The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction

by Ashley, Mike;

  That connection exists not only in the here and now, but also throughout the entire length of an E-particle’s existence. Since the amount of sub-quantum “energy” carried by an E-particle declines very, very slowly over a long period of time, we use a process based on complex energy transfer models to trace E-particle energy loss back through history, and once you’ve learned how to properly model, manipulate, and record E-particle energy states at that specified time, it is possible to “see” the past via a computer recreation based on E-particle positions.

  Or, rather, a possible past.

  Now, here’s where it gets tricky. Because event waves are extracted using huge amounts of computer processing power, and because quantum effects make it impossible to eliminate every last variant in event wave recreations, there is no guarantee that the event recorded actually occurred as depicted in the computer simulation. This inability to distinguish between “true” and “false” pasts is both unavoidable and gets worse the closer to the present you get, where the signal-to-noise ratio goes so overwhelmingly negative that no amount of processing power is capable of resolving event waves into a coherent picture. The technical word we use for this noise is “fuzzing”, and once you get past the 13th century or so A.D., everything is pretty much hopelessly fuzzed out.

  Irving Weintraub explains how and why this is true (in layman’s terms) in his book The Disappearing Greek: Sub-Quantum Event Waves and the Recording of History. In the book’s title case, a physics team resolved an event wave depicting a minor skirmish from the Peloponnesian War. The computer recreation showed two soldiers being killed, then buried, next to a prominent rock outcropping about 40 miles inland of the Aegean coast. Well, it so happens that this outcropping still exists, and when an archaeological expedition was sent out to examine the site – voila! – the remains of a Greek soldier, one of the two depicted by the computer (down to his good-luck necklace and the dents in his armor) were dug up. But, here’s the kicker: despite the event wave depiction showing both of them being buried side-by-side in the same grave, there was absolutely no sign of his companion, or of the site being disturbed since the original interment. The computer recreation had displayed a previously unknown and verifiable historical event, but one that had not occurred as the computer had depicted it.

  Well, these results were strange enough that they ran the event wave resolution again, and this time, three soldiers died. Further runs produced variations on the same results: the same event was depicted over and over again, but the details varied every time, a pattern that has surfaced in every multi-run event wave resolution. The reasons for this are still hotly debated, the most popular view point being the “many worlds” theory of sub-quantum division, that every wave event depicts history as it occurred in an “alternate reality” that split off from our own at the instant of the event’s occurrence. A few theorists (with a tips of the hat to Heisenberg, Von Neumann and Schrodinger) have even gone so far as to postulate a new sub-quark uncertainty principle for event waves. According to them, we’ll never be able to resolve an event wave that truly depicts our own past, since any “true” event is altered by its very viewing.

  However, even though event wave depictions are not strictly “true,” all those we are able to view follow known history to the letter – indeed, on a scale of centuries, the differences are essentially arbitrary. No one has recorded an event wave where Alexander the Great was never born, or where Rome lost its war against Carthage, or where the pyramids were never built. In the greater scheme of things, event wave depictions diverge from our own reality only by minute degrees of arc, which makes E-particle wave research a historiographic tool of immense power.

  And that was why the Christian Research Council approached us about the Jerusalem Project. At first I wasn’t terribly interested – until they were willing to put up $10 million in backing, no strings attached. We would direct and conduct all research, their involvement strictly limited to bankrolling the project and receiving progress reports. They had agreed to those conditions readily enough, believing it would make their case that much stronger when (that was the word they always used, “when”) we came up with proof for the existence of Christ.

  Which lead directly to another aspect of the “Phil Problem”. Given that independence, I was very hesitant to turn the project over to someone whose loyalty to the sponsors (or at least their goals) was stronger than that to the University. I needed a hardworking drone, not a crusading zealot.

  All of this was on my mind as I called Phil up to arrange the interview.

  After the initial breakthrough, progress on the Jerusalem Project proceeded at a steady clip. The wave event held steady without fuzzing out, eliminating the necessity of reacquiring a trace fix. Over the next month, Phil all but lived in the lab as he captured Jesus’ last few weeks of life. Despite his self-imposed sixteenhour workdays, he seemed bursting with energy and enthusiasm, in the grip of an excitement that bordered on mania. He was all smiles whenever I dropped by the lab, despite the dark circles under his eyes.

  “The entrance to Jerusalem,” he said one day when I looked in, inclining his head toward the holotank. There Jesus, looking as ragged and dirty as any lst-century traveller, rode a donkey down the middle of a broad street. All around him a crowd cheered and shouted in a hundred different voices, too many for the computer to translate.

  “ ‘When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred’.” Phil quoted.

  “Do you want a day or two off? You’ve been working two weeks without rest. Let Mark or one of the other grad students cover things for a while. You look dead tired.”

  Phil shook his head, smiling. “Maybe later, but not now, not with the wave reaching Passion week. I’m going to see it through to the end.”

  “All the way to the crucifixion, eh?”

  Phil shook his head again. “No. All the way through to the Resurrection.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Of course. Stupid of me. That’s what I meant.”

  “You still don’t believe, do you?”

  “Believe what? That Jesus lived? That the Bible is literal truth and the word of God?”

