Джером Биксби: The Man From Earth

DAN: Next question.

ART: You— You— You realize this is an invitation to men in white suits with happy pills.

DAN: Think about it— A mechanism allowing survival for thousands of years?

ART: Run out of room even faster.

DAN: Well then we’d have to go to Mars as a colony as we expanded, as we’d have to.

JOHN: I’d like that. On a planet of another star?

DAN: I envy you.

LINDA: Did you have a pet dinosaur?

JOHN: (smiling) They were a little bit before my time.

DAN: At least something is.

ART: No doubt you could give us a thousand details, John, corroborating your story, from the Magdalene to the Buddha to now.

JOHN: Ten thousand, and you could stay out of the books.

EDITH: Oh, it’s getting chilly.

HARRY: (beckoning to the fireplace) Here, come over here. Join me.

DAN: That, uh, raises an interesting question, John. Could there be others like you who escaped the aging process as you have?

HARRY: Representing something terrific we don’t even know about biology.

DAN: We’re learning all the time.

HARRY: Yeah, but how would he know? He doesn’t wear an armband, an I.D. Badge saying "yabba dabba doo."

(chuckles)

JOHN: There was a man in the 1600s.

EDITH: (interrupting) Where were you in 1292 A.D.?

JOHN: Where were you a year ago on this date? Anyway, it was the 1600s, and I met a man, and I had a hunch that he was…like me, so I told him.

ART: Ah. See, you said this was a first.

JOHN: I forgot.

DAN: A crack in your story, John?

JOHN: A touch of senility.

Anyway, he said yes, but from another time, another place. We talked for two days. It was all pretty convincing, but we couldn’t be sure. We each confirmed what the other said, but how do we know if the confirmation was genuine or an echo? I knew I was legit, but I thought, "maybe he’s playing a game on me." You know, a scholar of all we spoke about. He said he was inclined with the same reservation.

DAN: Now, that’s interesting. Just as we can never be sure, even if we wanted to— I mean, if we were sure, you couldn’t be sure of that.

JOHN: We parted, agreeing to keep in touch— But of course, we didn’t— And 200 years later I thought I saw him in a train station in Brussels. Lost him in the crowd.

EDITH: Oh, what a shame. I–I mean, if it were true.

HARRY: Okay, here’s one for you. What do you do in your spare time?

JOHN: (laughing) Oh every 50 years or so, when I wanna get away from the rush, I go down to a primitive tribe in New Guinea, Where I’m worshipped as an immortal god, and they have a huge statue of me. It’s a big party. Yeah, I’ve got a lot of pictures of it, but I’ve already packed them up. I’m sorry.

EDITH: I won’t make the obvious nasty crack about more unwashed cavemen.

JOHN: Actually, bathing was the style until the middle ages when the church told us it was sinful to wash away god’s dirt, so people were sewn into their underwear in October and they popped out in April.

EDITH: You said you just happened. I don’t believe that. If your story’s true, why did God allow you to happen?

DAN: That makes an interesting point. Are you religious, John?

JOHN: I don’t follow a known religion. No.

DAN: Ever?

JOHN: Long time ago I did, like most people. Some just never get over it.

DAN: Do you believe in god?

JOHN: As Laplace said, "I have no need of that hypothesis." He may be around, though.

EDITH: He’s everywhere. We just can’t see him.

HARRY: Pfft. If this were the best I could do, I’d be hiding, too.

DAN: And creation…

JOHN: It’s here, I’m not so sure it was created.

EDITH: What then?

JOHN: Maybe it’s just accumulated, fields affecting fields.

ART: What about the source of the field energies? Wouldn’t that imply a prime mover?

JOHN: I’d wonder about the source of the prime mover, and turtles all the way down, infinite regress, but that doesn’t imply anything to me…Back to the mystery.

EDITH: It’s a very old question, but there’s no answer except in religious terms. If you have faith, it’s answered.

DAN: Did you ever meet any person from our religious history? A Biblical figure?

JOHN: In a way.

EDITH: Who?

JOHN: We should skip this one.

HARRY: No, no, no skipping. Come on.

JOHN: Next question.

HARRY: No, come on!

Everyone clamoring.

ART: Come on, spit it out!

DAN: Good lord! You were one of them!

JOHN: This is going in a direction that I–I— I–I didn’t expect. I hoped it wouldn’t— We…should call it a night.

ART: Come on! You were someone in religious history?

JOHN: (hesitates) Yes.

EDITH: In the bible?

JOHN: (hesitates) Yes.

HARRY: Someone we know?

EDITH: How could we not know someone in the bible?

HARRY: I mean somebody important.

JOHN: You may think you know him, but it’s mostly myth.

ART: (loudly) The entire bible is…mostly m-myth and allegory with maybe some…basis in historical events. Y -You …were part of that history?!

JOHN: Yes.

LINDA: Moses.

JOHN: Moses was based on Misis, a Syrian myth, and there are earlier versions— All found floating on water, the staff that changed to a snake, waters that were parted so followers could be led to freedom and even receive laws on stone or wooden tablets.

LINDA: One of the apostles.

JOHN: They weren’t really apostles. They didn’t do any real teaching. Peter the fisherman learned a little more about fishing.

ART: How do you know that?

JOHN: The mythical overlay is so enormous…and not good. The truth is so… so… simple. The New Testament in a hundred words or less. You ready?

EDITH: I don’t think I wanna hear this. Harry, will you take me home?

HARRY: No! Not right now. I do want to hear this.

ART: Sit down, Edith. You act like you believe him.

EDITH: (softly) It’s sacrilege.

HARRY: How can it be sacrilege? He hasn’t said anything yet.

EDITH: (righteously) The new New Testament is sacrilege.

DAN: There are a dozen new new testaments, from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to Tyndale, all the way to King James, all revisionist, and all called revealed truth.

EDITH: I mean a new New Testament in 100 words.

HARRY: I can give you the Ten Commandments in ten words:

Don’t. Don’t, don’t, don’t. Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t.

DAN: (laughing) Don’t. The commandments are just modern updates of more ancient laws. Hammurabi’s code.

HARRY: That’s right, and they weren’t the first, right? Edith, I was raised on the Torah… My wife, on the Quran. My oldest son is an Atheist. My youngest is a Scientologist. My daughter is studying Hinduism. I imagine that there is room there for a holy war in my living room. But we practice live and let live.

Why don’t you sit down?

Edith hesitantly sits

HARRY: What is your preferred version of the bible?

EDITH: The King James, of course. It’s the most modern, the work of great scholars.

DAN: Modern is good.

HARRY: Alright, John, hit us with the short form.

Choral/religious music…

JOHN: Guy met the Buddha, likes what he heard, thought about it for a while— Say 500 years, while he returned to the Mediterranean, became an Etruscan. Seeped into the Roman Empire. He didn’t like what they became— A giant killing machine. He went to the near East thinking, "Why not pass the Buddha’s teachings on in a modern form?" So he tried. One dissident against Rome? Rome won. The rest is history. Well, sort of. Lot of fairy tales mixed in.

EDITH: (quietly) I knew it. He’s saying he was Christ.