The Murder of Jesus Christ

Chapter 12

It didn’t take me any time at all to orient myself. I was Adlai. My memories of the 21st century were vivid but just as vivid were my memories of being a lone wanderer in Judea.

I was angry at my father for losing the damned sheep, but the reality was that he knew I was unlikely to bother hunting for it, at least not very hard. I was born a nomad, and had often left Jericho for months at a time without saying good-bye.

By modern standards, my body was a wreck, and if I appeared in Minneapolis as I currently existed, I would attract stares and gasps. My body was thin, with no obvious muscle tone. Scars covered much of my body, and most of my teeth were gone. I was always in pain from any number of sources, and when I had the chance to eat, I ravished whatever there was, even at the expense of my kin.

I was a very typical wandering Jew.

I wore a simple robe that had started off gray and fresh many years ago but was now full of tatters and looked like crap.

Nobody took a second look at me, though. I was as poor as everybody else.

The river Jordan was my home, and now I took control of our body to start to walk north. The river flowed beside me, a lazy flow of water that seemed to take its own time to wind from the Sea of Galilee in the north down to the Dead Sea a few miles behind me.

“Onward to Nazareth.”

Before I go any further, I need to clarify something. I wasn’t speaking English at all during my time in the distant past. As with all Jews of the time, I spoke the common language of Aramaic.

I expect nobody reading this book is fluent in Aramaic, so I’m going to give you my best English translation of the dialogue.

Even so, it was cool to be able to speak a language that is essentially dead, just as a native would.

Because I was a native.

Within seconds, I was acclimated and no longer thought the temperature particularly hot, no longer thought the rolling hills particularly exotic, and no longer thought my body was a washed-up mess.

Everything was totally normal.

I was half David Abelman and half the wanderer Adlai of Machaerus, a town near the Dead Sea. When I was small, my mother died, and my father took me to live near Jericho. He wanted to leave the memories of his dead wife, who I believe he loved deeply. He has often spoken of her in soft tones, and I wished I could remember more about her.

The whole idea of my mother dying when I was very young seemed to parallel David Abelman’s mother, Molly, dying when he was very young. I filed that away for future consideration but never managed to figure out any reason the two situations had that in common. Just a fluke, I think.

Asher was now old and unable to properly tend his flock of sheep. Soon, I knew he would leave to walk to his homeland, Machaerus, where he would leave this world to join his spiritual father.

It was of no concern to me if I was there when he left. That type of emotional connection wasn’t common in these times. Asher would never consider waiting until I returned, partly because he knew my treks could take me away for long periods, and one day I would leave again, never to return.

He knew I couldn’t be happy if I was rooted to one spot.

Adlai was the perfect ancestor for me. Although, “ancestor” isn’t really the right word for a past life, is it? Maybe “spiritual ancestor,” which sounds awkward. Well, hell, I’m going to stick to ancestor.

We walked north, always keeping an eye on the flow of the Jordan.

The river brought life to Judea, with it’s plentiful fish and the water needed to grow crops and feed livestock.

We had traversed the river at least a half dozen times, and each time, we’d wandered off at points to see the world, such as it was. We’d been to Jerusalem, a much larger city than we were used to, and we had no interest in returning. The Romans were too present, and they could barely stand us lowly Jews. All we were good for was handing over food and other possessions for the precious empire.

No thank you.

My body may have seemed fragile to a modern eye, but in fact it was perfectly built for long walks. Slim, no extra weight, and my mind was full of patience and determination. Once we wanted to go someplace, we went and we arrived. The shortest distance between two points was always found by a nomad.

Our new destination would take time. Several days.

That wasn’t any type of detriment, because I carried my fishing gear, so I could eat, and the river provided my drinking water. I needed nothing else.

God provides for us.

“What?”

I was taken aback when I realized that Adlai was a fierce believer in God, and always had been. Asher had taught him the power of the Lord and Adlai never questioned it.

He knew with absolute certainty that God provided.

It was very odd to have that belief myself, while at the same time knowing the concept of God is ridiculous and infantile.

Nonetheless, we believed.

We kept walking.

Our body didn’t grow weary, and our muscles never cried out for a rest. We would occasionally walk into the Jordan to cleanse our body of sweat and to cool down. A small sip of the cool fresh water rejuvenated our soul.

I couldn’t tell you how far we walked that first day. There were no Fitbits or even a wristwatch. We walked with a known purpose that never wavered.

By evening, we were ready to stop for the night. I estimated we had walked thirty miles or so. We were hungry, but fishing was a task for the morning, and so we lay down and slept.

The morning sun brought fresh energy with it, and we woke full of zest for the day.

As always, we prayed before doing anything else:

Shema Yisrael,

Thank you for providing me with life and to be able to enjoy your creations for another day. I know you will always care for me, and for those I care about. I will do your service unfailingly until you bring me home to your table. Amen.

.We stood for a few extra moments of reflection before walking over to the river. The Jordon smelled like life.

I took out my net and started to cast it out upon the water. In less than a dozen tries, I caught a fish I knew was called a musht, but that I might have called tilapia if I were eating it in my favorite Minneapolis restaurant. We cooked the fish and ate it in silence, thanking the Lord for providing.

We bathed in the river before looking to the north and continuing our journey.

Most of the trip, I let Adlai control our body. He was perfectly content to continue walking, even though he had no particular purpose in mind. Walking was the way of his life.

The purpose behind our trip was buried in David Adelman’s mind. That mind—when I use the “I” pronoun—knew exactly what the trip was about.

Not that far to the north in Galilee was the village of Nazareth, and if the Bible was to be believed, the historic Jesus lived there as a teenager right now.

I wondered if I would have the courage to follow through on my plan to kill him.

I didn’t believe Jesus was a supernatural being. I didn’t believe he was the son of God. I didn’t believe he was capable of performing any miracles.

I did believe he lived, though. He was a man who inspired people to follow him, and those followers created Christianity after Jesus was crucified.

Christianity in turn spread to eventually have more than two billion followers.

One of those believers was Adolph Hitler. Hitler murdered six million Jews.

If he himself had been Jewish, there would have been no reason for the genocide. My grandmother would not have suffered the loss of her siblings and other relatives, and she would have had a chance to have a happy life.

