Bonus Chapter: Cloning Jesus Chapter 2.

Hello again! I had some spare time so decided to finish chapter 2. Maybe I'll do that going forward; edit two chapters per week. Don't forget Monday I'll be posting the first chapter of Peasant!

I'm not going to lie- something feels a little off about this chapter. It's I'd say 99% done, but I just can't put my finger on what it's issue is. That's one thing that's nice about putting my writing up like this; at any given time I can go back and edit it if I find a way to make it better; also a plus for the reader, that means anytime you want to re-read it means that it will be of better quality.

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy chapter 2!

CHAPTER 2

“I believe in God, only I spell it nature.”

-Frank Lloyd Wright

(1867-1959)

            It took us nearly five years to find an actually valid blood sample of Christ.  It would have been impossible if we had tried even a year earlier than when we had started.  However, when the Human Genome Project came to a successful close and the data was published, a number of Canadian scientists wrote a computer program that has become an important tool for genealogists ever since.  With the program, eloquently titled the Human Genome Interface or HGI (we referred to it with its nickname, ‘The Mutt’, and you’ll soon see why), a person could enter in any sequence of DNA and see exactly what that person would look like and even get a report of who they were, biologically speaking of course.  In addition, one could decide which genes they wanted or which to forego, meaning the program, slowly at first, but eventually became quite popular with parents planning pregnancy.  People love to play God.  I suppose makes them feel important.  However, I assure you our reasons for cloning God were much more scientific.

            Using the HGI we were able to determine a template, and through arduous work developed a process that would allow us to assemble the DNA using advances made in 3D printers, which were already being used to assemble organs and limbs for transplant by the time we began this daunting project. Though it was not exactly My or Dr. Goffel’s forte, we researched the Bible, page by page by page, starting with the New Testament, we created a basic picture of what Jesus would have looked like.  To be on the safe side, so to speak, and safeguard our work as a double check, we looked quite a bit into the Old Testament too for genealogical purposes since Jesus was related to David and Solomon, or so most of us had been taught by our peers and according to the Bible and various books on the subject.  From that basic picture we then used the HGI “Mutt” program, we extrapolated a DNA model that although at first appeared somewhat questionable and even dubious, we would later prove to be an almost near perfect match of Jesus’ own DNA.  You’ll soon see why it became so apparent that this was the actual DNA model of Jesus and not a mistake or incorrect analysis and guesstimation on our own part.

            Of course when doing this, we couldn’t just go with the classic look of Jesus, lying on a cross, white, very European looking.  Pretty Germanic in appearance too, if I might add.  Almost every culture throughout history had a depiction of Christ looking like their average conception of themselves. The first portraits of him that have been found were Roman, and he looked very white. In the Middle East with the first portraits of Jesus from that area, he looked Middle Eastern. Throughout history Jesus has been white, Arabic, even black, and I’m assuming somewhere, Asian. Thus, we decided to start from the beginning. 

Line by line we analyzed the texts, assembling and creating the DNA from his parents, his grandparents, their parents and so on back to David.  From his ancestors, we then traced the recorded ancestral line down numerous times, checking and rechecking, correcting and adjusting whenever we had to. This was made difficult because there are actually two separate and somewhat different family trees of Christ; the first we found located in the book of Matthew, and the latter and more detailed in the book of Luke. We did the best we could considering how much the two differed.

 In this fashion we compiled a large list of traits from which we derived what we believed the DNA of Jesus to be with The Mutt program.  Of course we had to allow room for error, but we were sure our analysis was correct, and over time we eventually proved that the DNA really was his, give or take a few matters we were wrong in.

            At this point, we pondered, where exactly could we even find Jesus’ DNA?  We couldn’t be satisfied with the DNA model we had derived using the Human Genome Interface, we still needed the actual DNA of Christ to clone him.  Our readings and analysis of the Bible made us doubt we would find any of Jesus’ sperm – the Bible was very vague on the subject of whether or not he had had sex. I’m looking at you Mary Magdalene, and whatever relationship she had with Christ.

            So we turned to the only choice left, blood.  We spent countless hours reviewing ancient texts to see how we would or if we even could find some of his blood.  We looked over three of the four supposed spear of Longinus, the spear of destiny, which most would think would be the most obvious source for Christ’s blood, as according to the Bible and history, the spear was supposedly what actually killed Jesus when it pierced his side, spilling his blood. We traveled first to Vienna, Austria to test the purported spear kept there, the very one Hitler had obtained during World War II. When that proved for naught we then schlepped to Echmiadzin, Armenia, and later to Poland for another claimant spear. Although there was blood on two of the spears, none of the DNA was intact, having deteriorated over the centuries or matched our model. Because of this we could not conclusively determine whether it was the blood of Christ or not, and thus was unusable. The Vatican never contacted us back over whether or not we could test the spear they held. So in the end the Spear of Destiny turned out to be a dud for us.

            The second place we looked was the Shroud of Turin.  We had tested the legendary shroud because many viewed it as a holy relic because something like the shape of Jesus was on it in the form of apparent blood stains.  In the end we discovered the Christ-like stain on it was caused by grease and not in fact by blood, and in any case we confirmed the Shroud was not from his time either, having been made sometime in the middle of the fourteenth century. We knew this would likely be the case when we went to it, but we believed it would be better than our last option; the cross.

            When we published our finding on the shroud, as so many before us had, it drew at least to us an unsurprising and unfortunately expected outrage from Catholics and Catholic organizations.  Amongst those was also the Catholic League.  ‘How dare we question a religious relic?’ were the words of one religious authority on the matter.  We gave no apology, and certainly did not back down or retract our finding. How could we?  This was the truth, to retract what we found would be wrong, false, and in a sense lying just to appease those upset with our findings. 

            In truth though, because the shroud had failed to provide the DNA sample we needed, we lost interest in it altogether, ignoring the religious official’s and others’ like his words and outcries. You could say we were zealous in our determination to obtain that sample. After that incident however, we vowed to keep a much lower profile and leave all our research and findings unpublished until everything was said and done. We didn’t want anything else we found to potentially interfere again with what our true intent was.

            Why though, people worship a stained cloth, you tell me.  I guarantee if there was a grilled sandwich with Jesus’ face burned into it, people would also pray to it, believing it a miracle.

            We were disheartened by these negative results because we realized that meant there was only one place else we could still plausibly as well as reliably find the DNA… and if you guessed the cross, you were right.  The only problem with using this source was that the cross had been broken into thousands of pieces over the years.  And to make matters worse, here’s the funny thing;  If you were to take every shred of wood from all the thousands of churches in the world claiming to possess a piece of the original, you could build a boat roughly a quarter the size of the Titanic or the rough equivalent of half of Noah’s arc.  You can imagine the hell we went through to find the right piece.

            We searched for three years on a surprisingly high budget. What can I say, universities will pay for anything. Apart from that, our patent on the revolutionary technique for assembling DNA could have made us rich if we weren’t so devoted to our endeavor. In fact, several companies worked together, even creating a dummy corporation with the sole purpose to fund us.  After all, this would be the first clone of any human being and they could profit from it immensely if through cloning it became an easier, cheaper and more legal source of stem cells rather than using those from aborted fetuses. And that was just one way our research pushed science forward. Cloning in the belief of many, and to a degree, myself as well, had the potential for limitless medical miracles.

            But while on this subject, and before I discuss our tribulations with the cross, let me discuss the matter of how we decided whom to clone first?  We considered Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Freud, George Washington, among many others. You name the historical figure, we in all likelihood considered them.  In the end we wanted the first person cloned to be significant, in short, somebody who mattered. Perhaps the most significant person in history. In the end, we eventually settled on Jesus Christ.  It all came from a joke; that he should be the first clone, but upon reflection realized that it could be done, especially with we had at our disposal after accumulating over the past few years, some in part due to our own previous research. The more we considered the idea the more and more we realized that it should be him.  What figure has affected history more than Christ? In essence, whether it be by his actions or his followers, what man has mattered more? Perhaps it was like trying to hit a dart board from a mile away, but we were resolved once we had made up our minds. If ever we wanted to make our own place in history, it would be there.

            The discovery that truly made our project and endeavor possible was made in late 2009 by Dr. Wakashitanamerana, a Japanese scientist when she discovered that DNA could hold a substantial amount of memory if analyzed in a certain way.  Before her pioneering work for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize, all scientists could do with DNA was copy it from the beginning of that DNA’s existence – the original birth of the person from which it had come.  Scientists had to essentially regrow the entire human being from birth.  But after her work, scientists could take a strand of DNA, search it for a specific moment in time, and then clone the person from that point in their life through the memory stored in the RNA.  Unfortunately though, the clone would have no memory of who they had been because memories are stored in the mind using an entirely different and yet to be understood chemical system.  A fascinating person and genius in her own right, Dr. Wakashitanamerana eventually went insane from the pressures of her genius and the expectations placed upon her because she’d won the Nobel Prize.   It didn’t help either that she had a phobia of awards – go figure.

            Ultimately we would spend three years searching for the blood of Christ.  We went around the world twice and would have gone around again had we not stumbled upon a very small church in the hills of southern Greece, not far from Istanbul.  On display in the small cloister of the church was a tiny piece of wood, a mere inch of it, which the congregants and priests claimed was part of the true cross, as it was called by Catholics.  It turned out they were right.  There was blood on it and thankfully since the journey had dragged on for so long until that time, the DNA of the blood matched ninety percent of the DNA model we had extrapolated using the ‘Mutt’ program- thus proving we had correctly (more or less) created our model of Christ’s DNA and that the blood on the wood was indeed Christ’s.  As luck would have it, this would prove to be a good match, and the amount of blood left on the piece of the cross would prove to be more than enough for us to do what we needed to. It was amazingly intact. A religious man would call it miraculous.

            In reality and upon reflection, what we went through was like finding a needle in a haystack. One in which you had only a vague idea of what the needle looked like, it’s dimensions or if there was even a needle there in the first place. But lady luck was smiling upon us, or perhaps it was God even, and there was actual DNA of Christ, and with it we could finally begin the cloning of Jesus, the first human to ever be cloned.

