A Movie I Want To See: Jesus Comes Back
Jesus comes back. He travels to Los Angeles. Why, you ask? To make a movie, of course. Ideally the year would be 2026, and little would be different than today.
There's a trick, sometimes people look at him funny. Sometimes when he leaves the frame (of the movie, not the movie-in-the-movie) he looks odd. In fact, he looks blurred.
He does, however, perform miracles. That's the pitch, "I do miracles" and the Hollywood bosses all want to bid, but Jesus, as lots of people expected, isn't interested in the cash payouts.
So, he feeds the entire studio lot, thousands of people, with the sandwiches and coffee from a single pushcart. And this miracle isn't even filmed for the movie he wants to make (although hand-held cameras abound).
Of course there are skeptics. The miracles shut most people up, but a few are convinced its a trick.
Perhaps on a beach in Florida, someone hears about this, and doubts it, and someone says "Prove it" and this someone thinks they will. And goes out to do said.
Said person purchases whole catalogs of detection devices, loads them in a trunk of car, and drives to Los Angeles, picking up compatriots along the road. Real scientists are shooed away by the studio, knowing a proved fraud would sink their imminent and record breaking profits. The truth can come later.
Day after day, walking in different detectors from the trunk and walking near the Jesus figure, the skeptic tries to puzzle it out. He notices the blur quickly, but can't tell anyone but his compatriots, since he needs continued access.
He is going crazy, so he stabs the Jesus figure, Jesus bleeds, the guy is arrested, the focus turns to the cop. The cop, you see, is a bit of a skeptic himself. On the weapon is both the blood of Jesus, which he now has an opportunity to study, and a chip of bone. Jesus asks for the weapon, and gets it in his hand, but then the cops take it.
We follow the scalpel to the lab, we see the police officer carry it to the technician, who puts it under the microscope. "Looks normal to me, although I'd have to do more tests to be sure," says the technician. Then the technician notices the bone chip. Under the microscope it doesn't look like bone, it looks like metal with a bone-like covering. They leave the room, to get others, when they get back the bone is just bone.
Well, now that the cat is out of the bag, the viewer is launched from Earth, arcing up and over, slingshotting to the moon, to the far side of the moon, to the spaceship. The spaceship is in contact with the Jesus. The aliens agree that the technician should be killed. They dematerialize part of his brake line while he's driving.
The cop is quite afraid. The cop is from Los Angeles, and knows some people in the studio. A gaffer for laughs? A best boy for the worst? Someone. The signal to the moon is detected. The alien now is pretending to be alive (its a robot) and that he was the original Jesus, too. That works for a while, too. The studio executives and the preachers both really want to believe, not to mention the now millions of people who have put their faith in this thing.
Perry Mason style, for lack of a better idea, the Earthlings learn that faking to be the reborn religious figures of planets is the best way to conquer them. Maybe the robot, shielded from its space controllers, has no preferences, and simply spills the beans once asked.
The aliens' plan was simply to use us as cheap labor, manufacturing mostly. Poverty was going to be the new way, the new Jesus would never die, and no one would be in a position to question the new production methods, or where the product ended up going.
In the end the aliens leave, and the Earthlings look up, knowing both that they are not alone, and targets for exploitation.
The discovery of the robot nature of the Jesus robot, maybe it should have something to do with his heart.
© 2008, by Josh Narins
