The Cross of Fire

by Barry N. Malzberg

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Alien Contact

Synopsis

In the far future, it has become possible in advanced psychotherapy for a man to be given dreams as vivid as reality in which he may play any part he chooses. If that man were inclined to see his life as a struggle between good and evil, and if he were blessed with a profound sense of the black humour inherent in his situation, he might choose to play the part of Jesus, called the Christ. If he were inclined to write a book, it might be this one.

Release date: August 6, 2012

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 224

Sample

Depersonalization takes him over once again and as usual he does not quite feel like himself. This is for the best: the man as he is known could hardly manage these embarrassing circumstances. Adaptability, that is the key. Swim the fast waters. There is no other way that he, let alone I, could get through.

“Pardonnez tout ils,” he says, feeling himself twirling upon the crucifix in the absent Roman breezes, a sensation not unlike flight. “Mais ils ne comprendre pas que ils fait.”

Oh my, oh my, is that awful! He wishes that he could do better than that. Still, there is no one around, strictly speaking, to criticize and besides he is merely following impulse which is the purpose of the program. I can do what I want, he tells himself. “Ah pere this is a bitch,” he mutters.

The thief to his left, an utterly untrustworthy type, murmurs curses, and the man, losing patience with his companions who certainly look as culpable as all hell, stares down. Casting his glance he thinks he can see the onlookers, not so many as one would hope, far less than the Gospels would indicate but certainly enough (fair is fair and simple Mark had made an effort to get it right) to cast lots over his vestments. They should be starting that stuff just about now.

Oh, well. This too shall pass. He considers the sky, noting with interest that the formation of clouds against the dazzling sunlight must yield the aspect of stigmata. For everything, a natural explanation. It is a rational world back here after all, if a little on the monolithic side.

“I wonder how long this is going to go on,” he says. Just making conversation while the blood congeals. “It does seem to be taking a long time.”

“Long time?” the thief on the left says. “Until we die, that’s how long, chief, and not an instant sooner. It’s easier,” the thief adds confidentially, “if you breathe in tight little gasps. Less pain. You’re kind of grabbing for the air.”

“Am I? Really?”

“What you got to try to do is not reach so deeply inside yourself,” the thief says helpfully. “Pant a little; you get more shallow than going far inside. There’s less pain, too.”

“I’ll have to try that.”

“It’s a matter of experience,” the thief says mysteriously. “You go through these things, you learn.”

“Leave him alone,” the other thief says. “Don’t talk to him. Why give advice? Do you think that he’d give you any help? The filthy buggers nailed you up here in the first place; that’s how much caring there is.”

“Just trying to help a mate on the stations, that’s all.”

“Help yourself,” the second thief grumbles. “That’s the only possibility.”

“Didn’t get you no different place, chief?” the first thief says almost cheerfully. “Did it now?”

“No it didn’t,” I say. “We’ve all wound up in exactly the same place and so much for human circumstance.”

“Stuff it chief.”

“Where?” I say but there is no answer. So much for relationships. It is impossible to deal with these people. The texts imbue them through sentimental focus with what I might call pathos but, truly, they are swine. I can grasp Pilate’s dilemma.

Thinking of Pilate as my blood rots leads me into another channel, the question of choices as they cross with circumstance, motive with fate but before I can truly consider these interesting metaphysical issues, pain of new dimension slashes and there I am, there I am, suspended from the great cross groaning, all the syllables of thought trapped within.

“Ah,” I murmur, “ah,” he murmurs. “Ah, monsieurs, c’est le plus,” but it is not to be sure le plus at all. There are always further levels of potential descent.

Indeed there are and it goes on, in fact, for an unsatisfactorily extended and quite spiritually laden period of time. The lot casting goes quickly and there is little to divert on the hillside; one can only take so much of that silly woman’s cries before all emotional impact is lost. It becomes a long and screaming difficulty, a passage broken only by the careless deaths of the thieves who surrender in babble and finally, not an instant too soon, the man’s brain bursts … but there is time, crucifixion being what it is, for further slow dimunition. Lessened color; black and grey. If there is one thing to be said about the process it is this: it is exceeding generous. One will be spared nothing.

Of course I had pointed out that I did not want to be spared anything. “Give me Jesus,” I had asked and cooperating in their patient way they had given me Jesus. There is neither irony nor restraint to the process and this is exactly the way that it should be.

The thief’s instructions on how to breathe were a particularly good touch: I can appreciate fine work on every level. I am not unaware of the value of fine work.

“Depersonalization, the tendency to think of or refer to oneself in the third person, is one of the characteristics of schizophrenia, you know,” he said to me. “It is an ancient and mysterious disease about which we have not been able to do as much as we had hoped.”

“Is that so?” I said. “Is that so?” he said. “What is it exactly?” the man asked.

“The slow or rapid shattering of the psyche, the disintegration of the personality. Once considered to be functional in origin but now suspected to have an organic base, to be caused by a circulatory or cellular imbalance. Of course,” the advisor said, “this is completely off the record. It is considered quite risky to discuss symptoms or diagnosis with the subject.”

“I appreciate your doing that.”

“Not to mention. Just keep it in confidence.”

“Oh I will,” I said, “I won’t tell anyone.”

“I’ll deny everything if you say that I’ve been sharing confidential information with you.”

“I am a man of honor,” he said. “I am not only a voyager but a conservative.”