  “The Resurrection. That Jesus not only lived, but was sent to earth to redeem mankind’s sins.”

  I shrugged. “Right now, I don’t know what I believe. A few

  weeks ago I didn’t believe Jesus existed at all.”

  “So if I give you proof of his Resurrection, you’ll believe?” I laughed. “Well, then I won’t really have any choice, will I?” He nodded, obviously figuring that this was as much as an

  admission as he would get out of me. “Alright, then. Give me

  about five days, and I’ll have your proof.”

  As I walked away, I mulled over the flip side of that equation,

  the question that lay unasked between us: And if Jesus doesn’t rise,

  will you admit that your religion was founded on a lie}

  When I finally met Phil in person, I saw immediately that our brief vidconference had not done justice to his impeccable sense of style. He looked more like a Wall Street stockbroker than a particle physicist, wearing a three-piece, charcoal pinstripe Armani suit with razor-sharp lapels, a starched white shirt and a red silk power-tie. I had put on my best suit for the occasion, but it was a shabby, shapeless thing next to Phil’s sartorial splendor.

  “Dr Morley, I’m Richard Lasman. It’s a pleasure to met you in person,” I said, extending my hand.

  “Likewise,” he said, shaking firmly. “You have a lovely campus here. Lots of trees and open space.”

  “We’re lucky. The founders picked a spot far enough from downtown that we’re still in the suburbs. Please, come in and sit down. Can I get you anything to drink?”

  “Some ice water would be nice.”

  I had my office assistant fetch his drink while we exchanged pleasantries. We talked about a few mutual acquaintances (all of which had guardedly voiced the same mixed feelings about Phil), then got dow
n to business.

  We talked about technical aspects of the project for roughly thirty minutes, and any lingering doubts I had about his intelligence and expertise vanished. A couple of times he was so far over my head that I had to have him “laymanize” things for me. Not only was he the best candidate among all the applicants I had received, he might have been the best in the world at developing phase signal resolution techniques. I was truly impressed and told him so. He was obviously pleased, but maintained the same calm, smiling demeanor he had exhibited during the entire interview.

  But it was time to bring up less pleasant matters.

  “Well, so much for the technical aspects,” I said. “But there are a few others things I need to know.”

  “Ask away.”

  “Well, one of the things I’m concerned about . . .” I began, then trailed off, shuffling through papers as I looked for some way to broach the subject delicately. I didn’t find one.

  “I understand you had a drinking problem,” I said bluntly.

  “Oh, that’s putting it mildly,” said Phil, still calm. “It was more than a problem. I was a drunk. A violent drunk.”

  “Violent?” I asked stupidly, somewhat dazed at this straightforward confession.

  Phil nodded, still calm and controlled, but all trace of his smile gone. “Dr Lasman, I put my wife in the hospital, twice. Once with a concussion, once with a broken arm from when I threw her down our stairway. I just thank God we didn’t have any children then, because I would have beaten them too.”

  I sat in silence, too stunned to speak.

  “As you probably know, I got into a couple of fights with other faculty members there at USC.” Actually, I had only known of one. “I was drinking half a bottle of bourbon before lunch, calling in sick every other day and had three DWI arrests before they pulled my license. The university was getting ready for hearings to revoke my tenure. I had probably sunken about as low as you possibly can without killing someone.” He stopped talking and shook his head, looking at my stricken expression. “I’m sorry, I seem to have dumped an awful lot on you all at once.”

  “Oh no, it’s just – well, after all, I did ask.” I let out a short, nervous laugh. “I certainly can’t accuse you of holding anything back. You deserve a lot of credit for recovering from something like that.”

  “No, Dr Lasman, what I deserve is to be dead. What I deserve is to be burning in Hell right now for I did to my wife and friends. And I certainly didn’t deserve to have her stick by me like she did for those two years, doing everything she could to pull me back from the abyss. But where I had sunken to, neither she nor any other human being could help me.” Now it was his turn to let out a short, low laugh. “I’ve heard it said that justice is what we all deserve, but mercy is what we want. Well, I ended up getting mercy instead of justice. And I pray to Jesus Christ every day for giving me that mercy, and I’ll say that prayer every day to the day I die and it still won’t be enough. I’m a very lucky man, Dr Lasman, and I work hard never to forget that.”

  “And how long have you been . . . recovered?”

  “Since March 17, 2012.”

  “That’s pretty specific.”

  “It’s not something you forget.”

  “Was that your first AA meeting?”

  “No, not exactly. Something a lot more personal.” He looked down at the floor. “Dr Lasman, when I quit drinking, one of the things I swore off was lying. Lying for any reason. I always do my utmost to tell the truth, no matter what the consequences. So I’m quite aware that what I’m about to say may cost me my chance at heading the Jerusalem Project. I stopped drinking because I had a religious experience. A vision, in fact.”

  “OK,” I said carefully. “If you don’t want to talk about it. . .”

