Jesus, the Missing Years

The Time Machine

- Epilogue

One cannot choose but wonder. Will he ever return? It may be that he swept back into the past, and fell among the blood-drinking, hairy savages of the Age of Unpolished Stone; into the abysses of the Cretaceous Sea; or among the grotesque saurians, the huge reptilian brutes of the Jurassic times. He may even now - if I may use the phrase - be wandering on some plesiosaurus-haunted Oolitic coral reef, or beside the lonely saline lakes of the Triassic Age. Or did he go forward, into one of the nearer ages, in which men are still men, but with the riddles of our own time answered and its wearisome problems solved? Into the manhood of the race: for I, for my own part cannot think that these latter days of weak experiment, fragmentary theory, and mutual discord are indeed man's culminating time! I say, for my own part. He, I know - for the question had been discussed among us long before the Time Machine was made - thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end. If that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so. But to me the future is still black and blank - is a vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places by the memory of his story. And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers - shriveled now, and brown and flat and brittle - to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.

The Time Machine 2

- Prologue

Jesus was finally going home. The promise of adventure presented to him that hot dry day in Nazareth so long ago by the stranger were as if seeds of excitement were sown on barren ground. Edging the lever of the fantastic machine unto himself increased the pace of the strobing sun and and moon across the heavens as he passed outside of time, numbering the days and years. It was time, Jesus mused, after spending much of his adult life journeying to different eras to return to whence he came and end his wandering ways. He had been gone for too long from home, 18 long years! Much had changed for Jesus in the interim. He was older, wiser and had grown a long beard, something that would amuse his brother to no end. Undoubtedly many would think him dead and miraculously returned to life.

Years had passed since that day the Time Traveler appeared in the hills above the humble abode of Jesus. While collecting stray sheep for Joseph, a strange sound and flashing lights over by the old cave piqued the attention of the humble carpenter. Treading the path around a grove of olive trees Jesus beheld an amazing sight! An odd cart, bereft of oxen, seemed to form from the very air! The ground did tremble, the air did sound as if trumpets and with a flash of light the odd cart solidified and dropped roughly to the earth, the impact pitching it's pilot out roughly onto the dirt.

Swiftly, Jesus ran to offer comfort to the master of the cart. Even to his eyes untrained in the ways of healing it was obvious the stranger was injured. "Do you need succor? May I wash your feet, stranger?" Jesus said.

The stranger opened eyes caked with blood and looked up at his would be savior. "W...Weena?" The visitor said. Jesus was confused. The stranger was delirious, possibly possessed by madness. "I know not what this Weena may be." Jesus said, laying his hands upon the wounded man and helping the stranger to a sitting position against the cart. "Pray, tell me what is this wondrous cart I behold in my eyes that needs no goats or oxen to lead it?"

The stranger seemed to gain strength from the caring hand on his shoulder and was able to speak without gasping for breath. "It is a time machine, for crossing the years without the requirement of experiencing them. In the seat of this device that I built with my own two hands I am an eagle soaring above creation whereas man is the snail slowly traversing the years. Yet, kind sir, I am in sore needs of your assistance. My wounds are grievous and I am on a mission of utmost importance."

Jesus considered the chores that lay before him that day. Find the missing sheep, till the field, repair the table that Abraham dropped off yesterday at his carpenter shop, and scrub clean the village leper. After weighing these options Jesus decided that being a good Samaritan took precedence. "Of course, how may I help thee...Sir..?"

"Call me the Time Traveler, for that is who I am and what I am. I need to deliver these tomes of knowledge, we call them "books" in my far future advanced era, to my companion in the year 802, 701 A.D. I need you to pilot my 'cart' as you call it for my injuries are debilitating, though not fatal."

"Okay." Said Jesus. Over the course of the next several hours the Time Traveler explained the working of the arcane machine. It was then that together Jesus and the Time Traveler embarked upon an amazing and yet unrecorded series of adventures that culminated far in the future where the visitor was ultimately re-united with his young, child-like bride. When the Time Traveler decided to remain forever in the year 802,701 A.D., the homesick and restless Jesus begged his friend to let him return to the land and time of his birth. The Traveler agreed and adjusted settings on the time machine so it would return to him once the prodigal son had reached his proper era.

And thus began the long, strange journey of Time Traveling Jesus. Unbeknown to him, this would be no routine trip home. Along the way many adventures awaited him, both in the far future and distant past, with deeds great and small and fraught with danger and shocking revelations.

Tags: Science Fiction Jesus, the Missing Years Pulp