After lunch on Friday afternoon, Phil called me in to watch the crucifixion.
Though mostly forgotten now, Millennialism was a huge cultural phenomenon around the turn of the century. Every Easter or Christmas, it was hard to turn on the television without half the channels showing “docudramas” based on the life of Jesus. Save for the shape of the cross (it was actually a T-shape, and Jesus only carried the cross-piece rather than the entire thing), the scene that unfolded was almost exactly like the ones I had seen on TV. The crown of thorns, the darkened sky, the “forgive them, Father, they don’t know what they’re doing” (Dr. Silver’s translation program was relentlessly modern, though I think Phil missed the poetry of King James) were all there. I was somewhat shocked at how close the actual event was to its multiple media reenactments, though six hours of real time event wave depiction wasn’t exactly designed for winning sweeps week.
I only watched the first and last half-hours, spending the rest of the day checking in every now and then while I buried myself in administrative work—a futile attempt to avoid thinking about the passion play unfolding in the lab. It was a fittingly ironic gesture. History was being made a few hundred feet away and I preferred shuffling papers.
Come 7:30 that night, I was still in my office, filling out next week’s paperwork in a vain attempt to keep from thinking, when Phil called.
“Richard, can you come here? There’s something I want you to see.”
When I got to the lab, the holotank’s murky image could barely be discerned.
“What is it?”
“The tomb where they laid out Jesus. Ruth, do an artificial light enhancement of two hundred percent.”
The image brightened, and now I could clearly see a shrouded body laid out on a stone slab. “This is three hours and eight minutes after His death on the cross.”
“Okay,” I said neutrally.
“Watch. Ruth, eliminate artificial light enhancement and run the recreation from the stop point.”
For fifteen or twenty seconds there was nothing to see except a few flickering bands of fuzz. Then, just as I was about to ask Phil what I was supposed to see, it started.
For a moment it seemed as if fireflies had somehow gotten into the tomb. Several tiny specks of light appeared and started to fly in circles around the body. Over the next few seconds their numbers grew, until there were hundreds of them, each glowing brighter and brighter. The hght became so intense that I started to bring my hands up to shield my eyes, but just then the brightness reached its peak, then abruptly disappeared. This time I didn’t need any light enhancement to tell me the tomb was empty.
“I think it’s safe to call that Transfiguration,” said Phil, a broad smile on his face, utterly calm, utterly at peace.
My mind was anything but. I felt like I was drowning in unfathomable metaphysical seas, my careful, logical denial of Christ’s divinity shattered, my worldview lying in ruins. Even today, what happened next is something of a blur. I remember talking about the project report, and Phil, down on his hands and knees, loudly offering a prayer of thanks, tears streaming down his face. But the exact words and actions of that night still elude my memory, almost as if I was stoned out of my mind or using powerful painkillers.
I left as soon as possible.
On the way home, I stopped by a bookstore and had them print out a King James Bible. I stayed up half the night reading it, feeling numb all over. The next morning I copied Phil’s files to my home system and spent the weekend reviewing them, looking for signs of tampering or fraud. I didn’t find any. Phil’s record-keeping was meticulous and the data looked genuine.
By Sunday I had exhausted my store of plausible denial and finally started facing up to the awful truth. Jesus Christ had lived, preached, died, and been resurrected. Christianity, that silly, foolish religion I had taken such pride in scorning, was a more fundamental, bedrock truth than anything modern physics had ever discovered.
Making that admission wasn’t easy. How do you continue your life after finding out everything you’ve ever known is wrong? I could almost believe it intellectually, but emotionally I was still in turmoil. I started making a mental list of the things in my life I would have to change. I was numb at the thought of learning how to pray. I even flipped through the Yellow Pages looking at listings for local churches.
Still, I thought I was coping remarkably well—calmly, rationally, logically. I thought the worst was over.
I was wrong.
I got in to work early Monday morning, intending to truly congratulate Phil, something I had failed to do in my numb state on Friday. My first sign that something was wrong was the broken glass.
Outside the lab hallway, a small forest of beer bottles shards lay shattered beneath the torn safety poster they had been hurled against.
Inside the lab things got worse.
In addition to more broken beer bottles, paper readouts were scattered across the lab floor amidst overturned chairs, one of our ancient computer terminals smashed against the wall. On the other side of the room I heard the slosh of a bottle and several quick intakes of breath.
I followed the sound until I found Phil sitting in a chair at the far end of the lab, drinking bourbon straight from the bottle, a three-day growth of beard on his cheeks, his hair and clothes disheveled. A cluster of empty liquor bottles was scattered around his feet, one marooned in a shallow pool of vomit. At the sound of my footsteps, he turned, bleary-eyed, to look at me.
“Oh look, Mr. Atheist is here,” he said, “Good fucking deal.”
“Phil?”
“Who fucking else,” he said, then drank the rest of the bottle and hurled it against the far wall.
“All gone,” he said. The smell of bourbon on his breath was almost overpowering. “If you want some you’ll have to buy your own. Damn good thing they deliver, isn’t it?”
“Phil, why are you doing this?”
Phil got up and staggered away. “Why’dya think?” he slurred, coming to rest leaning on the holotank. He turned and looked at me once again, his eyes seeming to focus for the first time.
“You weren’t here then, were you?”
“When?”
“When I ran the second run,” he said, caressing the holotank’s steel backside. Then he started to cry.
“I didn’t know,” he said between sobs. “How could I have known?”
“Know what? What second run?”
“The second run!” he said, angry again, tears still falling down his cheeks.
“Phil, I don’t understand what you’re talking about. Please, try and calm down and tell me what happened.”
Phil looked at me a moment, then whispered a soft “Oh God,” and half slid, half collapsed to the floor, his back against the holotank.
“The first run fuzzed out. ’Bout a half hour after Jesus… after what you saw. What I showed you. The light… can you believe it? Four weeks of clear resolution, and then fuzz. Lost the trace. Nothing but goddamn fuzz. God-damned.” He paused a moment. “Jesus fucking Christ, I need a drink.”
“Okay, so the first run fuzzed out. What second run?”
Phil looked at me a moment, then closed his eyes. “I did a second run. I used the first run data to refine the parameters, used the crucifixion as the entry vector. I wanted to see the Resurrection. I wanted to see Jesus rise from the dead.
“What happened?”
Phil opened his eyes again. “What happened? Not a goddamn thing happened. Not a goddamned thing.” He staggered to his feet.
“Ruth!” he yelled. “Bring up the goddamned run.”
“Dr. Morley, I’m not sure what you mean—”
“Shut the fuck up you metallic whore! Bring up the last run, the one that starts Friday night!”