Killing Jesus might stop Hitler from killing so many innocent people.

Or maybe not. Maybe he would have found some other reason, but I needed to try. I could use Grandma’s Shelljah time machine to fix her life.

Walking felt therapeutic. One foot in front of the other, again and again. We kept a steady rhythm going, moving ever closer to my goal.

By noon, the sun was shining down with its full power, but it did not bother us. We wore a gray covering on our head, as did all the men from Judea. We did veer a little to the west of the river, because there was heavy vegetation, and the route to the west was easier.

That’s when we saw the dead woman.

From about a hundred feet away, we could see her lying on the ground, collapsed, blood splattered on her robe.

As we got closer, Adlai tried to rush our body, to keep walking past her. I couldn’t let him. He’d seen his share of abandoned women before, and I could feel his need to ignore her, as she was of no value, but my 21st century soul wouldn’t allow us to ignore her.

I stopped and stared.

She was flat on the ground, arms outstretched, her cheek plastered into the sand.

Her eyes were open, but she didn’t move. Her hair was black, as was true of almost all women of the region. Adlai had never seen a blonde woman and would have been shocked if he did.

I hesitated, not knowing what to do. I glanced around to be sure this wasn’t an ambush of some kind, which is why Adlai had wanted to rush past. It could easily be a Roman trick.

But, no. The entire area as far as we could see was empty.

“Hello?”

I leaned down and touched her hand. It was warm, and I could move her fingers easily, so if she really was dead, it hadn’t been for long.

I felt for a pulse, which was an action totally foreign to Adlai. He was surprised to hear the quiet bump of a heartbeat. I was too. She was alive, although I didn’t think she would be for long.

Her robe was white, of course, but there were streaks of blood covering her. I couldn’t see where it had come from.

We shook the woman, and I called to her again. Her eyes didn’t focus, and she didn’t reply.

There were still no other people around to help, not that they would have anyhow. It was clear that it was up to us to help her.

We picked her up in our arms and walked toward the Jordan.

I thought about taking off her robe, to see where the blood had come from, but that would have shocked Adlai to his core.

Adlai had spent some of his teen years in Qumran, a tiny outpost on the Dead Sea. It was where many Essenes lived. The Essenes were a Jewish sect who were very devoted and who later became famous for having written the Dead Sea Scrolls, which contained many writings, including the oldest copies of the Old Testament ever found.

They were a commune of celibates who wanted little to do with women. Adlai had grown to feel that way, and he resisted my attempts to help this unknown woman. I ignored his feelings.

Within a few minutes, we were by the river. We carried her body into the water and lowered her, allowing her to become refreshed. I splashed water onto her face and cupped some to drop into her mouth.

She drank and as I washed her hair back, her eyes fluttered and then focused on me.

The woman was fearful, which wasn’t a big surprise.

“Hello,” I said gently. “You’re going to be fine.”

She looked around as if expecting others to be present. Then, she swallowed and licked her lips. Her face was very pretty, and I realized how much I was enjoying looking at her.

She reminded me of Karen.

For the first time, I wondered if Karen Anderson also had past lives that could have converged with my own.

I almost laughed to think this girl could be carrying Karen’s soul. The chances of that happening were ridiculously small.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

The girl pushed herself from my arms and stood on her own. She wasn’t hurt as badly as she had appeared.

“I am Adlai. Who are you?”

“My name is Shonda.”

“What happened to you?”

Shonda lowered her head. “I am a water-girl, but I disappointed my master.”

“How?”

“I am barren. I was unable to provide him with children, so I am useless to him.”

My memories from Adlai made me believe Shonda’s words, but my David memories made me grow angry that somebody had treated this girl so badly.

“You’re just a girl.”

She stared at me, not knowing how to reply.

“Are you bleeding?” I asked her.

“No. He left me for dead in the desert, marking me with a jug of pig blood, so that everyone would stay away from me. I should be dead.”

Part of me wanted to hug her, to comfort her, and to let her know everything would be okay, but I hesitated. I had no idea what would happen to the girl when we parted ways, and I didn’t want to give her false hope.

“Are you hungry?”

She nodded. I offered her my hand and led her to shore. We found a sheltered area, where she could sit, and then I went back to catch her some food. It wasn’t long before I had another musht. I prepared it for her and she ate it greedily.

I watched, having no idea what to do next.

Chapter 13

Two days later, I met Jesus.

Regardless of my views on religion, and my belief that there’s no such thing as supernatural deities, it was still a gut-wrenching and inspiring moment to meet the man who would inspire billions of people to follow him.

Chapter 14

I got ahead of myself, but I hope you understand. Let me go back a bit.

The day I found Shonda, she was quite weak, even after being in the river and having a couple of fish to eat. There was no reason to rush, and I didn’t want to abandon her, so we stayed where we were and relaxed for the rest of the day.

Shonda told me a bit about her life. She was born in a tiny village where only about a hundred people lived. Her parents took her to Bethel when she was still a child, and they sold her to a man who already had eight other women in his harem. When she was twelve, she was old enough, as far as he was concerned.

She never used the man’s name, and I could feel the hate seeping out as she spoke of him. Hard to blame her, although in my own mind, I thought her parents were really the despicable people in her life.

Now, seven years had passed without Shonda producing a baby. She was deemed useless.

“He was going to kill me by strangling me,” she said. As she told me that, she subconsciously felt her neck, as if trying to reassure herself that she hadn’t been murdered after all.

“I just stared at him, knowing anything I said would only make matters worse. The rest of his harem were there with him, each of which had given him at least one child. The children were hidden away. I don’t know why he even cared about children, because he never spent any time with them. But, he did care. Deeply. He wanted me dead, but he decided not to do it himself.”

I could see tears in her eyes as she told me her story. As far as I could tell, she was a sweet girl, who should have had a happy life. I wanted to kill the fucker who treated her so badly.

“In the end, he said I wasn’t worth his killing me. He called for his protectors and told them to abandon me in the desert and let me die on my own.”

She moved closer to me until her face was only a foot away from my own. She really was a pretty girl.

“And that’s what happened. I walked as long as I could, but then… I don’t know how long I was abandoned before you found me. Now, I belong to you. I will do anything you want, since you own me.”

