I don’t know the man to Henry’s right. He’s an Asian man who has just a few wisps of his natural dark hair on the sides of his head but has chosen blonde hair implants that sit on top like a bird’s nest. He also has facial enhancements to remove wrinkles as well as a pronounced chin implant on a face that wasn’t originally designed to have much of a chin. The combined effect makes him look like he was drawn by a cartoonist.
They all stand as I approach.
Don’t say it. Please don’t say it.
“Welcome home Cephas.”
Henry extends his hand.
Damn.
“It’s good to see you Henry. Hi Ray, how’ve you been?”
“Very good, Cephas,” he responds with a broad smile that almost says “Thanks to you.”
“Cephas, I’d like you to meet Toshi Tanaka,” Henry says. “Toshi’s the deputy director for advanced technology.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you Toshi. Advanced technology? Does this mean I’m here to help with a new gizmo for tracking Christians?”
No facial expression. No interest in their new project. Give them nothing.
“Not exactly. But I dare say what we have here will be the topic of your next book.”
I bet he’s hoping to be in that book.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Henry says and gestures for everyone to sit.
“Cephas, before we start on Toshi’s briefing I should catch you up,” Henry says. “No individual has done more for the world in the area of identifying cultists than you have. Three years ago I thought your efforts had won the war for us but now it seems that you only found the tip of the iceberg. Tell me Cephas, how many fish heads do you think there are in North America?”
I think about it for a moment.
“I’d guess somewhere between one-hundred and two-hundred thousand at any one time. Kids probably jump in and out of small groups for kicks or to shock their parents, people on the fringes probably do the same.”
“What would you say if I told you the corps estimates there are now over five million fish heads in the United States alone and the number is growing each year?”
Okay, that’s worth raising my eyebrows by two millimeters.
“I’d ask two questions. The first question is ‘where are they all?’ since I don’t see any evidence the number is that big and the second is ‘if they’re practicing their faith so quietly they’re invisible to me, what’s happened to make you believe they’re dangerous? Why call me in?’.”
“I’ll answer both of your questions. They’ve invaded every facet of our society. They’re everywhere, living among us. As to fact that they practice their so called faith and stay invisible, that’s exactly what makes them so dangerous. But why am I telling you? You know more about religious history than anyone. You know ideological differences lead to holy wars. After two millennia of wars we have peace because of the world unity we’ve built in the absence of religion.”
“Are you saying the Christians have become violent?” I ask and look from Henry to Ray. “I monitor all public news references to Christians, so you’ve kept it quiet if they have.”
“Not yet,” Ray says. “But you can see how such a growing and organized force must be contained now, before it can become violent.”
“Okay, I get it. What do you need from me?”
“We need a spokesman,” Henry says.
“A spokesman? I’m an analyst. Find an out of work news anchor.”
“Just hear us out.”
Ray commands his com to display something on a screen embedded in the table in front of me.
“Here are some papers we recovered when we raided a cultist meeting place. As you can see they’re written in Latin but are dated to a year ago. We believe this is a letter from a leading Christian to his followers. It’s signed with the letter ‘A’.”
Interesting. Much of the New Testament of the Christian Bible was letters written by a man named Paul in exactly the same way.
The letter starts with encouragement to the brothers and sisters then goes to explaining certain passages of the New Testament but in the last paragraph switches to more practical matters including watching a person referred to only as “DRCP”.
“Now read this one,” Ray says.
It’s the same format as before but this time encourages the readers to examine the writings of “DRCP”.
“And this one.”
I skip straight to the last paragraph where it suggests it would “send a powerful message if DRCP were to die”.
“We put a team on it three months ago and they recently answered the question of who the target is,” Ray says.
It took three months? The bar must have lowered again after I left.
“Then you should have called me in sooner. DRCP stands for “Dr. Cephas Paulson”, and apparently they’re not part of The Cult Hunter fan club.”
“Damn it,” Ray says. “You have no idea how big a bet I just lost with Riemann over whether you’d figure it out before I could tell you.”
“It’s so nice to know protecting me is your primary concern.”
“Our people have been protecting you around the clock for two weeks now,” Henry says. “You’re in no danger. We’re not going to let anything happen to our greatest asset.”
I turn to Toshi.
“Why do I have the feeling this is the part where you start talking and I’m some sort of bait for your new high tech gizmo?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” Toshi says. “Do you remember about twenty years ago there was a big stir in the news about a scientist in Utah who claimed he’d unlocked the secrets of time travel?”
“Considering it happened before I was born, no, but I’ve read about it. Didn’t he retract the whole thing and leave science in disgrace?”
“The truth is he left academic science to work for us. It took twenty years but we now have a working device.”
Toshi flashes me a proud smile. I wish he wouldn’t smile. When he smiles his chin implant gets in the way of the normal movement of his cheek muscles and makes him look a little crazy.
