Story

For my Science Fiction class, we’re supposed to write a short story.  The story is supposed to take some ancient or medieval story and turn it into science fiction, or write a science fiction story involving some human archetypal plot such as "boy meets girl" or "coming of age."  So this is the story I wrote.  I’m not a writer at all, so considering that, I’m proud of what I’ve written.  Anyway, here it is:

            In a field in Iowa, Frank busily uprooted the broken corn stalks that now covered much of his property.  This was the second time the mysterious crop circles suddenly appeared on his property, though he had heard of many other farmers who had been likewise afflicted.  The last time this happened to him, nearly four years ago, he was greeted with another rather unexpected surprise the following night.  Frank was awakened from a deep sleep by the most fantastic light display he had ever seen coming from outside his bedroom window, yet his wife, letting out a soft snore, seemed completely unaware of what was going on.  She didn’t even get startled awake when Frank suddenly disappeared from the bedroom and rematerialized in a seemingly endless white room.  It was here that an alien creature with the body of a woman and wings of a white dove told Frank of the coming of the son of YHVH, a name that he couldn’t seem to utter himself, but sounded something like Yah-vay to his human ears.

            So when the crop circles appeared the second time, Frank naturally expected to get another visitor that night to explain a bit more about this Yah-vay person.  By the time he finally finished clearing the damaged crops away, night had fallen.  Frank looked around the night sky for the patterns of moving lights he’d seen on TV programs of people claiming to have seen UFOs, anxious to see if he could spot a spaceship in the distance.  Instead, all he saw was the moon.  One could imagine the surprise Frank felt when he turned around to face the other direction and saw the moon again.  Looking back and forth between the two moons, he realized the second moon wasn’t a moon at all, but a large, glowing light set far off in the night sky.

            As Frank stared at this second moon-like object closer, he disappeared to again find himself in the same endless white room to which he was transported four years ago.  Another of the winged-woman creatures appeared before him and explained the situation.

            "Tonight is the night, young one."  The alien was fond of calling Frank young, despite looking as if he could be her father.  Perhaps these alien creatures aged differently.  "YHVH has found a human woman with the appropriately pure genetic material to bare his son.  You must go to her and welcome the baby into this world.  He will one day show your species the path to peace.  Follow the light."

            With that, the alien and the room disappeared and Frank found himself back in his field staring at the second moon.  Knowing he must obey, Frank strode into his home and passed his wife wordlessly as he searched for his old camping bag.  She wouldn’t understand if he told her what he was doing.  He didn’t even understand what he was doing, but he felt compelled to go; compelled to follow the light.

 

            "What do you mean you don’t have any room!?"  José was absolutely livid, and understandably so.  His fiancée was about to give birth to a child that he knew wasn’t his, and on top of that, she had the nerve to claim some alien named Yah-vay had abducted her in the dead of night and impregnated her with the child that will some day unify the world.  "This is a hospital and my wife is going into labor!  How can you say you don’t have any room?"

            "I’m sorry sir," the nurse looked annoyed.  "If you don’t have insurance, we can’t give you a room.  You’ll have to go to the community hospital down the street."

            "Insurance?  This is an emergency!"  The nurse looked unimpressed and thoroughly bored.  She had to turn away poor, uninsured couples like José and Maria on a daily basis, so this was nothing new for her.  "Fine!  Come on Maria, we’re leaving!  What is happening to this world if you need insurance just to have a baby?"

            José and Maria left the hospital, Maria nearly doubled over in pain as they got back into their ’96 Kia Sephia.  The car may have been 10 years old, but it still got them where they needed to go – barely.

            "We’re almost there, Maria.  Just breathe.  Breathe."  José felt ridiculous for going through so much trouble for a child that wasn’t his, but he loved Maria.  He couldn’t imagine leaving her to fend for herself, even if she was unfaithful and he would take care of the baby as if it were his.

            José caught a glimpse of some odd glowing orb

above the community hospital, but pushed that out of his mind as he came to a screeching halt in front of the hospital doors and threw the gearshift into park.  Rushing to the other side of the car, he helped his fiancée out and into the hospital.  Two hours later, Maria and José got their first look at their baby boy, Yeshua.  Why Maria insisted on that name, José couldn’t fathom, but she invoked the alien-told-me-to excuse whenever he probed the issue.  Whatever the reason, Yeshua was his new son and Maria would soon be his wife.  But first, they would have to contend with three very odd visitors.