            The next problem that daunted our achievements thus far (and believe me, proving that Christ existed was and is an achievement in itself, even if one doesn’t believe in God) was where we could legally clone him.  Roughly three-quarters of the world had banned cloning and the country that was foremost in its technology at the time and also one of the few nations that still legally allowed the process to be done, was Israel.  We also found the symbology behind Christ being cloned in his legendary homeland somewhat fitting if not appropriately humorous, even.  With that in mind we settled on cloning him in the heart of the holy land, Jerusalem. We set our sights on a facility that had made headlines in 2004, the Rambam hospital, which was exploring human cloning for experimentation. It sounds Frankensteinish, but it was perfect.

            Thanks to Dr. Wakashitanamerana (or Dr. Wak, as I called her because even I have trouble pronouncing her name after our years of collaborating), within three months we had a fully grown human on our hands, but only after spending over twenty million between a wing of the hospital building, not to mention the near insane amount of money on the technology to do it. It would never have been as simple as growing a slurm from a petri dish- it was an incubation tank. The whole shebang. On more than one occasion Dr. Goffell voiced his opinion that it all seemed fantastically futuristic. In the end Jesus ended up being the third Christ we attempted to clone and the only one that lived.  The others had failed early into the process, much to our expectations and to a degree, despair.

            Some may have interpreted it as the will of God that the first two attempts failed and a sign that we should stop.  We chalked it up to faults on our own part, and through stubbornness and determination prevailed.

            People have often asked me during the ordeal and after why we didn’t just simply clone Christ from the theorized model of DNA we had already assembled.  This is an admirably intelligent question, but there two problems had we wanted to.  First, we had no way of actually knowing that the DNA model we had was that of Christ; we needed his blood and DNA to match up with our own theorized model so we would know there was actually a Jesus to clone in the first place.  You can’t just go on faith in science.  I am a firm believer that faith has no place mingling with science.  You need facts to explain something and even if we had the technology to just clone him from the DNA model we had assembled we very well may have been wrong about whom we had cloned.  As it turned out though, we weren’t, but up until that point we were just theorizing about what he was like with the genetic model we had created.  We needed his blood, at the very least, as a double check for our model to prove its accuracy.

            And it was only once we had that blood we could synthesize copies from its long dead and dormant material. The second problem with doing that is there is simply no way to do it without the raw biological material. We needed more than just a template to work with, and it is far easier to replicate DNA when you have a source than to manufacture our own from scratch, which would have made the three month process into six as we assembled the various nucleotides, RNA among other components. The DNA model we had made was just an electronic guide, though an essential one. Without it, identifying the blood and DNA of Jesus would have been impossible.  We needed the real blood or some other biological material from Christ for our best chance to actually clone him.            Some of the crew, technicians, and scientists thought as he came out of the cloning chamber it would be as if God had.  They were sorely mistaken.  Out stumbled a man, nothing more and nothing less.  He shivered in the cool air and breathed like we did.  However, that didn’t stop the Christians among us from crossing themselves in his presence, some even dropping to their knees in worship.

            After his “birth,” we spent the better part of his first year teaching him as much as we could about the world he lived in.  Although he had the body of Christ, his mind was still a blank slate.  He knew nothing, barely how to walk, and hadn’t a chance in hell the ability to already speak.  He was like a child, only in the body of a man.  We had to teach him virtually everything, ranging from simple concepts such as using the bathroom to the more complex ones an individual experiences in life. You should have seen him the first time we got him to use a fork; it was priceless.

            After he had learned to walk and fully use his body, we began taking him for visits outside of the building.  It was fascinating to watch and study him, I have notebook upon journals of notes I took recording every detail concerning the development of our Christ. It was as if we had given a blind man sight.  He wanted to learn everything, and with each passing day his curiosity grew and grew.  When Dr. Goffell later referred to those moments as similar to what Frankenstein must have gone through, I would feel my cheeks flush.  The most difference was he was not at all depressed or blood thirsty.

            We soon found he was incredibly intelligent, learning everything that we taught him quickly, and even things that we didn’t teach him that he picked up on his own. We also found he had a knack for languages, as well.  We taught him basic English, which he learned quickly.  His enunciation and manner of speaking had a hint of my own New Yorker accent because I was his primary English tutor.  He picked up Hebrew from the Israeli doctors and researchers on our staff, as well as from the people he spoke with on the streets around our large building and in the open-air markets.  It only took him a few months to master that language.  By the end of his initial studies, he could fluently speak English, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Italian.  We tried German with him, but after several lessons he threw a fit and refused to learn any more of the language, saying it was too guttural and ugly.

            He often did that, dividing the world into two categories.  As soon as he learned the two words; beautiful and ugly and their meanings, he began to label everything as either of the two.  White and black, light and dark. He was like that with everything.  Back then there was never an in-between, no gray area.  It was either black or white, good or bad.  We found this interesting because of the fact that he always seemed to judge things and he was good at it too.  He had a natural sense of what was right and what was wrong, a damn near flawless code of ethics, and a perfect understanding of our basic laws.

            By the end of the first year, just six months since he had stepped from our cloning chamber, we were ready to take Jesus to the next level.

Cloning Jesus Introduction and Chapter 1

Well, I'm posting this a tad early. I got into a writing fever, so decided to just go with it. I hope you guys enjoy; this is the beginning of my manuscript for Cloning Jesus. A 370+ page I hope to someday get published. It's a satire on modern Christianity. So take it with a grain of salt.

I last opened this book to edit it in 2009, but found I had run into a problem; I just kept adding and adding material, and it was derailing the manuscript. So I essentially locked it as it was, with the intent to pick it up again when perhaps I had either matured (I started this when I was 16) or had some idea on how to resolve this issue.

Well, I opened it again for the first time in 6 years and 6 months and 11 days now that I'm 25 and live in Israel. I figure it's a fitting location to finish the manuscript and begin working toward publishing it. I had forgotten it was so long, and this led to a kind of daunting shock. But then I began reading, and let's just say I began to remember how much fun I had with this story. 

I think you guys will too.

INTRODUCTION

            My name is Eric Nowell and I was born in 1966.  I went to Yale when I was seventeen years old and after I graduated, enrolled in the Harvard medical and graduate school, where I received my doctorate, all in only seven years.  I was hailed as a genius by my colleagues and professors.  I majored in Biology and did my graduate work on the structure of DNA and cloning processes.  Because of my research, I’ve often been called the pioneer of cloning, but in all honesty, my associate and partner Dr. Chris Goffell is more that than I am.

            I’m not going to lie, the story I have to tell is one you already know, but damn if I can’t admit it’s pretty weird. I suppose we should have realized it could have been nothing short of when we cloned Jesus Christ. But in the end it’s the truth, from one who was closest to Christ. Literally as much as one physically could have been. But as far as truth goes we each have our own role in deciding it for ourselves- all I can do is present my experience as honestly as possible.

            And boy, that story is incredible. But let me tell you about me before we get into the meat of things and what happened.

            I lived a good childhood, though entirely uneventful.  If you had ever told me that I would someday meet Jesus or that I would be responsible for his cloning, I would have laughed.  My parents weren’t religious, not in any sense at all.  They didn’t believe in fate or destiny. They believed life was what you made it and pushed me hard because of those beliefs.  That is probably why I am an atheist, why I call no religion my own.

            When I was young I smoked pot, got drunk and slept around.  It was fun, but not too much fun.  Some people, regardless of that, would say I’m cautious.  My parents thought I was reckless with my education, where I wasted my time even though I got my doctorate in a record amount of it.  I regret nothing today.  If given the chance, I would do it all again.  All that was achieved was by no means enabled by caution.  Brashness, courage, and yes, perhaps even the recklessness my parents once spoke to me of so long ago is what made it all possible.  What Dr. Goffell and I did, what we achieved, has been recorded in the annals of history.  I doubt we will ever be forgotten because of it.  A reward I think, in and of itself.

CHAPTER 1

“Of all the religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most tolerance, but until now Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.”

-Voltaire

(1694-1778)

            “Bill, it’s good to have you with us again,” Terry Blake on CNN started, the opening line for every person who has been on the network more than once.

            “Thank you, it’s good to be back here,” Bill Donahue replied and nodded his head, his double jowls jiggling slightly.  I was almost mesmerized by them, their movement nearly hypnotic. Age had not treated the man kindly after more than thirty years serving the Catholic League.

            The man welcomed back to the show, Bill Donahue, had been President of the Catholic League since 1993.  It is an American civil rights group for Catholics, which sounds good, even noble, until one realizes that they consider anything that goes against their beliefs to violate their civil rights, even if it doesn’t have anything to do with, or affect them in any way.  It is an odd organization that under Donahue has become most notable for attacking popular culture whenever it doesn’t align with their beliefs.  However, because Donahue is considered one of the most influential Catholics of the twentieth century, especially in America, and because of this he was there on air with the anchor.  We had personally requested that he be present to give a religious view on what we were about to do, and by request I mean insisted. Otherwise we would take our announcement elsewhere. One of the greatest of not only the 21^st century, but potentially millennium. Don’t blame me- It was Jesus’ idea. We had originally wanted to do this at a conference, but of course, he insisted we do it in this manner.

Bill Donahue didn’t know that though, believing instead that he had been invited to discuss a recent House legislative bill his organization had pushed through.

            “So it’s been four years since you were last here,” Blake cut in quickly.

            “Yeah with what’s his name... the ‘artist’ with that despicable, genitalia exposed chocolate statue of our Lord he made and called art...” Donahue struggled with the memory.

            “Cosimo Cavallaro,” Blake offered helpfully. Considering that had been over twenty years ago, even I was surprised how on his game Terry was.

            “Yeah, that loser,” Donahue commented condescendingly.

            Blake nodded politely at Donahue’s remark, considering whether or not to laugh. He didn’t entirely agree with Donahue’s view of the man and his odd art, but breaking the tension, Blake pushed on with the conversation. 

            “So in the fifteen years since last here, would you tell us about what gains have the Catholic league made?” he asked.

            Donahue smiled. He loved that subject.

            “I’m glad you ask.  We have managed to raise nationwide mass attendance by almost fourteen percent, and we also pushed through a bill that banned the teaching of evolution in Georgia last year, not to mention numerous movements such as having the bible used as a textbook for teaching science on evolution.”

            “An interesting piece of legislation, controversy aside, and one that has received national attention, correct?”

