Deus Ex Machina

In another town, a family welcomed the apostles and him as guests for the night in their home. That night, the Apostle Peter found the room where Jesus slept. “You’re nervous,” Peter said afterward, towards dawn. “About meeting him.”

“I am,” Jesus said.

“All speak of the Baptist as a great man,” Peter said. “But between a prophet and a messiah, who is more important?”

Jesus smiled. “Again, Peter, you ask a question when you’ve already decided the answer.”

“You will always be remembered,” Peter said.

The face of Jesus registered visible surprise at that remark. “Yes. But often not accurately.”

The next day, at the edge of the sea, the air smelling of fish, Jesus and his apostles found the Baptist and a crowd. Apostle James told his companions a few minutes after their arrival that the crowd numbered one thousand nine hundred and eighty-eight. After a moment, he reconsidered and said, “Probably more like one thousand nine hundred and fifty-five.”
A lot of them, maybe a hundred, banged away relentlessly with drums and tambourines. The crowd danced a dozen different dances and sang bits and pieces of a hundred different songs. Despite the ceaselessly noisy crowd, the Baptist shouted his preaching of the Word of God’s Kingdom and anointed many with the waters of the sea. Jesus and his companions waited patiently for hours, and then the Baptist performed the ceremony with the Messiah and each of the apostles.

Just before Jesus’s turn, he considered the noisy, singing, shouting, dancing crowd, then turned to the Baptist. “At least they’re dignified and reverent about this.”

“Oh, at least that,” the Baptist said.

The second after Jesus had been baptized, it seemed to him that all sounds temporarily vanished, except a voice from Heaven, which said, “This is my son, and I love him, and he fills me with pride.”

Soon afterward, Jesus went into the desert to quiet his fears and worries, although not expecting them to vanish. Anyone who challenges everything, even with only preaching and healing, cannot expect the resulting attention of the world to be entirely loving or safe.
The air in front of him developed a small rip, like an old and cheap cloth torn by an impious child. The slit in the air served as a window to somewhere else: Not the desert and its morning sun, but a place dark and interior, filled with shadows not human nor animal, and tuneless, echoing music. When it grew just long enough three men stepped through it, squeezing through. The rip in the air grew smaller and then vanished.

Jesus studied each stranger. “You appear as humans,” Jesus said. “Angels? Demons? I expected either. Such visitors often come to those who journey to this desert to reflect and pray.”

“Neither angel nor demon,” said the youngest of the three men. He had been a boy only a few years ago. His eyes appeared huge, moist, and his ears and nose so small as to seem mistakes of nature, if nature and God permitted mistakes. “My name is Den. We’re some of the most respectable men in the fields of government, business, and entertainment. A machine we made brought us from ages hence and the other side of the world. Some of our people live and work on the moon. Our cells are rarely filled because our healers can remove evil thoughts out of the heads of the wicked. No soldiers fall in any wars, because such conflicts happen in a kind of world of dreams we create. We’re here to make an offer.”

“You speak my language so easily? This seems unlikely.”

“Teacher, our machines allow us to understand each other,” Den said.

“The clothes are the same as now, all those years ahead?”

“We’re trying not to stand out,” Den said. His glance passed over the robe he wore. “I guess these are disguises in a way.”

Jesus pointed to Den’s hand. “What is that tattoo, just above your fingers?”

“I told you two we needed to do something about that tattoo before we left,” said another of the three, maybe ten years older than the first one who spoke. His beard appeared extensively and frequently trimmed, so his facial hair crowded his lips and chin. He possessed a bulkiness that didn’t seemed to have been from overeating or frequent labor, but only an accident of birth. Perhaps this man viewed this bulkiness as a kind of armor, because a quality came from the face and in his stances that resembled Roman soldiers patrolling the land where Jesus lived and preached, viewing themselves as the guardians of the interests of their masters so far away but really reduced in their mind to jailers of women, children, and all the rest. “Let’s say what we have to say and see if he’ll co-operate. Oh, Son of God, I am Broca.”

“You speak of a machine that took you from the future to the past,” Jesus said.

“Science is useful when she knows her place,” Broca said.

“If this machine you speak of is real, there are temptations enough already,” Jesus said. “If people could revisit past days, wisdom would wither and die, with anything said, done, or made, if men could endlessly re-do everything.”

Den said, “You know previously, we did have some trouble with--”

Broca pointed at Den and said, “You’ll not speak of this. Jesus. Master. Teacher. This is not like any other conversation you’ve ever had. Maybe you need to get to know us, but we already know everything about you. We have already peered into this age, seen it all as easy as you see your own hands. Our eyes have been everywhere these days and there are no secrets from us. About anything. About you.”

