The Christ Clone Trilogy 01 - In His Imagery
By
James Beau Seigneur
Body of Christ
Ten years later — Knoxville, Tennessee
It was cold outside. The usual warm autumn weather of East Tennessee had given
way to a cold snap that sent the local residents scurrying to their wood piles
for added warmth and atmosphere. Decker and his wife Elizabeth lay a bit more
than half asleep, snuggled together before a waning fire, dreaming to the sound
of the crackling hardwood embers. The fire's warmth and glow offered more than
enough reason for not getting up when the phone rang. One-year-old Hope
Hawthorne lay sleeping soundly in her crib in the bedroom. Though he knew she
wouldn't likely be awakened by it, on the third ring Decker finally lifted
himself slowly from the floor and moved toward the offending instrument. On the
eighth ring he answered.
"Hello."
"Decker Hawthorne?" responded the voice from the other end of the phone.
"Yes," Decker answered.
"This is Harry Goodman. I have something you'll want to see." Goodman's voice
was excited but controlled. "It's a story for your newspaper. Can you come to
Los Angeles right away?"
"Professor?" Decker said, a little dumbfounded and not yet fully awake. "This is
quite a surprise. It's been . . ." Decker paused to count the years, "seven or
eight years. How are you?"
"I'm fine," Goodman answered hastily, not the least bit interested in small
talk. "Can you come to Los Angeles?" he asked again, insistently.
"I don't know, Professor. What exactly is the story about?"
"If I tell you over the phone you'll think I'm crazy."
"Maybe not. Try me."
"I can't. Not over the phone. All I can say is it has to do with the Shroud."
"The Shroud?" Decker asked in surprise. ". . . of Turin?"
''Of course, the Shroud of Turin."
"Uh . . . Professor, I hate to bring this up, but I'm afraid the Shroud is old
news. They did carbon 14 dating of the Shroud and found out it wasn't old enough
to be the burial cloth of Christ. Didn't you read about it in the newspapers
last month? It was on the front page of The New York Times. "7
"You think I live in a shell or something? I know all about the carbon 14
dating," Goodman said, not pleased at having to explain himself.
"Well, so what more is there to say about it?"
"I really don't think I can talk about this on the phone. Decker, this may be
the most important discovery since Columbus discovered the New World. Please,
just trust me on this one. I promise you won't be disappointed."
Decker knew that Goodman was not given to gross exaggeration. Obviously whatever
it was must be something pretty important. He did a quick mental check of his
schedule and agreed to fly to Los Angeles two days later.
"Who was that?" Elizabeth asked. "Professor Goodman," Decker answered. Elizabeth
gave Decker a puzzled look. "Goodman?" she asked. "Henry Goodman, your old
professor, the one you went with to Italy?"
"Yeah," said Decker without much enthusiasm. "Only it's Harry, not Henry. I'm
afraid I'm going to have to skip the drive up to Cade's Cove on Saturday. I have
to fly out to Los Angeles to see him about a story."
Elizabeth's disappointment showed on her face but she didn't say anything.
That night Decker and Elizabeth lay in bed talking about what it could be that
Goodman had found. Decker had not even talked to Goodman since the fall of 1981
when the Shroud team had formalized the findings of their 140,000 hours of work
in a published report. In short, the report said that the image on the Shroud is
clearly not the result of a painting or any other known method of image
transfer. Based on thirteen different test measures and procedures, the scourge
marks and blood around the nail holes and side wound are, indeed, the result of
human blood. Fibrils beneath the blood show no evidence of oxidation, indicating
that the blood was on the cloth prior to whatever process caused the image.
Finally, the report said that while the material of the Shroud may be old enough
to be the burial cloth of Jesus of Nazareth, it is impossible to even guess at
its age without carbon 14 dating, and that could not be done without destroying
a large portion of the cloth.
But that was in 1981. By 1987 six labs around the world had equipment that could
perform accurate carbon 14 dating using a sample the size of a postage stamp.
