“What will you do if she’s convicted?”
“I haven’t decided.” That was true. The end of the trial was a black hole, waiting to consume Bobby’s future, as unavoidable and as unwelcome as death. So he did his best not to think about it.
“I saw Heather,” he said. “She’s well, in spite of everything. She’s published her Lincoln TrueBio.”
“Good piece of work. And her pieces on the Aral Sea war were remarkable.” David eyed Bobby. “You must be proud of her — of your mother.”
Bobby thought that over. “I suppose I should be. But I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel about her. You know, I watched her with Mary. For all their friction, there’s a bond there. It’s like a steel rope that connects them. I don’t feel anything like that. It’s probably my fault.”
“You said you watched them? Past tense?”
Bobby faced him. “I guess you haven’t heard, Mary left home.”
“…Ah. How disappointing.”
“They had one final fight about the way Mary was using the WormCam. Heather is frantic with worry.”
“Why doesn’t she trace Mary?”
“She’s tried.”
David snorted. “Ridiculous. How can any of us hide from the WormCam?”
“Evidently there are ways. Look, David, isn’t it time you rejoined the human race?”
David caged his hands, a big man, deeply distressed. “But it is so unbearable,” he said. “This is surely why Mary fled. I tried, remember. I tried to find a way to fix things — to fix the broken past. And I found that none of us has a choice about history. Not even God. I have experimental proof. Don’t you see? Watching all that blood, that rapine and plunder and murder… If I could deflect one Crusader’s sword, save the life of one Arawak child.”
“And so you’re escaping into arid physics.”
“What would you suggest I do?”
“You can’t fix the past. But you can fix yourself. Sign up for the 12,000 Days.”
“I’ve told you.”
“I’ll help you. I’ll be there. Do it, David. Go find Jesus.” Bobby smiled. “I dare you.”
After a long silence, David returned his smile.
Chapter 21
Behold the man
Extracted from the Introduction by David Curzon to The 12,000 Days: A Preliminary Commentary, eds. S. P. Kozlov and G. Risha, Rome 2040:
The international scholarly project known popularly as the 12,000 Days has reached the conclusion of its first phase. I was one of a team of (actually a little more than) twelve thousand WormCam observers worldwide who were assigned to study the historical life and times of the man known to His contemporaries as Yesho Ben Pantera, and to later generations as Jesus Christ… It is an honor to be asked to pen this introduction… We have always known that when we meet Jesus in the Gospels, we see Him through the eyes of the evangelists. For example Matthew believed that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, as appeared to be predicted by the Old Testament prophet Micah; and so he reports Jesus as being born in Bethlehem (though Jesus, the Galilean, was in fact — naturally enough — born in Galilee). We understand this; we compensate for it. But how many Christians over the centuries have longed to meet Jesus for themselves through the neutral medium of a camera — or better still, face-to-face? And how many would have believed that ours would be the first generation for which such a meeting would be possible? But that is precisely what has happened. Each of we Twelve Thousand was assigned a single Day of the short life of Jesus: a Day which we would observe with WormCam technology — in real time, from midnight to midnight. In this way a first draft “true” biography of Jesus could rapidly be compiled. This visual biography and attached reports are no more than a first draft: a simple observation, a laying-out of the events of Jesus’ tragically brief life. There is much subsidiary research to be done. For example, even the identities of the fourteen Apostles (not twelve!) have yet to be determined, and the fate of His brothers, sisters, wife and child are known only sketchily. Then will come the mapping of the blunt events of the central human story against the various accounts, canonical and apocryphal, which survived to tell us of Jesus and His ministry. And then, of course, the true debate will begin: a debate into the meaning of Jesus and His ministry — a debate which may last as long as the human race itself. This first encounter has not been easy. But already the clear light of Galilee has burned away many falsehoods.
David lay in his couch and tested its systems: the VR apparatus itself, the nursing agents which would manage the intravenous feeds and catheters, turn his abandoned body to reduce the risk of bedsores — even clean him if he desired, as if he were a coma victim.
Bobby sat before him, in this quiet, darkened room, his face shining in complex SoftScreen light.
David felt absurd amid all this gear, like an astronaut preparing for launch. But that Day of long ago, embedded in time like an insect in amber, unchanging and brilliant, was waiting for his inspection; and he submitted.
David lifted the Mind’sEye headset and settled it over his bead. He felt the familiar squirming texture as the headset wrapped itself tightly around his temples.
He fought panic. To think that people subjected themselves to this for mere entertainment.”
…And light burst over him, hard and brilliant.
He was born in Nazareth, a small and prosperous Galilean hill town. The birth was routine — for the time. He was indeed born to a Mary, who had been a virgin — a Temple Virgin. As his contemporaries knew Him, Jesus Christ was the illegitimate son of a Roman legionary, an Illyrian called Pantera. It was a relationship based on love, not coercion — even though Mary had been betrothed at the time to Joseph, a prosperous master builder and widower. But Pantera was transferred from the district when Mary’s pregnancy became known. It is to Joseph’s credit that he took in Mary and raised the boy as his own. Nevertheless Jesus was not ashamed of His origin, and would later style Himself Yesho Ben Pantera: that is, Jesus, son of Pantera. That is the sum of the historical facts of Jesus’ birth. Any deeper mystery lies beyond the reach of any WormCam. There was no census, no trek to Bethlehem, no stable, no manger, no cattle, no wise men, no shepherds, no Star. All of that — devised by the evangelists to show how this boy-child was a fulfilment of prophecy — was no more than an invention. The WormCam is stripping away many of our illusions about ourselves and our past. There are those who argue that the WormCam is a mass therapy tool which is enabling us to become more sane as a species. Perhaps. But it is a hard heart which does not mourn the debunking of the Christmas story!…
He was standing on a beach. He could feel the heat like a heavy moist blanket, and sweat prickled on his forehead.
To his left there were hills, folded in green, and to his right a blue sea lapped softly. On the horizon, mist laden, he could make out fishing boats, brown-blue shadows as still and flat as cardboard cutouts. On the northern shore of the sea, perhaps five kilometres distant, he could make out a town: a clutter of brown-walled, flat-roofed buildings. That must be Capernaum. He knew he could use the Search Engine to be there in an instant. But it seemed more appropriate to walk.
He closed his eyes. He could feel the warmth of the sun on his face, hear the lapping of water, smell grass and the sourness of fish. The light here was so bright that it shone, pink, through his closed eyelids. But in the corner of his eye, within his eyelid, glowed a small gold OurWorld logo.