            “Well… I don’t know much about controversy. Children should know how things actually came to be as they are… About our lord, not that we are related to chimps. Yes,” Donahue concurred, putting particular emphasis on that word.

            “But don’t you think that both the bill and introduction of the bible in classrooms may have hindered student’s education, as well ignores their first amendment rights?” Blake asked cool as a cat, as if he’d rehearsed it a hundred times, which in fact he had.

            “You know, I get asked that a lot.  Do I think it ignores the first amendment?  No, not at all.  All we’re saying is if you won’t teach creationism alongside evolution or intelligent design, then give the student a chance to decide for themselves, unbiased, which is exactly what is being done for the students.  They were given a biased opinion on the matter and now we’ve made it unbiased.”  Donahue looked at Blake, his answer smooth as water on a fine calm day.

            “With… giving them Bibles?”

            “Yes.” Donahue responded.

            “But, ah, some might think of the those students who are Islamic, Buddhist or members of any of the other faiths the world offers-“

            “This also gives us a chance to let them see the truth and decide if that’s what’s best for them if their parents won’t”

            Blake raised his eyebrows at these words, and acted quickly to cut him off. Donahue sure loved his tirades, which had only gotten more pronounced with time. Give the man a pulpit and he’d probably speak over the Pope if possible.

            “But couldn’t one argue that the students were already being given a balanced perspective, seeing as their education is secular-“

“Pfah, secular.” Donahue retorted.

“-And thus unbiased toward any faith. And concerning those students who are Christian, consider most probably attend Church, and have already chosen God?  Wouldn’t the teaching of evolution arguably counter-balance that?” Blake asked, remaining as calm as could be.  You couldn’t tell from most of Blake’s reporting that he has a very negative view on fundamental Christians, but I’d met and discussed the issue with him prior to the show.  I guess you’d expect that view since his father is a rabbi though.

            “Well, no, I mean these teachers advocate that God doesn’t exist by teaching the filth.  Do I look like a monkey to you?” Donahue asked the news announcer.

            “No, of course not,” Blake answered as deadpan as possible. 

That would be a discredit to the primates, and chuckled at my own thoughts and leaned back in my chair as I continued to watch from the adjacent studio I was in.

            “And tell me Terry,” Donahue asked, using Terry’s first name to give the viewers the appearance that Blake and he were closer, better friends than they actually were. In fact, they had never spoken before this broadcast in their entire lives. The last time Bill Donahue had been on the show it had been hosted by a different anchor. Donahue was smooth alright, but in, I checked my watch, five minutes, the water’s about to get choppy, I thought to myself.

 Donahue continued his inane question, “Tell me Terry, do you look like a monkey?  Do any of the fine people you work with look like monkeys to you?”

            “Well I certainly hope I don’t, we pay the people who do our makeup quite a lot,” Blake replied.  I almost laughed aloud  at Blake’s response, who dipped his head as he prepared to speak again.

            “Legally though, is this bill viable?  When creationism was first brought into schools it was found to violate the Establishment Clause, an important part of the First Amendment.  The Supreme Court ruled it was illegal and if taught in schools, would mean the government was promoting one particular religion above others, violating the First Amendment.  The same was found for intelligent design, which, at least legally, is the same as creationism.”

            “Ah, that is true,” Donahue conceded.  How could he not? Fact was fact. “But laws do change upon time and review,” he continued. Touche, I found myself thinking, mildly surprised I found myself agreeing with him at least on that. Let’s hope they leave it be.

            “Are you prepared for the lengthy legal battle that will most likely ensue?”

            “Naturally,” Donahue scoffed, “we’re determined to make this bill law.”

            “How will you go about that?” Blake inquired, genuinely curious.  At what he said next, Donahue almost had a twinkle in his eyes.

            “Because if enough people complain, any law can be changed.  I’ve talked to rabbis and imams, and they agree with this bill.”

            “But wouldn’t it, if passed, essentially redefine the First Amendment, or at least make it particularly selective, thus undermining it?” Blake asked and Donahue nodded.

            “We’ll do what we have to, to stop the filth from being taught. If that means making sure the first amendment is treated as our founding fathers intended-”

            “I see, but I highly doubt our founding fathers had the support of intelligent design or creationism in mind, point in fact, they wrote the first amendment specifically because of such beliefs and how they had no part in anything to do with the government, which is what public schools do. But, you interpret it as you will I suppose.” Blake said disconcertedly.  He didn’t like what he heard one bit, but being on CNN and the news, he tried his best to be impartial and unbiased.  However, he, like the rest of the network, usually failed at that.

            Blake looked down briefly, shuffling a stack of papers on his desk. He looked back at Donahue, a bemused smirk on his face. Game time, I thought.

            “What is the Catholic League’s opinion on cloning, Mr. Donahue?” he asked as he looked up again, abruptly changing the topic and jumping it forward.  I could see he was already pointing the conversation in the direction it needed to go. Donahue looked caught off guard, obviously having not expected the question.

            “Well,” he started, blinking. “I obviously can’t speak for everyone in our organization, but I’d say that we are generally completely against it.  It is an affront to God and an abomination of human nature.  The Bible couldn’t be any clearer on that.”

            “But aren’t twins just nature’s way of cloning?” Blake asked countering coolly.  He in fact had a twin brother.

            “If you want to look at it like that, sure. But the difference between the two is that a twin is born from a mother with God’s will, while the other…” he trailed off, hesitating on how to phrase the rest of his thought, “-while the other is born in a metal and glass cylinder and grown like a plant.  It’s an abomination and it isn’t how God intended things to go and for us to act,” Donahue finished, quite triumphantly I might add.  He looked downright pleased with himself.

            “So you would say that a clone of a person is not the same as a human?” Blake continued, pursuing the topic.

            “Yes, yes I would,” Donahue agreed.

            “Why?’ Blake asked.  Donahue looked at him for a second before answering, considering his words.

            “Because clones don’t have souls.  Only humans do.  A clone is not a human, especially not in God’s eyes.”

            “So if we were to clone say, you, your clone wouldn’t have a soul?” Blake asked.

            “No of course not!” Donahue started. “There is only one soul that is William A. Donahue, and it’s in my body, and it’s already being used,” he said, smiling.

            “Now say we were to clone somebody such as Jesus, would the clone in that case have a soul?” Blake asked.  I could almost see the faint smile that I knew he wanted to wear.  He knew exactly where this conversation would go, and he knew that his place in the annals of human history was almost assured.  It was but moments away.

            Donahue’s smile faded and an ugly look crossed his visage, his jowls trembling ferociously.

            “Terry, I don’t like that question and I take offense to it,” he stated angrily.

            “My apologies-” Blake started but Donahue cut him off.

            “You should be sorry for a remark like that, asking a deliberately inappropriate question.  You should feel terrible,” he finished and the ugly expression on his face grew more severe.  Terry Blake looked away for a moment, then turned his gaze back to Donahue.

            “If you ever met a clone, what would you do?” he asked Donahue tentatively, who continued to glare angrily at him.

            “I would probably cross the street and get as far away from him as possible.” He finished.  I couldn’t help but think of the 1960s with that remark.

            “Well Mr. Donahue, on that note we have a surprise for you.” Blake said, suddenly sounding deservedly smug. I don’t know how Blake had kept quiet knowing what he was about to reveal. I suppose it had something to do with our confidentiality contract, but even that wouldn’t have held me back if I were in his position.

            “What surprise?” Donahue growled, suddenly finding himself nervous and not at all happy with where the conversation had taken a turn.  He had much preferred speaking about his vaunted bill and wondered vaguely if he should leave.

            Blake rotated his swivel chair to face a screen that was behind and above where they were seated. Throughout their exchange it had been showing nighttime photos of New York City.

            “Would you please welcome Mr. Jesus Christ the Second; the clone of Christ!” Blake announced, smiling, clearly to the viewers rather than the other who was with him.  I half expected there to be clapping as he announced it.  Too bad the room was empty save for himself, Donahue and the various cameramen and crew.  Blake had the look on his face of a child that had just found his pile of presents on Christmas morning and was undoubtedly thinking about what miracles this would do for his already good ratings.

            Donahue’s face turned bright red, “What is the meaning of this?” he cried out angrily, his face flushing to a dark purple.  He was cut off as the screen changed, and upon it was the kindly face of a Euro-Arabic looking man.  He had a distinctive nose, a thick head of lengthy brown hair that fell past his shoulders, and light piercing green eyes that looked directly at Terry Blake.

            “What’s up Mr. Blake, it’s good to be here,” he said in his fairly deep, though still musical voice.  In my opinion he coincidentally sounded quite a bit like Jeff Goldblum, but my colleagues have mostly disagreed with me on that. It’s a minor point of contention and disagreement, nothing more. In the end, Jesus always had his own unique voice. Donahue did nothing but stare at the man dumbfounded, unbelieving of the prank that he was sure was being played in front of his very eyes.

            And that was how the world got their very first look at the clone of Jesus Christ, on CNN with Donahue howling in outrage in the background, Terry Blake smiling coolly while Dr. Goffell and I watched. We both agreed it was one hell of a way to announce what we had achieved.

Short Story #1 The Enlightened

Here is the short story I published on Amazon. Self-published, of course.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated! Negative, positive, it's all good in my book if it might help me either with the material, or keeping my spirits up to keep writing.

I hope you enjoy!

The Enlightened

By: Alexander Borschel

            The monk looked upward, the horizon of white and blue filling his view. The storm had passed, though it had been weeks since he had last moved. He had been meditating, as his many brothers, identical in form and appearance, had been until that moment. The Great Buddha spoke that  it is good in our contemplations to pause and appreciate what we have in the moment; for everything is impermanent and there is only so much time to appreciate it, he politely reminded himself, surveying the dramatic landscape.

            Jagged mountains of the Himalayas filled his view. The land centuries before had been known as Tibet, later China, and then… nothing. It mattered little, the mountains saw the changes of the world but stirred not, unmoved by the simple plight of the mortal algae that had briefly settled upon its face. Man came, man went, it matters not, the monk reminded himself, as able to change the past as he could interrupt the flow of karma.

            The monk had long ago given up his name, as all his fellow brothers had done. Selflessness, the act was but a step closer on the Noble Eightfold path to enlightenment, as were the yellow and orange robes the monk wore, pale from centuries of use, and many different, though brief, owners. The clothing only just fit his thin and sleek form.