And in early 1988 the Catholic Church announced that Pope John Paul II would
permit the Shroud to be carbon 14 dated by three laboratories. In October 1988
the Church announced the findings. The labs found that, with a combined
certainty of 95%, the Shroud was made of flax grown sometime between 1260 and
1390, and therefore, the cloth is simply not old enough to have been the burial
cloth of Christ.
"What was it that Professor Goodman said?" Elizabeth asked. "That it was the
most important discovery since Columbus discovered America?"
"Yeah," Decker responded, shaking his head.
"Well, if the Shroud has been proven a forgery, what else could he be talking
about?"
"I don't know," Decker shrugged. "The only thing I can think of is that Goodman
has discovered how the image was made. After all, even though we know it's a
forgery we still have no idea how the image was transferred to the cloth,"
Decker explained. "But if that's all he's found, he's blowing this way out of
proportion. It could hardly be compared with Columbus discovering America."
"Well, then he must have discovered some way to prove that it's real," Elizabeth
concluded.
Decker shook his head. "No, that's crazy," he concluded. "The carbon 14 dating
was conclusive, and besides, it's axiomatic that you can't prove the existence
of God in the laboratory. So even if the dating was wrong, how could Goodman
prove the authenticity of the Shroud? Proving the Shroud is a forgery is
something science can do, but trying to prove it's authentic would be nuts."
Decker paused and then added, "Not to mention totally out of character for
someone like Goodman who's not even sure of his own existence, much less the
existence of God." Elizabeth and Decker laughed, kissed, and ended their
conversation for the night.
Los Angeles, California
Harry Goodman met Decker at the Los Angeles airport. Once they reached his car,
Goodman wasted no time getting to the subject at hand. "You remember, no doubt,"
Goodman said, "the effect it had on me when we discovered the minute particles
of dirt in the heel area of the Shroud image." Goodman presumed too much; ten
years had passed since Turin, but Decker politely nodded recollection. "It made
no sense," Goodman continued. "No medieval forger would have gone to the trouble
of rubbing dirt into the Shroud unless it could be seen by the naked eye. It was
then that I began to question my assumption that the Shroud was a forgery."
Decker shook his head, certain he must have misunderstood. Could Goodman really
be suggesting he thought the Shroud was real?
"You, of course, recall that some of the most conclusive work on the Shroud was
done by Dr. John Heller using the samples gathered on the strips of Mylar tape."
Decker did recall. Heller and Dr. Allan Adler had proven that the stains were
human blood and had also determined that the images were the result of
oxidation.8
"Yeah," Decker replied. "But how can any of that matter now that we know the
Shroud's not old enough to be authentic?"
"I wanted to examine the tape samples taken from the heel and foot area more
closely," Goodman continued, ignoring Decker's question, "so I arranged to get
the samples sent here. You will recall that the samples were placed in a
specially built case, and they took great care to guarantee that no foreign
materials got onto the samples. Each sample was catalogued by where it had come
from on the Shroud and then the case was sealed hermetically for shipping.
Unfortunately, that was like closing the gate after the horses have already
gone.
"In Turin, I personally counted more than a dozen different contaminated
articles that came in contact with the Shroud. At least two team members and
three priests kissed it. Hell, as far as kissing and touching the thing, it
seems that's been going on for as long as it's been around. And don't forget the
rust stains from those old thumbtacks. Even our procedures to prevent
contamination introduced some contaminants. The cotton gloves we wore surely
carried American pollen that, no doubt, got onto the Shroud material. And while
we're talking about other materials, let's not forget the plywood, or the
backing material, or the red silk covering.
"The point of all this is that the tape samples picked up all sorts of garbage
that had nothing to do with the origin of the Shroud or the creation of the
image. In his published report on the Shroud, Dr. Heller noted finding both
natural and synthetic fibers, fly ash, animal hairs, insect parts, beeswax from
church candles, and a couple of dozen other assorted materials, not to mention
spores and pollen.9 Because of all
this clutter, Heller decided that most of his examination should employ levels
of magnification just powerful enough to examine substances that could have been
used to create a visible image, and to ignore the smaller, irrelevant materials.
