The Murder of Jesus Christ

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.”

“My grandmother… spoke of it.”

He nodded. “Myth, legend, whatever you want to call it. Sometimes stories get passed down through the generations. At some distant time in the past, maybe the Shelljah was used to scare small children or perhaps just as part of a story-teller’s trade. It was silly, of course. There is no Hebrew magic, let alone the ability to move through time.”

I nodded.

“I need to go say hello,” he said. “Would you like to join me?”

As I looked up to the front of the synagogue, I was suddenly overcome with a powerful sense of loss. I could feel tears forming in my eyes, and I felt weak.

I tried to smile, but that didn’t work so well, so I shook my head and nodded, excusing myself to go to the bathroom.

As I splashed water on my face and took some deep breaths, I wondered how I could hold myself together for the service. Somehow, I had to.

A few minutes later I walked out and into the main chamber of the synagogue. Several other women had joined and were seated.

Who are these people?

By the time the service started, there were more than a hundred people waiting. All were women.

The service itself was professional but caring. Clearly Rabbi Pfeiffer knew my grandmother very well, and he sprinkled his talk with stories of her life.

He didn’t mention her being captured by the Germans during the war and how she barely escaped the fate of so many other Jews.

I wondered why that never came up, until the end of the service. As I was about to leave, I stood and looked at all the women present. They were all ages, with the youngest looking like she was still in high school, the oldest needing a wheelchair and perhaps would be joining Ariela soon.

One of the women across the aisle must have seen me staring. She walked over and put a hand on my arm. She would have been in her forties, the start of gray intruding on her otherwise chestnut hair, a nice smile on her face.

“You must be David.”

I nodded.

“I’m Sarah Cruit. I’m one of the people your grandmother helped.”

“Helped? I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean. Who are all these people?”

“She was the leader of our group. Ariela’s collection of holocaust survivors and their families. As you can see, she was only comfortable with women, but every one of us has spent time in your grandmother’s hands. She would collect us like postage stamps, adding each to her group. She encouraged the older ones to talk about what they’d experienced, and the younger ones to talk about what they remembered about their family members who perished.”

She frowned and then added, “I never knew my own grandparents. They were both gassed. Ariela helped me to place that loss in the context of everything else in my life. It allowed me to love my ancestors, to feel what they felt, to appreciate every little thing about them, and to remember the horrors.”

“She did that with all these people?”

Sarah nodded. “Over time, of course. She wasn’t big on crowds, and more than a few people at a time was hard for her to manage, so we rotated in and out, brought new members to the group, met several times each week, and eventually, she showed us how to carry on when she passed. This group will live on, and we’re all so much better prepared today than we were a couple of years ago.”

“When did she start doing this? I just can’t believe I never knew.”

“She spoke of you often, David. She started this when you moved out of her home. She wanted something to do that would take up the free time she had.”

I stood there like a goose to which somebody was explaining the alphabet. It was hard to imagine Ariela had this whole secret world I never knew about.

“Thank you for telling me this.”

Sarah smiled and walked away. I never saw her or any of the other women again.

Chapter 20

As I sit here now in my prison cell, I often think back to my time with my grandmother, wondering what I could have done differently.

And to close out one part of my story, her statements that the Shelljah would no longer work for me after her burial was, of course, correct. I did try, several times, to be sure, but no luck.

Maybe that was a good thing. My travel to murder Jesus indirectly resulted in millions of people being killed, and I had no desire to make things even worse.

After Ariela’s burial, I spent time closing out her estate and then gradually started to pick up some of the usual freelancing gigs I loved. My photos took on an even deeper meaning for me, because I knew that life was short and getting shorter with every passing day. I didn’t want to grow old and die (or worse, die young) and not leave something behind. A legacy of some kind.

Death leaves a mark on the soul.

Part of me wanted Karen Anderson back. She was still aboard the Skywheel and about to leave Earth orbit for the moon. I watched every bit of news about the mission, but never tried to contact her. She was one of Earth’s emissaries to the aliens, and I didn’t want to distract her.

Besides, we’d proven we weren’t compatible.

Emotionally, that didn’t much matter. I still wanted another chance. Somehow.

It was three months after Grandma’s funeral that I got the email that threw yet another monkey wrench into my odd life. It was from John Questore, the general editor at Time magazine.

I almost laughed at the note.

“Well, who wouldn’t want to meet the daughter of God?” I asked myself.

Bullshit and more bullshit.

It was after eleven at night when I’d opened the email. I was tired and cranky.

What the hell.

I grabbed my cell phone and slid over to John Questore in my Contacts and clicked to phone him.

After I left a voicemail message, I sat at my computer and looked up Erika Sabo. Somehow, I had missed a lot of news lately.

She was nineteen years old, lived in a small town called Aynsville in New York state, and had started to preach at the local library eight weeks ago. As Questore had said, she told anybody who would listen that God was her father, and she was here to deliver His message.

Or maybe I should say ‘messages,’ because she seemed to have a lot to say.

Her website was www.ErikaSabo.god which certainly was catchy.

Now, I’m not a techie by any means, but even I knew that “god” wasn’t a valid top-level domain name. I typed in the address, though, and it worked. Her website popped up.

I’d have to ask somebody about how that was possible. I’m sure it was a trick of some kind. So, we weren’t dealing with some dummy.

The home page of the site carried a photo of her. She was a pretty black girl with a nice smile and bright blue eyes.

The rest of her site contained dozens of sermons. I didn’t stop to read them. It wouldn’t surprise me to find she could write compelling stories. If she was gaining the attention of Time magazine, she had something special.

As I was browsing, my phone chirped. Questore.

“John!”

“Hey, David. It’s good to hear from you.”

“Ditto. Still smoking stogies? Or has Elaine trained you yet?”

“She’s tried many times, but parts of me aren’t tameable, I guess.”

He laughed and I imagined his wide grin. We’d met several times during my trips to Manhattan, and he always had a wide smile and a cigar in his pocket. I never saw him light one, though.

“So, what’s the scoop on this Sabo woman?” I asked.

“She’s one of a kind, I can tell you that. I’ve listened to a podcast of one of her sermons, and she’s very powerful, and she’s very quickly gained lots of believers.”

“Never known Time to care about charlatans, John.”

There was a long pause at the other end of the phone, and I began to wonder if we’d lost contact. Finally, Questore replied, and I could have sworn I heard awe in his voice. “She might be the real thing.”

Yeah, well. I doubt that, buddy.

“I’m not sure I’m the right photographer for this one, John. You know I’m the science guy, not the religion guy.”

“It’s for the cover. You like doing our covers.”

Yes, yes, I do.

“And she won’t let anyone else do it. This is her first national press interview. She promised us an exclusive, but only if you’re there to shoot it.”

Now, at this point, you’re maybe thinking the same way I was. What were the chances that I had murdered Jesus Christ and find that a new… version?… embodiment? I had no idea what to call her. What were the chances that the messiah would return to Earth and ask for me?

I still called bullshit, but if it was the real deal, was she after revenge?

Impossible.

“David?”

“Just thinking.”

“We’ll double your usual rate.”

“You must really want this thing.”

He paused again and I imagined him taking the cigar out of his shirt pocket and playing with it. “David, just for a minute, consider this might be real.”

“Has she performed any miracles?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Not raised the dead or parted the Red Sea, by any chance?”

“David, I need you to be serious. This could be the story of a lifetime, and that means the photo shoot of a lifetime, too.”

I shook my head, but of course he couldn’t see me. This wasn’t my thing. At all.

“Why does she want me? Time has lots of great photographers.”

“No idea. I asked her, and she laughed and said it wasn’t negotiable.”

“She’s a fake, John. You gotta know that.”

“I’m not asking you to write the story, so you can believe whatever you want. I know you’ll take great pictures regardless. Please, David. I’m asking you as a personal favor.”

I wanted to say no. I really did. But then I remembered the eyes of the boy Jesus staring at me before I stole his final breath by bashing in his head.

“I’m only doing it for the money,” I said.