Adlai had a brief period where he took control of our shared body and he nodded. This was what he naturally expected, and he was looking forward to sharing the nights with her.

He had never been with a woman. The time he had lived with the Essenes taught him that women were to be scorned. When he left the sect, though, he struggled with that and secretly thought about having a woman of his own. Now, one had voluntarily given herself to him.

I put my hands on her cheeks and smiled at her.

“You are free,” I said. “I won’t own you, but you are welcome to travel with me if you wish. If you have some other place you would rather be, that’s fine, too.”

“I have no place and no one.”

“I understand.”

“Please let me come with you.”

We nodded. Adlai wanted to throw her to the ground and fuck her, but I wasn’t allowing any such thing to happen.

“We are going farther up river, to the village of Nazareth.”

“I know of Nazareth.”

“Do you? What do you know of it?”

Shonda seemed uneasy.

“They say…” she said, but then she stopped. Her mouth closed and again, she looked around. She was afraid.

“I will protect you.”

She nodded. “They say the messiah will be there.”

I smiled at her.

“Do you believe them?”

“I want to, but we’ve seen many false messiahs come and go. They all say they are the Chosen One, and they all talk about God’s word and what we must do for Him. They ask for money and for favors.”

“Did your master give them anything?”

She locked eyes with me. “Sometimes he gave them me.”

I wanted to hug her, but I didn’t want to give her mixed signals. She was an abused nineteen-year-old girl who hadn’t had a chance to grow up. All she had been taught was that her body was useful to barter for other things.

“I wish you’d had a different life,” I said.

She nodded. “When the false messiahs were unable to perform the miracles they promised, my master would either throw them out or have them killed. He liked to toy with fakers.”

“And of the one in Nazareth?”

“We heard stories. I don’t believe them any more than I believe the people who begged for money to my master, but some do believe.”

“Did your master believe?”

“I never knew. He was very skeptical, always.”

“What do you know about this messiah in Nazareth? Does he have a name or do you know what he looks like?”

“I know nothing about him.”

We were silent for a moment. That’s when she hugged me. I held her to me and stroked her hair. Then she looked up and her eyes pleaded with me. I only hesitated a moment before kissing her.

Adlai got his wish after all, and we all spent the night sleeping in each other’s arms.

The next morning was bright and sunny, and Shonda’s smile was just as bright, so there wasn’t much we could have asked for to make the day start off better.

I let Adlai do his morning prayer, and Shonda nodded her head silently beside us while he did that.

None of us were really hungry, so we started hiking north, getting as much ground under us before the mid-day scorching sun hit us.

Shonda showed no signs of any weakness or fatigue, which surprised me after she’d been abandoned a week earlier.

Sometime that morning or perhaps the afternoon before, we’d left Judea and wandered into Samaria. That brought us closer to my goal, so when I realized we’d crossed some invisible border, I was happy.

The only thing I wanted to be careful of was the memories that Adlai carried of the Samaritans. They’d always been antagonistic to Jews, so it was best to avoid people if we could manage it. Why start an argument if we didn’t need to?

Shonda walked immediately behind me the entire time and didn’t speak. She’d learned her lessons from her bastard master, and I thought of asking her to walk beside me and feel free to talk, but Adlai wasn’t keen on that. He’d have to be the one to stay with Shonda whenever I headed back to the 21st century, so I didn’t want to rock the boat there.

Samaria grew more mountainous the farther we walked. We stayed in the valley, following the river Jordan, but all around us craggy mountain peaks rose high. I wondered how anybody could live here, but of course my science background knew the answer: life fills every part of the Earth, from the highest mountains to the deepest ocean trenches. Life always finds a way.

Mid-morning, we followed a curve in the river, and we found ourselves face to face with a small group of people. There were maybe twenty men, the same number of women, and about a dozen children.

So much for trying to circumvent contact with the Samarians. I didn’t want to look like we were avoiding them, because that might cause a conflict in its own right, so I walked straight to the group and bowed.

“Greetings. My name is Adlai, and this is Shonda.”

We looked at the group, who all looked vaguely puzzled. Their skins were much darker than ours. One man came closer to me, then looked back at the rest of the group as if to ensure he had permission to speak on their behalf. Nobody seemed to object.

At first, he spoke a bit of Arabic. When I didn’t reply, he spoke in broken Aramaic.

“I am Fadel.”

I pointed to the Jordan. “We are following the river.”

He looked where I was pointing.

Shonda finally said something to me, the first words she had spoken on our hike. “You should trade food.”

“Trade?” At first, I wasn’t sure what she meant.

“They have lamb. And bread.”

Shonda pointed at the piles of food that were being protected by several of the men. I could smell the food and all of a sudden, I craved it. I was getting sick of eating fish.

I smiled at her and nodded.

Fadel watched me carefully as I went to the water and took out my fishing gear. Shonda stayed with him, a hostage to show we meant no harm.

It took only about twenty minutes to catch a half dozen fish. I brought them back to Fadel.

“Please accept.”

Fadel gratefully took the fish and carried them back to his group. He spoke in Arabic with several other men, with them all glancing back to us. I’m sure they didn’t trust us, but they wanted to.

After the discussion, one of the women brought us portions of lamb and bread. We gratefully accepted and also took their offer to sit with them for our meal.

As we ate, I wondered why the Jews of Judea were so leery of the Arabs in Samaria.

I remembered the parable of the Good Samaritan from the Bible. A man was beaten and left half dead on the side of the road. A priest came by and then a Levite, which I think was an assistant to the priest. They both walked around the man to avoid him.

Finally, a Samaritan walked by and immediately took the beaten man to his home and nurtured him back to health.

The parable is intended to answer the question, “Who is my neighbor?” which is a follow-up to Jesus’s command for all people to love their neighbors. The Samaritan was the one in the story who truly fulfilled that commandment, even though his people despised Jews.

I’d never appreciated that story until the meal I shared with the Samaritans we met.

After we ate, we said good-bye and started walking again, Shonda behind me.

We managed another fifteen miles that day.

The next day, the day I first saw Jesus, we started the morning the same as the two prior ones, praying and walking, stopping to catch fish along the way.

We were now in the area called Galilee.