“Me?” Jesus paused. “Everything?”

“There are some . . . things we ignore,” Broca said. “‘The Big Picture’ and all that. That’s the term we’re using now. ‘The Big Picture.’”

“We are here for a great purpose,” the oldest of the three strangers, a man with short white hair, said. He kept one of his hands in a pocket in his robe. His tiny, bright eyes never squinted, although everybody squinted in the desert, including the oldest stranger’s two companions. During the conversation, the man with short white hair smiled frequently, with no apparent motivation. Furthermore, Jesus found it odd that a man so obviously an elder showed no trace of a beard. “I am called ‘Kell,’” the oldest stranger said. “These other two answer to me.”

All three of them stood tall. Jesus came up to their chests with all of them. Their hair had the quality of silk thread. And they were pale, their faces a color and hue he had never seen before. So it’s not surprising, given their appearance and how they arrived, that I suspect they are not from around here, Jesus thought.

“Why are you three here?” Jesus asked.

“In our age, despite that, when someone is available to us, we can take the evil thoughts out of their head, sin is still rampant,” Den said. He nodded at the ground. “As abundant as these grains of sand. You aren’t fully accepted. This is frustrating, to say the least. We have swept away the old institutions, the old laws, and the old ways to create, to attempt to create, a truly pious society.”
“I guess men usually fear blood and fire,” Broca said. “But we used blood and fire in a serious attempt to create a much better world. Oh, there are those who say they are devoted to you, Messiah. But they demonstrate no commitment to a much better world. And you know how some people are wild animals?”

“I know sometimes some of them seem like it,” Jesus said.

“This is the problem of our society,” Broca said. “Much more than ‘sometimes.’ Return with us to our time. Assume authority over the governments of the world. That’s the way all things are supposed to be at the end. You, in charge of the world, so all will be brothers and sisters before God.”

“And those of other faiths?” Jesus said.

“Blood and fire, my friend,” Broca said.

“Describe more of what you did first to solve the problem of your time, before you came here to make this offer.”

Kell smiled. “It is written, ‘He will turn the hearts of the children to fathers lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.’”

“I reject your plan for me,” Jesus said. He went to one knee, and using his fingers, he wrote this in the sand: Yeshua ben Yoseph. “This is the first thing the rabbis taught me in the temple: How to write my name.”

Den said, “Actually, because of our machines, we hear the name as--”

Kell stopped this sentence with a gesture, and grinned at the younger man, showing teeth as clean and fresh as a sunrise, an altogether unnatural appearance.

A brief wind erased the name in the sand.

“If I traveled with you on your voyage home, the disruption would be greater than the wind erasing the name in the sand.”

“Your journey to our time wouldn’t be one-way,” Kell said. “Once the pious global reign of the Messiah is established, we bring you back and everything still happens as history records.”

Jesus crossed his arms. “So you wish. If you can travel in time, why not go to what would be the future for you? Perhaps everything turns out the way you want.”

“We’ve been,” Kell said. “There are only two groups there: effete, ‘artistic’ weaklings and illiterate savages. Now then. Broca, Den . . . Let us withdraw and re-think our plans.”

“He’s shorter than I thought he’d be,” Broca said.

“Everyone in this age is shorter than you’re used to,” Den said. “That’s not just you. And, sorry, Messiah, but you’ll regret your choice.”

The odd hole in the air reappeared and the three strangers stepped back into it, then the hole vanished, and Jesus shivered.

A few days later to continue his ministry, Jesus and his apostles went to Capernaum, its streets already filled with its citizens, expecting them, among them a group of young women and men who danced and played flutes. On the Sabbath, he entered the temple and taught, and exorcised a demon from a man.

Soon, they were back in the streets with the crowds.

“What’s wrong?” Apostle Matthew asked.

“Why would there be something wrong?” Jesus replied.

“In all the time I’ve known you, you always focus into the eyes of each person and really see them. Today, during the exorcism, your eyes focused somewhere else.”

Jesus smiled. “So if you and the others don’t succeed in bringing the Word of the Kingdom to everyone, you’ll at least pay attention.”

When Jesus gathered his apostles for the journey to the next town, Peter could not be found. Jesus and his apostles found on a wall behind a shop in Capernaum these words:

IF YOU WANT BACK WHAT YOU LOST, SAY ALOUD THREE TIMES “I ACCEPT.”

Kell, Broca, or Den would’ve grabbed Peter as we came out of the temple in Capernaum, Jesus thought. The crowds provided enough distraction. With their way of creating fantastic holes in the air, there’s no way to find Peter by asking around.