“I don’t believe you, but it doesn’t matter why. It only matters that you’ll do it.”

“Email whatever information you have. Place, time, whatever. I’ll head out first thing tomorrow.”

I ended the call and started making some rough notes about Sabo. Normally, if I photograph a person, it’s a scientist involved in some recent discovery. I always liked to immerse myself in whatever they were doing, to come to the photo shoot with an eye to making their work personable and connect emotionally to the viewer.

Sabo was naturally photogenic, but I wanted to know what made her tick. Why would she be saying she was the daughter of God?

If I didn’t believe in God, why the heck would I believe in her?

I googled her and found a mix of fact and rumors. The fact portion was limited: her birth announcement, a couple peripheral mentions in stories about her school (apparently, she was top of the class every year of her school career), and a spate of articles recently about her forming her ministry.

She didn’t have a normal synagogue to teach, so her ministry moved around. One week it would be at a school gymnasium, the next at an outdoor baseball field or in a movie theater. The “where” didn’t seem to concern her much. The location of her Friday evening sermon was always flashing on the home page of her site, starting each Thursday evening. Twenty-four hours’ notice for whoever was following her.

Which seemed to be a large number. She had hundreds of people who would go anywhere to hear her lecture.

Then there was the rumor mill. According to the notes on the internet, Erika Sabo was:

Any and all ideas were spread, and it seemed that everybody who lived in New York state had their own truth about Sabo.

I took a few minutes to book an early flight to Albany, and reserved a car. Aynsville was a few hours from the airport. I also booked a hotel room, in case I ended up staying the night. Might be interesting to stay and listen to her speak on Friday.

Chapter 21

Unbeknownst to me, three months earlier, Erika Sabo started to slowly build her ministry.

It started with the small group of people who she’d grown up with and who had already had an inkling that she was one very special girl.

Sam was previously mentioned, Erika’s younger brother, and how he was bullied by a guy named Peter Smythe a few years back. After Erika caused Peter to fly through the air without touching him, Peter changed.

No more bullying, not just with Sam, but with anybody. Peter became quieter, contemplative, and he seemed to spend a lot of time looking at Erika. The quizzical looks he gave her turned over time into admiration when he saw how she always seemed to know the right thing to say or do.

Three months ago, Erika found Peter sitting on the steps of the high school. She smiled and sat down beside him, as if they were best buds.

“I have a job for you,” she said. She smiled at him. They hadn’t spoken since the altercation three years earlier.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“You’re good at building web sites, right? The best in town.”

Peter frowned. “I don’t know. It’s pretty easy. I’m sure lots of other people could help you.”

She beamed her million-watt smile at him and took his hand.

“I don’t want other people. I want you.”

“It’s close to final exams. Maybe in the summer? I don’t have a summer job lined up yet. What kind of web site?”

“Can’t wait for summer. I’m dropping out of school today, and I need you to drop out as well.”

Peter laughed. “Oh, right. Like that would be totally fine with my parents.”

“It might be. If I talk to them.”

One day, I can recount the rest of that story, to show how Erika was able to convince Peter’s mom and dad that it was the right thing for him to quit school.

For now, all that needs to be known is that she did, and Erika had her web designer. Peter also acted as her head of social media. He set up her presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snap Chat.

And one month later, Erika’s online ministry went live.

Peter crafted ads that targeted everybody in Aynsville, and within days, news of Erika Sabo was everywhere in the small town.

Peter was good at techie stuff, but it helped that Erika was able to provide a list of all the social media accounts of people who lived in the town. He had no idea how she’d generated such a list, and he felt no need to ask. Sometimes all you need is faith.

It was the same when she said her web site would be www.ErikaSabo.god, which was ridiculous until it worked.

Peter Smythe was Erika’s first disciple.

After having the online ministry for a couple weeks, Erika had gathered several hundred people who would check out her sermons every time she posted them.

It was time to move to an in-person church.

She knew she couldn’t expect everyone who followed her online to show up in person, but she figured some would.

That’s when she started speaking in parks and anywhere else she could.

She called the local movie theater and found that they didn’t start showing their features until after noon on Sundays, so she rented the largest room and had Peter set up a PowerPoint deck he hooked up to the projection system.

In the lobby, the theater staff wouldn’t be around, so Erika set up free coffee and juice, pastries, and a basket of mixed fruit.

The first Sunday, forty-six people showed up. She entranced them by telling them that they were the people she was most excited to meet: God’s chosen followers.

She said publicly for the first time, “I am the daughter of our Lord. The Bible prophesied that one day the Messiah would come to show the way, and now I am here.”

Nobody left the room. How could they? She was a riveting speaker who connected with each and every person in the audience.

Peter hadn’t known she was going to claim to be God’s daughter, but neither was he surprised. Somehow, deep inside himself, it seems he’d known.

Erika’s congregation grew into a fully-formed church almost immediately. It was like she’d been running it for years. Volunteers organized the morning drinks and snacks, while others set up a kid’s section in one of the other theater rooms, so children could play Bible games and learn bits about Erika while their parents sat in the main room.

Her messages were always consistent and heart-warmingly simple. She wanted people to love each other.

Some of her congregation couldn’t help thinking of John Lennon whenever she spoke. His songs were often about love.

At the third Sunday session in the theater, Miles Insa and several other people opened the ceremony with live music. Miles played the keyboard, while other volunteers played guitar, bass, and drums. They played rock gospel songs, which brought the audience to their feet, clapping their hands, singing along with the band. The songs were an introduction for Erika.

Everything went perfectly.

Also that third Sunday, a woman named Chris Spinnie walked into the theater. She was thin, about five foot six, and her hair was matted down and dirty. She hadn’t bathed in some time.

Spinnie’s eyes were laser-focused on the bowl of fruit set up for people to take. There were apples, oranges, and a large bunch of bananas.

She had no interest in the sermon or the crowd of people gathered to wait for the service to start. All she wanted was the food.

“Can I help you?”

Chris stared at the twenty-something guy handing out programs at the theater entrance. “No,” she muttered and walked to the fruit. She greedily grabbed two apples and took a bite from one.

The soup kitchen a couple blocks away never had fruit. Chris was able to get a meal once a day there, but it’d been years since she’d had an apple and a banana.

A woman at the food kitchen had told her about the church that sprang up each Sunday in the movie theater. “And they have snacks. You should check it out.”

Chris had no interest whatsoever in the church. But she sure wanted that fruit.

She wore a light sweater, full of holes, but she didn’t mind. Who would ever care if she wore tatters? Not her.

“Welcome, friend.”

Chris Spinnie turned, wanting to shout, “You don’t know me, and I’m certainly not your friend.”

She hesitated, though, when she saw a young black woman smiling at her.

“Please, take as much as you like.”

Chris glanced at the banana she’d hidden inside her sweater. She felt guilty, like she was stealing it.

“I don’t go to church,” she blurted out.

“It’s okay. Really. My name is Erika, and I’m the pastor here. Please, take more.”

Erika grabbed another two bananas and handed them to Chris. Then she pulled out a plastic grocery bag and placed two apples and three oranges inside. You can have as much as you like.”

“Really?”

“I promise it’s totally fine.”

Erika handed over the bag and pointed at the fruit. “Please add more if you like.”

Chris was suspicious but took a third banana to add to the bag.

“Why would you do that?”

“You need the food.”

“You know I’m a just a worthless heroin addict? I don’t care about your church.”

“God loves all his children.”

“Yeah, right.”

“It’s true. And so do I. Please come back next week and enjoy some more fruit.”

Erika hugged Chris briefly, smiled, and left to talk to other people in the crowd. Chris hurried out and had eaten all the fruit within a few hours.

The following Sunday, she did return to the church. She again helped herself to the fruit and again had a short conversation with Erika, who never tried to convince her to join the service.

The following week, the same thing happened, but Chris decided she wanted to see what this unusual pastor taught in her church.

After listening to the band, she almost lost her courage and ran away. She was in the back row of the theater, surrounded by people who didn’t seem to care that she was a homeless drug addict. They welcomed her and sang along with her.