By mid-afternoon, we reached the Sea of Galilee, a huge lake that was gorgeous and full of tasty fish. At least, Adlai thought it was huge. David had seen the Great Lakes, though, and was less impressed with a lake of which he could see the other side. This was the area where Jesus built his ministry. He preached mainly near the north and western parts of the sea, but we were at the south.

Even though Adlai had insisted we pray from time to time, and I wanted to respect his wishes, I still had no belief that Jesus Christ was any kind of supernatural son of God.

And here I have to say: It really made no difference to my excitement. He was the most famous person in history. We started to walk west. Adlai knew perfectly how to find his way to Nazareth.

The longer we walked, the faster the pace I set.

There was no question that there was a man named Jesus. His lineage was well known, his teachings passed down for many generations, and his crucifixion well documented. You don’t need to trust the Bible on this. There’s other historical documents that discuss all this.

He was real.

And I was close to him.

I hoped.

Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but he grew up in Nazareth. When he was twelve years old, he visited Jerusalem. That’s all the Bible reveals about him until he reached prime teaching age, about thirty, when he formed his ministry.

I really hoped he had stayed with his parents in Nazareth. Most historians thought that was most likely, and that he would learn carpentry or stone-work from his father, Joseph.

We hurried even more as I thought of meeting Joseph and Mary, whose baby had arrived in a manger. Not on Christmas, but perhaps in the spring. Nobody knew exactly when Jesus was really born.

It was late afternoon when we reached Nazareth. The village was very small, with most houses built of stones piled together. There were wooden additions as well, and I wondered how many of them might have been added by Joseph.

We stopped short of entering the village while I tried to estimate its size. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought there might be 500 people or so living there. Surely no more.

As we entered the village, I could see men hard at work doing lots of different chores: herding donkeys, pounding stones, hacking wood with something that looked like an ax.

And it took no time at all to find him.

Even if I hadn’t known there was something special about him, it would have been dead obvious. Nobody could have missed him.

He looked to be about fifteen years old, skinny, which wasn’t unusual because everyone in the village was thin, tall, though, certainly taller than any other man I could see. He was close to six feet, which made him a giant.

We walked closer, slowly. I knew I was staring at him, but I couldn’t help it.

Jesus had changed so many things in the world around him. He had more followers in the 21st century than he would possibly imagine, more churches founded in his name than would seem conceivable, more charities doing more good… and more crimes committed in his name.

He stood out because he was tall, but that wasn’t all.

He smiled, a broad grin, looking right at me. I felt him looking deeply into my soul as we moved closer. I believe everybody who approached him would feel the same.

The single thing that set him aside from everybody else was the color of his eyes.

He had bright blue eyes that almost seemed to glow. Every other person I’d met in the middle east had dark eyes, mostly deep brown.

Nobody had blue eyes.

His long hair was blonde. Not the dark colors of every other person around.

It was almost like a man from Sweden had been teleported to Galilee. His eyes and his smile captured me as nobody else had ever done.

I immediately understood why the people gave him a chance to minister to them. They would be as hypnotized as I was.

As I got closer, he held out his hand and I gratefully held it.

“Welcome,” he said.

I hesitated and then asked, “What is your name?”

“I am Yeshua. I am the one you seek.”

I remembered that Jesus was also called Joshua, and the Aramaic way to pronounce Joshua was Yeshua.

For several seconds, I couldn’t speak. Finally, my partner soul took over. “I am Adlai.”

Chapter 15

Erika Sabo was nineteen years old—no longer a child, but sometimes her mind had fleeting visions of the same fantasies and dreams she had had as a young girl. She would never admit to anybody that she still craved a Disney movie from time to time or that she liked to suck on a strawberry lollipop when she was alone in her room. Nobody needed to know any of that.

Her parents were Eileen and Henry Sabo. They’d both been born in Chicago, and neither liked living in such a massive city. When Eileen got an email asking if she’d be interested in working in Aynsville, New York, she never really thought twice, and much to her great relief, neither did Henry. She was an accountant, and he was a school teacher, both skills quite marketable at the time, so they packed their bags and headed east.

A month after they settled in, Eileen found out she was pregnant, which was very much not in anybody’s plans. She wasn’t a regular church-goer or even discussed her religious beliefs with anybody (such things being her own personal story, and nobody else needed to know), but on one thing she was very clear: If God wanted her to have a child, a child she would have.

“Are you sure?” asked Henry. “We’ve just gotten settled, and we don’t have to do this if we don’t want to.”

She only had to tell him one time, and he never broached the subject again.

However, when Erika was two years old, Henry decided that being a father really wasn’t his thing. When he left, he told Eileen it wasn’t her (which was true, it was Erika), but he wasn’t ready for a family. Both were only twenty-six, and he wanted more out of life.

Eileen didn’t have a lot to suggest to him, and in the end, she realized she wouldn’t miss him at all. They’d outgrown each other, and really, she surprised herself by wishing him well.

The only slight discomfort was that Henry moving back to Chicago meant Eileen and Erika were the only black people who lived in the neighborhood. Oh, there were a few others farther away, way over on the other side of Aynsville, but none nearby.

Eileen didn’t exactly mind that. She wondered if it would affect Erika in some way, as if the divorce would rob her of some sacred birthright.

Two years later, Eileen met Chad Parcher. Chad worked in the same office she did, and one day he shyly asked if she would like to go to dinner.

Eileen had never dated a white man before, but she’d blurted out a “Yes” before her mind managed to even think about that.

A year later, they were married.

Erika was five at the wedding ceremony and was the ring bearer. She grew to love her step-father, especially as phone calls from Henry grew less and less frequent.

By the time she was nineteen, it’d been four years since her natural father had contacted her. Chad was the only Dad that mattered.

Not the only Father, but the only Dad.

Earlier in this book, I kept back a couple details, figuring they fit better here.

Erika had bright blonde streaks of hair mixed randomly in with the coal black of the rest of her hair. People who met her thought she’d done something with dye or a special treatment from a hair stylist to give that appearance. However, that’s not the case. Erika would never do anything to change her appearance, because that reeked of vanity, a sin of which she was clearly not guilty. Some of her hair turned blonde when she hit puberty. She was as surprised as anybody.