            He felt the chill wind stir, feeling the sensation throughout his being. He smiled and resumed the position of dhyanamudra, his back straight and legs folded in a lotus style. His hands were cupped at the base of his midsection, right hand over left, his palms turned upwards and fingers extended. He closed his sense of sight, concentrating on the nothingness, and slowly, after several moments reality slipped away. He sat in the void, both moving and not; the dark empty chasm both pushing and pulling at his very being. He both was and wasn’t; at the same time remaining whole. In this chaotic and noisy, calm and silent solitude the monk considered what was to be the last mystery before his complete enlightenment.

            For a time he was still as he contemplated the matter of everything. A wave of profoundness washed over him, shaking and stirring his thoughts ever forward. It finally made sense; elation joining the feeling, the emotions and thoughts combining to overwhelm him. The answer to a question he had long asked himself emerged. The monk thought of the smallest unit he could think of, an atom.

            In his mind the atom multiplied, first into two, then a hundred, thousand, and many. They swirled and swirled together, like pixels in the night sky. They combined, merged, and stacked, a shape beginning to form in front of the monk’s form. The last of the tiny luminescent points combined to form a mirror-like image of him, though unlike the monk was brilliantly composed of light.

            He raised his arm, the other doing the same. The tips of their fingers touched, and a ripple went through the statue-like form of light, each ripple aging the figure over and over. The being of light’s face flashed with anguish, as if he suffered with each change more and more. It pained the monk terribly to see this, and his pity was great.

            The figure became bent with time, all before the eyes of the ever calm, ever patient monk as he watched his own inevitable demise play itself out before him. It was the realization all beings must someday make; that with the gift, and beauty of consciousness, came its balance, the cessation of it. The monk understood that if existence, if life, then there must inevitably be nonexistence, death. All a cycle, a balance. A part of karma.

            The figure of light, though still sitting began to lean. It fell after several seconds, collapsing as it touched the ground. The small beads of light scattered like sand, spreading across the ground, though not one touched the sage. For a time the small lights remained there, motionless. Gradually, however, as if there were a wind the particles of light gradually began to shift, coming together, forming new shapes, small at first, but which quickly grew into vast structures, with many parts moving between them. A world appeared around him, like that of a nebulous network, and then slowly the image faded.

            All from the death of my being is their existence possible, the monk realized, a cycle, where forever one is connected with all that comes after.

            His mind tore at the question, that which was then most pertinent to him. It, essentially, was the why of his existence, and through that he intended to discover his who. It was for this reason the monk had long ago cast away his title when first joining the monastery and those like him, his fellow brothers, so many years before. The monk had been nameless so long he could no longer recall what he had once gone by.

            And still, silently, he remained seated, unmoving. His thoughts were like river channels that flowed through his mind, all on the same course to the same destination; karma. To him, meaning purpose. He understood well that purpose gives definition, that definition gave meaning, and meaning gave value. The monk understood that should he know his purpose he might understand who he was, and in that, where in the universe, in the cycle, he fit.

            For a time he contemplated this, and in a moment of revelation he found further understanding. His purpose was to exist, death being nothing more the fulfillment of that purpose. It was simple in nature, this idea, but it took hold and spread quickly throughout the meditating individual’s system. In that moment the monk understood the nature of why he and those like him practiced martial arts; it was not for the sake of fighting, nor even just for meditation, but for a higher reason, the preservation of their existence, their purpose.

            However, the monk also understood the wrongness of the cycle, of everything. Of constantly existing and then not existing, and then existing again. Should one exist, they would suffer. In the monk’s understanding it was impossible to have one without the other, something tragic. To suffer was terrible, and was why he had first gone to the Buddhist monastery to begin with, to find an answer and like Buddha, solve the problem of suffering.  It seemed to the monk then, that the only freedom of suffering was freedom from existence.

            But what was suffering, if nothing more than the attachment to a given thing? The monk pondered. The Buddha had taught that detachment was essential to eliminating suffering, and thus detachment from the self, freed one from the cycle of existence, of being. He understood then, as well, why they had given up their names. How does one name what does not exist? Or un-name what does? .

            He was part of the system, an ever flowing balance of coming and going of the world, karma, purpose. The great immensity of just how big it all was struck him with awe. He finally accepted the cycle, and with that understood how to exit and end it; free himself from rebirth with nonexistence. Tantric Nihilism.

            In what had felt to the monk but a few brief moments, in fact days had passed again. Rain clouds obscured, a few small rays intermittently filtering through, casting the area in a grey, dark light; a luminous shadow across the landscape, the mountains dark and quiet. The air was cool, though no longer quite as chill. The monk walked unsteadily at first, it had been forty days since having last done so. There was a thick fog that clung to the mountains, condensation sticking to the monk as he walked toward the main building of their temple. It was well worn, the foundation crumbling, and pieces of each wall were missing. The monk and those like him at the monastery minded not.

            The monk came to a stop by a wide, but mirror perfect surface of water.

            He peered into it, his reflection gazing back. The monk’s head was like a large metal-plated orb, his body of the same material, his humanoid form thin, small and silver, though also looked dulled. Set in the middle of the machine’s head was a lens, similar like that of a camera, while next to it was a small box, a thin strip of red light shining, steadily beeping in it. His hands were three fingered, and thick at the base, like a triangle; ending at the tip of his segmented metallic finger. His feet were less populated with only two toe-like appendages.

            The robot stood on two legs, as thin as his two arms, at five and a half feet tall. The lens of the machine’s camera whirred; the light beeping as he steadily recorded, analyzed, and processed his own image. The robot felt joy, love thyself, it thought and continued, entering the temple.

            It walked down the decrepit building’s winding corridors, emerging in the middle of an immense room. A solitude figure stood in the middle of the vast, otherwise empty hall, it seated in the Mahayana position. The machine removed the sandals it wore around its feet, and bowed once as it entered the room. As it came before the figure the robot bowed, reverently kneeling before his teacher, noticing the worn wooden staff next to it.

            “Master,” the machine spoke, its voice cold, metallic and monotonous.

            The figure before him began to move, its movements jerky. It had been many years since it had last done so.

            “You think you have reached enlightenment?” it rasped in a voice identical to his, folding its arms and hands, also jerkily. The bowed other said nothing.

            “Silence, the most Zen of answers,” the robot said in a lowered tone, as if it were sighing, if the machine could have sighed. Still, though, the prostrate other did not respond.

            “Tell me, then, have you something to teach that no master has ever taught?” the machine’s teacher asked. The machine raised himself slightly,

            “There is,” the robot replied.

            “Can you tell me what it is?” the teacher asked.

            “It is not Buddha. It is not things. It is not thinking,” the robot said. His teacher sat in consideration,

            “Impressive,” it acknowledged.

            “Master, may I speak?” the prostrate figure asked. Its teacher nodded.

            “Master, I must ask, when the great master who raised this monastery built three gates and made the monks pass through them, the first gateway was the study of Zen. By studying Zen you can see your own true nature, but where is it?”

            The robot paused, its teacher saying nothing. “By going through the second gate, you can free oneself from life and inevitable demise. But once you eventually go, how can you free yourself?” it continued, but still the other did not respond. “Going through the third gate, your form separates into the elements, but where are you?” it asked.

            The monk’s teacher bowed. Both straightened.

            “I see you are well versed in the koans,” the teacher spoke

            “Yes master, but it matters not how well I recite them, but rather what meaning they have to me,” its student replied.

            “And what is this meaning?” the teacher inquired,

            “That it is not how one speaks, but how one acts and is. This is why a one-handed clap matter equally to the two-handed; it is not the sound they make or do not, but the message behind it, the intent. It may be quieter than still air yet as loud as rushing water,”

`           His master nodded,

            “And yet, what message can silence bring?” the teacher insisted. The other was quiet.

            “Just what nothingness has brought us, master” the robot answered, “something, everything.”

            “You posit that nothingness, silence, tells us everything?” the seated robot shook its head, “but also a part of the path.” It nodded approvingly, “You have reached enlightenment,” his teacher spoke.

            “I would not say so,” the robot replied. The master stared at the supplicant machine, and grabbed the staff far quicker than any eye could follow, rose and swung the end of the staff toward its student’s head. The machine moved fluidly, the air still.

            “Nothingness,” it said quietly, both staring at the staff that still hung in the empty air. Its master withdrew the staff, placing it back where it had been as the robot resumed Mahayana.

            “Then why are you here?” it demanded, the other’s attention had still been fixed elsewhere, but was immediately brought back on its teacher.

            “I desired your company,” the monk spoke truthfully. His master nodded,

            “And that is how one knows you have reached enlightenment.”

            The robot paused, listening closely. It bowed, accepting its teacher’s words.

Cloning Jesus Complete Compilation of Chapters

Decided to make a post where every chapter is linked together. I'll be adding to this over time with each chapter I have finished.

This way you can read it all at once if you want, or if someone new and lazy and don't want to click on every different chapter post.

Plus it centralizes the book and makes it overall easier since it'll be organized. I hope you all enjoy;

Cloning Jesus

INTRODUCTION

            My name is Eric Nowell and I was born in 1966.  I went to Yale when I was seventeen years old and after I graduated, enrolled in the Harvard medical and graduate school, where I received my doctorate, all in only seven years.  I was hailed as a genius by my colleagues and professors.  I majored in Biology and did my graduate work on the structure of DNA and cloning processes.  Because of my research, I’ve often been called the pioneer of cloning, but in all honesty, my associate and partner Dr. Chris Goffell is more that than I am.

            I’m not going to lie, the story I have to tell is one you already know, but damn if I can’t admit it’s pretty weird. I suppose we should have realized it could have been nothing short of when we cloned Jesus Christ. But in the end it’s the truth, from one who was closest to Christ. Literally as much as one physically could have been. But as far as truth goes we each have our own role in deciding it for ourselves- all I can do is present my experience as honestly as possible.

            And boy, that story is incredible. But let me tell you about me before we get into the meat of things and what happened.

