The Boys of Passover

• You're probably wondering who's playing superhuman baseball this year, since last year's challengers have pretty much dissolved. Well, the United Nations was interested too.
• The U.N. has a law-enforcement arm nowadays: the Paxis Directorate. Some of them are superhumans, others have battlesuits. So it's Paxis on both sides of the game: Suits against Skins!
• The "Suits" all come from my pals in DuoPolarity of Boston. Their Baseball Suits beat the world's most powerful superhumans in the game last year. This year, the challenge for them is: Program the Paxis battlesuits for baseball - without screwing up their battle experience! Well, they can always restore the experience from backup, so I'll skip you the programming details.

How do I fit in?

• I've programmed for DuoPolarity, for years now.
• I'm actually a U.N. reservist, and I've worn one of their battlesuits!

No, I don't get to play for Paxis; I'm only moderately friendly with the guy who hands the battlesuits out. But I do get to help work on the suits - as a DuoPolarity contractor. Cool!

But in the meantime, the U.N. wants me for something entirely different:

• I've also operated one of their time machines! And believe me, they guard those a lot more closely than they do their battlesuits. So there aren't that many qualified operators.
• And they're sending their time machines on a mission. It seems our past is uncertain now! Well, duh. I already believe in alternate pasts; that theory explains a lot of historical uncertainty. And that was before I even discovered time machines.
• The U.N. is also interested in how people might have messed with the past recently. Well, duh, I even messed with it myself this year - and last. But only in a reactive sort of way.
• And they're sending filmmakers to document it all. Somehow, AOL Time Warner has gotten the job. Maybe it's because some of the recent time travellers are Toons whose portrayals are copyrighted by Warner Brothers. But still... Some people may complain about Big One-World Government, but there's still inordinate influence from Big One-World Corporations.

The U.N. time machine mission is aiming for Year 29 "Common Era" - the time of Jesus of Nazareth! I've heard most time travellers want to go see that, and our United Nations scientists are no exception. I guess they finally got the go-ahead. And I'm driving!

• I've heard, Year 29 is the most heavily policed year in all of time travel. So I recommend an alternate destination.
• The U.N. is not paying heed to my suggestion to scrub the mission - but they have good reason. Another group is piggybacking with us and onward. My group will draw the attention (which I'm infamous for), while the other group goes on to 700 BC, and then does the real mission... Break out to the universe that's blockading us!

As backup, I insist on two of my friends from the FERG: Mikhail and Vidya.

• Mikhail's been on secret mission; we recently had a party to welcome him back.
• Of course I can pick my backup. The U.N. gets my services for practically free 'cause I'm a reservist, but the FERG should get something out of this.
• Among us, we have to learn Aramaic, Greek, and Latin, two languages apiece, in subliminal sleep training. Ancient Judea was tri-lingual, thanks to multiple waves of invasion. Hey, I can understand that. For instance, modern Greenland is the same way, Greenlandic, Danish, and English, for much the same reason.
• So, our team member from India takes Latin / Aramaic (suitable for an emissary to Rome from the Land of the Hind); our Russian (actually Transcarpathian, but don't get him started on all the nations that ever claimed Transcarpathia) takes Greek / Aramaic (suitable for a Russian Jew - such things actually existed in the Crimea of the time), and I get Greek and Latin (suitable for a northern-Europe barbarian like myself).
• Of course, the film team learns the languages too. They want to work for the U.N., they got to follow the rules like I do.

I've heard, the U.N. teleport devices have stopped working, because our universe is being blockaded. So how is it that their time machines still work? Well, they don't work the same as they used to.

• Last year, I could (and did) go straight from California to ancient Judea. This year, our team will have to fly over to Istanbul (the U.N. time travel facility most convenient to Israel), and go back to ancient Byzantium and travel from there.
• The theory is, our time period has become like a rifle. It can't spread the time travellers in space (as regards Earth's surface) like it used to.
• But if we can reach the past, we can double back toward any future from there. That's one way around this blockade on our universe.
• But why Istanbul? I gather, they picked Istanbul / Constantinople / Byzantium because it's relatively stable throughout history.
• And the U.N. hasn't staffed a facility there yet... but it is staffed, because the U.N. will send people there from the future. Ain't time travel grand?