"For his purposes, Heller did exactly what he should have done, but his
procedures would have missed the kind of evidence that I was looking for. That's
why I decided to have a second look. I was interested in what might ordinarily
have been missed among all the microscopic clutter.
"I believe that what I found will explain the whole Shroud mystery." Goodman
paused. "But there's more."
Decker waited but Goodman was silent. "Well, what is it?" Decker asked.
Where's your sense of drama, Hawthorne?" asked Goodman. "You'll see, soon
enough."
At the University, Goodman drove to the William G. Young Science building on the
east side of the U.C.L.A. campus and parked in the tenured faculty parking lot.
Goodman's office was on the fourth floor and looked out over a courtyard
westward to the Engineering building. It was arranged very much the same as the
office he had at U.T., including the ragged but now framed 7 think, therefore,
lam. I think' poster and a laser-printed version of Goodman's first law of
achievement. "Before we go any further," Goodman began, as they settled into his
office, "I must confess that I have brought you here under slightly false
pretenses." Decker didn't like the sound of that but he let Goodman continue.
"What I am going to show you — you may not reveal to anyone. At least not yet."
"Then why was it so important that I come out here right away?" Decker asked,
both puzzled and a little perturbed at having been misled.
"Because," Goodman answered, "I need a witness. And the way I figure it, you owe
me. You could have gotten me in a lot of trouble with my colleagues when you ran
your story on the Turin project. The only reporter that was supposed to be there
was Weaver from National Geographic. We weren't even supposed to talk-to anyone
from the press. And then a week after we got back, the whole world reads wire
reports of a copyrighted story in a Knoxville paper by some damned reporter who
managed to pass himself off as a member of the team. And that damned reporter
just happened to decide to pass himself off as my damned assistant!
"I went through no end of scrutiny over that, but it could have been much worse.
You could have cost me the trust of a lot of my professional colleagues.
Fortunately you did make yourself useful while you were there and you made a
good impression on the rest of the team members. But still, it might not have
worked out so well. If anyone had thought that I knowingly helped a reporter get
onto the team, I'd have been blackballed as a security risk on all kinds of
future projects. So the way I figure it, you owe me, and you owe me big."
"Hey, I was just following Goodman's first law of achievement: 'The shortest
distance between any two points is around the rules,'" Decker responded. But
Goodman was right and Decker knew it. His conscience had always bothered him a
little about the way he got on the Shroud team. "Okay," he said at last, "it was
a lousy thing to do. I do owe you. So what is it you want to show me that I
can't tell anyone about?"
"You can tell anyone you like, but only when I say so. In fact, at the right
time I'll want you to report it; just not right away. Right now I need a witness
and you know I can't stand most reporters. Truth is, you're just barely
tolerable," Goodman added with a grin, trying to lighten the mood. "I need
someone I can trust to keep the story quiet until I'm ready to go public. You've
covered the Shroud story from the beginning. People will believe you when you
report what I'm going to show you, but if the story comes out too soon it could
doom the whole project."
"But, Professor, if this is about some research you've done, why don't you just
publish it yourself in a scholarly journal?"
"I will, of course, publish my work in detail later. But, well. . . I'm afraid
I'll need to break the ice with the public before I reveal the exact nature of
my research to my peers."
Decker frowned in confusion.
"It's just, I'm afraid I've applied a little of Goodman's first law of
achievement myself. There are those in the scientific community, who, because of
their narrow-mindedness, might condemn my methods. My hope is that once the
benefits of my work are well known, public opinion will be too strong in my
favor for my peers to condemn my methods. So, in exchange for confidentiality
now, you get exclusivity later. As the story evolves you'll be the only reporter
to have it. Certainly after you publish each part of the story, I'll have to
talk to other press people, but I'll make sure you have the story a week or two
before anyone else."