Alive, alive to the tenor of the strange and difficult times, I found myself moved to consider the question of religious knowledge as it may blur into fanaticism. Hard choices have to be made even in pursuit of self-indulgence. Both were dangerous to the technocratic state of 2219 of course, but of the two religion was considered the more risky because fanaticism could well be turned to the advantage of institutions. (The state did not know, as I did, that the two were often indistinguishable.) Sexuality was another pursuit possibly dangerous to the state but it held no interest for me; the general Privacy and Social Taboo acts of the previous century had been taken very seriously by my subdivision and I inherited neither genetic nor socially-derived interest in sex for its own non-procreative sake.

Religion interested me more than fanaticism for a permanent program but fanaticism was not without its temptations. “Religion, after all, imposes a certain rigor,” I was instructed. “There is some kind of rationalizing force and also the need to learn a good deal of material. Then too there is the reliance upon another, so to speak higher, power. One cannot ultimately fulfill narcissistic tendencies. On the other hand fanaticism dwells wholly within the poles of self. You can destroy the systems, find immortality, lead a crushing revolt, discover immortality within the crevices. It is not to be neglected; it is also purgative and satisfying and removes much of that indecision and social alienation of which you have complained. No fanatic is truly lonely. He has learned to bear his isolation in grandeur.”

“I think I’d rather have the religious program,” I say after having considered all of this. “The lives of the prophets, the question of the validity of the text, matters of the passion attract me.”

“You will find,” they pointed out, “that much of the religious experience is misinterpreted. It leads only to increasing doubt for many and most of the religious figures of history were severely maladjusted. You would be surprised how many were psychotics whose madness was retrospectively falsified by others for their own purpose.”

“Still,” I said, “there are levels of feeling worth investigating. Levels of belief.”

“That of course is your decision,” they said, relenting. Pressed on the point they will always relent; this is how they maintain their power. Under the revised acts of 2202 severely liberalizing board procedures there have been many improvements of this illusory sort. “If you wish to pursue religion we will do nothing at all to stop you. It is your inheritance and our decree. We can only warn that there is apt to be disappointment.”

“Disappointment!” I screamed, allowing affect to bloom perilously forth. “I am not interested in disappointment. This is of no concern to me whatsoever; what interests me is the truth. After all and was it not said that it is the truth which shall make ye free?”

“Not in this lifetime,” they say, “you will find that it is very much different here,” and sadly, sadly they cut me off and sent me on my way with a proper program, a schedule of appointments with the sinister technicians, the necessary literature to explain the effect that all of this would have upon my personal landscape: inevitable changes, the rules of dysfunction, little instances of psychotic break, but all of it to be contained within the larger pattern. By the time I exit the transverse I have used up the literature and so I dispose of it, tearing it into wide strips, throwing strips into the empty, sparkling air above the passage lanes, watching them catch the little filters of light for the moment before they flutter soundless to the metallic, glittering earth of this most unspeakable yet interesting time.

“I’m sorry,” Pilate said. His eyes did indeed seem reflective. “I offered them a choice; I would have been willing to accept their judgement. Barabbas is a fine fellow, very popular nowadays; perhaps I should have forced the issue—”

“It’s all right,” I say, “I don’t mind. Let’s get on with it.”

“You don’t understand,” Pilate says. “Crucifixion is an extremely painful process; you would have to have undergone it to know of what I am speaking, but it is not to be taken lightly. You’ll see what I mean.” His eyes become vague, he clutches his robes. “Perhaps we could have a recount,” he says, “another ballot or failing that I could allow you to slip out the side, say that the prisoner escaped, there’s precedent for that and besides—” His voice mumbles off. “No,” he says, “it can’t possibly work. There’s got to be a crucifixion; I just wish that there were some way not to go through with it.”

“I am ready,” I say, “let it be done.”

“You’re saying that now,” Pilate shrugs, “but later on you’ll be thinking differently. Oh well,” he says after a pause, “there really is no free will, we have to come to understand that and I’m not prepared to separate you from what you take to be your destiny.” He walks to an alcove, gestures. “You’ll just be on your way, then.”

“I’m really grateful for the opportunity that you’re giving me,” I say, “you don’t think so but it’s true. You don’t know how much you’re helping.”

“One of the characteristics of schizophrenia,” Pilate points out quietly, “is disassociation reaction, a separation from the physical consequences of one’s acts. One regards oneself as insensate machinery, not capable of feeling.”

The soldiers enter.

“Let’s go,” I say boldly.

Pilate sighs and turns away.

* * *

I find myself at an earlier point of the process the Grand Lubavitcher Rabbi of Bruck Linn, administering counsel to all who would seek it. The Lubavitcher Sect of the Judaic religion was, I understand, a twenty- or twenty-first reconstitution of the older, stricter European forms which were composed of refugees who fled to Bruck Linn in the wake of one of the numerous purges of that time. Now defunct, the Judaicists are, as I understand, a sect characterized by a long history of ritual persecution from which they or at least the surviving remnants flourished but then again the persecution might have been the most important part of the ritual. At this remove in time, it is hard to tell. The hypnotics, as the literature and procedures have made utterly clear, work upon personal projections and do not claim historical accuracy as historical accuracy exists. The times being what they are. The times are not oriented toward history.

It is, in any case, interesting to be the Lubavitcher Rabbi in Bruck Linn; regardless of the origins of the sect or its reality there is a certain power in it. I can respect power even as I administer it. In frock coat and. . .