The Jesus Molecule

- a story by Darcy Moore

Devil's Lair was not a popular tourist destination and it looked like a cross between a frontier pub and an ancient general store; but it had what I wanted. There was a straggle of men in groups around the rough tables but, as I had expected, he was sitting on his own. Faces turned to watch me as I threaded through the circles of light cast by the single bulbs hanging above each table. A few were tourists but most were looked like they'd been there for some time.
        I stopped beside him. "The Jesus Molecule." It was a statement, I had done my homework.
        "It's here, here in this box," he mumbled without surprise and held an opaque green object in his hands. He had one tooth in the centre of his mouth and a few long grey strands of hair, glued with spit, stuck backwards with spit across his sunburnt and wrinkled scalp. His clothes, what I could still recognise as clothes, had seen beyond my lifetime. "So yer couldn't keep away boy? Sit down, sit down." His face looked quickly into mine. I don't know if it was my youth, or my just being there, but he became animated.
        "So yer want the secrets of the universe boy?" he said craftily.
        "Something like that," I said casually.
        His voice rose in a high cackle. "Well, yer'll get what yer need, and that's all yer'll get."
        "Oh shut up Luke." A ruddy faced man with a matted beard leaned out of a poker game, and spat on the floor at the old man's feet. He turned to me. "Don't go mixing with that crazy bugger, it'll be the end of you. You young fellers come in, you listen to his raving. Before you know it you're all fired up and you go off with him. And .." he brought his boot down hard but ineffectually on the solid stone.
        Another spoke from behind a cloud of cigarette fumes. "Play yer hand Will. Let the kid kill himself if he wants." Then he added with a laugh, "One less boy to go round I say."
        "Go on. For christ's sake get on with the game Ike," came a surly, third voice. Then more placatingly, "C'mon Will what's it to us anyway."
        Will snorted at both men, then fixed me with an intense but not unfriendly stare. "Remember I warned you." He turned back to the game.
        I was startled, and I had misgivings for about ten seconds. But I had no better prospects and had squandered the last of my inheritance getting here. So I went on.
        "Why do they call it the Jesus Molecule?" I asked the old man. His laugh said he was not about to tell. Yet when my hands itched towards it he showed no concern.
        "Here feel it boy. Yer feel it all yer want. Yer can't do nothin with it."
        The moment I had it I willed myself for a dash at the door, but it was like I was screwed into the stone at my feet. Instead I sweated, unavoidable anyway because of the uncomfortable heat, and tried to act nonchalant, but the old man knew. He set on me a look of malevolent pleasure.
        I wondered what had come over me - the box might be important but I needed the old man and what was in his head more. "Logic is what's needed here. Get a grip on yourself." I was very good at giving myself belated advice.
        The thing he called the box, lay in my hands, about the shape and size of a brick. It was as smooth as glass, not a fault in its surface.
        "This is just a lump of something," I griped, feeling cheated.
        "That's all it is fer you boy, without me. Yer can't get inside, not you. Only me."
        "Ok, ok. What do you want me to do?"
        I heard a groan, it was Will. "Bloody idiot," he muttered.
        "Will, Will. Christ let him be. Don't spoil it," said surly voice, barely above a whisper. Older people forget what it is to have sharp young ears.
        "First get me a drink." The old man had puffed out his chest and made as if he was holding court.
        Of course I did, and I've never seen someone come alive so. But it wasn't the alcohol, it was because we both knew he'd hooked me.
        But I'd been hooked for years. I think I was five when I first heard the tale, and it had everything to set a young kid's brain on fire. I guess I never grew up.

        Lucius Golinucci was a scientist of exceptional intelligence. It was said of him he'd have invented the world but someone beat him to it. So he settled for more mundane tasks like shafting death. But he was born too late and the genetic code had already been set - not just the old triggers to cancer, loss of skin tone and cell replication, organ failure and the like - but a programmed thanatos; a self- destruct time bomb of the intellect. It was in response to an earlier hedonistic age that reduced children to a single life experience, sex to a sport and sustained a population that crawled interminably into senility with no tail end to wipe its dribbling mouth.
        So, in an anguish of self-conflict which thanatos won, Lucius Golinucci always aborted his imminent successes. For him, then, the ultimate challenge became to somehow trick his genes - to devise an exit from death without his knowledge.
        The proof was certainly here though he wasn't the radiant man in his prime, not the man of my dreams. I had no wish to emulate him; indeed my object was to discover his secret and destroy it. Consequently he would die too but, as the pessimists say, life is death. Then for the rest of my life I would be feted by a grateful world with all the temporal pleasures, to expire in the extremes of debauchery.
        "Eh, eh! What are yer doing? Pick up the box and get yerself along." He was rapping on my arms with a knotted stick.