Another big change happened at the same time, and this one was much harder to believe. Both Eileen and Chad swear it’s true though. Erika’s eye color changed from the dark brown she’d inherited from Eileen and Henry, and now her eyes were bright blue.

If you saw Erika in sunlight, her gleaming eyes and that magical hair, mixed with the rich bronze of her skin made her a stunning sight, one that couldn’t be forgotten.

She never acted like she was prettier than any other girl when she was in high school, wasn’t vain or pretentious in any way. She didn’t have to be. She was beautiful, smart, and articulate. When she spoke, everybody listened. Erika could gain an audience whenever she chose, just by smiling and calling out to whoever was walking by.

It was a skill that would come in handy when she started to preach.

When she was six years old, Erika realized exactly who she was. It wasn’t a big surprise to her, but her young brain had needed time to process the underlying soul that had inhabited it.

Three months after her sixth birthday, it was like she’d tripped across the information: she was God’s child.

When she was a young teen, that knowledge formed her fundamental nature. If somebody had told her that people’s souls inhabited more than one body as time went on, she would have nodded in agreement. After all, once upon a time she had been Jesus.

She remembered her prior life in great detail. She knew the successes and the failures, and she certainly remembered the agony of the torture and crucifixion. That knowledge was fully-formed in her genetic code, the same as her eye and hair color.

“I will do your bidding, my Father.” That is the phrase she spoke every morning as she awoke. She waited to receive instructions, and until she did so, she would be a normal human girl.

She laughed with her friends, she teased the boys, she loved chocolate ice cream, and she watched YouTube videos. Her real self was always in the back of her mind, but for the first part of her life, she was a typical girl. She liked that.

This was her second life, though, and she looked forward to the day she could show the world who she really was.

Chapter 16

As I walked closer to Yeshua, his overpowering presence became insurmountable. Remember, he was tall. Maybe five feet eleven, maybe even taller than six feet. That might not seem tall in the 21st century, but two thousand years ago, we were a shorter species. Most of the men I saw as I moved closer to Jesus were about five foot five. To them, he was a giant, with blazing eyes, bright hair, and a killer smile.

The kid was a natural.

He continued to stare at me with that huge grin.

Shonda stayed behind me. I wasn’t sure if it was her normal sense of servitude or if she wanted me between her and this stranger as a shield of protection.

“I’m honored to meet you, Yeshua.”

“And why do you seek me?”

Why indeed? I couldn’t very well tell him that I’d hunted him for the past three days to murder him.

“News travels far, and I have heard stories about you. I wanted to see if they were true.”

“Really? What stories? Where did you hear them?”

I changed the subject. “Forgive me for being so rude. May I introduce Shonda to you? She has accompanied me on my journey.”

I gently pulled Shonda from behind me so that she could be beside me.

“It’s indeed a pleasure,” Jesus said.

Shonda tried to smile, but she was afraid. She’d mentioned seeing fake messiahs who had visited her master, and maybe they hadn’t all treated her well. Or maybe she was afraid of becoming a bargaining chip in whatever might happen next.

“Shonda is recovering from an injury, but she was kind to me and has joined me in our journey from Jericho.”

“Jericho? I passed through Jericho on my path to Jerusalem several year ago.”

“You were with your father,” I said. “You went to visit the Temple.”

“You seem to know much about me.”

In fact, that short conversation exhausted everything I knew about Jesus after his birth. The trip to the Temple was well documented. Nothing else concrete was known about his life until he started his ministry on the Sea of Galilee. That wouldn’t happen for another fifteen years.

“I was in Jerusalem at the time,” I said.

He stared at me with a knowing look, and I held his gaze, not wanting to flinch. He knew I was lying, but I had no idea how he knew.

Historians and religious leaders have wondered for millennia what Jesus was doing with his life for all those lost years between his birth and when he started preaching.

Many felt he stayed in Nazareth, which I could now verify, at least for this part of his life. There’d been wild speculation that he’d spent years in India or in Rome or England, but nobody really knew.

Until now.

“Yeshua?”

A woman came from across the dusty street toward us with two young children in tow.

“Yes, Mother.”

I was looking at Mary, who had experienced the virgin birth.

She was rather short, certainly under five feet, wore a full-length yellowing robe that covered her from head to toe, and so all I could really see was her face.

She looked to be about thirty years old, but it was hard to tell for sure. Her forehead was etched with several fat wrinkles, and when she spoke, she had few of her teeth left. None of that was unusual, but somehow I’d expected her to be a beautiful, radiant queen. It felt odd that the mother of Christianity should be so pleasantly ordinary.

“Are you going to introduce me?” she asked.

Jesus smiled and nodded. “My mother can be quite forward. It has gotten her into trouble from time to time.”

“I’m very pleased to meet you,” I said as I bowed to her. “My name is Adlai. This is Shonda. We have traveled from Jericho to meet your son.”

Mary nodded, as if that type of thing happened every day. Maybe it did.

“He is somebody worth knowing,” she said cryptically, “but he still has a job, like everybody else.”

Jesus added, “I have taken over my father’s business.”

“Joseph?”

He nodded. “He died recently, but fortunately he taught me his trade from when I was very young. He trained me as a woodworker. I am busy building fishing boats for the Sea.”

Jesus gently moved the two small children to the front. “I have four brothers and two sisters. These are the two youngest, Judas and Simon.”

I smiled at the two young boys. I hadn’t realized Jesus had any siblings, let alone six.

“You’ll need a place to stay,” said Mary to me. “We don’t really have an inn or anything here. Our village is very small as you can see.”

“We are used to sleeping in the open,” I said. “We are nomads, and our lives are dedicated to wandering. We have no need for walls to sleep in.”

I wasn’t sure Shonda would have characterized herself as a nomad, but she didn’t contradict me.

I turned back to Jesus. “The Sea of Galilee is far from here.”

“Yes, but I build sections here. They are carried by donkey to the water.”

Shonda’s face was lowered, but I could see her trying to catch glimpses of both Jesus and Mary.

Jesus saw it too, which told me how intuitive he was. “Perhaps you would like to join me while I work?” he asked me. “Mother, could you show our little village to Shonda?”

“Of course I could.”

Shonda glanced up and looked at me. I couldn’t tell if she was happy with the idea or hated it.

“I’d love to see your work,” I said. To Shonda, I added, “I won’t be long.”