            I lived a good childhood, though entirely uneventful.  If you had ever told me that I would someday meet Jesus or that I would be responsible for his cloning, I would have laughed.  My parents weren’t religious, not in any sense at all.  They didn’t believe in fate or destiny. They believed life was what you made it and pushed me hard because of those beliefs.  That is probably why I am an atheist, why I call no religion my own.

            When I was young I smoked pot, got drunk and slept around.  It was fun, but not too much fun.  Some people, regardless of that, would say I’m cautious.  My parents thought I was reckless with my education, where I wasted my time even though I got my doctorate in a record amount of it.  I regret nothing today.  If given the chance, I would do it all again.  All that was achieved was by no means enabled by caution.  Brashness, courage, and yes, perhaps even the recklessness my parents once spoke to me of so long ago is what made it all possible.  What Dr. Goffell and I did, what we achieved, has been recorded in the annals of history.  I doubt we will ever be forgotten because of it.  A reward I think, in and of itself.

CHAPTER 1

“Of all the religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most tolerance, but until now Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.”

-Voltaire

(1694-1778)

            “Bill, it’s good to have you with us again,” Terry Blake on CNN started, the opening line for every person who has been on the network more than once.

            “Thank you, it’s good to be back here,” Bill Donahue replied and nodded his head, his double jowls jiggling slightly.  I was almost mesmerized by them, their movement nearly hypnotic. Age had not treated the man kindly after more than thirty years serving the Catholic League.

            The man welcomed back to the show, Bill Donahue, had been President of the Catholic League since 1993.  It is an American civil rights group for Catholics, which sounds good, even noble, until one realizes that they consider anything that goes against their beliefs to violate their civil rights, even if it doesn’t have anything to do with, or affect them in any way.  It is an odd organization that under Donahue has become most notable for attacking popular culture whenever it doesn’t align with their beliefs.  However, because Donahue is considered one of the most influential Catholics of the twentieth century, especially in America, and because of this he was there on air with the anchor.  We had personally requested that he be present to give a religious view on what we were about to do, and by request I mean insisted. Otherwise we would take our announcement elsewhere. One of the greatest of not only the 21^st century, but potentially millennium. Don’t blame me- It was Jesus’ idea. We had originally wanted to do this at a conference, but of course, he insisted we do it in this manner.

Bill Donahue didn’t know that though, believing instead that he had been invited to discuss a recent House legislative bill his organization had pushed through.

            “So it’s been four years since you were last here,” Blake cut in quickly.

            “Yeah with what’s his name... the ‘artist’ with that despicable, genitalia exposed chocolate statue of our Lord he made and called art...” Donahue struggled with the memory.

            “Cosimo Cavallaro,” Blake offered helpfully. Considering that had been over twenty years ago, even I was surprised how on his game Terry was.

            “Yeah, that loser,” Donahue commented condescendingly.

            Blake nodded politely at Donahue’s remark, considering whether or not to laugh. He didn’t entirely agree with Donahue’s view of the man and his odd art, but breaking the tension, Blake pushed on with the conversation. 

            “So in the fifteen years since last here, would you tell us about what gains have the Catholic league made?” he asked.

            Donahue smiled. He loved that subject.

            “I’m glad you ask.  We have managed to raise nationwide mass attendance by almost fourteen percent, and we also pushed through a bill that banned the teaching of evolution in Georgia last year, not to mention numerous movements such as having the bible used as a textbook for teaching science on evolution.”

            “An interesting piece of legislation, controversy aside, and one that has received national attention, correct?”

            “Well… I don’t know much about controversy. Children should know how things actually came to be as they are… About our lord, not that we are related to chimps. Yes,” Donahue concurred, putting particular emphasis on that word.

            “But don’t you think that both the bill and introduction of the bible in classrooms may have hindered student’s education, as well ignores their first amendment rights?” Blake asked cool as a cat, as if he’d rehearsed it a hundred times, which in fact he had.

            “You know, I get asked that a lot.  Do I think it ignores the first amendment?  No, not at all.  All we’re saying is if you won’t teach creationism alongside evolution or intelligent design, then give the student a chance to decide for themselves, unbiased, which is exactly what is being done for the students.  They were given a biased opinion on the matter and now we’ve made it unbiased.”  Donahue looked at Blake, his answer smooth as water on a fine calm day.

            “With… giving them Bibles?”

            “Yes.” Donahue responded.

            “But, ah, some might think of the those students who are Islamic, Buddhist or members of any of the other faiths the world offers-“

            “This also gives us a chance to let them see the truth and decide if that’s what’s best for them if their parents won’t”

            Blake raised his eyebrows at these words, and acted quickly to cut him off. Donahue sure loved his tirades, which had only gotten more pronounced with time. Give the man a pulpit and he’d probably speak over the Pope if possible.

            “But couldn’t one argue that the students were already being given a balanced perspective, seeing as their education is secular-“

“Pfah, secular.” Donahue retorted.

“-And thus unbiased toward any faith. And concerning those students who are Christian, consider most probably attend Church, and have already chosen God?  Wouldn’t the teaching of evolution arguably counter-balance that?” Blake asked, remaining as calm as could be.  You couldn’t tell from most of Blake’s reporting that he has a very negative view on fundamental Christians, but I’d met and discussed the issue with him prior to the show.  I guess you’d expect that view since his father is a rabbi though.

            “Well, no, I mean these teachers advocate that God doesn’t exist by teaching the filth.  Do I look like a monkey to you?” Donahue asked the news announcer.

            “No, of course not,” Blake answered as deadpan as possible. 

That would be a discredit to the primates, and chuckled at my own thoughts and leaned back in my chair as I continued to watch from the adjacent studio I was in.

            “And tell me Terry,” Donahue asked, using Terry’s first name to give the viewers the appearance that Blake and he were closer, better friends than they actually were. In fact, they had never spoken before this broadcast in their entire lives. The last time Bill Donahue had been on the show it had been hosted by a different anchor. Donahue was smooth alright, but in, I checked my watch, five minutes, the water’s about to get choppy, I thought to myself.

 Donahue continued his inane question, “Tell me Terry, do you look like a monkey?  Do any of the fine people you work with look like monkeys to you?”

            “Well I certainly hope I don’t, we pay the people who do our makeup quite a lot,” Blake replied.  I almost laughed aloud  at Blake’s response, who dipped his head as he prepared to speak again.

            “Legally though, is this bill viable?  When creationism was first brought into schools it was found to violate the Establishment Clause, an important part of the First Amendment.  The Supreme Court ruled it was illegal and if taught in schools, would mean the government was promoting one particular religion above others, violating the First Amendment.  The same was found for intelligent design, which, at least legally, is the same as creationism.”

            “Ah, that is true,” Donahue conceded.  How could he not? Fact was fact. “But laws do change upon time and review,” he continued. Touche, I found myself thinking, mildly surprised I found myself agreeing with him at least on that. Let’s hope they leave it be.

            “Are you prepared for the lengthy legal battle that will most likely ensue?”

            “Naturally,” Donahue scoffed, “we’re determined to make this bill law.”

            “How will you go about that?” Blake inquired, genuinely curious.  At what he said next, Donahue almost had a twinkle in his eyes.

            “Because if enough people complain, any law can be changed.  I’ve talked to rabbis and imams, and they agree with this bill.”

            “But wouldn’t it, if passed, essentially redefine the First Amendment, or at least make it particularly selective, thus undermining it?” Blake asked and Donahue nodded.

            “We’ll do what we have to, to stop the filth from being taught. If that means making sure the first amendment is treated as our founding fathers intended-”

            “I see, but I highly doubt our founding fathers had the support of intelligent design or creationism in mind, point in fact, they wrote the first amendment specifically because of such beliefs and how they had no part in anything to do with the government, which is what public schools do. But, you interpret it as you will I suppose.” Blake said disconcertedly.  He didn’t like what he heard one bit, but being on CNN and the news, he tried his best to be impartial and unbiased.  However, he, like the rest of the network, usually failed at that.

            Blake looked down briefly, shuffling a stack of papers on his desk. He looked back at Donahue, a bemused smirk on his face. Game time, I thought.

            “What is the Catholic League’s opinion on cloning, Mr. Donahue?” he asked as he looked up again, abruptly changing the topic and jumping it forward.  I could see he was already pointing the conversation in the direction it needed to go. Donahue looked caught off guard, obviously having not expected the question.

            “Well,” he started, blinking. “I obviously can’t speak for everyone in our organization, but I’d say that we are generally completely against it.  It is an affront to God and an abomination of human nature.  The Bible couldn’t be any clearer on that.”

            “But aren’t twins just nature’s way of cloning?” Blake asked countering coolly.  He in fact had a twin brother.

            “If you want to look at it like that, sure. But the difference between the two is that a twin is born from a mother with God’s will, while the other…” he trailed off, hesitating on how to phrase the rest of his thought, “-while the other is born in a metal and glass cylinder and grown like a plant.  It’s an abomination and it isn’t how God intended things to go and for us to act,” Donahue finished, quite triumphantly I might add.  He looked downright pleased with himself.

            “So you would say that a clone of a person is not the same as a human?” Blake continued, pursuing the topic.

            “Yes, yes I would,” Donahue agreed.

            “Why?’ Blake asked.  Donahue looked at him for a second before answering, considering his words.

            “Because clones don’t have souls.  Only humans do.  A clone is not a human, especially not in God’s eyes.”

            “So if we were to clone say, you, your clone wouldn’t have a soul?” Blake asked.

            “No of course not!” Donahue started. “There is only one soul that is William A. Donahue, and it’s in my body, and it’s already being used,” he said, smiling.

            “Now say we were to clone somebody such as Jesus, would the clone in that case have a soul?” Blake asked.  I could almost see the faint smile that I knew he wanted to wear.  He knew exactly where this conversation would go, and he knew that his place in the annals of human history was almost assured.  It was but moments away.

            Donahue’s smile faded and an ugly look crossed his visage, his jowls trembling ferociously.

            “Terry, I don’t like that question and I take offense to it,” he stated angrily.

            “My apologies-” Blake started but Donahue cut him off.

            “You should be sorry for a remark like that, asking a deliberately inappropriate question.  You should feel terrible,” he finished and the ugly expression on his face grew more severe.  Terry Blake looked away for a moment, then turned his gaze back to Donahue.

            “If you ever met a clone, what would you do?” he asked Donahue tentatively, who continued to glare angrily at him.