She knew she stank, but nobody moved away from her.

When Erika took the stage, it seemed like she spent the entire sermon talking to Chris. The story was about how Moses led his millions of Israelites through the desert for forty years, and how their faith eventually led them to the promised land.

“Imagine what it would be like to wander aimlessly for so long. What kind of damage would that do to people? How could they keep going?”

Erika was looking right at Chris. She knew it.

Her words shook Chris deep inside, and she became one of the wanderers, lost in the desert. After all, isn’t that what she’d been doing for the past half-decade? Wandering aimlessly, wasting her life without knowing if she would ever give a shit about a destination?

She’d been a druggie for a decade, and it slowly destroyed whatever bits of humanity she had. She sold her body for money, stole, and even attacked random strangers to steal their money. Any way she could get money for drugs, she would.

She didn’t care about anybody or anything. She had no reason to live, and sometimes spent a lot of time thinking about that. If she was dead, though, she wouldn’t be able to take the heroin she needed.

After the sermon, Chris stayed in her seat. The final prayer brought her to tears, but she didn’t know why. All she knew was that she didn’t want to leave.

“I’m glad you stayed.”

Chris blinked as Erika sat beside her.

“I am too.”

“Let me buy you some lunch.”

Chris knew if she agreed to have lunch, Erika would talk about her poor life choices, how she could choose to stop taking the drugs, stop her criminal acts, make something of her life.

She’d heard the lectures a thousand times and didn’t need to hear it again.

“There’s a steak house next door that I quite like,” said Erika.

Steak.

How long had it been? Chris couldn’t say. She just nodded.

During lunch, Erika talked about things going on in the world and in Aynsville. It was like she wanted to bounce future sermon ideas off Chris. They talked about the weather and sports and local politics.

What they never talked about was Chris’s lifestyle.

At the end of lunch, they went their separate ways.

Two weeks later, Chris went home with Erika to have a home-cooked dinner. Chili. It was breathtakingly good. Chris couldn’t recall ever eating a better meal. For that matter, she couldn’t recall the last time she had a home-cooked meal of any kind. She didn’t like thinking about that.

At one point, Erika left her alone for ten minutes, while she changed clothes.

Chris couldn’t help but snoop around Erika’s apartment and she found a stash of cash in a drawer. She quickly fanned it and guessed there was more than $500. Chris held it and was so close to pocketing the entire amount, but she resisted and put it all back.

She sat in the living room and prayed for strength. It was the first time she’d ever prayed on her own.

When Erika returned, she had a bag full of clothes.

“Here, you can try these on. I hope they fit. But before you do, would you like to take a shower?”

Chris could only nod.

She left that day wearing a new pair of jeans and a light pink T-shirt with a logo from Adidas.

They hugged before Chris left. As she was leaving, she turned and said, “I wanted to steal the money from your drawer. It’s what I do.”

“Did you steal it?”

“No.”

Erika smiled. “Thank you.”

Another two weeks passed, and Chris asked if she could help out on Sunday mornings. She started looking after the coffee urns, making sure there was always enough for anyone who wanted some while they waited for the service to start.

Soon enough, Chris became Erika’s third disciple. She broke free of the drugs, because she was addicted to something else now. It wasn’t easy, but it was necessary. Not to Erika, but to Chris.

Erika smiled every time they saw each other, and Chris still believed every sermon was written especially for her.

Every other person listening on Sunday mornings felt the same thing.

As time went on, Erika gathered other people who she knew were completely loyal to her. By the time I met her, she had nine disciples.

Jesus would have had twelve, had he survived.

Chapter 22

Last night I stopped after I finished writing the last chapter, I re-read everything put down so far, all the good and especially the bad. It was hard to read the bit about smashing in Jesus’s head.

I’m not proud of that.

This is supposed to be an account of my crimes, but just as much an insight into why I’ve done the things I have. I’m trying to be as honest as possible, not trying to sugar-coat my actions.

So, let me spend a few minutes in a digression.

I’m in prison. The author’s note at the beginning of the book mentions my gratitude to the warden, but really, is there anybody on the planet who doesn’t know what I’ve done and what happened to me? Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but not by much.

My mail is screened, but I get dozens of actual letter mail every day. I’m limited in my use of email and my address isn’t public, which is good, because I’m sure I’d drown in notes from total strangers.

Some think I did the right thing, but most think I’m a horrible person who really should have received the death sentence.

I haven’t spoken to any reporters since I’ve been incarcerated.

I haven’t had any visitors, either. Well, that’s not quite true. Karen Anderson comes to visit me. As much as I hated doing it, I once told her to never come back. I’ve done her enough damage, and I didn’t want her to feel obligated to visit me once a month. However, she’s continued to ignore my request, and I’m grateful when she shows up. She’s a good person.

Besides… well, that’s a later part of my story.

Reporters never stop trying to interview me, but I don’t want to favor one media outlet over another. Instead, this book is my attempt to answer the questions they want to ask. And all proceeds from the book go to the Founding Church of Saboism.

So, about me.

I’m a photographer, specializing in science pictures. I love my job, because, well really, there’s nothing better than photography and science. Those are my two favorite topics, and magazines paid me a lot of money to go have fun.

How lucky am I for that?

I was never one for religion. It never came together for me, because it felt like science and religion were on opposite sides of a long-fought battle, and there was no way I was going to abandon my science. I trust science. It all works. So, if science says that the universe came into being from a unbelievably catastrophic explosion, and that expansion took place over a few micro-seconds, and once that was all set in motion, there’s really nothing more to the universe. It’s all explainable.

I chose that over believing some wizard in the sky snapped His fingers one day and imagined the universe into existence.

Science wins. Always.

At least that’s what I thought most of my life.

But stubborn old beliefs can be changed. It just takes the right catalyst.

I arrived in Aynsville in the evening and headed to my hotel. I unpacked and set up my laptop, checking the latest headlines from CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Another stubborn old habit.

Nothing new since I’d left Minneapolis earlier in the day.

Part of me still thought this was a wasted trip. I was here to photograph a nineteen-year-old girl who told people she was God’s daughter.

Maybe that should be capitalized: God’s Daughter.

Either way, I wanted the damned thing to be over with. Carrie Hargrave was doing the interview, and it seemed like a ridiculous waste of my time to photograph it.

But, Time magazine, in the form of John Questore, could be quite convincing. I grabbed a can of Coors Light from the minibar and popped it open. Without really thinking about it, I went to Google Images and typed in Erika Sabo.

“Hello there,” I whispered.

The first photo I saw grabbed my attention. She was clearly a young woman, but her expression was one of solid confidence. She was smiling broadly, and there was no way around it: she was absolutely beautiful.

Would God have created a beautiful black girl to be the Messiah?

Jesus was in his thirties when he started his ministry. Well, he would have been if I hadn’t murdered him.

I was puzzling over the question without even realizing at the time how silly it would sound if somebody spoke the same question out loud to me. God didn’t do any such thing, because there was no such thing as God.

There were hundreds of photos of Sabo online, but they all showed the same powerful face. The face that launched a new religion.

After flipping back to CNN on the laptop, I found I couldn’t get her out of my mind. Part of that was professional curiosity. How would I photograph her to really bring out her inner self? What angle would work best, and what background? I thought about lighting and F-stops, my mind wandering off to layout and design and focus and maybe spiritualism. After all, I needed to present her in a way she was comfortable with.

“Lady God.”

I laughed a bit when I said that, as if it were the funniest thing I’d heard in ages.

Eventually, the room darkened, and I climbed into bed, dreaming my now-standard nightmare of a horribly angry Jesus climbing out of his grave to track me down and torture me to death.

The hotel had a free continental breakfast for guests. I toasted a bagel and swiped some cream cheese on it. When I sat in the small restaurant, I saw Carrie Hargrave and waved to her. She smiled and nodded and selected a bran muffin and a croissant to bring over to me.

“Good to see you,” she said.