“What is this?” Apostle James asked.

“You know that it is wise to not tell everybody everything,” Jesus said.

“Of course.”

“Then accept my silence about this?”

James nodded.

That afternoon, Jesus and his apostles walked to the home of Apostle Thomas. Behind the house lay a garden that grew vegetables and flowers. Different food for different types of hunger, Jesus thought.

“My sisters and brothers,” Jesus said after Thomas’s wife greeted the travelers and shared wine. “I ask for time alone in this house.”

“When?” Thomas’s wife asked.

“Now.”

Thomas’s wife said, “How long were you going to--?”

“I don’t know. It might be a while.”

When the apostles and the members of the household had all gone outside, the Savior said, “This is not how I usually talk to you. But all is not as it should be at this moment.”

Suddenly, a new presence filled the room, as powerful as thunder and as quiet as thought.

“I’m listening,” God said. “Those men that you’re worried about . . .”

“With everything Den, Broca, and Kell can do, why take Peter as a hostage? Why not just kidnap me and force me to their will?”

“That is too simple and direct for them,” God said. “Men like this add details to their high and mighty idea of themselves to trick themselves into thinking they are about more than their high and mighty idea.”

“There is something else, Father. I know my role in the events ahead for the salvation of humanity.” For a moment, Jesus shut his eyes, and then opened them and continued. “I don’t relish the pain that waits for me, but I must do what I must do. These three strangers claim to be devoted to us and the Word, but they would pluck me from this time before I’m done with my first visit to Earth. Do they not understand the consequences of taking me from time, before what lies ahead is reached? They say they would return me to these years, before the end, but still what they want is wrong.”

“By not acknowledging the consequences of removing you from these years, even temporarily, they wish to trick themselves into thinking that these consequences don’t exist,” God said.

“May I solve this, without physical force?”

“I prefer that as the solution to all problems,” God said. “Although not everybody seems to get that.”

Jesus spilled a small amount of dark red wine from a glass unto a table. With his finger, he traced the tattoo he remembered from Den’s hand: SPOT.

“Father, what is this?” Jesus asked.

“Ages from now, Den will own a dog that will die very young. ‘Spot’ will be the animal’s name.”

“I have one more thing to ask. And I know miracles must not be frequent and frivolous, but if I must, Father, I will argue with love for the miracle I ask for now.”

Finished with what he had to do, Jesus left the house, intending to speak to everyone he had asked to step outside. They spoke first, surprised because they had walked out of the house a moment before. To Jesus, it seemed as if it been hours, but he said nothing of this.
He took Apostle Mary Magdalene aside and said to her, “Go ahead to the next town, by yourself. Find a building that the people of the town can’t explain. They can’t explain what it is or how long it has been there. Be subtle.”

“Why me for this, Jesus?”

He thought of the three strangers and how somehow they reminded him of emperors, maybe because of their boast that they could see everywhere. “Some men have the habit--the foolish habit--of ignoring women,” Jesus said. Mary Magdalene smiled. “I would use that to our advantage.”

“What is this about?”

“An enemy more dangerous than the Romans. The rest of us will follow tomorrow morning.”

Mary Magdalene left, walking into the red sunset.

When morning came, Jesus and the rest of his apostles arrived in the next town. The people of the town gathered to hear him. After a brief conversation with Mary Magdalene, Jesus spoke to the crowds of God’s Kingdom and love. He healed the blind, lame, and deaf with his hands and the Holy Spirit. For a second, his imagination flared up and there the three strangers dragging him away from these days, these places, these people. He gentled away his resulting anger.

“Tonight, let your day end with the sunset,” Jesus said to his apostles and to the crowds. “Tonight, sleep. Sleep all of you. Sleep soundly. There is something that is going to happen here tonight, in the streets. I must do it privately.”

That night, Jesus walked the streets of the town alone. He stopped for a brief encounter with God and then continued to the small building Mary Magdalene had told him about. He approached holding his hands behind his back. “Perhaps one, two, or all of you could come out and talk?”

The three men from the future stepped out of the building.

“We told you,” Broca said. “Say aloud anywhere you agree to what we want and we would hear it, and you’ll get Peter back.”

“How did you find us?” Den asked.

“You are wrong, I suspect, about many things. But you have never lied. You never said you were magicians. You didn’t want to draw attention to yourself, so your machine had to resemble something common to this place and age.”

“True,” Den said. As we went on, he gestured wildly, nervously. “We started, of course, with earlier, more primitive versions of the machine: a kind of huge sphere with the passenger and a liquid inside. They broke down all the time, but those early explorers were heroes and geniuses.”

“Why are your hands are behind your back?” Kell asked.

