John R. Little
THE MURDER OF JESUS CHRIST
This book is for Emma and Sammie, who bring me to life every single day.
Author’s Note
For the past few years, people have asked if I would ever write an autobiography. Mostly I’ve laughed at the idea. Who would want to read about my life? As time has gone on, though, I know there’s a very specific time frame that everyone is interested in. In this book, I finally gave in and wrote down those events.
Maybe now the questions will stop.
You might question how I seem to remember dialogue word for word. As you’ll see, I have a very good memory, and if I couldn’t remember the exact words, I sure as hell remember the tone and nature, so how I’ve written things is very close, if not exactly what happened.
I’ve also included some stories for which I wasn’t present. That’s the result of a bit of research, a few phone calls and emails, and so on. It’s as precise as I could make it.
Sometimes I don’t come across as a particularly nice guy. I’ll have to live with that.
For now, it’s good enough that I write the truth about what happened as best I can. Maybe now I’ll be able to sleep without nightmares.
I want to offer my sincere thanks to Warden Alan Richman for providing access to the facilities I needed to write this book.
Prologue
Jimmy Morano had expected it would be a boring day of monitoring, just one more in a long string of boring days spanning the Christmas season. Nobody else was working on the project, having all put aside their algorithms and computers to enjoy a week (two for some) with families and turkey.
He took a long sip of his cold Starbucks Americano and set it down on his desk.
The only sound was the sweet hum of the bank of computers lining the room.
To be sure, Jimmy never minded being the only one working. It let him catch up on the data stream that seemed endless and infinitely boring. However, there were occasional bursts of interesting bits in the stream that kept all the astronomers on the project fighting for more.
Today was one of those rare days.
Jimmy was twenty-two years old, a recent graduate of Cal Tech, and he had his whole future ahead of him. He had no way of knowing his life was about to be defined by a single moment.
He stared again at the coffee. “Should have sprung for the cappuccino,” he whispered.
His head ached, no doubt a side effect of the partying the night before with Joanna. He didn’t remember much of the night and chalked that up to both the beer and the monotonous routine of their relationship. He knew it was time to move on. She probably knew it, too.
Beep, beep, beep.
Probably another false alarm.
The data stream was fed by seventeen ground-based telescopes scattered around the world, as well as six in Earth’s orbit and two from even farther out. The data was primarily a by-product of whatever else the telescopes were doing. If a scientist in Japan was focused on a new comet near the Orion nebula or an astronomer in Australia was monitoring radio signals from the center of the Milky Way, they did their thing, but whatever they were looking at also fed the Cosmos supercomputer at Cal Tech. All the feeds were combined, and a series of sophisticated programs sifted through the work, looking for patterns.
It was a cheap way to see everything in the known universe without having to build a single telescope.
Beep, beep, beep.
The supercomputer used predictive analytics as well as more basic pattern-matching algorithms, and if it found anything unusual, it notified the guy in charge. Today that guy was Jimmy Morano.
Jimmy picked up the data feed and found that the power of the computer had been pretty much wasted with this anomaly. It was a single observation that triggered the notification, and it came from the Sunset II satellite.
Sunset II was a small satellite that orbited the sun from twenty million miles away. That meant it was close to the sun and allowed it to monitor solar radio activity at a fine level of detail.
Occasionally, though, the satellite would focus its sight on the planets in the solar system, including Earth. Once in a long while, it would aim its receivers at the Moon.
“Holy shit.”
Jimmy stared at the signals and pressed keys to select a summary.
He had six hours of recording available.
Without hesitating, Jimmy sent a standardized email message to his supervisor, copying other researchers in several labs around the world who were also linked to the project.
His headache was forgotten as he watched the dancing sprites on the graph in front of him.
For the past four hours and six minutes, there had been targeted radio waves emitting from the far side of the moon, the side that humans could never see from Earth.
It was obvious from the repetition that the radio signals were not natural, and they certainly were not made by humans.
There was only one possible cause. There were aliens on the far side of the moon.
Part 1—In the Beginning
Chapter 1
In the future, if I ever witness another spaceship blasting off from Cape Canaveral, it’ll still never cease to be an astonishing event.
However, this launch was two hours late, and I had to pee. I tried to ignore the pressure, because once the word was given, I’d only have a few minutes to start taking photos. A little discomfort was nothing I couldn’t manage.
My name is David Abelman and even though I’m sure you’ve heard about me, I should take a minute to introduce myself. I’m a science photographer. I shoot pictures of just about anything, as long as it somehow relates to science.
I’ve been fortunate in my career to have photographed covers for Discover, Natural Geographic, Time, and dozens of other magazines.
Some consider me lucky. I’d be one of those.
The Sagan was two miles away. Far enough that I could barely see the tiny speck of metal reaching up from the ground, majestically pointing to the sky and beyond.
There were five crew members on board the rocket. One of those astronauts was Karen Anderson, about whom you will learn more later. She’s important to this story.
Man, I really had to pee.
“Suck it up, buttercup,” I whispered to myself.
The astronauts might have to go, too, but their space suits would take care of that. Just for a moment, I was jealous of them. I did have an empty Coke bottle from earlier, but even with nobody nearby, it felt like something a teenager might do. I was twenty-five years old, and I’d damn well behave like it.
Unless I couldn’t. I needed to think about something else.
My tripod was set, with my best Canon EOS SLR camera ready to go into action. I own nine cameras, but I only use three for serious business. The EOS was my favorite and my go-to camera when I really needed the shot.
I refreshed the NASA app on my iPhone. It was all splashy and colorful, but the only thing it was showing now was the launch time.
And it was moving again.
5 minutes 15 seconds to launch.
“Finally.”
It’s not unusual to have launch delays. The weather, final systems checks, any of a hundred other things could cause Mission Control to take the safe route and halt the timer temporarily.