“You too.” I smiled at her. We’d only worked together a couple times in the past, but the experiences had been good. She was Time’s best interviewer.

Munching on my bagel, I asked, “Got your questions ready?”

She patted her purse. “You betcha.”

Carrie was in her early forties, I guessed, but she still kept her hair neatly pulled back into a tight pony. I imagined her doing the same thing back in high school and every day since.

I’m sure she planned her appearance to seem youthful and invigorating, putting her interview subjects at ease.

And her photographers.

“Do you believe her story?” she asked.

“Of course not. Do you?”

Carrie seemed to hesitate before replying. For a minute, I thought maybe she hadn’t heard me, but then she said, “I want to.”

“Really? The daughter of God?”

“I’ve always believed the Messiah would come one day. The Bible tells us that. Why not now?”

“You believe everything in the Bible?”

Carrie laughed and seemed to take some tension away with it. “Not everything, no. But enough.”

We finished eating in silence. It wasn’t that I was bothered by what she said, more that I just didn’t understand it, and wished I could. Wouldn’t it be nice to believe the whole universe was planned out in detail and that one of the rewards of believing was eternal life in one form or another?

When we left, I called a taxi and we both climbed in the back.

“Good luck,” I said.

“You too! Make people want to read my story!”

“I’ll sure do my best.”

We were to meet Erika Sabo at the movie theater where she’d be giving a sermon in a couple hours. It was one of those multiplexes that showed twelve movies in different rooms.

She was waiting by the popcorn machine when we walked in. We were still early enough that none of her parishioners had arrived. She smiled broadly when we came in and rushed over to greet us.

“Miss Hargrave, so nice to meet you.”

Carrie seemed to be tongue-tied, and I can’t say I blamed her. The young woman was shorter than I expected, younger-looking than I expected, but somehow way more captivating. Her eyes were like bright and unavoidable arrows.

Most of her hair was black and kinky, the way many black girls liked it. It reminded me immediately of a halo around her face.

There was a single blonde streak running from the middle of her part down her left side. It was the exact same color as Jesus’s hair.

“And of course, it’s a delight to meet you again, Mr. Abelman.”

“Again? I don’t believe we’ve met before.”

She locked eyes with me and for a moment didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to.

I saw her. More importantly, I saw him.

This was the boy I’d murdered all those years ago.

It was impossible I could know that, but know it I did.

I couldn’t speak. In a split second, I felt like everything I’d ever known was wrong, and that the only thing that mattered was Erika Sabo. I wanted to kneel before her, but I felt light-headed and I knew if I tried, I’d faint.

Her smile widened farther, which I wouldn’t have thought possible.

“You recognize me, don’t you?”

I nodded, not trusting myself to talk.

Carrie finally broke the trance.

“You’ve met before?” She looked back and forth at me and Erika.

I took a deep breath and said, “Years ago. I hadn’t really put it together until now.”

The moment felt like it lasted forever, but then Erika said, “There’s a small office we can use for the interview and photos. Follow me.”

The room was decorated like it was used for kids’ birthday parties. There was a long table in the middle.

Erika apologized for the cramped quarters. “We’re moving into our own building next week. Seating for 800, lots of office space.”

Carrie and I got ourselves set up, and I started taking some initial photos as Carrie started her recorder.

Before she started, she asked, “Is it okay if I call you Erika, or would you prefer Miss Sabo?”

“We’re all friends here, so first names are perfect. Everyone I speak to in my sermons is on a first name basis with me.”

“How many people are you expecting today?”

She shrugged. “It’s growing every week. Last week we had about 150. Maybe 200 today? We use the largest room for the service, with an overflow set up in the room next to it. It’s amazing what you can do with technology today. The live feed shows on the screen in the overflow theater as if I was in both places at once.”

“You’ve only been preaching a short while.”

“I’m happy with the progress we’re making.”

The questions were softballs to get Carrie and Erika into the chat. I moved around the room, capturing photos from different angles. I’d pick the best of them later.

I tried to concentrate on what I was doing and not the turmoil wracking my brain.

I’d never believed in God or in Jesus Christ. But here was the same Jesus I’d killed two thousand years earlier. None of my science training would provide anything close to an explanation.

I checked the exposure on my camera while Carrie continued.

“What’s the subject of the sermon today?”

“I’ll be talking about the Book of Ruth. It’s one of my favorite books of the Bible. A love story of sorts. And a moral obligation that shows God wanting us all to welcome strangers with open arms. You never know what might happen.”

I interrupted. “I’m not familiar with that story.”

“Ruth is a Moabite who came to the promised land and was accepted by the Israelites. She was the great grandmother of David, the greatest of the Israelite kings. And he is my own very distant ancestor.”

Carrie looked up when she said that.

“How can you know that?”

“The Bible promises that the Messiah would be a descendent of David. If you’re dogged enough about following his children, and their children, well, you end up finding me.”

“You claim to be the daughter of God.”

“I know it’s hard for some to believe, but it’s true. I’m here to bring my father’s word to life.”

Carrie hesitated before asking her next question. “Why would God need that?”

“It’s more about why humanity needs it. God is patient and merciful. Sometimes, humanity forgets their history. Sometimes they forget who created them.”

“Most people think you’re a fraud.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I feel that I have a challenging life ahead of me.”

Once again Erika smiled broadly, as if this was an inside joke.

Then she added, “Winning one person at a time is nice, but it won’t work when there’s seven billion people on Earth. That’s why I need you guys, and that’s why I’m scheduled for an interview on The Tonight Show tomorrow. And that’s why Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat and all the other social media platforms are so important. Things change at a ridiculous speed these days. I’m hopeful my word will affect a lot of people, for the better.”

Erika stood and walked around the room. “My father’s word isn’t that complicated. It’s my humble honor to spread it.”

The interview lasted for an hour altogether. Carrie and I stayed to watch the sermon, and I snapped more photos as she talked. I could tell she loved speaking to the crowd, and they loved listening.

Chapter 23

Karen Anderson felt the acceleration push her back into her seat as the Golden Luna pulled away from the Skywheel. Months of preparation had passed, and they were finally on their way to the moon.

The moon, she thought. Who would’ve thunk?

The crew of five were all strapped in, as the computerized navigation system controlled everything. The humans on board had nothing to do except wait and (for Karen at least) to pray.

“Dear Lord,” she whispered with her eyes closed and her head bouncing around as the Luna thrust faster and faster. “Please bless this ship and the crew, and let us find whatever it is you want us to. I have faith in you, and your judgement.”

She hesitated, wanting to add another, more personal thought, but it felt wrong. At this moment, she needed to worry about the mission, not herself.

No matter how hard it was.

“Amen,” she finished.

She opened her eyes and looked ahead to the viewscreen in the front of the ship. Nothing much had changed since their departure, but she knew the Skywheel was already thousands of miles behind them.

It would take a little over two days before they could be inserted into lunar orbit. The last two days that anybody would have to wonder what was happening on the far side of the moon.

The aliens were still broadcasting some indecipherable message back to their home. That much was clear.

The moon was tidally locked to the Earth and had long ago lost its ability to form its own rotation. It now rotated once in approximately twenty-eight days, identical to the time it took to orbit the Earth. As a result, the far side of the moon could never be seen from Earth. Only the dozen Apollo astronauts who flew to the moon fifty years earlier had seen it.

Now, the group of five on board her ship would see it, and three of them would land, if it was possible, to visit the aliens.

She still found it impossible to believe, but she pushed that to the back of her mind. In the preparation leading up to the flight, she’d scanned a thousand ideas of where the aliens came from and what they were doing. But, the truth was that nobody had a clue.

Karen knew nothing about Erika Sabo. Although the internet was available to her, it wasn’t something with which any of the astronauts spent their time. There were way too many other priorities that needed their attention. The mission was costing more than a billion dollars, and they would only get one chance to make it a perfect shot. If they failed, another ship might be available in a year, but it would be staffed with a whole other crew.

She needed this to go perfectly.

And up to now, it had. However, there was a glitch in the process, and she was the only one who knew it.