  “No, I think it’s important for you to know.” He took a deep breath and stared off into the distance. “I had just come home. It was just after 10 p.m. and I was even drunker than usual. My driver’s licence had been taken away six months before, so I had staggered home on foot from a tiny hole-in-the-wall bar some ten blocks from my house. After a few minutes I managed to unlock the front door and stagger inside. I made it halfway up the stairway – the same stairway I had thrown my wife down – when I tripped and fell. I landed sprawled out flat on my back at the foot of the stairs.

  “While I was lying there, I felt myself – my spirit – lifted up, and a moment later I was next to my unconscious body. I remember standing there, looking at myself – looking at my uncombed hair and the stains on my jacket, watching a thin trickle of blood seep out of the edge of my mouth. Then I heard someone call my name, and when I looked my house was gone.

  “I was standing in the middle of a vast, dimly lit plain, the sky an odd shade of purple, no sun or stars visible. I heard the same voice call my name again, and I turned to see a man in a hooded robe standing by a riverside. I walked over to him and asked who he was and why I was there. And that’s when he pulled back the hood, and I saw it was Jesus Christ.”

  I was silent, struggling to keep my face impassive as I watched Phil tell his story and stare off into the distance. Whether it was true or not, I could certainly tell that he believed it was true.

  “He didn’t answer me at first, but merely pointed to the river.

  I looked down and saw that it was a river of blood. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of bodies in the river, all floating face down.

  “ ‘This,’ He said, ‘is your future. This is the endpoint of the path you walk.’ I started to ask Him what he meant, but just then a great wind came sweeping down the plain, drowning out my words.

  “ ‘Remember,’ He said, and then His body was suffused with a blinding white light.

  “Just then I came to, stone cold sober, at the foot of the stairs. It was already morning outside.” He sighed and shifted in his seat. “Well, since then I haven’t had a single drink. I spent the next two weeks reading the Bible and apologizing to my wife, my co-workers, and everyone else I had wronged during my binges. Jesus Christ changed my life. It’s as simple as that.”

  I sat there silent for a long moment, not knowing what to say. What could I say? Though I knew he thought he was telling the truth, I didn’t for a moment believe that he had received an actual vision from God Almighty. Alcoholics saw all sorts of things in the grip of delirium tremens. What was I supposed to tell him? The vision that had changed his life was merely a particularly vivid case of the DTs?

  No. Instead what I said was: “That’s quite a story.”

  “No story, just the truth, as hard as it may be to believe. Dr Lasman, I’ve talked with some of your colleagues here and I know that you’re not a Christian. That doesn’t bother me. The state of one’s soul is a personal matter, and I wouldn’t presume to judge another man. ‘Judge not, least ye be judged.’ But if swearing on the Bible isn’t enough, I give you my solemn word as a scientist that I haven’t had a single drink since that day.”

  “I believe you,” I said truthfully. “Of course, the University will want documented proof of your recovery.”

  Phil nodded. “I have random drug test records for that entire period, at least once a month, showing that I’ve been clean and sober the entire time.”

  “I’d like to get a copy of that. Not that I don’t believe you, but the Federal Drug Rehabilitation Act requires us to keep the paperwork on file.”

  After that we discussed various casual, unimportant things: politics, the weather, football. I bid him goodbye and promised to get in touch as soon as we made a hiring decision. When he left my head was still spinning from what he had said, though not for the reasons you might expect.

  Next to his confession, I suddenly felt inadequate. During my early years as a scientist, I thought I had been searching for Truth – and when I thought about it, it was always with a capital letter. Truth was the first thing that had lead me to physics – and, not coincidentally, atheism.

  When I set my sights on physics, religion was on
e of the first things I gave up. After all, how could I look for Truth when a fundamental part of my worldview was based on a lie? How could I dare to pull back its veil of mysteries when I cloaked my own fears in such threadbare robes? No, I had to strip off the comforting lies of God and the afterlife, of Christ and the soul. Only when I was naked of such deceptions could I approach Truth on equal terms.

  But after my meeting with Phil, I was shocked to find my commitment so hollow. Where once I had held Truth above all else, my own life was now a tapestry of shabby lies. Each disillusionment, each compromise, each falsehood I had to commit in order to climb the administrative ladder, was a thread in that tapestry.

  In short, Phil had shamed me. Here was a devout Christian, a fervent believer in the most threadbare and shabby mass of lies known to man, and yet he still found the courage to relate his wrenching personal tragedy with the absolute truth I had lost. It was that, along with his scientific ability, that finally made me hire him.

  Until he succeeded, I never had cause to regret it.

  As Phil continued to capture Christ’s wave event, I was going through a very different kind of intellectual crisis. During that time I had not yet abandoned my atheism, merely retreated with it to higher, more intellectually defensible ground. Obviously, Jesus of Nazareth had lived, and preached, much as was described in the Bible. But just because he had lived did not mean he was divine.

  For those few weeks it seemed entirely possible that Jesus thought he was God, or the son of God, or whichever grade of hair-splitting distinction Christian theologians use to categorize divinity. True, almost all the recorded miracles (the loaves and fishes, the raising of Lazarus, etc.) occurred before Phil’s entry point into the wave event. But after the crucifixion, I thought our messiah would turn out to be just another corpse. I quickly found out how wrong I was.

  After lunch on Friday afternoon, Phil called me in to watch the crucifixion.