David Epperson - The Third Day

By that point, I wasn’t sure who was more nervous. Although Naomi might not have understood the intricacies of how we commanded light to appear on a whim, she also had no conception of the infinitely more transcendent mystery that Bryson’s device was about to reveal.

I, for one, felt a veritable swarm of butterflies emerge from their cocoons in my stomach as Juliet booted up the computer. From the others’ expressions, I could see that they did as well.

The screen displayed the familiar blue backdrop while the Professor hooked his camera to the machine. When he finished, he glanced around the room and we all took a deep breath.

“Here we go,” he said.

Then he pressed ‘play.’

As with his earlier venture, the screen first displayed only the date and time: 2029 04 15; 02 30 00 .

Bryson started to explain that the camera’s date couldn’t be set before the year 1950, but we had already gotten the idea: Sunday, April 15, of the year 29 AD, at two-thirty in the morning.

A few seconds later, we could begin to make out the tomb in the full moonlight. A Temple guardsman, dressed in full uniform with his right hand resting on the hilt of his sword, stood on each side of the entrance.

“That’s the tomb?” exclaimed Juliet.

We all mumbled our concurrence without taking our eyes off the screen. The guards weren’t moving around much, though it was obvious that neither man was asleep.

“Where did you get caught?” I asked Bryson.

“I tried to sneak up behind the location where I placed the camera,” he said, admitting for the first time what we had suspected: that his real goal had been to witness the event in person.

“But I had the bad luck to run into the spot where the relief crew was taking a break,” he continued.

Personally, I thought he had become disoriented in the twists and turns of the quarry’s many trails, but whatever had really transpired, it was no longer our primary concern.

We all kept our full attention focused on the image on the screen, though for nearly an hour, very little happened.

The guards appeared to chat back and forth — undoubtedly complaining, like soldiers everywhere, about why they got stuck standing out in the cold all night while their colleagues dozed comfortably in their beds.

But their voices were too low and the camera too far away for the microphone to pick up enough details for Naomi to translate.

2029 04 15; 03 27 42

A few minutes later, we saw the first real movement. The initial two guards stepped away from their posts as two others took their places.

“Shift change, by the look of it,” said Lavon.

The same relative inactivity continued as before, though, and I couldn’t help but chuckle as the others grew restless. Ordinary sentry detail remained as boring as it ever was, two millennia later. Some things truly never changed.

2029 04 15; 04 08 17

“When does it start getting light?” asked Sharon.

Juliet had printed out a sunrise/sunset table and read out the numbers.

“Nautical twilight begins at 4:17. Civil twilight, the time when dawn first begins to break, starts at 4:46.”

Upon hearing this, my butterflies began to leap around in a renewed burst of activity. For that matter, everyone’s did. Whatever was going to happen would do so very soon.

2029 04 15; 04 16 52

Though the guards remained at their posts, they suddenly perked up, and one of them noticed something to his left. He craned his head and called out to his colleagues.

Then suddenly, we saw a brilliant white flash — and then nothing at all.

***

The rest of us stared at the screen in silence as Bryson rewound, then replayed, then rewound, then replayed the last couple of minutes, over and over.

Each time the result was the same, and when he repeated the drill in slow motion, we could see no discernable difference.

To a believer, what we had just witnessed could represent the incredible surge of energy that accompanied the resurrection, or the brilliance of glowing angels, afire with God’s power.

To those taking the other side, it could be the result of an unknown quantum effect that altered the device’s memory during our return to the present. Or, perhaps, the flash could have derived from the more mundane possibility of an equipment malfunction, or even a guard moving a torch too close to the camera’s primary lens.

What was clear, was that the recording wouldn’t convince anyone either way.

From the very beginning, it had been matter of faith.

It always would be.

Eighteen months later

I glanced down at the directions Lavon had emailed a few days earlier and then back over to my map, curious once more as to the reason he insisted that I drive eight hours without knowing exactly why.

In truth, though, I didn’t really mind.

I had some time on my hands, and no more financial concerns, either, courtesy of the Brysons, who had mourned the loss of their brilliant student — and who worked out a plan to get him back.

Their scheme was straightforward enough. It called for me to return to our original cave just a few minutes before we had “landed” on our earlier journey. As long as the Professor remained in Boston, he couldn’t simultaneously appear in Judea to bowl over his assistant and knock him silly.

I would therefore have a brief window to pull the kid to safety before the Romans turned him into a pincushion. As an additional bonus, I could pull Markowitz out of the cave, too.

This sounded reasonable enough, with two modifications.

First, I insisted that Juliet accompany me, ostensibly to show her a brief glimpse of the first century world — though in reality we all knew that her real purpose was to serve as a hostage to guarantee the Professor’s end of the bargain.

I didn’t think Bryson would abandon me with Lavon and Sharon remaining behind as witnesses, but I saw no need to take the chance. As a former President had once said — trust but verify.

Second, I had my own equipment list, which consisted of a bullhorn, a bag full of flash-bang grenades and my trusty Glock, just in case.

***

After a brief interval to confirm that the Brysons had indeed made the necessary adjustments to my own investment account, Juliet and I set forth out on our journey.

We returned in less than five minutes, with both Markowitz and the geeky kid safely in tow. Thankfully, I never had to fire the Glock, though I did have some fun with the flash-bangs and the bullhorn, which stopped the combatants in their tracks.

I could only laugh as I considered the report Publius would make when he arrived in Jerusalem later that day.

In any event, I could reassure my conscience that I had not ruined the centurion’s retirement plans. Despite the last bit of unpleasantness, I respected the man and the soldiers he commanded, and wished them no harm.

A few weeks later, I read that the Brysons lost their entire facility to a mysterious fire, though fortunately, no one suffered injuries in the blaze. According to the newspaper, the couple had then decided to return to MIT, much to the delight of their former students.

On most occasions, I consider myself an eminently reasonable person — though I can drive a hard bargain when pressed.

As for Markowitz, I saw very little of him after his rescue. Though he had complained vociferously about having his journey cut short, he seemed to calm down after we explained how his first venture had ended.

More importantly, he would recall nothing from the earlier trip, so we no longer had to worry about him devising a hare-brained attempt to free Judea from the Roman yoke, and all of the unintended consequences such a venture would entail.