She tried not to think about it. Instead, she visualized the flight path. The Golden Luna was aimed at where the moon would be in two days. To be more precise, the ship was aimed five hundred miles above the moon’s surface. The moon’s gravity would capture the ship and sling-shot it around and around in an elliptical orbit that would settle down to orbit less than twenty miles above where the alien signal originated. The first few times around, the crew would run detailed scans to find out what was below. Then, a lunar landing module would be released, allowing three of them to float down to the surface.

Only if it appeared safe, of course. There were a lot of things that could cause a mission to abort, primarily if it seemed the aliens were hostile.

Nobody quite knew exactly how they would tell, but everybody believed they would know somehow. Mission Control would make the final decision.

Karen was one of the three astronauts that would glide their way down to the surface. She would meet the aliens.

Except.

Except for the glitch.

“Nobody asked for this,” she said. “Certainly not me.”

She closed her eyes and tried not to let a tear squeeze out of the corner of one of them. She wished she could talk to David, but he was somewhere, maybe a million miles behind her. She’d lost track of where he was after she’d been aboard the Skywheel.

He’d know what to do. He always did.

But I don’t need him, she thought. I can figure this out.

The acceleration continued to push her down into her seat. It would stop soon, when the ship reached its cruising velocity, and then she’d float away, as if the ship were standing still.

At twenty-six, Karen was the youngest person ever to go into space. She wanted others of her generation to be proud of her and to look at her accomplishments to show that you can do anything you set your heart on.

Now, she was going to blow it.

As she thought again of the aliens and what they might look like, the thrust of the engines stopped and as expected, the force no longer held her like super-gravity, and she was floating free.

In the ten months she’d been either training or working on the Skywheel, and now on the Luna, she’d been the subject of countless medical tests. NASA was careful not to let anybody who had any possible issues go to the moon. There was no doctor on board, no hospital, nothing much past a fancy first-aid kit.

Every test showed her to be healthy and ready to blast to the moon.

Every test.

Including the blood test they undertook every month.

She passed with flying colors. On top of that, it’d been that same ten months since she’d been with David. That last argument was the last time they’d slept together.

Which meant it was impossible for her to be pregnant.

Karen had no idea why they had pregnancy tests on board the Luna, but they did. She chalked the first result up as a false positive, but two in a row? And her body was telling her the same thing.

It was impossible. She knew that. Regardless, she had to come to terms with the fetus she was carrying in her womb.

Chapter 24

The next night, Erika was scheduled to go onto The Tonight Show. James Arlender was guest host. I’d heard of Arlender of course. Who hasn’t? He’d grown his reputation and career as a comedian by skewering religion. Any religion. He wasn’t biased against Judaism, but since most Americans were Jewish, that was his target more often than Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism. He was an equal opportunity offender.

I wondered why Erika would have chosen to have her first national television broadcast with him. There were a hundred other hosts who would have made more sense.

“I have to reach my audience,” she said when I asked her. “All my audience. Some of them are fans of his, so he’s got the people I need to talk to.”

By this time, I was convinced she didn’t need anyone’s help to reach an audience, so I shrugged and carried on.

I was still taking photos of her. Earlier that day I’d sorted out the best I had taken as part of the Time interview and emailed them off. I should have been on a plane back to Minnesota.

Part of me already knew I’d never book that flight.

Instead, I kept hanging around her. I took more photos as she answered phone calls, wrote an article for her web site, organized a meeting of her closest advisors and stopping only occasionally for a quick sandwich or a piece of fruit.

Her nine disciples were as busy as she was, and as the day wore on, I realized how much work they’d collectively gotten done during the day. Nine people working their asses off for no payment I was aware of, all because they believed she was the daughter of God.

I believed it, too.

Forty-eight hours earlier, I had basically laughed at the idea, but now I knew it was true. This slight, unprepossessing girl, a black girl from a poor family, the most unlikely of choices, was, without question in my mind, indeed the daughter of God.

God, a being I would have also sworn couldn’t possibly exist.

All from looking into her eyes, and a couple words she’d spoken to me.

She knew me. I knew her. I’d killed her by smashing her head with a rock. She should have hated me, refused to see me, wanted revenge.

Instead she smiled at me with that smile the whole world now recognized, and she accepted me without hesitation into her innermost circle of advisors.

She never said, “Hey, David, wanna work for me?”

She didn’t have to. She knew, and I knew. I was meant to be part of her team.

I was her tenth disciple.

In the late afternoon, she nodded at me, indicating she wanted me to follow her. We silently walked out the door together and into the sunshine. It was in the mid-seventies, a beautiful day for a stroll.

Without knowing what she wanted, I walked with her, not talking. She’d let me know what she wanted in her own time.

Finally, she said, “It’s a beautiful day.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

“You have questions.”

Well, there was the understatement of the year. My mind had been swirling with questions ever since we first met. How was this possible? How could I have been so wrong my whole life? Why did science still seem to trump religion, when I now knew the truth?

I also had bigger questions, the kinds of things that drive people crazy.

How could God allow a monster like Adolph Hitler to exist and to kill ten million innocent Jews? They were His own people, and he sat by idly while they were slaughtered.

And for every Hitler, there were a thousand mini-Hitlers. People who killed without caring about consequences. Men who raped girls before they could even count themselves as teens. Women who abused their husbands with calculating cruelty, robbing them of their humanity. What kind of a God would put up with that shit? Sometimes it seemed like if there was a God, He must be as cruel and sadistic as His worst creations.

Do we have free will? If God knows all, past, present, and future, and he can direct everything to match His desires, we have no free will of our own. If that’s true, what’s the point of even being alive? It’s like the history of humanity was written in a book, and God is slowly turning the pages at his convenience. More, he’s written the damned book from beginning to end.

Why is the Bible stuffed with demonstrations of God performing miracles and talking to everyday people, lifting them up with his voice, but for the past two thousand years, it seems like God has been silenced. No miracles, and the only people who say they hear God are totally nuts by most definitions.

So, yes, I had questions.

But, I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind.

“How can you forgive me for what I did to you?”

Erika smiled. “We love all our children. Nothing you can do will ever change that.”

“We?”

She sat on a bench and pointed, so I sat beside her. I was feeling all kinds of intimidation, but at the same time knew I was totally safe.

“My Father, myself, and the Holy Spirit. We’re the Trinity. Three beings unified into a single God.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I know. You will.”

I wasn’t so sure about that.

“Have you lived forever?”

She nodded. “It’s not so hard to believe. Time never existed before we created it, so before that, without time, there wasn’t the concept of forever, so it wasn’t anything particularly special.”

My science background kicked in when she said that, and I kind of—well, sort of—understood what she was saying. Before the Big Bang that created the universe, everything that existed would have existed only as a figment of a creator’s imagination. We measured time as how long it takes between two different events, like how long it takes for a second hand on a clock to sweep from pointing straight up to pointing to the right. That constituted fifteen seconds. If there were no clocks, nothing to move, nor people to watch things move, does time itself exist?

At the moment, none of that really mattered. My brain was on fire, and my mind seemed to be running in a thousand different directions.

I opened my mouth to ask her another question, or maybe to thank her or to tell her I needed to go to the bathroom. Whatever it was, nothing came out. I couldn’t think straight, and she reached out her hand and took hold of mine.

“It’s a lot to take in.”

I nodded, not able to speak.

She stood and I did the same. She hugged me and I wanted to hug her back, but my body wasn’t really working all that well. I stood there like a dead tree while she hugged me. She didn’t let go, though, and after what seemed like a million years, I put my arms around her and hugged her back.

I was in the stage wing, watching when Erika was called out to join James Arlender. In times past, I’d watched some of his HBO specials, and with everyone else, I’d groaned at the jokes when he’d make fun of some group. It didn’t matter to him if it was religion, politics, or race. Anything went with him. Being on The Tonight Show, though, I knew he’d have to cut out the swearing and hopefully treat Erika with a bit of respect.