“If you three were so concerned about blending in, you should have done something about your skin,” Jesus said, ignoring Kell’s question.
Broca scowled. “What’s wrong with our skin?”

“I’ve never seen anyone paler,” Jesus replied. “Invalids who have been indoors for weeks aren’t as pale as you three. You three are white as clouds.”

“We come from a time of a whole different story!” Broca shouted so loudly Jesus feared he would wake part of the town. “Because in our time, it’s only white people who--”

Kell raised his hand. “You will be silent, now.” Broca stopped shouting. He frowned. “You surmised that we would have our vehicle in the next town and that Peter would be inside. Am I right?”

“I don’t really have to answer that question, do I, Kell? You judge your world, your time, too harshly, I think. You build a machine to travel back to the time of the Messiah? You think this is all about how you are owed in this life one day beholding a perfect world, with the true paradise waiting beyond this life’s horizon?”

“Aren’t we owed exactly that, paradise in this life?” Broca asked.

“Everybody else, from your time, is the problem?” Jesus asked. “Not any of you?”

“We don’t claim to be perfect,” Den said.

“He’s not saying that,” Kell said. Kell glared at Den. When Kell focused on Jesus again, the Messiah held out a puppy.

“The salvation of mankind comes to rescue his boyfriend and he brings a puppy?” Broca asked. “This is a joke! Jesus we have to keep in one piece. This stupid little dog I’ll take care of now with my bare hands. I haven’t killed in weeks. It’s making my head hurt.”
Broca took a long step towards Jesus and the puppy.

Kell said, “Messiah, you are owed command of Heaven’s soldier’s. But this type of weak, losing—-”

In one hand, Den already held some sort of weapon.

Light from it struck Kell and Broca and they fell to the ground.

The animal in the Savior’s hands yawned.

It wagged its tail.

Briefly, the wind howled.

“Aren’t you going to ask if they’re dead?” Den asked. He put his weapon in his pocket.

“I know they live. Now, Den, bring out Peter or I walk away with your dog Spot.”

“You wouldn’t hurt him!”

"Of course. So what happens now?”

“Wait here!”

Den rushed into the small building. He came out with Peter and untied his hands, bound behind his back. Jesus put the dog on the ground. The puppy barked, wagged its tail, and trotted over to Den, and licked the hem of his robe. Peter and Jesus kissed.

“Den,” Jesus said. “Around your neck, maybe I glimpsed something.” Jesus stepped over to Den, eased a thin chain around Den’s neck onto his fingers, and drew the chain clear until what in Den’s time all knew as a Christian Cross, Den’s a small one, rested in the hand of the Messiah. “Thank you. All three of you. I no longer tremble at—-” He nodded at what he held. “Of course, I’ll have to pretend otherwise. Like joy, the presence of fear, even pretend fear, can tell us when something truly important is going on.” He let the Cross slip through his fingers, and stepped back over to Peter. “Den, how many times has this happened?”

“Forty-two. The other two always wake up disorientated in our vehicle, forgetting each time we have tried this with you. I pretend to be the same way. Kell always says something about the vehicle malfunctioning. I don’t know why I always remember each time.”

“You’re young,” Jesus said.

“Compared to those two, yes.”

“Perhaps the young remember differently from everybody else. Broca is right about seeing a joke here tonight, but he doesn’t know how he’s right. Salvation can wear many faces. It’s possible to laugh the truth into people. I apologize.”

“You apologize?” Den asked.

“There were lessons to teach when we first met in the desert. I should have figured out a way to do it then. But sometimes even I am still a student. I, the Son of God, came to rescue a friend and companion from bandits. I brought not a sword, but a puppy.” And Jesus laughed.

(I acknowledge the influence of Poul Anderson, Margaret Atwood, Michael Bishop, Chester Brown, Dan Brown, Salvador Dali, Lester Dent, Philip K. Dick, J. G. Eccarius, Philip Jose Farmer, Joe L. Hensley, Ahmed A. Khan, A. J. Langguth, Michael Moorcock, Sydney Newman, Tom Robbins, Rod Serling, Theodore Sturgeon, Willis Wheatley, Robert Anton Wilson, and H.G. Wells. The way I staged the baptism is borrowed from the 1988 movie The Last Temptation of Christ. The phrase “laughing the truth into people” I took from the 1964 Studs Terkel interview with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Special thanks to beta readers Dee Bourne, David Canosso, Mary Daurio, Rachel Dodman, Fibonaccho, Cassandra Flores, Ptolemy Graves, Amanda Greenberg, Harpalycus, Michael Sherrin, Dee Williams, and J.A. Williams.)