Anyway, we eventually get to ancient Jerusalem, and get into the outer courtyard of its Temple during Passover. Of course, that's where the fun begins.

• In New Testament Jerusalem, people have given some money to a man to take into the inner courtyard. It would be good to follow, but only Mikhail's eligible to do that (thanks to Jewish purity rules), and he's busy. For that matter, so's Vidya; she's working with the filmers.
• But I can walk on air (with my favorite magic trenchcoat under my robes), so I go peek over the wall.
• Inside, I see four red horses and a curtain. Entirely suitable for a prophetic play; they loved prophecies about horsemen back then. But then something spooks the horses.
• Then the voice of Jesus starts narrating behind the curtain. "There's an electrical fire in here... but there IS no electricity here! Those Warners must have brought it. Call the fire brigade - and call Vidya!" And then he recites her correct cell phone number!
• But wait a minute: Jesus of Nazareth only speaks Aramaic - and I don't! I only studied Greek and Latin for this mission! And how does Jesus know about electricity anyway?
• But I did once study Jehovahpower. So did Jesus. It seems we both speak the same language after all. And when you know Jehovahpower, you have a good chance of knowing anything.
• But how did electricity get in there? Well, I guess the film crew was less respectful of the holy precincts than I've been.

But then, there's someone standing beside me - even though I'm up in the air! She says, she's Time Police - and I'm interfering!

Well, like it says in my U.N. report, I managed to get away... by joining a travelling school of gladiators. That's how I got the 22 extra pounds of upper-body muscle mass. That's where the scar came from too. And my poor trenchcoat is ribbons now. But I'm proud to say, I set up the diversion that allowed Mikhail and Vidya and the filmers to get away.

Now that I'm back, I've seen some other reports...

• One team went back to the time of the prophet Elijah, stayed there, and found the same regional famine he did.
  • They holded up with a Lebanese widow, just like he did.
  • They shared rations with her, leading to the same sort of Miracle of the Bottomless Jars as Elijah took credit for.
  • They even repelled some hungry intruders, leading to a new Miracle of the Home Invasion. (12 Dec 2004)
• Another team went back to ancient Lebanon with the first team, then tried the "double-back" way around the universal blockade. Only one agent made it back; she reported, the other one got seduced by battle-maidens, and then got his throat torn out by beagles. Yeesh.
  • The battle-maidens are new to me, but I've seen the evil beagles in action before. I know of mercenaries named Tyrmj, who had War Beagles. I left them at the universe that's now blockading us. I guess they're still there... and on the job.

I'm sorry I missed the baseball game and that month of work. But I can now say, those U.N. plans to get to alternate universes by way of the past, are going to have some opposition.

But also, I'm a historian and a Christian. And I have to report some historical findings. If we can believe this past we went to...

• It seems Jesus of Nazareth started out as a travelling performer of morality plays! He was of course famous for his one-man shows, but he of course had a troop of supporting cast. When my team saw him, he was doing the Judean equivalent of a Passion Play, based on Old Testament prophecies!
• But then this riot started during one of his plays. He got blamed, and got the death penalty. So he really did die for other people's sins, in the most literal way. And he especially died for the sins of my own era.
• That's not to say, Jesus wasn't the Son of God and all that. Christianity believes, we're all adopted sons of God - which belief Jesus often reminded people of. Could be, God needed an innocent person to die for other people's sins right about then.
• Once he died, Jesus became the highest bidder for the Good Lord's throne. So he got Jehovahpower - which accounts for all those miracles he did before that. Jehovahpower is funny that way. As well I know.
• I hope not to have offended good Christians with this theory. Many believe God designed the universe from Day 1 with the intent of sacrificing part of his family to redeem it. But if you'll excuse me, that sounds like Plan B to me. And God's good at recruiting people to his family - and giving them a part in his plan, even Plan B.