"What do you mean, 'as the story evolves'?" asked Decker.
"What I'm going to show you today is just the beginning. There will be several
installments along the way before you report the overall story." Decker still
had no idea what Goodman had discovered, but he couldn't help but be interested.
"So it all comes down to five things," Goodman concluded. "First, I need a
witness I can trust. Second, you owe me for Turin.
Third, you've covered the Shroud story since the beginning. Fourth, if you
provide me with confidentiality, I'll provide you with exclusivity."
"And fifth?" Decker asked.
"Fifth," Goodman answered, "is that if you report the story before I say to,
I'll deny every word of it and you'll make a total ass of yourself. You'll never
prove a thing."
"I thought you just said you thought that people would believe me."
"Yes, if I back you up and you back me up. But by yourself, and with my denial,
they'll think you're crazy. Decker, I'm offering you the biggest exclusive of
all time on the greatest discovery — scientific or otherwise — in the last 500
years. But in some ways it's also the most bizarre."
"Okay," Decker said. "So let's hear it."
"Do we have a deal?" Goodman asked, extending his hand to seal the agreement.
"Sure," Decker said, leaning over the desk to shake Goodman's hand. "So what's
this big scoop about the Shroud?"
Goodman leaned back in his chair, placed his fingertips together, his elbows on
the arm rests, and gazed off into space, apparently considering his words.
"Consider the following hypothesis," Goodman began. "The image of the man on the
Shroud of Turin is the result of a sudden burst of heat and light energy from
the body of a crucified man as his body went through an instantaneous
regeneration or 'resurrection,' if you will."
Decker's mouth dropped open. There was silence for a long moment and then he
began to laugh. "You're kidding me, right? This is all payback for Turin, isn't
it?"
"I assure you, I am entirely serious," Goodman responded as Decker's laughter
continued.
"But this is ridiculous," Decker said as he stopped laughing and tried to read
Goodman's face for any hint that despite his denial, he was, in fact, playing a
practical joke. Finding none, he continued. "Professor, that's not a scientific
hypothesis; that's a statement of faith. And since the Shroud isn't old enough
to be the burial cloth of Christ, it's not even blind faith, it's ignorant
faith."
"It is not a statement of faith at all! It's based on sound scientific fact and
reasoning. There is a way to test my hypothesis and to prove it."
Decker's eyes squinted, revealing the puzzlement behind them. "Okay, I'll bite,"
he said reluctantly, "how can you prove it?"
"By way of explanation," Goodman answered, "let me ask you what you know about
Francis Crick."
Decker was a little resistant to Goodman's unexplained change of subject but
decided to allow his old professor some flexibility and not argue the point. "I
know he won the Nobel Prize in medicine back in the early '60s . . ."
'"62," Goodman interrupted.
"... for his co-discovery with James Watson of the double helix structure of
DNA. And I know he published a book a few years back . . ." Decker struggled to
remember the name of the book.
"It was called Life Itself"10
Goodman said, finishing Decker's sentence.
"Yeah, that's it, Life Itself
"Good!" Goodman said, "then you're familiar with his book."
"I've read it." Decker tried to make it clear by his tone of voice that he
didn't think much of Crick's book, but Goodman didn't seem to notice.
"All the better! You will recall that in the book Crick examines possible
origins of life on this planet. He raises the question of why, with the
exception of mitochondria, the basic genetic coding mechanism in all living
things on earth is identical. Even in the case of mitochondria the differences
are rather small. From what we know of earth's evolution, there's no obvious
structural reason for the details of the coding mechanism being identical. Crick
does not entirely discount the possibility that life originated and evolved
naturally on earth but he offers a second theory—that perhaps life was planted
on this planet by a highly advanced civilization from somewhere else. If all
life on earth had a common origin, that would explain the apparent bottleneck in
genetic evolution.