She nodded and walked away with Mary.

Mary.

The mother of God.

I’d been dying to blurt out to her, “So, did you really think you were a virgin when you got preggers? Come on, you can tell me…” Somehow, I managed to hold in that question. As she walked away, though, I saw her grace, calm demeanor, and confidence. There weren’t many other women visible in the village, but the few I had seen had been meek and almost invisible. I saw why Jesus said she was quite forward.

When I looked back at Jesus, I felt ashamed for my thoughts questioning Mary’s purity. His eyes were like bold sapphires that managed to drill into my mind. In return, I could only feel he was full of gentleness, a person to be trusted, somebody to listen to.

Yes, he was a natural, all right.

“You’ve walked a long way from Jericho.”

“It’s the life I lead.”

He nodded and smiled. We walked from the village center between two stone buildings toward a copse of shrubbery. A path was worn between the bushes. This was a commonly used trail.

After walking a couple hundred yards, the path opened into a clearing. There, I could see a half dozen long narrow pieces of wood.

“The wood is brought here by lumbermen. I create the boats here. They are then transported by others to the Sea.”

He showed me a set of tools he had sitting on a block of stone. He had an axe, a chisel, a small handsaw, and a larger saw. Some other tools were not known to either myself or Adlai, so we had to wait for Jesus to show them to us. I was surprised I recognized any of the tools.

I could see a pile of wooden boards shaped like the bow of a boat. They were lain out on the ground near several piles of rocks. The rocks were each about the size of a softball.

A second pile of rocks was used to weigh down another set of wooden slats. Jesus had taken some slats and twisted them a little. The rocks were used to anchor both ends, so they remained twisted.

He could see me staring at that.

“I wet the wood while it is twisted, so that it weakens temporarily. The rocks hold the wood into its new shape. After seven days of watering and being bent, the shape will hold. These make it easier to create the frame of the boat.

I nodded.

“Would you like some water?”

“Thank you,” I said as he handed me a skin of water. It was fresh by his standards but felt a little oily by ours. I didn’t care. I was thirsty and drank a lot of it.

When I gave back the skin, though, I noticed it was still full.

Jesus grabbed the skin before I could examine it more closely. I decided I had to have been mistaken.

We spent the next couple hours talking and with Jesus showing me how he did his work. By now, it didn’t seem at all strange to be talking to him in a language I had barely heard of before. Sometimes whatever you’re doing becomes normal.

That didn’t change my thinking about why I was in the past.

My own focus was the Holocaust, but I also knew that millions more people had been killed from religious wars. These included the Crusades, the Great Turkish War, the French Wars of Religion, and the Thirty Years War.

Would these people have all died if Christianity hadn’t existed? Maybe. Sometimes religion is a crutch for a land grab or a power-hungry dictator. All I cared about was stopping Hitler from murdering so many people.

That meant I had to kill the kind-hearted teenager who was happily showing me his trade.

I felt sick.

Chapter 17

Colonel Peter Lassiter kept a map of the United States on his desk. It was laminated and on the surface he kept fifteen small green houses and red hotels he’d picked up from a second-hand Monopoly game.

The houses represented the fifteen states where he had ongoing operations.

He was forty-five years old, kept his head shaved bald, and wore a traditional army uniform typical of a colonel. On his chest were several colorful rows of service ribbons and badges. Hanging below those were three medals of honor.

Lassiter absently rubbed his ribbons as he stared at the map on the desk.

Everyone who knew him knew that Lassiter was a complete son of a bitch, and nobody ever gave him grief. Anyone who did wouldn’t be around to do it a second time.

The uniform was not earned. Peter Lassiter had never served in the army or any other branch of the armed forces. Nobody who worked with him knew that, though. He believed in his own power and used the uniform to symbolize it.

Fuck anybody who crossed him.

“Time to close the San Diego operation,” he said. “Pity, I thought it would work out.”

The San Diego operation referred to a teenaged girl he’d kidnapped from Ocean Beach, a handful of miles from his base in California. The girl had been wandering at midnight a week earlier. Jesse Helman, his lead man in the area had texted him:

Female teens were the ones that had the highest payback, especially ones who seemed to be from a middle class or higher background.

When Helman had taken the girl to the local vault, Lassiter checked her out on the net-cam.

“Nice work, Helman,” he said.

“Thank you, sir.”

The girl was drugged and unconscious. She’d be that way from the kidnapping until she was either freed or killed. Even so, her arms and legs were tightly bound to a bed. She wore only a skimpy purple bikini. She had long blonde hair that was tangled from when she fought her kidnapper.

Before putting her under, Helman had obtained her name and address as well as the email address of her father.

Lindsay Smyth was sixteen years old and would be dead very shortly.

Like many businesses, Lassiter’s profit was in volume. There was no advantage to drawing out any operation. The ransom was either paid or it wasn’t.

The first email was sent within two hours of the kidnapping. The father replied, pleading for his daughter and saying he had no way to raise a million dollars. He didn’t have the resources.

Lassiter didn’t give a shit. Not a single solitary shit. That was his rate, and the email was very clear that good old Dad had seventy-two hours to get the money or the girl would be killed. Time was wasting.

A second reply came six hours later.

When that email had arrived, Lassiter knew the girl would end up dead. The father had called the cops, and they were telling him to arrange a meeting.

That’s not how Lassiter worked. Payment could only be made via bitcoin, a digital currency that could be used without any possibility of tracing the origin of the money. It was easy to use, especially for the father, who worked at Apple as a software engineer.

He sent one last email, re-enforcing the time limit and that payment could only be via bitcoin. He knew it was a waste of time.

His emails went through several anonymous proxy servers. When the FBI tried to trace him, they’d get lost in a spaghetti of locations, mostly in the Middle and Far East. Lassiter enjoyed thinking of them trying to find him.

For the three years he’d been in full operation, they’d never come remotely close.

In that time, his team had abducted forty-six people. Twenty-four of those had the million-dollar ransom paid. The other twenty-two had been killed and discarded.

There were three little plastic hotels on the map right now. San Diego, Cleveland, and Boston. He knew his people in the other twelve cities were scouting for fresh targets.

Clearly, the FBI knew the kidnappings were all related. The initial email he sent was a standard letter with only minor tweaks.