While I watched her walk out, full of confidence and smiling that jarring smile of hers, I clicked away with my camera. It seemed that, without asking, I was taking on the role of official photographer.

I’m pretty sure that’s how all her closest followers joined her team. They found out what they’d be good at and they did it. No need to ask for permission, no discussion of payment (there was none) or any other type of reimbursement. The church bought food and provided a place to sleep for the staff, and everyone accepted that’s all they needed.

“Welcome, Erika.”

I heard Arlender’s voice loud and clear. He shook Erika’s hand but hesitated first, as if he might try to hug her instead. I’m not sure. Maybe he was just always a bit nervous.

“Thank you.”

They sat on opposite sides of a desk.

I wished Jimmy Fallon wasn’t on vacation.

“So, let’s start with an easy question. You say you’re the daughter of God. That’s the big guy in the sky, right? Presumably God could drop a son or daughter anywhere. Why you? Why in a small town in upstate New York?”

Erika nodded. She’d clearly expected the question.

“You mean why a black girl instead of a white man?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You don’t have to. But, to answer your question, my father doesn’t care about color or gender or any of the other things you like to poke at. What matters is that this was the right place at the right time.”

“The right place and time for what? To exploit people?”

“To bring the Lord’s message.”

“What message is that?”

“Have you ever read the Bible, Mr. Arlender?”

He shrugged and grinned. “I’m waiting for the movie.”

The audience chuckled. I took some photos of the audience as the interview went on.

“There’s really only two things you need to know.”

“Weren’t there ten commandments? And a bunch of other laws and stuff?”

“I’m glad to hear you know at least that much.”

The audience laughed, and Arlender was taken aback. I think he was expecting Erika to be some wimpy girl he could make fun of and move on to the next guest.

“So, what are these two things you want everyone to know?”

“Love God and love each other.”

“That’s it? Six words is all you got?”

“It’s all I need.”

“Can you perform a miracle for us?”

“I’m not here for parlor tricks, Mr. Arlender.”

Arlender looked to the audience. “Hey, what do you think? Should God’s little girl prove who she says she is? Wouldn’t you like a miracle?”

He waved his arms up and down to rile the people. They started to cheer and stood as if they were going to riot. I snapped more photos. I wasn’t worried about Erika. She could take care of herself. My job was to document it.

She stood and looked to the audience.

“Please be quiet,” she said. Although it would have been easy for everyone to continue cheering, one by one they stopped and sat back in their seats.

“Umm,” Arlender sat back down too. “I hope you’re not going to say that was a miracle.”

“That’s just your audience being polite. I hope they want to hear what I have to say.”

“Why won’t you perform a miracle? The Bible is full of them.”

“The events of the Bible happened a long time ago. Times change, and so do strategies for communication. If I started to levitate, would you believe it was a miracle?”

“Any magician can fake that.”

“Exactly. I’d waste time and just be allowing you reason to reject my message. I’m not here to perform silly stage tricks for you.”

“Well, it’s easy for you to pretend to be some kind of super-being if you don’t have to prove it.”

“If I deliver you a true miracle, would you believe what I say?”

He hesitated and shrugged. “Why not? If you can prove it by doing something no magician can.”

“In that case, watch the skies.”

“What?”

“Tomorrow night. Midnight Eastern time. I know your show is on the air then, but it’s not live, so you can be out looking at the sky.”

“What would I see?”

Erika smiled. “You’ll find out.”

Arlender shrugged. “Sounds pretty non-committal to me. He glanced at a producer who was standing beside me. The producer made a circling motion with his hand. Time to wrap this up.

“Well, thank you for coming, Erika. I don’t believe anything you say, but there’s a sucker born every day, so best of luck to you.”

Erika reached out to shake his hand. He hesitated and finally took her hand.

“Bless you,” she said. She gave the audience one more big smile and left the stage.

Chapter 25

The following day was Sunday. Erika and I woke and I cooked a few pancakes for us to share. She then led me into the media room and turned on the TV at 9:00. We were still getting used to the new church facilities. As usual, she was way ahead of me in understanding what was going to happen.

The first segment of Face the Nation was an interview conducted by Phil Showson. I found the transcript of the interview and copied it here with the approval of NBC.

Showson: Last night, Erika Sabo took to national TV to discuss her beliefs. They were so extraordinary we felt we wanted to hear a different perspective from the two main religions followed through the U.S., so today we’re welcoming Rabbi Nathaniel Cobert from Central Synagogue in New York City and Imam Abdul Naseer from the Islamic Cultural Center of New York. Thank you both for being with us today.

Cobert: Very glad to be here.

Naseer: Always good to be with you, Phil.

Showson: As you both know, a young girl in upstate New York has been claiming that she is the daughter of God. Can you tell us how Judaism and Islam view Ms. Sabo?

Naseer: We cannot always know Allah’s intent, but the girl is very naïve if she thinks the world will accept her story. We believe the prophet Mohammed was the greatest of the messengers of God. There is no need for a supposed daughter.

Cobert: I’d go a step further. Judaism is built on the fundamentals laid down by the Lord in the Bible. There, we see the predictions of a Messiah yet to come, but young Sabo doesn’t fit the prophesies at all.

Showson: In what way?

Cobert: The Messiah is to be a man descended from David, and he will be born in the Holy Land, probably in Bethlehem. Clearly the girl hasn’t done her very basic homework.

Showson: Imam Naseer, does that disqualify her? Is this just some kind of elaborate hoax?

Naseer: I suppose it’s possible for Allah to change his mind about things, but it seems very unlikely. I don’t even know why you’re dignifying this by covering the story.

Showson: Rabbi, is that how you see it?

Cobert: Absolutely. As far as I know, she hasn’t gone so far as to demand people hand over all their possessions, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see something like that soon. We’ve seen many so-called prophets come and go over the years, and they all demand cash. It’s a scam, plain and simple. This might be a new twist, claiming to be the daughter of God, but otherwise, it’s the same old same old.

Showson: She promised a miracle for tonight. What will you say if she can pull it off?

Naseer: I’m sure she can do some kind of gimmick. We’ve had lots of magicians in the past who have performed amazing feats. David Copperfield made his audience believe he made the Statue of Liberty disappear. Sabo probably has some kind of similar trick up her sleeve.

Cobert: Yes, my thoughts exactly. Whatever she does, just ask a professional magician and I’m sure you’ll see they can reproduce whatever it is.

Showson (nodding): Thank you for your time, gentlemen. We’ll all be watching the skies tonight.

Cobert: Thank you.

Naseer: Always a pleasure.

The segment ended and I felt horrible. Erika clicked the television off and turned to me.

“Well,” she said. “What did you think?”

I couldn’t face her. I stared at my shoes, as if they were the most important things in the world. The silence grew but she didn’t say anything more. I felt her staring at me, and I finally said, “They’re right. I never thought of it, but the real messiah needs to match the prophesies in the… Bible.” I’d almost said the Old Testament, rattled by the TV discussion. Before I changed time, there were two parts to the Bible, but now there was only the Old Testament, but it was silly to think of it that way because there was no longer any such thing as the New Testament.

“Really?” Erika continued to stare at me. “You don’t think the prophesies are fulfilled?”

“How could they? You aren’t a man.”

“Oh, ye of little faith.”

She said it with a lilt to her voice and I looked up to see her smiling at me.

“I need you to trust me, David,” she said.

I wanted to, but…

She took my hand in hers.

“The Bible is talking about the messiah’s arrival. He was a little boy born to Mary in Bethlehem. I think you know that prediction came true. After all, you came to find me and you killed me.”

I thought about that. “So, you today… that’s not what the prophesies were about? What about you being a descendent of King David?”

“I am.”

“How?”

“Well, David had a son named Solomon. Solomon had Rehoboam who had Abijah who had Asa who had Jehoshaphat who had Johoram. Do you want me to keep going?”

“You’re saying if we followed all the generations down, we’d find you?”

“You bet.”

“I should know better than to doubt you. But, just humor me and tell me one other thing only God could know.”

