It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

A story about Christmas, with a twist.

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

Wherever there were humans, there was dust. And the dust floated in the air disturbed only by the soft snores coming from the webbing bed stretched across the tiny cabin.

A glaring burst of light filled the space, followed by horrific electric buzzing. Noelle fought with the webbing like a fly struggling within a spider's trap. Velcro finally tore free and she pushed off the wall to glide over to the porthole. A quick check showed no mushroom clouds blossoming on the earth's surface below. The harsh sound continued.

"What?!" She yelled into the empty room.

The buzzing stopped and two faces appeared on the screen which covered one of the small walls. She recognized them both. On the left was Chief Physicist Liu Xiaoming representing the International Consortium of Science Counsels (ICSC). Liu's hair had been ebony when Noelle had first started working on the project. It was now streaked with grey to match the pallor on the exhausted woman's face.

The physicist's voice filled the room from speakers embedded in the ceiling. "All systems have checked out. Commander Agnusdei, are you ready to initiate?"

Commander Noelle Agnusdei blinked the sleep from her eyes. "That's scheduled for tomorrow."

On the right was Monsignor Kelechi Agbani who represented the Consolidated World Religions (CWR). The top of his head was shaved bald with a thin band of curly black hair around the back and over the ears connecting with a goatee in front to create a complete ring of hair around his head in line with the latest fashion within African culture. "Ambassador Liu is needing to move things ahead more speedily since the unprovoked attack on Cairo by ICSC radicals. She needs what she believes will be political capital from this parlor trick before our reactions to this unprovoked act of terrorism remain diplomatic."

Noelle flew over to the porthole again. Cairo was on the other side of the Earth. She could see nothing.

She turned back to the screen. "Was it nuclear?"

Liu nodded.

"How many dead?"

"Under a million." Liu hung her head.

"Lies!" The Monsignor's eyes did not show the fervor indicated by his tone. "The death toll is at least five million. Do not try to lessen the weight of your sin."

"You have no proof that the ICSC had anything to do with it!"

"I have five million reasons to believe that you did."

"And how do you know that? Faith?!"

"Yes. Faith. And digital imagery. This time, you apostates have gone too far."

"When do I initiate?" Noelle interrupted. She had witnessed too many similar diatribes in the past between these two.

Liu was in charge of this part. "Moonbase and Titan are already online and counting down."

"Counting down from what?"

The scientist leaned back to look at a clock offscreen. "We're at T minus nineteen minutes and thirty-two seconds."

"Less than twenty minutes? I don't have time for a shower or even breakfast."

"Our trial runs with the primates have shown that having something on your stomach is not a good idea."

Noelle immediately started frantically stowing her gear into the lockable compartments and bouncing around the cabin. "I'm aware. But this was supposed to be my last breakfast before I went... tomorrow!"

"You can have a celebratory breakfast after this is complete."

Monsignor Agbani fired in. "The CWR does not accept this project or any of the results that might be obtained from it."

Liu was distracted back to the argument. "That's because you know exactly what the results will be. We will prove that none of the miracles surrounding your Jesus Christ ever happened. Everyone will then know that the Bible is a compilation of fairy tales as are the Qur'an, the Tanakh, the Talmud, and the sacred texts of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. Your house of cards will come tumbling down and the people of the world will see the truth."

Agbani smiled. "God will not let such a thing happen."

"I'm sure he wouldn't if he existed."

Noelle didn't have time for this. "Shut up! I've got more important things to do than listen to more of your arguing. Terminate conference call."

The screen went dark at her command and then filled with readouts from all systems. A digital clock counted down in the upper left corner. It showed 00:17:15. Noelle tapped the screen to highlight Inertial Controls. This latest and most experimental technology on the craft was what was going to keep her from being flattened like a pancake as she moved from Newtonian to Relativistic space. Once in Relativistic space, she would be able to travel faster than the speed of light without ever traveling faster than the speed of light. The science worked even if the language didn't exist to describe the process.

The speeds required to break free from Newtonian space had not been possible before the discovery of the material Peltonesium in the asteroid belt. This element was one thousand times denser than Osmium and one hundred times more radioactive than Polonium-210. The resulting Pelton Drive would take her to a speed of .45c within a few hours as she moved from earth orbit to Jupiter.

A slingshot around Jupiter would then be followed by a plunge toward the sun, taking advantage of the enormous gravity well to further increase speed to the point that space-time was bending around the ship. The ship could then create a countering field which would make an artificial wormhole which could be used to connect any point in space-time with any other point.