There was no way to stop him. He really did deserve the title of Colonel.

And yet… he wanted more.

Colonel Peter Lassiter was already the most successful kidnapper in history. The team was compartmentalized, so nobody who worked for him knew any other person and they knew almost nothing about him. They couldn’t trip across each other because they were all in different cities. When one of his associates finished several jobs in the same place, he moved them to another city. No point taking a chance of any snoopy types seeing the same person near two abductions.

More importantly, none of the operatives knew Lassiter. His team had all been hired anonymously on the dark side of the internet. DarkNet was where all smart criminals lurked, because everything they did there was hidden. Not even Google searched there. Lassiter found and paid his staff (using bitcoin, of course), equipped the local vault, and monitored the whole operation by using the shadowy features of DarkNet.

His associates picked lone wanderers, who were randomly available for them. For each successful kidnapping, they were paid $100,000. It didn’t matter if the ransom was paid or not. Lassiter always paid his staff.

He was untraceable.

But there was no challenge.

Lately, he’d been thinking of trying something bigger, something more exciting, something to get him energized and scared and thrilled.

A movie star?

The spoiled kid whose father ran a Fortune 500 company?

A famous YouTuber?

The options were all out there, but each of them brought significant risks along with the rewards. He only needed to make a single mistake to lead to his downfall.

Decisions, decisions.

For now, he shrugged and sent the text to Jesse Helman.

Easy peasy. Five minutes later, Lassiter watched Helman appear on the video. He had a gun and casually blew the girls brains out.

Lassiter turned off the feed and took the red hotel away from San Diego, replacing it with a green Monopoly house.

“Time for you to get back hunting, Helman.”

Chapter 18

The sun was starting to set, but I didn’t want the day to end. Nobody in modern history had ever heard Jesus’s words from his own mouth, and it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

The downside was that the more time I spent with him, the more I liked him, which would make my job all that harder.

I finally got up the courage to ask the main question in which I was interested.

“Do you believe you are the son of God?”

It wasn’t because I was ready to be convinced. I wanted to hear what he believed about himself.

“That’s an odd question,” he answered. He stepped a bit closer and locked eyes with me. It felt like he was trying to hypnotize me with those bright blue eyes, especially when the twilight sun bounced off them. He was majestic, no question about that.

For the first time, I wanted to believe.

Jesus looked at me for several moments and then finally added, “You must believe what you must believe. Is it so hard for you to do that?”

“Yes, it is impossible to believe.”

“You need to have faith, Adlai.”

“I believe in what my eyes can see. Can you perform a miracle for me? Maybe make manna fall from the sky, or raise a body from the dead?”

He smiled, as if my request was childish. Maybe it was.

Although I was Jewish, I’d been to Christian church services many times. Sometimes for weddings, sometimes for funerals, and a few times because of dating a girl who wanted me to go to her church with her. I went and pretended to pray at the appropriate times, and I listened to the sermons, and in my own mind I asked who in their right mind would believe that a magical man once came to Earth who could perform miracles, and whose father was God. He could raise people from the dead and do many other things.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Judaism isn’t any better. The Old Testament is full of miracles, too, ones achieved with God’s help. I don’t believe that any more than the mystical stories of Jesus.

Now, though, I was where the Christian stories had originated, and the enormity of that was weighing on me.

“The Lord wants people to trust Him and to love Him, as He loves them,” he said. “Love is based on feelings, on mutual respect, on the relationship that grows between the father and his children.”

He shook his head, and continued.

“Love is not based on analyzing columns of figures and subtracting others. It is not based on evidence. It is based on faith. That is the only way it can work. Do you love the girl with whom you came? Shonda?”

Now it was my turn to smile.

“No. I met her three days ago. She is very nice, and we have enjoyed our time together, but it is too early to call it love.

“I have been in love other times, though,” I added.

And maybe I still am. I wished Karen Anderson had been with me instead of Shonda.

“Do you ask for proof of everything about a girl before you fall in love with her? Is it not more likely you know some things but others you continue to learn as you grow closer?”

“It is not the same.”

“It is exactly the same.”

“You claim to be supernatural. That is a big statement. In my time, a famous scientist once said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

Jesus nodded. “Carl Sagan.”

And that was the moment my heart skipped a beat.

Obviously, there was no way in hell that a person living in 11 A.D. could possibly know who Carl Sagan was. He was the most famous astronomer in the late twentieth century, host of a successful TV show, but given that he was born in 1934, well, you can see why the mention of his name shook me.

“How could you possibly know Carl Sagan?” I’m sure my voice cracked as I asked the question.

“I am confused,” Jesus said. “You told me Carl Sagan spoke about extraordinary claims.”

“No, I did not. I said ‘a famous scientist.’ I did not use his name.”

Jesus shrugged. “You can either believe you spoke his name or that I performed a miracle.”

It felt like he was playing a game with me that I didn’t know the rules of. I didn’t feel like doing that anymore, so I moved on.

“Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?”

I was thinking of the Holocaust, but it feels like there’s an infinite number of examples. Small children who die of cancer, teenage rape victims, wives beaten by their husbands, and on and on. If God was all-powerful and all-knowing, why would He allow this kind of garbage to happen?

“You like to jump to the big questions.”

“Do you have an answer?”

“I do. But, that does not mean I am willing to share it with you. You are very confrontational, and anything I say would fall on deaf ears. I need you to be more open about your thoughts, instead of being so closed-minded.”

“I am not closed-minded.”

“You may believe that, but I know you better, my friend.”

Karen had called me closed-minded.

Once again, I couldn’t help but think about her. If I ever had the chance to tell her I spoke to the biblical Jesus, her mouth would drop open in shock.

Damn, I really did miss her.

I stared at Jesus and said, “You are a nice young man, Yeshua.”

“But?”

“I do not believe what you say.”

He nodded. “I know.”

“Millions of people will be killed because of your ministry.”

“Perhaps millions more will be saved.”

He came closer to me and put his hand on my left shoulder. I wanted to hug him, but I didn’t move.

I wanted to delay, to think of some reason to continue talking. I could ask him about the creation of the universe, about the laws of the Bible, about genetics, about aliens on the moon.

