied.

  Jesus glanced over toward the other side of the garden. There was a woman standing there, a shadow in the darkness. “You will take care of her?”

  Judas followed his gaze and nodded. “Of course.”

  “And the burden and hope she bears?”

  “Yes.”

  Jesus touched his chest, then his head as he spoke. “Heart and mind.”

  Judas repeated the gesture as he echoed the words. “Heart and mind.”

  “Until we meet again,” Jesus said.

  “Until we meet again.”

  “Go now, my brother.”

  The Final Day Terminal Impact= in 4 Hours

  From the 5th Gospel: Judas: 1:1 In the beginning, the Voice of God was heard inside our heads, our First Consciousness being an empty vessel. And the Voice told us: You Do This.

  The Mato Grasso Region of the Amazon

  “I, Judas, bear true witness to many of the events that have been recorded in the New Testament, for I saw and heard much of it with my own eyes and ears.” The man who uttered these words looked up from the barrels of the guns pointed at him. Judas smiled at the two men who held the weapons. A woman stood between them, not pointing a weapon. “Would you like to know more? For I have walked this planet for over two thousand years. Surely that is a story worth putting off killing me for a bit? At least until after we share a meal? Please be seated.”

  The man known in history as the Great Betrayer sat on a bench at a long table of finely worked wood. It was set in the center of a small clearing between massive kopak trees. There was about a twenty-meter circle of open sky above. A stream of clear water ran close by, tumbling into a river not far away. Over the tops of the surrounding towering trees, white-capped mountains were off to the west. Set among the roots of the trees, like growths amongst the wooden knees, were numerous small huts, but there was no sign of those who inhabited the buildings. Even the jungle that surrounded them was quiet as if all the creatures that normally made a steady din had gone silent to listen to what Judas had to say.

  Across the table fromJudas were the two men and the woman. Their clothes were dirty and tattered. Their skin bore the scrapes and bruises of a hard journey. The barrel of the pistol the man on the left held shook, his muscles exhausted from his recent ordeal. The other man’s hand was as steady as a rock. The stunning words Judas had just uttered seemed to have little effect on any of them.

  Judas spread his hands flat on the top of the table. “We both have stories of journeys. Mine has been millennia in the making. The three of you⎯a normal lifetime. But the last two days have been rather exceptional for all of you. There were six who started out, and now it appears only three have made it this far. So you have your own tale to tell.”

  Before any of the three could answer, figures clad in loincloths appeared like wraiths out of the jungle. Dozens of natives, the men with bows in their hands, arrows at the ready, the women and children behind them. The men kept the gun pointed at Jesus as their gaze swept over the tribe. None of them made a threatening move, but the number of notched arrows was much greater than the bullets in both guns’ magazines.

  Judas indicated the newcomers. “These are some of the very last on the planet not to hear the word of God—those whom your Brotherhood is seeking to reach. The Great Commission according to Matthew, correct? Or at least how some have interpreted what Matthew wrote. Or to be even more precise, how some have interpreted the translations of what Matthew wrote. He was actually a rather boring fellow.”

  The woman gently placed a hand on each man’s forearm. It didn’t take much pressure to get the man on her left to lower the gun to the wood; his hand letting go of it as if dropping a great weight that had been carried too long. The man on her right resisted for a while longer, a muscle twitching in his jaw.

  “Please, let us at least learn something,” the woman pleaded.

  Reluctantly, he too lowered the gun.

  Judas nodded and the corners of his mouth twitched upward. His face was creased, and it was evident he smiled often, which seemed to disconcert the three even more than his words.

  He indicated the natives once again. “You’re lucky. These are the peaceful ones. Others, ancient ones who live by the old ways in the remote valleys of the Andes, have been coming out of the mountains. They’ve sensed something. They worship me in their own way. They would have welcomed you quite differently, and your heads would have ended up on pikes.”

  “We saw that,” one of the men said. “On the river.”

  Judas nodded. “They are not under my control. However, you made it here. Most of you. We have a little bit of time before Wormwood, as your Brotherhood calls it, or the Intruder, as the Illuminati have labeled it, arrives.” The smile on Judas’s face deepened as if he were privy to something that the two were unaware of. “Many believe the Second Coming will begin then, others that the world will end. This is something about which I also know the truth.” He looked up at the sky. A great burning orb, larger than the sun, could be seen even in the bright daytime sky.

  “As I said, there is still time before what many fear–and many others hope for— arrives. I will tell you my story and some information you need if you give me a little bit of that time. I assure you my story is worth listening to. Would you like to know the truth of what Jesus taught? For I was there. And I learned much more about what went on before Jesus’s time, things that are recorded in the Old Testament. The truth is not exactly as you believe, but it is also not exactly as your opponents believe. Both are right and both are wrong. The truth lies in the great middle, where it almost always does.” As he said the last sentence, he touched his chest over his heart and then his temple.

  Judas spread his hands over the table. “Won’t you join me for supper?”

  Terminal Impact In 69 To 48 Hours

  Three Days Earlier

  Joint Defense Space Research Facility, Pine Gap, Australia

  Australia is the oldest, flattest, and driest of the seven continents, equal in size to the continental United States. Scientists’ best guess is that the native people, the Aborigines, have been there for over thirty thousand years, completely isolated from the rest of the world until the coming of the white man. The ancient Egyptian Empires, Greece, Rome, the birth of Christianity and Islam, Chinese Dynasties, the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Industrial Age, all of what we in the Western World know as recorded history—came and went, but the Aborigines remained the same and unaffected by the outside world until a relatively short time ago.

  When the first Aborigines arrived in Australia over thirty millennia ago, it was not as it is now. The center of the continent was fertile, containing lush jungles and swamps. The present Red Centre was born approximately ten to twenty thousand years ago when the world's climate changed and the land dried up. As many plant and animal species died and were blown away by the harsh weather and terrain, the Aborigines adapted and survived.

  The white man was an extreme latecomer to Australia when Captain Cook land
ed at Botany Bay in 1770. It took another hundred years before the first white men managed to cross the Red Centre, going from Adelaide in the south, to Darwin in the north. In the process of accomplishing this feat, many lost their lives, wandering through the deserts in desperate search of water and relief from the brutal sun. The white man did not adapt to the Red Centre, but sought to conquer it, with limited success.

  The overland telegraph line was built in the late 19th century from Darwin to Adelaide, and midway across the continent the town of Alice Springs was born to serve as a telegraph relay station on that line. A thousand miles from the nearest seacoast, Alice Springs is perhaps the most isolated town in the world. Because of that isolation, in the late 1950s, the United States, in cooperation with the Australian government, established the Joint Defense Space Research Facility at Pine Gap, sixty miles outside Alice Springs. The lack of interference from other radio emitters common in the civilized world made it an ideal spot to place the large receivers, and gave the United States coverage of the opposite side of the world both in latitude and longitude.

  Over the decades that followed, there were many rumors among the locals about what exactly went on in the facility. Some called it Australia’s Area 51. Strange objects were reported in the night sky. In the sixties, demonstrations were held by Australians along the compound’s perimeter, protesting whatever role they suspected it was playing in the Cold War, and simply the US Military’s presence given what was going on in Vietnam.

  The sun cooks the desert around Alice Springs, the heat causing light to waver and bend, making it difficult to accurately judge distances. Ayers Rock, what some call the heart of Australia, is not far away. The Rock is a place revered by the Aborigines as part of their own form of religion. The rock was named for the former Premier of South Australia, Sir Henry Ayers. The Aborigine still call it what they have for ages: Uluru. In a sign of compromise but not surrender, it is now officially known as Uluru/Ayers Rock.