        "Have a bit of patience old man," I could already savour the adulation of the crowds.
        Of Lucius I had more knowledge than most. Having wealthy parents and a pretty face hadn't hurt me, and it was surprising where one gleaned a thread or two.
        In what was seen as an eccentricity he had organised excavations on a site pinpointed, by leading Christian Scientists of his day, as the burial place of their founder. With extremely sensitive equipment he searched for signs of a cosmic nature like X-rays and short regular bursts of radio waves. No one ever suggested he was religious, but he was pragmatic and not one to be deterred by the scepticism so rampant among scientists generally.
        The work went on for years and most people forgot about it. His colleagues remembered with a jolt the day Jerusalem went down a gigantic hole. Predictably the Jews and Arabs accused each other, and soon the wealthy ones were on boats or airplanes and vehicles heading for Australia and South America. The crazy ones went and threw themselves into the widening pit convinced it was judgment day. They weren't far wrong.
        As the hole began to spread to the Mediterranean and the Arabian Sea panic proper set in.
        And where was Lucius? He'd struck pay dirt. He'd gone down and down; so far that all workers wore asbestos suits breathing equipment. Then one day the floor of the dig well started to collapse. Lucius went completely crazy and ordered for everyone to get out. They did, but one fellow was cagey and hung back. He saw Lucius close himself into a large metallic cube. It fell into the hole as well.
        Soon after the real dramatics started. But the few eyewitnesses who survived swore it wasn't subsidence, it was suction. Either way the people of Jerusalem were unlucky.
        The rest of the globe heaved a sigh of relief when the hole stabilised before it hit the seas; but first it breached the water tables. Now that was an environmental catastrophe! On the positive side there were a few unscheduled feast days around along 5000 km of coastline. It took a couple of weeks but the drop in ocean levels averaged out around the world to only about two centimetres.
        There's conjecture about why the hole stopped. Most people assume it was the water. If that was the case I should have drowned along with anyone else who went to Devil's Lair, 18 km on the road to hell, deepest place on Earth. No it wasn't the water; I happen to know it was Lucius. After all he started it.
        "C'mon, c'mon boy. You can't back out now. C'mon boy." The old man was quite agitated now, and less sure of himself. He needn't have been. I may have been belligerent, but I wasn't about to throw away this chance.
        "Look at old Luke, he's working up a stiff!" It was the surly voice again, laced with sarcasm. A few laughs rattled around him but fell silent when Luke, uncannily, fixed his watery eyes on each one in turn.
        A chair scraped and a dog yelped. I could feel him bristle, then he smiled.
        "Alright old man, I'm coming." I opened the wooden doors for him and was momentarily blinded by the dark. Soon I picked out the light near the motor link at the rear of the lair and, in the distance, a faint glow at what would be the shuttle's landing platform. Eventually I made out the overhead stars split here and there by the metal pulleys.
        "You didn't come here for the aesthetics." The voice was cold, and back in its element.
        "No Mr Golinucci, I didn't."
        A hand of steel gripped me and led me through the darkness. I still held the box.
        Not long into our journey I heard a scraping behind us and started to turn but his other hand clamped over my mouth. I nodded and it let go.
              **********************
I've been across the Australian and the African deserts by necessity, and by aircraft. Just like the oceans they give me the creeps. I can't comprehend people who go on the likes of Leichhardt Tours, or a Burke and Wills Odyssey, for fun! They come back looking ten years older and talk about it for the rest of their short, sickly lives. You see I'm a points-of- reference man.
        Yet here I was in the Devil's Stony Desert at night, 18 km below the lip of sanity. I promised myself that if I lived through this ...
        So we went on and on. Mr Golinucci stopped at deliberate intervals and pressed a flask to my lips. It was unpleasant, but cool and rejuvenating. At each rest he would whisper out of sight, which meant anywhere beyond 2 metres. I didn't dare move for I knew I'd bake on the rock sheet come high noon on the morrow, if I lost him.
        Then I began to see a little further ahead, and knew the sun was slowly swinging towards the rim. But he was way ahead of me, and almost immediately forced me down. I sat and felt around me. Amazingly there was stone on three sides.
        When the light came I found we were in a fracture in the ground, a large boulder overhead. Through cracks I saw what we had come through, or perhaps where we'd been. Instead of being uniformly flat and featureless the place was riven by faults and studded with boulders.
        He slept most of the day, and he looked like a frail old man. I wondered if he drew some power from the night, from the secret of the box. When he stirred he seemed a little perplexed, like any doddering human.
"Give me that, boy." It was crotchety Luke again.
I was curious. "I thought you didn't care old man."
