I blinked in surprise, still in Grandma’s apartment. Her stuff was still on the table as she’d left it for me. Her funeral was still slated for the following day.
Part 3—In His Image
Chapter 19
I didn’t have to consciously search my memory to find out what had happened. I knew it, the same as you know your middle name or what your favorite flavor of ice cream is. When you’ve lived with something your whole life, you don’t get amazed.
If you’re a chocolate fan, you don’t wake up one morning, astounded that you love chocolate. It’s just the way things are.
So, keep that as the backdrop when I tell you I wasn’t at all surprised by any of the changes I’d caused. By killing Jesus, the world unfolded differently, but that new world is the one I had now grown up in.
And the most important thing that changed was something that changed not at all.
Adolph Hitler still murdered millions of Jews. Of course, he didn’t pretend to be a Christian, since the concept no longer existed, but he still hated the Jews. He hated them even more than in his alternate time, because most people on Earth now had no particular religious attachment. Hitler was a madman who was incensed that people could pray to an all-seeing creator, when he felt they should have worshipped him.
He slaughtered them, but instead of the count being six million, he murdered ten million people.
“How could that be?” I was puzzled at first, but then the obvious answer came to me.
People need faith.
At least, a lot of people do. They want to believe there is meaning to their lives, that an all-seeing and all-powerful creator is watching and taking care of them, and they want to believe miracles can happen.
Christians believed in the same God that Jews believe in and the same God that Muslims worship.
Now, with Christianity flushed away, those people of faith still wanted to believe. They became Jews or Muslims. The increased Jewish population in Europe gave Hitler more targets.
I didn’t have to pick up the family tree my Grandma had left me. I knew it showed the same people brutally murdered. I hadn’t helped in the slightest. In fact, I’d made things worse.
It was ironic somehow, that if Jesus had lived, he would have saved four million people from a horrible death in the gas chambers.
“Oh my God…”
It hit me that I had personally been responsible for those additional four million deaths.
I blinked away a tear. Grandma’s upcoming funeral casting a pale shroud over everything, and any remaining optimism in the room was killed by my own guilt.
The room was silent. So silent I thought I could hear the faint echo of my thoughts bouncing lamely off the walls.
I sat in front of all the material Grandma had left me. Nothing was different, although the family tree was printed off a computer instead of hand-drawn. Part of me wondered why that would have changed. I suppose a million things had changed, but most of them were minor. It didn’t take long to think of a few of the bigger ones.
In the alternate time stream, we had a celebration called Christmas. By tradition, that was the anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ. Everyone would look forward to a giant feast on December 25 each year and people would buy each other gifts. The closest we now have is Winterday, celebrated on the full moon closest to the winter solstice, which gives us a break in the dark cold days.
Another holiday that was celebrated was Easter, which was to commemorate the day Jesus died and then was resurrected. The story was that he was beaten mercilessly and then nailed to a cross, where he was left to suffocate slowly. It was a horrible torture, but he rose from the dead after three days, said his farewell to his supporters, and then went back to Heaven.
I stared at my hands. Instead of dying on the cross, Jesus was murdered… by me. I felt buried by my guilt, which surprised me. I had believed the world would have been better off without a fake messiah preaching to his disciples. The message he sent to the world through his followers was one of love and tolerance and respect, all things in which I personally believed.
And was the world better off? The families of the four million additional people who died in the Holocaust wouldn’t have said so.
The refrigerator had no beer, but I desperately wanted one, so I left the apartment and headed to the nearest grocery store to pick up a twelve-pack.
That night, I polished off four of them, after which my head was heavy. I fell into a dreamless sleep, and didn’t move until the morning.
The morning.
To almost everyone in the world, it was just another cool spring day in Minnesota. Not so cold that Minneapolis shut down, not so warm as to be unseasonal. The high would be in the thirties, and the sun was shining bright.
It was a little after ten o’clock when I finally climbed out of bed.
It was the day I would bury my grandmother, a day I would never forget. Not only was it the day we lowered my surrogate mother to be returned to the earth, it was also the day I would lose my very temporary ability to travel in time. She’d warned me that once her body was buried, that was it.
That didn’t bother me at all. The only thing that mattered was losing her.
Suddenly, a thought occurred to me. I could once again go back in time and stop myself from murdering Jesus. I could undo the damage I’d done.
But… when I went back to kill him, there were unintended consequences—four million of them. What if I went back and ended up making things even worse?
No. Time to leave well enough alone.
I showered and pulled out my navy-blue suit from the closet. I only owned two suits, one for summer and one for winter. As a photojournalist, suits were rarely called for.
The Temple of Aaron synagogue was a large and very old building. It was the largest place of Jewish worship in the state, and as per her normal preciseness, Ariela Abelman had pre-arranged the time and the various components of the service with the rabbi.
I arrived at the temple at 1:00, an hour prior to the start of the service. I’m not sure why, but I felt like I should be there. As I mentioned earlier, Ariela was a private person, almost a hermit, and I didn’t know of anybody who would be coming to the service.
Well.
More than a dozen people beat me to the temple and were seated in the pews.
Maybe another service just ending?
“Are you David?”
I turned to find Rabbi Pfeiffer standing beside me. I’d never met him.
“Yes,” I said.
He greeted me with a big smile and a hug. “I’m so sorry about your grandmother. We will all miss her.”
“All?”
“I think you’ll be surprised at the number of people who she touched.”
The rabbi was about sixty years old, wore a fragile-looking pair of glasses, and had a yarmulke perched on the top of his head. He inspired me immediately with his confidence.
He pointed to the women sitting in the main area.
“They all knew her very well.”
“I never knew her to have friends. I lived with her until a few years ago.” I’m sure I sounded as puzzled as I felt.
He nodded. “I’m not surprised.”
“Rabbi?”
“Yes?”
“Do you know of something called the Shelljah?”
“The Shelljah? Where would you have heard of that? It’s a very old word.”