"Crick calls his theory 'Directed Panspermia' and it's not unlike a theory
propounded by the astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle.'' Crick points out that the amount
of time since the 'Big Bang' easily allows for the development of life and
evolution of intelligent beings on other planets as long as four billion years
ago. And that's if we take a very conservative estimate often to twelve billion
years for the age of the universe. What that means is that on one or more
planets in our galaxy, there may exist intelligent life which is as much as four
billion years more advanced than life on earth!
"Professor Crick goes on to suggest that if these intelligent beings wanted to
colonize other planets they wouldn't start by sending members of their own
species. To colonize a planet, it would first be necessary to prepare that
planet for habitation. Without plant life there wouldn't be sufficient oxygen
for intelligent life, as we know it, to exist. And of course there wouldn't be
food for the colonists either. To establish the needed plant life, they would
have only to place some simple bacteria, such as bluegreen algae, on the planet
and let evolution and the eons of time do their work."
"Professor," Decker interrupted, "I've read the book. What's the point?"
"The point is, so what if Crick is right? What if life was planted on earth by
an ancient race from another planet? Where are they now? Well," Goodman
continued, answering his own questions, "Crick makes several suggestions: maybe
they all died; maybe they lost interest in space travel; maybe they didn't find
the earth suitable for their particular needs.
"But there's another possibility Crick didn't mention."- Goodman paused to
emphasize his point. "Certainly earth wouldn't have been the only planet where
they would have planted life. Probably they'd have seeded thousands of planets
throughout the galaxy. So, what if when they finally got to this particular
planet, they found that it was already populated, and not just by plants and
animals. What if, through some strange set of parallel twists of evolution, they
found that it was populated by beings not far different from themselves? Would
they simply invade and colonize it anyway? Or might they instead decide to
observe it and let it evolve naturally?"
"Professor," Decker interrupted again, "what has all this got to do with the
Shroud of Turin?"
"Think about it, Decker. Somewhere in the galaxy there may be a civilization of
beings, billions of years advanced to us, who are responsible for planting life
throughout the galaxy, including earth. I believe that the man whose
regeneration caused the image on the Shroud of Turin was a member of that parent
race, sent here as an observer: a man from a race of human-like beings, so far
advanced to us that they are capable of regeneration, possibly even immortality.
Not true gods — at least not in the way that term is normally used — but not too
far from it."
"Haven't you heard what I've been saying?" Decker interrupted. "The Shroud of
Turin is just not old enough to be the burial cloth of Christ!" Decker closed
his eyes and took a long breath to gather his composure. "Professor, look," he
said slowly. "This whole theory is ludicrous. And I think if you'll just stop
for a second you'll realize how crazy it is. You're a scientist, and you're a
good one. You know a reasonable hypothesis from a ..."
"I am not crazy!" Goodman shot back. "So just cut the patronizing and hear me
out!"
Decker stood up, ready to leave. "I'm sorry, Professor. You don't want me. You
want someone from the National Enquirer^"
Goodman stood and placed himself between Decker and the door. "I'm not nuts. I
fully expected your reaction but I'm telling you I can test and prove both of
these hypotheses. Damn it, I know how crazy it all sounds, but when you see what
I've found on the Shroud you'll understand."
Finally, here was something solid Decker's curiosity could relate to. He no
longer hoped to find the news story of the millennium, but he might at least
find out what had made Goodman's conservative scientific mind turn to mush. He
agreed to go to the laboratory. On the way there Decker turned to humor for
relief. /'// bet he found a mustard stain, he thought, trying not to laugh at
the whole ridiculous situation. Elizabeth is never going to believe this.