"Give it to me anyway." Luke raised his stick in a threatening manner. I jerked it from his hand, and quivered in panic.
        "Here." I handed the box to him. "Why don't you use some manners?" There was that look of triumph again. If only I knew the rules.
        "What happened Mr Golinucci, when you first dug the hole?" At first he stared with incomprehension, then he looked around. He touched the boulder above him then, struggling painfully to his feet, he hobbled to the opening.
        "We've got to go back, we must go back. We'll die here." He was absolutely distraught and I knew he must be telling the truth. I leapt up determined to let him go, and to follow him. But instead I grabbed him and pulled him down. "The men are out there, they'll see you," I heard my own voice saying.
        Old Luke struggled and began to rage but I wrapped myself around him, leg and arm and torso. His teeth sank into my arm and his fingernails gouged my back but still I held. Then he weakened, and slumped. I came to my senses and released him. When I recovered from the shock of my own behaviour I checked him - the breathing was shallow and the heart beat slowly, feebly. That was enough. I suddenly felt exhausted myself and fell into a sleep of dark places, of malevolent shadows.
        When I awoke the early crater night was just beginning. Luke lay quietly. His fingers jerked occasionally, betraying life. I took the flask from his hip and walked to the opening.
        "You will learn to know each star, and its course." I jumped in fright, hitting my head on the overhead rock. "Swear very quietly." Once again the voice had my measure, and so I did, thumping the stone in pain while the blood trickled down my neck. It was a few minutes before I could comfort the lump on my head.
        "Now come, we do not have far to go."
        By now I had little faith in my play script. I tore it up and followed him. He didn't bother to hold my arm any more; either the light from the stars had swollen or my eyes had changed.
        Once again I heard fragments of sounds behind, but no longer felt concerned.
                ***********
        At first I thought we had halted for a rest, but Mr Golinucci motioned for me to take one side of a large flat rock. I modelled his actions and, with a deal of grunting, we slid it sideways.
        "Now put this in your shirt and secure it well. Your life depends on it." He gave me the box and descended into the hole. I peered over and thought I could see a pin of light far below.
        "Hell!"
        "Come down you stupid young man!" the voice came up muffled. But I was still undecided until I heard voices to one side and saw shapes approaching fast.
        "There he is, there's the young bloke."
        "I'll take him."
        But I tumbled into the gap and, catching hold of a rung, began to slither down a long tunnel. Then there was a report, a spurt of flame above me, and a gasp below me.
        "You cretin you'll get the old man." I soon felt vibrations on the chain ladder above me, and set to half falling and catching myself.
        Mr Golinucci called from some distance below me. "Careful, careful. Hold onto that rung." And had I not I would have fallen into what I could now see was a deep, distant flame. I t must have been huge. "Now swing backwards and let go at the end of the swing."
        Well, I thought, I had been in his hands all along; so, like a blind trapeze, I fell into the unknown. The fall was about 2 metres and knocked the air out of my lungs. I gathered myself and saw him, sitting on a stool. He was bleeding from the stomach and his voice gurgled, but he was smiling. We were on a ledge jutting out from the edge of a vast cavity, the upper curve of the walls being visible only in the glow of the flame.
        "So the jackals are gathering again." I followed his gaze to see feet drop out of the tunnel. I had to strain to make out the words.
        "Shit Will, there's nuthin here. Nuthin."
        "Keep going, there must be something you fool. They didn't just float down." The voice was surly.
        "Don't press him Ike. Let him back up."
        "Get off my hands, Ike. Will tell 'im, make 'im."
        "For Christ's sake Ike, get back up here."
        "Ike, you bastard. Will, Will the bastard's ... Get hiiimm." The body flapped like a bird trying to fly. I watched it until it was a faint black speck against the red and gold, the sound died quickly in the vastness of the place.
        "Now you get down Ike." The voice was icy.
        "Will, it was an accident, I was confused, I"
        "Get down or I'll put a bullet in your brain."
        A second pair of legs dangled into space, and began to swing like a pendulum. "No Will, no." They came away on the survival arc, and I had to step back quickly. The body fell
heavily and the man lay groaning, he clutched at an ankle. When he saw us he pulled a gun from his pocket. "Looks like your luck's run out Luke."
        Luke laughed at him and spoke in his immaculate tongue, "A two-bit line from a two-bit bum." The man was taken aback. "Hey Will, Will I found them," he shouted, desperate for support. "Will I got them. On a ledge. You gotta swing back in the direction of the ladder and let go. It's about, about 6 feet. Will, hurry up will ya."
        Will had confidence, or courage, or he knew his man, because he did it. And he landed like a cat. He looked at me and shrugged. "You take your chances kid, when you play grownup games."
        He turned to Ike, "Put down the gun."