“Your grandmother was an amazing woman, who was strong in the Shelljah. With that ancient Hebrew magic, you were able to go back in time and kill me.”

Erika’s face grew softer, the humor gone.

“And,” she added, “the world needs me now more than ever before. And it needs you too.”

“Me? I doubt that.”

She shrugged and smiled again.

“You’ll come to understand. Soon, David. We live in dangerous times. Timing is critical.”

I had no clue what she was talking about. Then she came and hugged me, and I held onto her tightly, almost afraid to let her go.

That night, the threats started.

In retrospect, it seems like an obvious impact from the interview that morning. Within minutes of Face the Nation airing, somebody had already started using #SaboIsFake and by noon it was the top trending topic on both Twitter and Facebook. Later our tech guru traced it back to a single post on Twitter. It was from an obscure rabbi in Kansas City:

As the day wore on, more and more violent tweets showed up, and it was impossible to keep up with them. Thousands of posts discussed assassinating Erika. For the first time, I felt ashamed to be American. Even if people didn’t believe the whole daughter of God thing, what happened to the right to free speech, the right to assemble peacefully, and the right to religious expression?

By mid-afternoon, Twitter was drowning in calls for Erika to be killed. It wouldn’t surprise me if some nut-job decided to take on the challenge.

“We should go,” I said to Erika.

“This is our church, David. We can’t be run out. We’re just getting started.”

“Have you seen what’s going on? You’re public enemy number one.”

“You can’t worry about people who think that way. This is way out of their comfort zone, and they need time to reconsider things.”

“Yeah, but while they’re reconsidering, somebody is going to kill you.”

“There’s a police presence outside. That’s all we need.”

“That’s only two people.”

“Cowards who make silly threats are easily discouraged. We’ll be safe here.”

I looked out the window down to the street below. Everything seemed dangerous. The little old man walking his dog, the new mother rushing somewhere carrying a small baby, two teenaged boys holding hands as they casually went about their way. Nothing was threatening, but everything was.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. Besides, all the threats are good news.”

I turned and stared at her, seeing that playful smile again.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll bite. How is it good news?”

“Twenty-four hours ago, maybe one percent of the population knew my name. Now, it’d be tough to find anybody in the country who hasn’t heard it.”

“Any news is good news?”

“They’ll all hear the good news in their own time. In the meantime, they’ve all heard that God is my Father, and that’s a big first step.”

“But they don’t believe it.”

“Not yet. Many of them will change their minds tonight.”

“Midnight.”

“That’s right.”

I knew I wouldn’t get an answer, but I asked anyhow. “What’s going to happen?”

She laughed. “Be patient, and look up to the sky at midnight.”

Chapter 26

Colonel Peter Lassiter had kidnapped his first victim when he was only twenty-one years old. That was more than two decades ago. He remembered his first time fondly. It was an eight-year-old boy who had wandered away from his mother in a busy arcade. It was crowded with teenagers playing the latest games, and the boy (Tommy Karewell, Lassiter remembered) had to go to the bathroom. He was holding his crotch with one hand, ready to burst into tears, when Lassiter saw him.

It wasn’t particularly well-planned. He hadn’t known what his next steps were or certainly the long game, but he saw the boy and something clicked.

“Here, son,” he said with a soft smile. “I’ll help you.”

“I need to go pee real bad!”

“I know. Come with me and we’ll take care of that.”

He held out his hand, continued to smile, and nodded, letting the boy know everything was totally fine.

There was a side door. Lassiter knew that because he’d played in this arcade somewhere around a million times, or at least it seemed like that. He’d been there so many times, he knew he basically blended into the wallpaper, part of the furniture.

“Hurry,” pleaded Tommy.

“This way.”

He led Tommy outside. The door led to a remote back part of the building. Only maintenance people ever used the door.

“This isn’t the bathroom.”

“It’s okay. It’s better than a bathroom.”

Why did he have chloroform in his car? Because he was prepared. He knew the next chapter of his life would need it, and so he was able to knock out the kid easily. Tommy never screamed, even when he must have realized something was horribly wrong.

The ransom demands followed, and that’s when he learned his first lesson. Just because a kid shows up to a birthday party at an arcade, that doesn’t mean his parents have any money.

He killed the kid two days later and buried the body in the woods outside San Diego.

When he finished he took the shovel and smashed it against a nearby tree. “Fuckin’ waste of time.”

He took a second whack at the tree before calming down.

The second kidnapping went much better. That time it was a teenaged boy wandering the beach. Lassiter saw the styled hair, the expensive ripped jeans, the leather backpack, and the guitar he had strung around his neck. He might have looked like a wanderer, but he came from money.

Lassiter waited, walking in the shallow water, until the boy got closer.

“Hey, Bud! Got a light?” Lassiter held out an unlit joint.

The teen almost walked right by, but the joint was calling to him. He shrugged and walked over to Lassiter.

“You sharing?”

“If you have a light.”

The boy kicked off his sandals and set the guitar down on the sand. He dug into his backpack, and while he was doing that Lassiter walked to him and put a rope around his neck, pulling tightly.

The teen dropped his backpack and tried to pull the rope away from his neck, but it was no use. Lassiter pulled as hard as he could, and after a minute or so, the victim stopped struggling. Lassiter dropped him on the sand and took one last look around. As he expected, there was nobody on the beach to be seen. There was a reason he chose this isolated location.

The boy’s name was Jason Anderson, and sure enough, his parents were loaded. They quickly paid the $100,000 ransom, but Lassiter was worried because the boy could tell the cops what he looked like and how he’d picked him up.

So, Lassiter killed Jason Anderson, and learned his second lesson. None of the victims could be allowed to see him or know anything about his operation.

He used the $100,000 as seed money to set up what would eventually become his kidnapping empire. Within three years, before his 25th birthday, he found the formula he needed. That’s when he’d set up his base and hired the best staff he could to do the dirty work for him. They never met him, and they didn’t care. As long as they got their cut from each kidnapping, they didn’t even want to know the boss.

The formula had worked well for the past fifteen years. One of his staff would take the victim and keep them locked up in the local vault. They were totally sedated the whole time, so they couldn’t say anything about who was involved or where they were kept. The ransom asked for a million bucks, to be paid by bitcoin, and after two days, the victim was either released or killed.

Magic.

The formula could be repeated endlessly across the country.

Now, though, Colonel Peter Lassiter wanted more. There was money in his scheme but no particular excitement anymore.

Today, he was making a list (and he chuckled as he thought of checking it twice, as if he were the reverse Santa Claus).

There were four names remaining on the list. He was trying to work out who the best victim would be. There were a lot of factors. Who had the worst protection? Who could actually get the most ransom money? How would he do the kidnapping? Could he even find their schedule to work out the best opportunity?

Of course, he could. That last one was a given.

At the top of the list was Taylor Swift. She had more money than God, it seemed, and she was the most famous person on his hit list. He already had her schedule for the next week printed, and there was a key point where she would be flying in a private plane from LaGuardia to LAX. That would be perfect.

The second person was Giles Hamilton, who had invented an app for smartphones that allowed security access for all devices in your home, connecting through the electrical grid to cheap devices (sold separately) that monitored everything. He was worth well over a billion dollars. The downside was that few people knew his name. Not much glitz there.

The next was a top Hollywood actress. Lassiter didn’t watch many movies, so he didn’t recognize her name. She would be easier, but she didn’t have deep pockets like Swift.

And the last name was Erika Sabo. The more he stared at the names, the more his eye was drawn to hers.

Little security, publicly available information about her scheduling, and her church probably had tons of money rolling in. Lots of positives. The only negative was that she wasn’t as well known as the others, so the publicity may not be as widespread.

Not as exciting.

But, maybe exciting enough.

He googled her again, to find photos of her from every angle. Every day there seemed to be tons more images. Her name was spreading. Her appearance on The Tonight Show the prior evening had increased her name recognition ten-fold. Maybe that would continue to happen, especially if the parlor trick she’d planned for tonight panned out. Like everyone else, he had no idea why she wanted people to look outside at midnight, but he’d be doing just that. If it was a good trick, her value would skyrocket.