“Great. Send me to the future so I can see if they killed me or not.”
“Actually, we can’t send people to the future. We can however send them to the past and then pull them forward again to the present.”
“Seriously? You’ve been sending people back and forth through time?”
“Not yet. The power requirements are enormous and increase exponentially according to the mass of the object sent and the distance through time being traveled. We’ve sent some small objects back and pulled them forward again and recently sent two mice back.”
Toshi again smiles proudly and again gives me the creeps.
“I take it the mice lived. Otherwise finding volunteers isn’t going to be easy.”
“We pulled one mouse forward and there were no side effects from transport whatsoever. The other one we left inside a cage two years back in time to prove it had time traveled. According to a necropsy it lived a normal life and died of old age.”
“So now you’re working up from mice to lab rats and you want me to be the first rat into the cage?”
“We’re proposing three people go back in time,” Henry says. “Are you familiar with the work of Dr. Thomas?”
“Of course.”
Dr. Thomas as he’s now called was born Ivan Frank. He became the world’s leading religious abolitionist through a combination of extensive writings and firebrand oratory skills espousing the evils and dangers of religion. He ironically changed to the Biblical name “Thomas” as a publicity stunt to make the statement that he’ll believe nothing religious until he sees it with his own eyes. When I broke the last Christian code he started to fall out of the limelight. I guess I put him out of a job.
“So who’s the third rat in the cage?”
“Why, a fish head of course,” Henry says. “I’m sure you see the combination is necessary. We’
ll send a devout believer, a devout skeptic and someone whose word is above reproach with skeptics and believers alike.”
“I’m above reproach with Christians? I’m The Cult Hunter.”
“You need to read the rest of these letters,” Ray answers. “Despite your work with us, they seem to believe you’re as open minded and thoughtful as a person can be. I’ll send them to you.”
“Add in the fact that you read and speak four ancient languages and you’re the only choice,” Henry says.
“You need someone who can speak ancient languages? Where do you plan to send me?”
“Not where, Dr. Paulson. When.” Toshi says.
I sit there looking back and forth at the three of them.
“You’re going to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. You’re going to end religion once and for all by proving Jesus Christ was a fraud.”
Chapter Five
Riemann catches me in the hallway when Henry’s briefing is done.
“You mind taking a look at something for me? I wasn’t kidding that there are some local fish heads we’re interested in.”
He doesn’t know the real reason I’m here or he’d give me a chance to catch my breath and let the enormity of the plan sink in.
I look at the time. There are two direct tubes back, either one of which will get me back on time to teach my afternoon class. Unlike the world religion class I taught yesterday, today’s class is for advanced students and is where I teach about the modern cultic Christians and the methods used by the corps to find them. The government sponsors the class in an effort to create a new generation of cult hunters, but so far they’ve gotten little return.
“Sure Bear, why not?”
When we reach his office Riemann instructs the computer to project a file showing surveillance footage of a street with a dozen or so people walking in each direction.
“Another section picked up a guy who was selling stolen antiques and in his collection were several boxes of blank paper, thousands of sheets of the stuff. Before he got busted he was contacted with an offer to buy his whole stash. He knew only fish heads would be looking to get their hands on that much paper so he used what he knew in exchange for leniency. The dealer was told to sit on a specific bench at precisely noon and someone would make contact. This is a video of everyone who came through from 11:50 to 12:10,” Riemann says.
“Why didn’t you just trace the com that called the dealer?”
“That’s the thing, the com that called him couldn’t be traced.”
“Could it be one of your own people?” I ask. “I’ve heard rumors that field agents sometimes use untraceable coms.”
“Just watch the video.”
I take in hundreds of small details as I watch the first fifteen minutes but they don’t come together to form a puzzle. When something of interest does happen I’m disappointed at how simple it is. At 12:05 a man walks onto the screen from right to left.
“Him.” I point at the screen. “He walked in the other direction at exactly noon.”
“Very good,” Riemann says. “Now check this out.”
He pushes a button and everyone else who passes back and forth through the camera’s view has a name and a number superimposed above them. The lone exception is the man I noticed, it says “Unknown” above him. The names and numbers are in different colors. Most are in red but a few are in blue but the colors don’t seem to correlate to anything.
Next the man walks to a woman who’s been sitting on the bench the entire time watching something on a small tablet device. His back is to the closest camera and the longer shot is too far away for the lip reading software to determine what he said. We presume he asks her for the time because she takes her com out of her pocket and puts it into her ear. As it enters her ear her name and number flip from blue to red and the lip reading software determines that she asked her com for the current time and then said "Its 12:04, I mean 12:05” to the man. The man then gets onto a passing hover bus and leaves. Once the man has left, instead of returning to her tablet the woman shifts herself to the front of the bench and starts drumming the four fingers of her right hand.