        "But Will, this, this, Luke"
        "Just put it down. Now, Mr Golinucci how about you open this box."
        "Christ Will you knew. You knew all the time," Ike whined.
        "Shut up. Well Mr Golinucci?"
        Lucius coughed and spat out a ball of blood, at Will's feet. "There's no need Will. It's open. It's yours if you want it."
        And it was true. The box, sitting precariously on a large rounded stone, glowed now and a hinge was visible on one side. I could make out the faint line of the lid. Ike stepped towards it.
        "Stop!" He froze to Will's voice. "The kid can open it."
        Lucius spoke to me then in a sound barely louder than falling dust, "Face it towards them. Keep the hinge towards your chest."
        It lifted easily, and sent tingles through my chest. I felt my heart falter for a moment, then surge on. Placing my fingers at its rear I gently swung the lid open. I could have died then and not minded for I've never had a sweeter feeling. It was as though my atoms were being individually teased apart. I was an instant spirit ready to spread myself across the world. But at the last moment they fell back, locking themselves into their molecules. Then I felt my body was being crushed, the atoms meshing in together. I collapsed with the distinct sensation that my atoms were moving in and out with ever decreasing swings, like a slowing pendulum until they finally stopped, humming in their established patterns. I lay there for some time with the shock of having to endure flesh and life again.
        "Get up, get up," Lucius gasped and struggled to lift me. I pulled myself up on the rock, feeling sick and groggy, then became aware of a world collapsing around me. I stared unbelievingly at sheets of rock and stones the size of cars falling through the air.
        "Come over here," he spoke with such urgency I flung myself after him. Against the wall stood a rectangular prism as large as man, and much wider. "Inside, inside."
        The inside was lit and resembled a small laboratory.
        He was sitting in a body seat, clutching the green box. It was shut again, but the hinge and lid were still visible.
        "Where are .. where's Will and"
        "They're gone, where you almost went. Their mothers won't recognise them." His laugh cost him dearly in blood and pain. Every extra word would take its toll, but I didn't care.
        "What happened? What is that? Surely you'll tell me now?" "Yes, I'll tell you precisely because I'm Lucius Golinucci. Old Luke comes with the sun but," he added with no hint of regret, "he's seen his last sunrise." He flinched in pain and slid down in his chair. I hobbled over to ease him up.
        "Whether you're lucky or not you don't know yet. Perhaps you'll never find out. But you're lucky for me. At last I'm able to die." He smiled at my confusion.
        "I was clever. I created two people, one who clung to life - that's Old Luke - and one who wanted to die. You see I took young men into the desert at night, I knew I had to return here, but Luke would head back to Devil's Lair each day. There'd always be someone waiting. They'd kill the boys but they'd never get anything from Old Luke because he didn't know."
        "But you made me stop him!" I gasped.
        "Yes. My need was so overpowering I broke out of my daytime prison - in his head."
        "And the Jesus Molecule?"
        "I'm not the evil person I'm made out to be. "He looked at me with resentment in his eyes. "I can't give individual mortality, but I've done what I can, for the species. The less you or anyone knows about it the better." And that was all he would say.
        "What are you going to do with it?"
        The talking had emptied him, he spoke slowly. "A viking ship." He pointed to a niche in one corner of the shell. I took the box and placed it inside. It fitted snugly, and could not open inadvertently. I slid down a facing plate and locked it with a key that had sat beside it.
        "You keep the key, as a keepsake," he gasped. "Now go. Shut the hatch after you. And oh," he lifted a rope with a grappling hook, "you'll need this if you don't want to join me."
        I turned to look at him once more before I swung the hatch shut. He had shrunk, his complexion was bone white, and his old clothes were drenched in his blood; but his face had the most sublime calm.
        Outside the shell, apart from a steady drizzle of sand, all was quiet. It took me many throws of the rope to secure a rung of the ladder, and a good many promises to the memory of my father to cast off into space and get up that rope. I was well up the ladder when I heard a terrible grinding sound, then a shattering. I bowed my head and waited silently the rock ledge, with its secrets, followed Jerusalem into the heart of the Earth. I think I went to sleep hanging there, and nearly lost my grip when a soft rustling sound pushed upwards through the tunnel.
        At the surface the late dawn was again approaching. I sat and thought about a lot of things as the light danced down a distant rim to my north and ran towards me. It took no notice of me but paused at a huge new crater, made what it could of it, then ran on across the stony wasteland.
        "At least this is an interesting place to die," I said, determined to be the most agreeable company I could. I had the flask, but I knew that wasn't enough.
        Then I jumped with a start as a wet muzzle pushed into my hands. It was a comfortable looking bloodhound and I gave it a mother of a tumble.
        I stood up. "Which way .... Lucius?"