           

            “Listen, mister – Goldstein is it? – I don’t care who told you to come here, I’m not going to let you bother my wife and baby.”  José was pushing Mr. Goldstein out of the hospital room. 

            “But they said I needed to come and welcome the son of Yah-vay into this –“

            “Wait, wait, wait…  Did you just say Yah-vay?”

            “Yes, of course.  This alien came to me and told me that I needed to come welcome the son of Yah-vay into the world.  To follow the light!”

            “This is crazy…  Did Maria put you up to this?”  Over Goldstein’s shoulder, José caught the sight of two other men striding right towards them.  Like Goldstein, these two were middle aged and from the looks of their tanned skin and dirty fingernails, were involved in outdoor labor.  “Now, who are you two?”

            “My name’s Frank and this is Mervin,” indicating the man next to him.  “We were sent to welcome the son of Yah-vay.”

            “Oh, great.  Look – My wife just had a baby and she’s tired.  She doesn’t want three strangers bothering her right now.  So if you would please leave –“

            “But we’ve got gifts for the baby,” shouted Goldstein, Frank, and Mervin in unison.

            “Get out!”

 

            The alarm clock switched on as seven o’clock rolled around.  Quiet at first, the alarm gradually built up to coax Yeshua out of his slumber.  Another uneventful day at the woodshop was before him.  Even the fact that it was his 30th birthday wouldn’t make the day much better.  Ever since Empress Jenna passed the Forest Preservation Act placing the astronomical tax on wood in an effort to preserve the last remaining plots of forest, carpentry was not a lucrative business.  Of course, with the Imperial War of Emperor George still raging long after his death and the widespread arrests now being made for the smallest protest against the government, no one was really in the market for wooden furniture anyway.  But Yeshua promised his father that he’d keep the woodshop open, so he’d continue for as long as he could.

            Recently though, he’d begun to have visions.  They seemed like fragments of memories.  Foreign, like they were the memories of someone else, but they left Yeshua with the unshakeable feeling that the man he called his father wasn’t his real father.  Perhaps it was just the ranting of his mother claiming to have been impregnated by an alien named Yah-vay leaving an impression on him, but now he couldn’t help thinking that maybe she wasn’t as crazy as he thought.  After all, the man that predominantly appeared in his visions did have a name that sounded an awful lot like Yah-vay, and the visions certainly seemed real enough to him.  Unfortunately, both of his parents died of the so-called Avian Flu that swept the globe eleven years ago, so he won’t be able to ask them any questions about the visions.

            Before heading to work, Yeshua took a moment to walk through the last remaining park in the Imperial States of America that was open to the public.  There by the lake was a man giving cleansings to a group of people joining his religious movement.  Yeshua had, of course, seen this before, but suddenly felt moved to have a cleansing himself, so he stood at the end of the line.  When his time came to have his cleansing, the man, whom Yeshua learned was named Jon, held a strange electronic hoop above Yeshua’s head which was supposed to cleanse the target’s body of impurities.  The hoop began to glow as it had for the others in line, but unlike the others, the glowing became more intense and eventually enveloped Yeshua in its light.  As the light intensified, Yeshua suddenly had a rush of visions, as if his entire life was flashing before his eyes.  The problem was, the visions he had weren’t of his own life, they were of the lives o

f hundreds of other people, or aliens, or something.  As these lives flooded through him, he realized that these were memories of his ancestors, passed down through his genetic code.  Yeshua was the son of YHVH, and had the blood of a race of aliens who called themselves Cristos coursing through his veins.  His mother wasn’t crazy at all.  Yeshua became aware of his purpose to bring unity and peace to the planet.