She’s not drumming casually, the speed is too fast.
“So you have no clue who the guy was?”
The drumming fingers continue at their steady pace so I switch to her eyes.
“He was wearing a hat and sunglasses. We have a dozen possible matches from the greater D.C. area based on the partial facial features the computer could see, none of which match anyone in the database of suspected fish heads.”
Her eyes are fixed across the street. The drumming is a signal and she’s watching for a response to be sure it’s received.
“Who’s the woman on the bench?”
“She’s already been cleared. She works in the Department of Energy and that location is consistent with her lunch routine. About sixty other people passed through the camera during that time, none of them are on any suspect lists.”
“Other than the fact that you can’t determine who he is, did you notice anything else strange about him?” I ask.
Riemann smiles.
“Your class on observing small details is still standard training. You can see there’s a com in his ear but either we can’t track it or it didn’t activate when he put it in. If it’s broken then why leave it in? If it’s untraceable why did he ask her for the time rather than just asking his own com? Did I miss anything?”
“It’s a little odd that the woman got the time wrong and corrected herself when her com had just said the time into her ear. According to the time index it was 12:05 when she spoke to her com. Her com was active and connected to the system at the time. There’s no way it said ‘12:04’into her ear when she asked it.”
Riemann pauses to think about what I’ve said.
“Anything else?” he asks.
As he asks the woman on the bench raises her eyebrows and abruptly stops drumming her fingers.
Her signal was received.
A moment later she stands and gets onto a hover bus.
Keep it to yourself.
“Send me a copy and I’ll go through it a couple more times.”
“Sure. It’s not classified or anything and it’s probably nothing anyway. Most likely the fish heads were watching from a distance and when the dealer didn’t show they took off,” he replies.
Riemann and the security detail escort me all the way back to the tube station and watch me until my car pulls away.
“Thanks for looking over the video. After the last one that pulled you here for a visit, I thought you might refuse today,” Riemann says as the doors close.
I almost did.
My last visit was a year after my “retirement”. I’d done such a good job crushing the Christians that the corps had reassigned half of the agents due to lack of work. It stayed that way for just a year, which is when Riemann asked me to look over a video of a man on his watch list. The man had died when a multi-ton hover bus malfunctioned, jumped its line and crushed him. That might have been the end of the file except that the local police reported him as rhythmically babbling the same words over and over and after he died they found a single piece of paper clutched so tightly in his hand his fingernails had cut deeply into his palms. The use of paper had been abandoned for nearly a century so naturally an investigation was opened.
By law all police officers wear helmet or shoulder cameras when on duty so both the paper and a video of the man’s last words ended up on Riemann’s desk. I got called all the way to D.C. that time too. I burst out laughing when Riemann handed me the paper. It contained Psalm 73 written in Latin. My work breaking their codes hadn’t eliminated the Christians, I’d simply forced them out of the modern electronic world and back to writing on paper.
When I watched the tape of the man’s final words my laughter stopped. It was horrific. He was a tall, dark-skinned man with short dark hair tinged with gray at the temples. His eyes were thankfully closed but
his lips were moving in rhythm so I focused on them to avoid looking at the rest of the scene. Only half of him was visible because his entire lower body and his left arm were pinned under the hover bus to the point of being nearly flattened. I later heard the only reason he wasn’t killed instantly was because the enormous weight had crushed him to the point that he couldn’t even bleed out quickly through his lower body.
Even so, it was clear he couldn’t survive long and the officer asked him typical questions such as his name and address but he continued repeating his rhythmic chant. What everyone else mistook as babbling were “The Lord is my Shepherd” in French.
The officer happened to look up at one point and his camera showed the hover bus was still full of passengers standing around watching video pads and talking on their coms as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. I don’t know if having them exit the hover bus would have done anything to relieve the great weight from the man, but none of them seemed to notice or care that a man was dying literally under their feet. When the officer panned back the man opened his eyes, looked up at the sky, smiled, and was gone.
The look of peace on his face will stay with me for the rest of my life. I most certainly have more knowledge of religion than that man did, but it’s clear to me he had an understanding of faith I’ve never been able to achieve. I still have a copy of the video showing the man’s last moments. When I watch it my only thought is that I need to find out for myself what he knew.
That piece of paper and video brought the corps back into the search for Christian cultists but with the Christians no longer communicating through electronics the corps’ been chasing its tail trying to find them again.
With no systematic communications to search and no codes to break my services have been limited to consulting rather than re-immersion into that world.
Until now.
***
As I take the tube ride home I don’t know what to think about first. Do I think about the fact that I’m under twenty-four hour surveillance by both corps kill teams and by Christians who would prefer me dead? Or do I think about the prospect of being hurtled twenty-two hundred years into the past?