            “I would probably cross the street and get as far away from him as possible.” He finished.  I couldn’t help but think of the 1960s with that remark.

            “Well Mr. Donahue, on that note we have a surprise for you.” Blake said, suddenly sounding deservedly smug. I don’t know how Blake had kept quiet knowing what he was about to reveal. I suppose it had something to do with our confidentiality contract, but even that wouldn’t have held me back if I were in his position.

            “What surprise?” Donahue growled, suddenly finding himself nervous and not at all happy with where the conversation had taken a turn.  He had much preferred speaking about his vaunted bill and wondered vaguely if he should leave.

            Blake rotated his swivel chair to face a screen that was behind and above where they were seated. Throughout their exchange it had been showing nighttime photos of New York City.

            “Would you please welcome Mr. Jesus Christ the Second; the clone of Christ!” Blake announced, smiling, clearly to the viewers rather than the other who was with him.  I half expected there to be clapping as he announced it.  Too bad the room was empty save for himself, Donahue and the various cameramen and crew.  Blake had the look on his face of a child that had just found his pile of presents on Christmas morning and was undoubtedly thinking about what miracles this would do for his already good ratings.

            Donahue’s face turned bright red, “What is the meaning of this?” he cried out angrily, his face flushing to a dark purple.  He was cut off as the screen changed, and upon it was the kindly face of a Euro-Arabic looking man.  He had a distinctive nose, a thick head of lengthy brown hair that fell past his shoulders, and light piercing green eyes that looked directly at Terry Blake.

            “What’s up Mr. Blake, it’s good to be here,” he said in his fairly deep, though still musical voice.  In my opinion he coincidentally sounded quite a bit like Jeff Goldblum, but my colleagues have mostly disagreed with me on that. It’s a minor point of contention and disagreement, nothing more. In the end, Jesus always had his own unique voice. Donahue did nothing but stare at the man dumbfounded, unbelieving of the prank that he was sure was being played in front of his very eyes.

            And that was how the world got their very first look at the clone of Jesus Christ, on CNN with Donahue howling in outrage in the background, Terry Blake smiling coolly while Dr. Goffell and I watched. We both agreed it was one hell of a way to announce what we had achieved.

CHAPTER 2

“I believe in God, only I spell it nature.”

-Frank Lloyd Wright

(1867-1959)

            It took us nearly five years to find an actually valid blood sample of Christ.  It would have been impossible if we had tried even a year earlier than when we had started.  However, when the Human Genome Project came to a successful close and the data was published, a number of Canadian scientists wrote a computer program that has become an important tool for genealogists ever since.  With the program, eloquently titled the Human Genome Interface or HGI (we referred to it with its nickname, ‘The Mutt’, and you’ll soon see why), a person could enter in any sequence of DNA and see exactly what that person would look like and even get a report of who they were, biologically speaking of course.  In addition, one could decide which genes they wanted or which to forego, meaning the program, slowly at first, but eventually became quite popular with parents planning pregnancy.  People love to play God.  I suppose makes them feel important.  However, I assure you our reasons for cloning God were much more scientific.

            Using the HGI we were able to determine a template, and through arduous work developed a process that would allow us to assemble the DNA using advances made in 3D printers, which were already being used to assemble organs and limbs for transplant by the time we began this daunting project. Though it was not exactly My or Dr. Goffel’s forte, we researched the Bible, page by page by page, starting with the New Testament, we created a basic picture of what Jesus would have looked like.  To be on the safe side, so to speak, and safeguard our work as a double check, we looked quite a bit into the Old Testament too for genealogical purposes since Jesus was related to David and Solomon, or so most of us had been taught by our peers and according to the Bible and various books on the subject.  From that basic picture we then used the HGI “Mutt” program, we extrapolated a DNA model that although at first appeared somewhat questionable and even dubious, we would later prove to be an almost near perfect match of Jesus’ own DNA.  You’ll soon see why it became so apparent that this was the actual DNA model of Jesus and not a mistake or incorrect analysis and guesstimation on our own part.

            Of course when doing this, we couldn’t just go with the classic look of Jesus, lying on a cross, white, very European looking.  Pretty Germanic in appearance too, if I might add.  Almost every culture throughout history had a depiction of Christ looking like their average conception of themselves. The first portraits of him that have been found were Roman, and he looked very white. In the Middle East with the first portraits of Jesus from that area, he looked Middle Eastern. Throughout history Jesus has been white, Arabic, even black, and I’m assuming somewhere, Asian. Thus, we decided to start from the beginning. 

Line by line we analyzed the texts, assembling and creating the DNA from his parents, his grandparents, their parents and so on back to David.  From his ancestors, we then traced the recorded ancestral line down numerous times, checking and rechecking, correcting and adjusting whenever we had to. This was made difficult because there are actually two separate and somewhat different family trees of Christ; the first we found located in the book of Matthew, and the latter and more detailed in the book of Luke. We did the best we could considering how much the two differed.

 In this fashion we compiled a large list of traits from which we derived what we believed the DNA of Jesus to be with The Mutt program.  Of course we had to allow room for error, but we were sure our analysis was correct, and over time we eventually proved that the DNA really was his, give or take a few matters we were wrong in.

            At this point, we pondered, where exactly could we even find Jesus’ DNA?  We couldn’t be satisfied with the DNA model we had derived using the Human Genome Interface, we still needed the actual DNA of Christ to clone him.  Our readings and analysis of the Bible made us doubt we would find any of Jesus’ sperm – the Bible was very vague on the subject of whether or not he had had sex. I’m looking at you Mary Magdalene, and whatever relationship she had with Christ.

            So we turned to the only choice left, blood.  We spent countless hours reviewing ancient texts to see how we would or if we even could find some of his blood.  We looked over three of the four supposed spear of Longinus, the spear of destiny, which most would think would be the most obvious source for Christ’s blood, as according to the Bible and history, the spear was supposedly what actually killed Jesus when it pierced his side, spilling his blood. We traveled first to Vienna, Austria to test the purported spear kept there, the very one Hitler had obtained during World War II. When that proved for naught we then schlepped to Echmiadzin, Armenia, and later to Poland for another claimant spear. Although there was blood on two of the spears, none of the DNA was intact, having deteriorated over the centuries or matched our model. Because of this we could not conclusively determine whether it was the blood of Christ or not, and thus was unusable. The Vatican never contacted us back over whether or not we could test the spear they held. So in the end the Spear of Destiny turned out to be a dud for us.

            The second place we looked was the Shroud of Turin.  We had tested the legendary shroud because many viewed it as a holy relic because something like the shape of Jesus was on it in the form of apparent blood stains.  In the end we discovered the Christ-like stain on it was caused by grease and not in fact by blood, and in any case we confirmed the Shroud was not from his time either, having been made sometime in the middle of the fourteenth century. We knew this would likely be the case when we went to it, but we believed it would be better than our last option; the cross.

            When we published our finding on the shroud, as so many before us had, it drew at least to us an unsurprising and unfortunately expected outrage from Catholics and Catholic organizations.  Amongst those was also the Catholic League.  ‘How dare we question a religious relic?’ were the words of one religious authority on the matter.  We gave no apology, and certainly did not back down or retract our finding. How could we?  This was the truth, to retract what we found would be wrong, false, and in a sense lying just to appease those upset with our findings. 

            In truth though, because the shroud had failed to provide the DNA sample we needed, we lost interest in it altogether, ignoring the religious official’s and others’ like his words and outcries. You could say we were zealous in our determination to obtain that sample. After that incident however, we vowed to keep a much lower profile and leave all our research and findings unpublished until everything was said and done. We didn’t want anything else we found to potentially interfere again with what our true intent was.

            Why though, people worship a stained cloth, you tell me.  I guarantee if there was a grilled sandwich with Jesus’ face burned into it, people would also pray to it, believing it a miracle.

            We were disheartened by these negative results because we realized that meant there was only one place else we could still plausibly as well as reliably find the DNA… and if you guessed the cross, you were right.  The only problem with using this source was that the cross had been broken into thousands of pieces over the years.  And to make matters worse, here’s the funny thing;  If you were to take every shred of wood from all the thousands of churches in the world claiming to possess a piece of the original, you could build a boat roughly a quarter the size of the Titanic or the rough equivalent of half of Noah’s arc.  You can imagine the hell we went through to find the right piece.

            We searched for three years on a surprisingly high budget. What can I say, universities will pay for anything. Apart from that, our patent on the revolutionary technique for assembling DNA could have made us rich if we weren’t so devoted to our endeavor. In fact, several companies worked together, even creating a dummy corporation with the sole purpose to fund us.  After all, this would be the first clone of any human being and they could profit from it immensely if through cloning it became an easier, cheaper and more legal source of stem cells rather than using those from aborted fetuses. And that was just one way our research pushed science forward. Cloning in the belief of many, and to a degree, myself as well, had the potential for limitless medical miracles.

            But while on this subject, and before I discuss our tribulations with the cross, let me discuss the matter of how we decided whom to clone first?  We considered Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Freud, George Washington, among many others. You name the historical figure, we in all likelihood considered them.  In the end we wanted the first person cloned to be significant, in short, somebody who mattered. Perhaps the most significant person in history. In the end, we eventually settled on Jesus Christ.  It all came from a joke; that he should be the first clone, but upon reflection realized that it could be done, especially with we had at our disposal after accumulating over the past few years, some in part due to our own previous research. The more we considered the idea the more and more we realized that it should be him.  What figure has affected history more than Christ? In essence, whether it be by his actions or his followers, what man has mattered more? Perhaps it was like trying to hit a dart board from a mile away, but we were resolved once we had made up our minds. If ever we wanted to make our own place in history, it would be there.

            The discovery that truly made our project and endeavor possible was made in late 2009 by Dr. Wakashitanamerana, a Japanese scientist when she discovered that DNA could hold a substantial amount of memory if analyzed in a certain way.  Before her pioneering work for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize, all scientists could do with DNA was copy it from the beginning of that DNA’s existence – the original birth of the person from which it had come.  Scientists had to essentially regrow the entire human being from birth.  But after her work, scientists could take a strand of DNA, search it for a specific moment in time, and then clone the person from that point in their life through the memory stored in the RNA.  Unfortunately though, the clone would have no memory of who they had been because memories are stored in the mind using an entirely different and yet to be understood chemical system.  A fascinating person and genius in her own right, Dr. Wakashitanamerana eventually went insane from the pressures of her genius and the expectations placed upon her because she’d won the Nobel Prize.   It didn’t help either that she had a phobia of awards – go figure.