            The light from the device began to fade and when Yeshua became aware of his surroundings again, he noticed those around him, Jon included, staring at him.  Never before had they seen someone who had reacted so powerfully to the cleansing device.  Some started murmuring something about the “Liberator.”  Yeshua looked around the group, gazing for a moment on each person there, and resolved to start spreading the message of his father for the sake of them all.  They deserved to be saved from the inevitable sentence many of them would serve at Dante’s Island Prison Facility as more and more actions were suddenly deemed detrimental to the Imperial War and thus, illegal.  Indeed, a new saying had come into being: there are only three certainties in life – Death, Taxes, and Imprisonment.  He would use the knowledge of the Cristos to end the Imperial War and restore the freedoms the people once had.  

 

            Yeshua was led by two armed security drones through the Imperial Courthouse.  As they walked, Yeshua considered the past four years since he had his awakening by the lake.  He had used the advanced technical knowledge of medicine and physics handed down to him through his genetic memory to perform acts that some considered miracles.  He had been able to restore control of the body to a quadriplegic, repair the damaged retina of a blind man, and successfully duplicate several hundred cans of tuna to feed a group of hungry supporters.  Others tried to mimic the devices Yeshua created for these acts, but no one seemed to be able to understand the science behind the devices.  Yeshua told his supporters that the devices were not important.  The important thing that he wanted his supporters to understand is that they deserved to have their freedom and their rights back.  He wanted to be sure they learned the value of compassion for each other so later generations of leaders would not commit the present-day atrocities.  But all of this would be a slow process.  Already, Yeshua knew he would be executed.  It had all been part of the meticulously considered plan.  When Yeshua was executed, a worldwide movement would begin that even the Empress could not contain.  They wouldn’t understand at first, but one day, they would.

Yeshua paused for a moment in thought and was promptly nudged by the drone on his left.  Returning his awareness to his current surrounding, Yeshua continued on through the courthouse hall.  They passed many other accused persons having their trial conducted by the computerized justice mainframe.  This mainframe had replaced all of the human judges and was capable of delivering a verdict within one minute by scanning the government records of the accused.  Nearly everyone who was charged got convicted, but Empress Jenna was convinced that this was better than having the human activist judges presiding over trials. 

As Yeshua passed the other people having their automated trials, he overheard their charges and sentences.  The man at terminal #663 was being charged with theft.  A plea by the accused was not necessary and within moments, the monitor responded with a verdict – guilty, 18 months at Dante’s Island Prison Facility.  The elderly woman at terminal #664 fared much worse.  Convicted of speaking out against Empress Jenna’s ban on Catcher in the Rye, she was sentenced to three years.  Another woman at terminal #665 was charged and convicted of idleness, one year at Dante’s Island.  The next terminal was available, so Yeshua was signed in by the drones escorting him.

“You are charged with conspiring to overthrow the Empress, with speaking against the Holy Imperial War, and with claiming to be the son of an alien.”  Yeshua stared directly at the computer-generated face displayed on the monitor as the mainframe calculated the verdict.  “Guilty on all charges.  Execution at Dante’s Island Prison Facility.”

 

            “Are we almost there, Maggie?”  Two women, supporters of Yeshua, were traveling to his final resting place.

            “Almost.  Soon after he was executed, some of his other supporters managed to get his body and bring him just over that hill.”

            They came up upon the abandoned storage facility shed where Yeshua’s body was placed.  But something was wrong.  The door to the shed was wide open and as the women peered inside, they saw it was empty.

            “No!  They’ve taken his body!  The government has stolen Yeshua’s body!”  Maggie looked as if she were ready to take on an entire squad of soldier drones by herself, when she turned around and cam

e face to face with an impossibility.  Before her stood the form of Yeshua.

            “Be still,” Yeshua commanded.  “I have indeed died, but death is only temporary.  My body has been revived and transported to the planet of my ancestors where I shall plan the end of the tyranny on Earth by my father’s side.  The form you see before you is an automated holographic recording I have left on Earth to explain what has happened.  Do not be afraid, for I have not left you.  From my place by my father, I will be able to watch over the progress of the planet and help when I am needed.  There will come a time when I return to finish the task I have before me, but for now, you must spread the news that I live on despite the attempts to end my message.  So go spread the message and prepare the world for the future.”

            As the holographic image of Yeshua disappeared, the women looked at each other and grinned.  Their leader had survived Dante’s Island and gave them hope that they could as well.  Even though he was no longer physically with them, his message still lived on and they would make sure the message never died.