In the lab Goodman opened a locked cabinet and pulled out a clear plastic case
with several dozen slides in it. Decker recognized it as the case of tape
samples taken from the Shroud of Turin. "As I told you earlier," Goodman began,
"I borrowed the slides in order to examine further the dirt particles that were
found in the left heel area of the image. I hadn't even thought about the Shroud
for the last few years but when it was announced that they were going to do the
carbon 14 dating, it reminded me of something. I wondered if it might be
possible to determine the specific chemical makeup of the particles of dirt
found on the Shroud and perhaps see if any unusual characteristics could rule in
or rule out given points of origin. In other words, was there anything about the
dirt that would indicate that it had originated in the Middle East, or,
conversely, was there anything that would instead indicate that the dirt was
from either France or Italy or perhaps even somewhere else?
"If it was from the Middle East, or even from Jerusalem itself, it would not
necessarily prove anything about the Shroud, of course. A forger who went to all
the trouble of placing dirt on the Shroud in such minute amounts that it would
take a twentieth century macroscope to see it, might just as well have thought
to import the dirt from Jerusalem. It makes about as much sense, which is to
say: none at all. I just wanted to get another look at it."
Goodman sat down in front of a microscope, turned on its lamp and placed a slide
on the scope's stage. "In the car I told you that Dr. Heller had avoided using
too much magnification because of what it was he was looking for." Goodman
paused, looked through the eyepiece lens, and adjusted the scope's objectives
and focus. "In my case," he continued as he looked up at Decker, "I used between
a 600x and a 1000AT." Goodman stood up and motioned for Decker to look through
the scope. "This first slide is the sample taken from directly over the left
heel."
Decker moved the slide around on the stage, refocusing as necessary. "There's
not much there," he said, still scanning the slide.
"Exactly," Goodman said. "At first I was rather disappointed. I checked the grid
but the only other samples from the feet, were from the nail wounds in the right
foot." Goodman took the slide from the microscope and carefully placed it back
in its designated slot.
"You remember that the right foot actually had two exit wounds, indicating that
the feet had been nailed left over right. The right foot was nailed down first,
with the nail exiting through the arch of the foot. The left foot was then
nailed on top of the right with the nail passing through both feet, leaving an
exit wound in the arch of the left foot and the heel of the right. Neither of
these samples seemed very promising though, because any dirt that had been in
the wound areas would likely have been bonded to the cloth by the blood."
Goodman took a second slide from the plastic case. "This particular sample is
from the blood stain of the right heel. I really didn't expect to find any dirt
there, but I looked anyway." Goodman paused.
"That's when I found it."
Goodman reached around Decker and shut off the microscope's lamp and handed him
the slide. Decker took the slide and placed it on the microscope's stage. He
adjusted the mirror to compensate for the loss of light from the lamp and
focused the lens. Goodman rotated the objective to Softy. On the slide before
him, Decker could see a group of several strangely familiar disk-shaped objects
surrounded by and imbedded into crusty blackish-brown material that he assumed
to be blood.
After a moment, he looked up at Goodman. His eyes had grown wide and his mind
raced in disbelief and confusion. "Is that possible?" he asked finally.
Goodman opened a large medical text book to a well marked page and pointed to an
illustration in the upper left corner. What Decker saw there was an artist's
representation of something very similar to what he had just seen through
Goodman's microscope. The caption below the picture read, "human dermal skin
cells."
Decker looked back through the microscope to be sure. Inexplicably, despite
hundreds or even thousands of years, they appeared to be perfectly preserved. He
felt Goodman reach around him again, this time to turn the lamp back on. The
brighter light made the small disks appear transparent and Decker could clearly
see the nucleus of each cell. Within a few seconds the lamp began to gently warm
the slide. Decker looked away to rub his eyes and then looked back.
In the warmth of the artificial light, the nuclei began to move.
7 Roberta Suro, "Church Says Shroud of Turin Isn't Authentic." The New York Times, October 14, 1988, section 1, p. 1.
8 Dr. John H. Heller,Report on the Shroud ofTurin, (Boston: HoughtonMifflin Company, 1983).
9 ibid., pp. 126 and 163.
10 Francis Crick, Life Itself, (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1983).
11 Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Diseases from Space, (London: Dent, 1979).