            Ultimately we would spend three years searching for the blood of Christ.  We went around the world twice and would have gone around again had we not stumbled upon a very small church in the hills of southern Greece, not far from Istanbul.  On display in the small cloister of the church was a tiny piece of wood, a mere inch of it, which the congregants and priests claimed was part of the true cross, as it was called by Catholics.  It turned out they were right.  There was blood on it and thankfully since the journey had dragged on for so long until that time, the DNA of the blood matched ninety percent of the DNA model we had extrapolated using the ‘Mutt’ program- thus proving we had correctly (more or less) created our model of Christ’s DNA and that the blood on the wood was indeed Christ’s.  As luck would have it, this would prove to be a good match, and the amount of blood left on the piece of the cross would prove to be more than enough for us to do what we needed to. It was amazingly intact. A religious man would call it miraculous.

            In reality and upon reflection, what we went through was like finding a needle in a haystack. One in which you had only a vague idea of what the needle looked like, it’s dimensions or if there was even a needle there in the first place. But lady luck was smiling upon us, or perhaps it was God even, and there was actual DNA of Christ, and with it we could finally begin the cloning of Jesus, the first human to ever be cloned.

            The next problem that daunted our achievements thus far (and believe me, proving that Christ existed was and is an achievement in itself, even if one doesn’t believe in God) was where we could legally clone him.  Roughly three-quarters of the world had banned cloning and the country that was foremost in its technology at the time and also one of the few nations that still legally allowed the process to be done, was Israel.  We also found the symbology behind Christ being cloned in his legendary homeland somewhat fitting if not appropriately humorous, even.  With that in mind we settled on cloning him in the heart of the holy land, Jerusalem. We set our sights on a facility that had made headlines in 2004, the Rambam hospital, which was exploring human cloning for experimentation. It sounds Frankensteinish, but it was perfect.

            Thanks to Dr. Wakashitanamerana (or Dr. Wak, as I called her because even I have trouble pronouncing her name after our years of collaborating), within three months we had a fully grown human on our hands, but only after spending over twenty million between a wing of the hospital building, not to mention the near insane amount of money on the technology to do it. It would never have been as simple as growing a slurm from a petri dish- it was an incubation tank. The whole shebang. On more than one occasion Dr. Goffell voiced his opinion that it all seemed fantastically futuristic. In the end Jesus ended up being the third Christ we attempted to clone and the only one that lived.  The others had failed early into the process, much to our expectations and to a degree, despair.

            Some may have interpreted it as the will of God that the first two attempts failed and a sign that we should stop.  We chalked it up to faults on our own part, and through stubbornness and determination prevailed.

            People have often asked me during the ordeal and after why we didn’t just simply clone Christ from the theorized model of DNA we had already assembled.  This is an admirably intelligent question, but there two problems had we wanted to.  First, we had no way of actually knowing that the DNA model we had was that of Christ; we needed his blood and DNA to match up with our own theorized model so we would know there was actually a Jesus to clone in the first place.  You can’t just go on faith in science.  I am a firm believer that faith has no place mingling with science.  You need facts to explain something and even if we had the technology to just clone him from the DNA model we had assembled we very well may have been wrong about whom we had cloned.  As it turned out though, we weren’t, but up until that point we were just theorizing about what he was like with the genetic model we had created.  We needed his blood, at the very least, as a double check for our model to prove its accuracy.

            And it was only once we had that blood we could synthesize copies from its long dead and dormant material. The second problem with doing that is there is simply no way to do it without the raw biological material. We needed more than just a template to work with, and it is far easier to replicate DNA when you have a source than to manufacture our own from scratch, which would have made the three month process into six as we assembled the various nucleotides, RNA among other components. The DNA model we had made was just an electronic guide, though an essential one. Without it, identifying the blood and DNA of Jesus would have been impossible.  We needed the real blood or some other biological material from Christ for our best chance to actually clone him.            Some of the crew, technicians, and scientists thought as he came out of the cloning chamber it would be as if God had.  They were sorely mistaken.  Out stumbled a man, nothing more and nothing less.  He shivered in the cool air and breathed like we did.  However, that didn’t stop the Christians among us from crossing themselves in his presence, some even dropping to their knees in worship.

            After his “birth,” we spent the better part of his first year teaching him as much as we could about the world he lived in.  Although he had the body of Christ, his mind was still a blank slate.  He knew nothing, barely how to walk, and hadn’t a chance in hell the ability to already speak.  He was like a child, only in the body of a man.  We had to teach him virtually everything, ranging from simple concepts such as using the bathroom to the more complex ones an individual experiences in life. You should have seen him the first time we got him to use a fork; it was priceless.

            After he had learned to walk and fully use his body, we began taking him for visits outside of the building.  It was fascinating to watch and study him, I have notebook upon journals of notes I took recording every detail concerning the development of our Christ. It was as if we had given a blind man sight.  He wanted to learn everything, and with each passing day his curiosity grew and grew.  When Dr. Goffell later referred to those moments as similar to what Frankenstein must have gone through, I would feel my cheeks flush.  The most difference was he was not at all depressed or blood thirsty.

            We soon found he was incredibly intelligent, learning everything that we taught him quickly, and even things that we didn’t teach him that he picked up on his own. We also found he had a knack for languages, as well.  We taught him basic English, which he learned quickly.  His enunciation and manner of speaking had a hint of my own New Yorker accent because I was his primary English tutor.  He picked up Hebrew from the Israeli doctors and researchers on our staff, as well as from the people he spoke with on the streets around our large building and in the open-air markets.  It only took him a few months to master that language.  By the end of his initial studies, he could fluently speak English, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Italian.  We tried German with him, but after several lessons he threw a fit and refused to learn any more of the language, saying it was too guttural and ugly.

            He often did that, dividing the world into two categories.  As soon as he learned the two words; beautiful and ugly and their meanings, he began to label everything as either of the two.  White and black, light and dark. He was like that with everything.  Back then there was never an in-between, no gray area.  It was either black or white, good or bad.  We found this interesting because of the fact that he always seemed to judge things and he was good at it too.  He had a natural sense of what was right and what was wrong, a damn near flawless code of ethics, and a perfect understanding of our basic laws.

            By the end of the first year, just six months since he had stepped from our cloning chamber, we were ready to take Jesus to the next level.

CHAPTER 3

“It is not as in the Bible, that God created man in his own image. But, on the contrary, man created God in his own image.”

-Ludwig Feuerbach

(1804-1872)

            It would be two years after he stepped out of the cloning chamber before we unveiled Jesus to the world on CNN.  During the entirety of those two years, our financial backers continued to urge us to show him off as soon as possible.  They wouldn’t admit it, but they were proud of what we had produced.  The problem though, was that we believed he was not quite ready yet, he still had so much left to learn before that day when we would deem him ready to be finally seen and known by the world. 

            He was a funny guy, on more than one occasion we would have to take a step back and eye him over, some even wondering aloud if we had really cloned Jesus because of his odd sense of humor.  He was always making jokes, whether appropriate or not, and loved to laugh.  Honestly, we hardly ever saw him without a smile upon his face.

            After our first year, most of which was spent in Israel and Jerusalem teaching him basic life skills and an introductionary education, we moved to America.  We spent the first year in the United States in Washington D.C., where we continued his lessons and showed him more about the world he lived in. Imagine you had the full cognitive abilities of an adult, butt knew nothing about how the world you existed in functioned. No historical knowledge, no clue how lights, or cars, media worked. In a way it could be shocking without levels of introduction. And yes, we probably could have chosen a better place with less greed and corruption, but we wanted him to experience firsthand the capitol of the country he would come to call home, a valuable experience for anybody to learn.

            The war with the Middle East, by then going into its twentieth year, seemed to once again be winding down.  Jesus had learned some about it from his time when living in the area in Israel and the topic always made him edgy.  Right from the get go he really disliked war, as well as any other form of violence.

            For the year we lived in Capital Hill, I would have to say Jesus had a good time during our stay.  Towards the end of the second year of his life, and the end of the first year in D.C., we would often take private walks together, discussing much about the world.

            One of the more unique and unfortunately misfortunate memories I have that stands out from one of our many walks occurred on April twentieth.  We had just left the Lincoln Memorial, where I had explained to him what slavery was and what good ol’ Abe had done for the Union and its beleaguered population back in 1865.  As we walked out of the memorial in the direction of Constitution Avenue, Jesus found, despite the still chilly weather, one of the many homeless in the city sitting on a grate, waiting for money to be handed to him.  Jesus urged me to give the man money and when I wouldn’t, promptly sat down next to the beggar and wouldn’t budge despite my pleading and begging. It was perhaps then that I first saw the beginnings of a deeper side of Christ. But then and there, it didn’t occur to me, especially as Jesus was making something of a scene.

            In the end we had to chloroform Christ into submission (I had Dr. Goffell bring me a bottle) and carry him back to our vehicle and compound.  Ironically, the whole affair cost us far more than if I’d just given the beggar a few bucks in the first place to placate Jesus. When I eventually tried that tactic, giving in, Jesus refused to leave regardless, taking more issue with my lack of ethic to help others rather than the not giving of money. He accused me of only giving for my own gain- namely him coming with me, than any kind of compassion for the other. The homeless man thought the whole ordeal unusual, but for fifty dollars and at his request made his way elsewhere. I suppose it was a win-win for him. 

Jesus was moody for a few days afterwards over the ordeal, especially in our manner of forcefully bringing him back, but he was consoled and eventually brightened considerably when informed that the man had gotten money regardless.  We never did tell him that the money given to the homeless person had actually been more or less a bribe, it just didn’t seem necessary to sour that episode anymore than I had already found myself doing. It was embarrassing to say in the least, but oddly at least to me, endearing in a very weird way.

            Another memory, one which warms me while sitting here on these late nights, was when we were at the Mazza Gallerie, a very nice mall on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington, D.C.  We were walking together into one of the stores that sold American merchandise, perusing what was being sold and on sale.  Now when I say American, I mean it was ‘Murican.  U.S. flags everywhere, Uncle Sam posters, the works.  Patriotism, patriotism, patriotism!