The way Jesus handled himself, I was confident he wouldn’t be fazed by any of my questions. He’d have some clear answer that sounded like it came from his Ph.D. thesis.

What would that get me? Some interesting bits of thought dropped into my hands, for sure. But were they of any value?

I could feel myself clenching my teeth. Jesus was a half foot taller than Adlai, but I was too determined to finish what I’d come here to do, so the height difference meant nothing. We outweighed him by a bit, and my muscles were those of a man who’d lived many more years than this teenager.

I grabbed him by the throat and squeezed.

I’d like to believe I caught him by surprise, but I doubt that. He didn’t jump back in shock. Rather, he carefully grabbed my wrists and tried to pull my arms from him. His attempts were quite feeble.

He tried to lock eyes with me, but I refused to look at him. I squeezed tighter and forced his body down to the ground. He refused to scream, but I could hear him trying to breathe. His nose flared, and he gasped for air, but I squeezed tighter as I forced him to the ground.

He finally fought back with more intensity, hitting me with his hands and trying to hit my face.

I glanced at his eyes. They were bulging and pleading for me to stop.

“Now would be a good time for you to perform a miracle,” I said through gritted teeth.

He hit at me harder. I had him pinned completely on the ground. He was kicking his feet, trying to bounce me off his body, but I had him tightly in my grip.

Beside me was the big rock pile I’d seen earlier. The tools weren’t close by. I had hoped to grab an axe or saw and finish him off, to let him out of his misery, but they were too far away.

“I am sorry,” I whispered.

He stared at me and stopped struggling for a moment, but then started to fight again.

I think in that second, he knew why I had to do this, and I hoped he might forgive me, but time was running short for that.

He bounced his body, shaking me. I reached for the closest rock and smashed his face with it. It was heavy, maybe five pounds, and I felt horrible when I saw the damage. His nose was crushed to bits, and his right eye socket was destroyed. I only had a quick glimpse, but I could no longer see his actual eye.

I closed my own eyes, and in spite of the terrible circumstances and my blindness to God, I whispered, “Lord, please forgive me.”

I didn’t know if it was me or Adlai praying.

The second and third smashes of the rock mutilated the rest of his face. His skull was cracked and I could see brain matter leaking out.

He stopped struggling, and I stopped hitting him.

There was no sound. He wasn’t breathing. His remaining eye seemed to look up to heaven.

I took a big gasp of air, not realizing I had been holding my breath.

The king was dead.

My head pounded with the pain of a thousand chisels carving into it. I knelt beside the body of Jesus Christ, staring in disbelief at what I’d done.

He was just a boy.

The pain I felt may have been time twisting and changing shape. The world I had created was nothing like the path that had already been carved out. I knew that. I felt the weight of momentum shifting, destroying the future I’d already experienced. I had no idea what world I’d be traveling back to, but I held onto the single basic fact that was critical to me: Hitler would no longer have a reason to kill six million Jews. My grandmother would live an easier, happier life, and so would so many other people.

I needed to believe my justification.

I half expected Jesus to blink and grin up at me, laughing at my feeble attempt to kill his story.

No such thing happened. His body remained motionless, and I could see it was lifeless. Small bugs already landed on his face and started to feed.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son.”

My words felt hollow as I recited one of the most famous verses of the New Testament.

“That whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Even a lifelong atheist like me knew John 3:16.

My hands had pounded the life out of Jesus, and that verse no longer rang true.

Christians believed the only way to Heaven was by following Jesus. Part of me almost hoped that there was a grain of truth embedded in the story, so that Jesus himself could find his way back home.

“Good-bye, Yeshua. I wish I had met you under different circumstances.”

I stood and felt a chill in the air. There was a low-lying cloud on the horizon as the sun fell and darkness started to overcome the small village.

I needed time to escape, so I dragged Jesus’s body into an area that was bushier. Nobody would see him unless they searched thoroughly. I used the water from Jesus’s skein to wash most of the blood from my hands.

As I walked back to the center of Nazareth, I tried to put the memory of my actions behind me. Instead, I focused purely on finding Shonda and going back to Jericho.

Was I worried somebody would accuse me of murder? No. Times were very different. There was no police force, no formal judicial system, no prisons. There was the sixth commandment: Thou shalt not kill. The commandments, though, were a moral code, not a legal one.

Anyway, by the time anybody found the teenager’s body, we would be long gone. Adlai would be back living his solitary life, but perhaps now with a companion. Nobody would ever accuse him of anything.

I wanted to stay with the body for some reason. It was a weird connection. I had liked being with Jesus. He was a special person, and it felt like leaving was an even bigger betrayal than the killing.

“I need to go,” I whispered.

Taking small steps, I inched backward and finally turned and walked briskly away. I wanted to get a bit of a start on our hike before it was completely dark.

After a few minutes, I was back in the village. Most people had retired for the day. They worked hard from sunup to sundown, and I knew they were huddled in their bedrooms, aching muscles willing them to sleep. There was little alternative in any case. The only source of lighting they had were candles, which were valuable and not to be wasted.

Standing in the village square was Mary and her youngest child, Simon, who I’d met earlier. He wore the same rags I’d seen him in earlier, but they looked even more pathetic in the twilight.

“Good-bye, Mary. I am glad to have met you.” I nodded to Shonda and she moved to follow me.

“Is Yeshua coming?” asked Mary.

I looked at her, and I think she saw in my eyes what had happened. She seemed to be as intuitive as her famous son.

She put a hand over her mouth and shook her head slowly.

I closed my eyes. I couldn’t stand to see the hurt on her face. Without looking back, I led Shonda out of the village.

We walked in silence for some time, until it was too dark to go any farther. Adlai and Shonda huddled together. I pulled my own consciousness away and let Adlai control our body.

It was time to leave. I found the virtual gas pedal in my mind and pressed it, slowly at first and then faster and faster.

I raced through the rest of Adlai’s life, and I was grateful to see he spent the rest of his days with Shonda by his side. He never met anybody associated with Jesus again, and he died at the ripe old age of forty-three.

The rest of my lives sped by in a blur, because I wanted to get the fuck out of this life. I jammed the accelerator as much as I could, but even so it seemed to take forever until I finally hit the brick wall of my true time and was shocked back to my life as David Abelman.

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.