James BeauSeigneur - In His Image James

"Christopher," Decker began, "I don't want to pry into your private thoughts or anything, so if you don't care to talk about it, just say so; but I'm interested in what you were saying about religion."

Yeah, that was pretty good, he thought; not too pushy; not too probing. He didn't want to say anything he'd have to explain.

What Decker was about to hear would go far beyond anything he possibly could have expected. Christopher didn't answer right away. It seemed as though he was deeply considering something. At first Decker thought it was just an answer to the question, but the look on Christopher's face said that it was something altogether different. Could he have understood the real reason for Decker's question?

"Mr. Hawthorne," Christopher began, looking as serious as Decker had ever seen him, "I've been meaning to talk with you about something, but the time just never seemed right."

Christopher took a long breath while Decker looked at him in anxious surprise. "I know who I am," he said. "I know that I was cloned from cells that Uncle Harry found on the Shroud of Turin."

"What?! How do you know?" Decker managed to sputter despite his shock.

"Well, I always had a feeling that I was different from other kids. But whenever I mentioned it to Aunt Martha she would just tell me that every kid feels that way from time to time and that I shouldn't let it bother me. Aunt Martha was a wonderful lady: she could always make me feel better.

"But when I got a little older, just before my twelfth birthday, I had a terrifying nightmare of being crucified – literally! It was so real. I didn't tell Aunt Martha or Uncle Harry about it because I thought it was just a nightmare. But over the next few months I had the same dream several more times. Of course, I had heard of crucifixion, but it didn't particularly frighten me, certainly not enough to cause a recurring nightmare. The dreams were always terrifying while they were happening, but when I'd wake up, it all just seemed kind of crazy, and pretty soon I'd go back to sleep.

"Then about a year ago, I was in Uncle Harry's study. He was doing some work at his desk and I was doing my homework in his big over-stuffed chair and I fell asleep. When I did, I had the dream again and apparently I started talking in my sleep. When I woke up Uncle Harry was sitting in front of me with the strangest look on his face. He had recorded most of what I said in my sleep on his old tape recorder. When he played it back for me I didn't understand a single word. It was my voice but the words weren't English.

"Uncle Harry called someone he knew in the language department at the university, played the tape for him over the phone, and asked him if he could identify the language. The man said that I had been talking in ancient Aramaic with some Hebrew thrown in.

"That's when Uncle Harry told me the whole story about the Shroud and everything. According to the man on the phone, a couple of things I said in my sleep were similar to things Jesus was supposed to have said when he was crucified.

"It was scary, but to tell you the truth, it was kinda neat too, especially when Uncle Harry told me his theory that Jesus might have been from another planet. I guess every kid likes to think he's special. He made me promise not to tell Aunt Martha or anyone else because he was afraid of what people might think or do. He was especially worried about the fundamentalist Christians who would think it was a sin to clone Jesus. He said that the only other person who knew about me was you. And, of course, you were in Lebanon."

"But how can you remember these things?"

"Uncle Harry wondered about that, too, and he had a theory that he thought might explain it. He said that each cell in the body has the blueprints for the whole body – not just things like race and sex and hair color and eye color and whether you'll be tall or short, but everything that every other cell in the body needs to know to function. That's how the single cell of a fertilized egg can reproduce to form something as complex as a human being. The information even tells the cells in a finger which finger they're in and how they're supposed to grow so that finger fits with the other fingers on the hand, and is the same size as the matching finger on the other hand. He said that information is also what makes cloning possible.

"Uncle Harry's theory was that the cells may include even more information than all of that. He said that about 95% of human DNA is called 'junk DNA' by scientists because they still don't know what it's for. He thought maybe the junk DNA is used by cells to record any changes in other cells, so that every cell stores the information from every other cell, including the cells of the brain. He said that might also answer some questions about evolution and something he called the collective unconscious of the species, but he didn't really explain that." Decker recognized the reference to the theories of Sigmund Freud's protégé, Carl Jung.

"Before he and Aunt Martha died, Uncle Harry was experimenting with some white mice to see if a cloned mouse would remember its way through a maze that the original mouse had been trained to go through. I don't think he ever completed his work on that.

"He thought that maybe the reason my memory is only partial is because of the cellular trauma of crucifixion, resurrection, and cloning."

"Do you remember anything after Jesus's resurrection?" Decker asked.

"No. Uncle Harry said that I wouldn't remember anything about that because I was cloned from a cell left on the Shroud only seconds after the resurrection."

"Is there anything else besides the crucifixion that you remember about your life as Jesus?"

"Uncle Harry tried to spur my memory by having me read parts of Aunt Martha's Bible. It was interesting, but it didn't help me remember anything. There was one thing in the Bible that seemed really confused, though."

Decker was intrigued. "What was that, Christopher? What was confused?"

"Well, the Bible made it seem like Jesus knew he was going to be killed, like it was all planned out, but that's not the way it was. I know this all sounds kinda strange, but in my dream, before the crucifixion, I remember being in front of Pilate and he was asking me questions. The whole time I just kept thinking that any minute I'd be rescued by angels. But something went wrong. Mr. Hawthorne, the crucifixion wasn't supposed to happen! For hours I hung on that cross with spikes driven through my wrists and feet, trying to understand what went wrong. That's why I said, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' I wasn't supposed to die. God was supposed to rescue me!"

Remembering this was obviously a painful experience for Christopher. "I'm sorry," Decker said, as he put his hand on the boy's shoulder and tried to comfort him.

At that moment the phone rang.

Decker gave Christopher's back a comforting rub and went to answer the phone. It was Ambassador Hansen. "Decker, I don't know any way to say this to make it any easier on you," Hansen said, "so I'm just going to read you the dispatch I received from Ambassador Rogers in Tel Aviv.

As per your request, at about five o 'clock Eastern time, midnight Israeli time, a driver was dispatched to Tel Hashomer Hospital to bring Mr. Tom Donafin back to the British Embassy with the intention of expediting his departure from Israel. The driver and Mr. Donafin were expected back within two hours. Three hours later, that is about three o 'clock a.m. Israeli time, the driver had still not returned to the Embassy and could not be reached by mobile phone.

In keeping with standard operating procedures, a search team was dispatched to cover the route that the driver had indicated on his itinerary. The search team was unsuccessful in finding either the driver or the car, but they did verify that Mr. Donafin had checked out of the hospital and left with the driver from the Embassy.