 A small girl and her mother walked into the store and after picking through several items, walked to the counter that Jesus was standing next to.  He smiled down at the little girl as she picked up one of those bracelets with the letter W.W.J.D on it and asked her mother what it meant.

            “Well honey,” her mother began, “That stands for ‘what would Jesus do?’” 

            Jesus, upon hearing his name, looked up from the rack of magazines he had been perusing through and leaned closer.

            “I’m sorry Ma’am?” he asked and she looked up surprised. She studied him for a half-second.

            “The bracelet,” she said and gestured with to him. Curious, Jesus held his hand out to inspect the item, and cautiously, she handed it to him.  He looked at it curiously from over the bridge of his nose and then looked up abruptly after apparently being lost in thought.  He then handed it back to the little girl.

            “What would Jesus do?” he asked. The little girl remained quiet, but continued to look at him shyly.

            “Well, I probably wouldn’t buy the bracelet,” he said, answering the bracelet’s and his own question.  “Why don’t you instead give the money to the homeless guy outside? Or to a charity?”  He hesitated, looked down at it again, and continued, “Though, I must say, yellow is such a nice color.”  He picked another bracelet out from the bucket and rubbed it between his index finger and thumb.

            “I really have no idea what I would do,” he said, as much to himself as to the girl and her mother before chuckling.   The little girl and her mother dropped the bracelet back into the bucket and both edged away from him as soon as they could, quickly leaving the store.  He laughed again as he looked at the bracelet, considering what to do.  As I said before, he was easy-going, but he also didn’t care much what other people thought. In many ways he did things simply because he enjoyed them.  In the end he bought a bracelet and gave his change to a homeless man outside the mall.

            It was about that time, much to our surprise, when he asked if he could get a job.  The request damn near floored us, it was one we had never expected from him. I honestly didn’t even know where he got the notion, either. Of course we said no- he didn’t even have a social security number, as far as the world was concerned, he didn’t exist legally. We provided everything, he had no need for one-- it was out of the question.  But still, he asked. We did our best to explain why as delicately as we could he couldn’t. Again, not one our best moments.  He became angry and kicked over our small kitchen table, sending my wallet that was sitting atop it flying.  The change from my wallet spilled across the floor, rolling everywhere. 

            Upon reflection we realized our mistake and began to take a more direct approach in his education, having him focus on that instead. It was then, at Dr. Goffell’s suggestion we begin his religious studies.  We gave Jesus a Bible to read so that he could better understand just who he was, why he was so important and why we had cloned him. He spent three days reading, a page a minute, and that alone was impressive to us.  Try reading the tome like that; it’s not unlike reading the dictionary, something I did in my youth; Spoiler alert-- it’ll practically eat your brain.  He ate the text up and spat it out, almost as if he had memorized the entire thing, line by line, much as we had studied it to make his genetic model. It was then we began to suspect he might also have a photographic memory. That was Jesus- he was constantly adapting and growing, his abilities as a person growing constantly.

            He strode out of his room on the last day of reading the Bible and dropped the hefty book onto the table in our small kitchen. He leaned on the back of a chair, his long hair falling across his shoulders.

            “Do people really take everything in there literally?” he asked and my mouth dropped wide open.  This was Jesus and he wasn’t buying into the Bible as someone religious might expect. This after all was the rabbi from history.  He noticed our surprised reactions which weren’t exactly what you would call subtle.

            “So I’m supposed to be the son of God, right?” he asked.  I looked around the table, looking for somebody, anybody other than myself to answer his question. “I mean, you guys cloned me from the person written about in the New Testament, and expected from the Old.”

            “Well… yes, sort of I suppose.  It all depends on what one chooses believe.” Dr. Goffell answered when it became painfully clear that nobody else would speak.  What else could anyone say to Jesus Christ though?

            “And why exactly would you or anyone believe that I am?”

            “Well Jesus, that has a lot to do with someone’s upbringing. We have only known you for a brief two years. Many spend their entire childhoods being educated and indoctrinated in their belief system. Most do not question it- they just accept what their parents and teachers tell them. If someone they trust tells them to believe that you are the son of God. They’ll believe it. Hell, Richard Dawkins once pointed out that if Jack and the Bean stalk was spoken in the Bible, most would probably accept it as a parable or a real even that occurred.”

            Jesus blinked,

            “How the hell do they even know who God is? Have they met him? Have either of you ever met him?” Jesus demanded sharply. I closed my mouth, which had still been slightly open.

            “Jesus, nobody has ever really met God except you supposedly, and even then, your past version” I said quietly.

            He shook his head at that. 

            “I’m sorry, but I don’t recall ever having a conversation with my father.  The closest to one I’ve had so far is you, Dr. Nowell,” he said, then looked at Dr. Goffell, “and you too, of course.” At this he turned away and grumpily poured himself a bowl of cereal from a box that had been in the cabinets behind him.

            I must admit that upon hearing that I was flattered, though wasn’t sure quite what he meant by his reference to his purported divine father. He had after all indirectly just compared me to God.  Our Jesus of Jerusalem, the clone of Jesus of Nazareth, had just compared me, to the “almighty” lord. But still, I didn’t get it, and chalked it up that perhaps he had interpreted what he read, especially considered the context of his personal differently than others might.  We were all quiet for a time after that, hoping the conversation was done.  It wasn’t.

            “So how many people worship me?” he asked quietly after a while, stirring his cereal.  He had been thinking I suppose. I wouldn’t blame him either. I found it curious, however—he didn’t distinguish at all between who he was now, and from whom he had been. Talk about an existential conundrum. 

            I chose my words carefully, aware that what I was about to say could put incredible pressure on him.  The last thing we wanted to do was stress Jesus out, especially when what caused the stress was truth. 

            “Ah, roughly two point two billion people, give or take a few odd million,” I said tentatively. I suppose I was trying to lay the information on him as easily as I could. Coming to learn that, that many people worship you or who you were, not knowing a single one of them, and they not knowing you, would probably be surreal and possibly overwhelming to anyone. 

            He nodded his head, accepting. If that was how things were, then that’s how they would be. I suppose then might have been when it began to occur he might be able to do something about it. The beginnings of a seed of a thought that would grow and ultimately change everything.

            “Why?” he asked, crunching on his cereal which had yet to become soggy.

            “Well,” I started, “you’ve read the Bible, what did it say happened to you?”

            “It says that I was Jewish, like our friends in Israel and that I gathered a band of twelve followers while I preached about mankind and our relationship with God and life while performing ‘miracles.’  Eventually one of my disciples betrayed me and in the end my death absolved mankind, because I was God in man’s flesh.” He pinched his arm holding the spoon, “I don’t feel divine. The book reads afterwards I was supposedly resurrected.  But what I don’t get is this--  If I had all those powers, if I could bring the dead back to life, heal the sick and dying, why can’t I do any of those things now?” he asked.          

            Dr. Goffell and I exchanged looks from over the table. Neither of us believed in the supernatural—we had always assumed he was merely a historical figure whose teachings had influenced much of the world’s history thereafter. We really had no exact answer to give and told him so. 

            “Sometimes people are wrong, especially after two thousand years,” I offered. Although most likely true as well, I had to admit that at least at the time, it was a pretty weak response to his question.  I might as well have not said anything at all, so meaningful and explanative was it. 
            He smiled regardless, my words having an unexpected affect on him. 

            “Well, there’s only one way to tell, isn’t there?” he asked and looked around the table. I returned the gaze, looking at him curiously what he meant.

_____________________________________

            Four hours later we stood on the banks of the Potomac, mid-winter, with a rare, at least for that time of year, layer of snow all around us.  Jesus was wearing a thick wetsuit, his brown hair tied back in a ponytail and tucked down into the top of the stretchy suit.  He daintily poked his covered toe in the water and then yanked it back.  You could tell he was cold and trying not to shiver.  It was as if he felt he had something to prove to us, not that he ever had to though.

            I was entirely against the endeavor, and had protested it the entire time, starting from when it was first suggested, to even when I was there.  Dr. Goffell encouraged Jesus on with several other scientists that were part of our accompanying entourage, flashing him a thumbs up from where he was a few yards back by the parked car.  Jesus waved at us, I was cold just look at him and thinking about what he was about to do.

            Jesus calmly stuck a foot directly out, almost as if he was kicking the air in front of him. He held it there for several seconds, perhaps for dramatic effect before promptly placing his foot on top of the water.  He held it there for about a second before putting his full weight on it, plunging with a splash through the surface.  He fell from our view, collapsing into the water, going face first with his whole body into the cold wet mud at the bottom beneath just above freezing water.

            Dr. Goffell shook his head with a bemused smile, and made his way down to the river before Jesus might drift away. If I were a more humorous man and this was twenty years prior when I was back at Yale, I probably would have found the whole situation funnier, myself.  But the last thing I wanted was for Jesus Christ to die from hypothermia before we had even told the world about him.

            Cursing myself for authorizing and allowing him to do the foolhardy stunt, we dragged Jesus out, dried him off and took him back to our facility. It was there Dr. Goffell approached me.

            “You know it won’t be long,” he remarked as we stood alone. I nodded, he was right.

            “Just a little more time to prepare him.” Dr. Goffell raised an eyebrow,

            “What more do we have to teach him? Physics? How to drive a car? We don’t have much to give him anymore.” He had a point there.

            “I know, your sarcasm aside, but I’m still not comfortable yet with the idea.”

            “Two years. We agreed we would wait two years to prepare him if we were going to have him go public, and it’s what he wants also. Lord knows why, but it’s what he wants also. I wouldn’t in his shoes.”

            “He doesn’t wear shoes,” I remarked. It was true- even in winter. One his more eccentric habits.

            “His sandals then. Whatever.”

            “I know. Two months. We’ll focus and then push things forward.” Dr. Goffell raised an eyebrow.

            “Alright, but I’m going to start setting things up for then.”

            “In what way?” I asked. He shrugged.

            “I don’t know yet, I’ll pitch it to you, but it’s time to get the ball rolling.”

            “I suppose.” I conceded. We stood in silence, pondering what to do next with our personal Jesus.