The result was a time machine which could accurately move one person to any point in the galaxy or in history. One just needed to be able to calculate the location of the end point in non-Relativistic space. Enough historical information was needed to determine a precise location and time.

This information had been provided ten years earlier, when ground penetrating radar had revealed a void deep within the earth fifty miles north of Jerusalem. Careful excavation unearthed a series of intact sealed clay jars. Within the jars were parchment and vellum materials covered with census data from AD 1 to AD 11. On one of these scrolls was the precise date of birth of a child named Yeshua, son of Joseph, a carpenter in the Town of Bethlehem.

That was her destination. She was to be present at the birth of Christ. But she didn't really care about that. Nor did she care about the world politics associated with this in her modern world of 2121. She wanted to be the first person to travel in time. The only history that concerned her was the history she was about to make.

There were risks. Most of the equipment was new and the science was experimental at best. It had never been tested on this scale. Small monkeys had been sent on smaller craft and over sixty percent of them had returned. Of those, ninety percent survived. Not great odds, but she would be the first!

The ride itself would not be challenging. She was just a passenger. Everything was programmed into the on-board computer. Titan base would monitor her on the way out for any deviations and make the corrections in the minutes before she made it from Jupiter to the Sun. Then, once she was in the past, she was to drop monitoring drones into the atmosphere and record everything that happened in and around the stable of an inn in Bethlehem.

When she was done, she had only to press a single button and she would be returned to one second after she left.

All systems looked good. She squeezed into the coffin-like inertial chamber and activated the small screen within. The clock wound down to the final seconds. 8... 7... 6... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... Everything went black.

The Pelton Drive ignited and the craft bucked hard twice before moving at an acceleration of nearly 15,000 meters per second per second. The slingshot around Jupiter went to plan as did the tangential plunge toward the Sun. Her speed hit .99c just inside the orbit of Mars and the wormhole successfully connected her with the temporal and spatial coordinates of 3 AD.

The ride through the wormhole was not smooth and parts of the craft touched the barrier between the relativistic space through which she traveled and the Newtonian space outside. The stresses imposed at the barrier approached infinite and each tiny graze impacted on the structural integrity of the craft and, more importantly, the housing of the Pelton Drive. Microcracking began along the weld seams, finding weaknesses in the alloy which attempted to contain the largely unknown reactions roiling within. The cracks were only wide enough to allow the passage of a few molecules at a time.

When the vessel was spat out at the other end of the wormhole, the math and programming had been correct. Noelle looked down on Bethlehem on the night of Jesus' birth. The microcracking in the containment housing would not have been discernible to any but the most advanced inspection equipment. That equipment was too large to be installed on her small ship.

Noelle felt like an intense pressure was filling her head and forcing her eyeballs from their sockets. A warning popped up on her screen. Her blood pressure was 220/140. The medical system attached to her arm injected a short steady dose of medicine and she watched as the readout dropped until it said 125/85. The warning disappeared. Checking a mirror, she saw that her eyes were bloodshot and the skin of her face was reddened, both symptoms that had been noted in the monkeys. Her mind at ease, she got to work.

Noelle achieved a stationary orbit above her target and dropped the drones. They were simple machines and would be controlled by the primary computer on the ship. Their job was to film and document everything on the ground below while maintaining a minimal profile to avoid being seen or interacting with the people of the time.

As she worked through the timed drops of the drones, the Peltonesium continued to leak out into the vacuum around the ship. Due to its density and radioactivity, critical mass of the material was only a few parts per million and the sphere of area around her was rapidly approaching it. There was no warning when one of the microcracks burst, releasing a large, explosive reaction which ignited a nuclear blast.

Noelle and the ship were vaporized instantly. The dense ball of Peltonesium remained in place and continued to feed energy into the blinding orb that hung above the planet.

250 miles below and throughout the region, traveling magicians and followers of the eastern religions looked into the night sky and saw the new star. In their travels and studies, they had heard tales and prophecies foretelling the coming of a new king who would be heralded by great miracles. They gathered in caravans and followed the star. They weren't going to miss it.

Below the explosion, shepherds sat in their fields among the hills when the night sky suddenly bloomed into midday brightness. Frightened, they ran to their common encampment, seeking courage in numbers.

The drones lost the control signal when the computer disintegrated, and they switched to incomplete back-up programming stored within their inadequate memories. The best they could do was create a flying formation and broadcast an alert in the form of sirens and colored lights.

The shepherds gathered under this host of apparitions that flew in the luminous heavens above them filling the sky with multi-colored lights and previously unheard sounds. They watched and listened to what almost sounded like song. The song of a heavenly host proclaiming the arrival of a king.