But, Taylor Swift was already a superstar…

Decisions, decisions.

Like everything else Lassiter did, though, he knew that somewhere in his sub-conscious, the decision had already been made. He stared again at Sabo’s name and smiled.

Chapter 27

The day started off the same as any other. Nobody talked about it being anything special. I checked the photos I’d taken the day before and selected a grouping that would work well. I was cataloging everything Erika did with photos, and every day had way too many pictures to use them all. I uploaded fifty or so and reluctantly deleted the rest. I suppose there could be a case for keeping them, as part of some comprehensive record of every bite she took or every laugh she shared with her team.

Screw it. I chose the ones I thought best represented Erika’s day without overdoing it.

What would today bring? None of us knew. I think if anyone would have known it would have been Chris Spinnie. Over the past couple months, she’d grown especially close to Erika. I knew Erika used Chris as a sounding board for new ideas.

This time, though, Chris just shook her head when I asked.

“Nope,” she said. “Got no idea.”

I looked hopefully at Erika’s other closest followers, but nobody seemed to have a clue.

Our Lady God was good at keeping secrets.

We knew only what she’d said in the interviews… something was going to happen at midnight, and we were all to be outdoors at that time to watch it.

Tonight was a full moon. Other than that, I wasn’t aware of anything special. It was a warm spring day, and the temperature would still be quite nice, in the low fifties, and it was going to be clear skies. I wondered if Erika had arranged that, but it was most likely a coincidence.

Or maybe not. The thing about Erika is that none of us really saw her do anything that looked like a miracle. Maybe she’d cleared the skies for us tonight. How would we ever know?

That was one of the reasons she gave for not doing any public miracles. If it was something small, like making the weather nice, how could she prove it was her? If it was something closer to home for somebody, like curing somebody’s illness, the skeptics would say the patient was in on it and had never been sick in the first place. Anything that couldn’t be immediately explained would be challenged by magicians, who would then try to duplicate whatever she did.

She didn’t want that kind of nonsense. In interviews, she’d say miracles weren’t necessary. “What is necessary is faith.” That was her best-known comment, and she’d delivered it a hundred times since coming out to the public.

This time, though, she’d promised a miracle. Every newspaper in the country and every news site on the internet carried the commitment. Most of them claimed it was a hoax, and cited examples of magicians like Houdini or David Blaine who seemed to perform miracles. They were tricks. In the country’s eyes, Erika was already a fraud.

At 10:00, Erika came out of her study and nodded at me. I walked over to her.

“Morning,” I said.

“It’s gonna be a good day.”

“Any special shots you want?”

“You’ll know what to get. You always do.”

Erika always complimented her staff, which was surprisingly good at motivating us.

She picked out a banana and slowly peeled it. “You want to ask me something?”

I felt guilty, and maybe I looked it. I think, sometimes, I felt overwhelmed by reverence. Being in the presence of somebody you know for a fact is a supernatural creature is overwhelming. I sometimes felt my body shake in disbelief. No, not disbelief, because I did believe. It was more like being crushed by the truth. And even after all this time, I was intimidated by her, wanting to ask her questions but afraid she’d think I was an idiot.

Well, no time like the present, especially when she’d invited me.

My mind went to my grandmother. Ariela Abelman was still the person who I was the closest to. Even though she’d died four months earlier, I thought of her every day. I thought of her ordeal as a child, being sent to the Nazi extermination camps, and how she only lived by the fluke of having Russian troops happen to arrive at the right time.

“Why does God allow evil people to live?” I stared at Erika, as if challenging her. “Why allow Adolph Hitler to be born?”

She nodded and took a bite of her banana before replying.

“Ever since we created people, there were two concepts the Lord wanted humanity to experience. Trust and love. In order to trust people, they had to have free will, the ability to make their own decisions, not what God wanted for them. We wanted people to live their own lives, not the life my father would have created for them. It was the right choice.”

“How does that answer my question?”

“God created evolution. That meant living things could strive to their best possible selves. Animals evolved to better suit their environment, and so did humans. Sometimes evolution creates better traits, and sometimes not so much. The good traits carry on, while the bad get weeded out.”

I nodded. I was the science guy. I knew how evolution worked.

“A child is born. Maybe he has a defective gene. Maybe he just lives in a bad environment and learns that to survive, he can’t play nicely with others. Maybe he just makes bad choices through his life, even if those choices lead him to run a corrupt government.”

She stopped for another bite of banana, and I grabbed one to join her.

“We don’t decide who’s making the right choices or the wrong choices. We love all people. That’s the second aspect we wanted humans to experience: honest love for one another and for God.”

“How’s that turned out?”

“Overall, not so bad, but not great. If we were marking a test, we’d give humans a C+ for love. It’s crazy when you know you only have a very short life span, and you don’t take advantage of the positives you’re provided.”

“My grandmother wasn’t given all that many positives. She had dozens of relatives who died in the gas chambers. You can’t tell me God loved Hitler.”

“I can. Because he did. God loves all his children, even if they hurt Him. He hates what Hitler did, despises it, but every human is one of His creations. He loves all of you, and He wants you to all, one day, reciprocate that love. It’s not a lot to ask.”

I wasn’t so sure of that.

She hugged me and kissed my cheek. “You have a lot to learn. Fortunately, you have time.”

I think about what Erika told me a lot. I have nothing but time here in prison, and she was right about one thing. I have a lot to learn. Even after being so close to Erika right to the end, I still feel I barely scratched the surface of understanding her message. I never could believe God could love purely evil people, but then I certainly believe Erika was serious when she told me that.

Lots to think about.

The rest of the day was uneventful. Erika spent much of her time secluded. I knew she was working on her next webcast, but it almost seemed like she was hiding.

What if the event at midnight was a flop? The internet would crucify her.

At 11:45 p.m., we all went outside. Without any prior plan, we formed a semi-circle around Erika, surrounding her with our hopes and prayers.

Part of me knew this was going to be a huge failure. I wanted to tell her to call the whole damned thing off. But, like all the other nine of her disciples, we stood silent, hoping for something to happen.

The full moon cast shadows from us all.

I wore a light jacket. It wasn’t cold. It was as beautiful a night as you could ask for. The lights from the church were all turned off. Only nature lightened the yard.

Nobody spoke. Somewhere in the distance, I thought I could hear a bullfrog, but it might have been my imagination.

Erika got down on her knees and looked up.

We followed her. Again, nobody spoke. We all fell to our knees.

I was in the middle behind her, so I couldn’t see her face at all.

Everything was silent. I wanted to keep checking my watch, but I held out. I would know when midnight arrived.

I did have my camera ready to pull up, whenever I saw whatever it was.

I’d never voluntarily prayed in my life. Even after being one of Erika Sabo’s disciples, I never did. I served her, I followed her, I wanted to do right by her, but praying really wasn’t my thing.

Until then.

I closed my eyes and silently asked God to help her.

When I opened my eyes, I blinked, and then the sky burst into fire.

It was like the fourth of July. Starwheels of explosive lights crossed the sky, a million shooting stars blasting above us, each only living a fraction of a second. There were so many streaks of light, I had to squint. It was like looking into the sun.

There was no meteor shower that should have happened that night. And certainly, no meteor shower in history had ever been so bright and totally sky-encompassing.

Over the years, I’d photographed many showers, so I was familiar with what they looked like. This was the mother of all meteor showers, the sky filled with bright streaks while not a sound was heard.

At the time, I had no clue how long the show lasted. A minute? Five minutes? Whatever it was, everyone on the lawn behind our church was captivated, mesmerized, totally transfixed on Erika Sabo’s miracle.

Finally, she lifted her arms up in the air, and the light show stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

My eyes were full of tears, and I wiped them away. It was much darker than it was earlier, and for a second, I thought my pupils had contracted due to the massive fireworks we’d witnessed.

But, no.

My eyes were fine. It wasn’t anything to do with them. It was dark because above us there were only the stars providing us with light.

The moon was gone.