THE SECOND COMING

In the year 3000, scientists decided that three millennia was more than enough time to wait for the second coming of the messiah. As such, it was time to take things into their own hands and speed the process up a bit.

After the secret meaning behind Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was decoded in the year 2967 and the Holy Grail was finally found, researchers made a point of scouring the ancient cup for any sign of DNA. When a skin cell from the lip of Jesus was eventually found, the scientists all came to the conclusion that naturally he had to be cloned.

So there the cloned fetus sat in a lonely government chamber, cloistered away in Area 62½. Years went by, alien crash survivors came and went, and still the cloned Jesus rested comatose in his chamber, developing in silence and isolation.

When the new Jesus had been gestated for his thirty-third year, the government decided that it was time to set him free and bring order to the world. The only problem was that they didn’t foresee the fact that the clone’s mind was as blank as a fresh canvas.

This fact was made abundantly clear when the Jesus clone was brought into an impromptu press conference. The audience stood rapt as their apparent savior stood before them, clothed in a robe the U.S. government had provided for him, its “MADE IN CHINA” tag sticking conspicuously out of the back.

The lead researcher stood at the microphone, absolutely beaming. The TV lights in the room could melt a marshmallow.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I present the second coming of Jesus Christ.”

The researcher motioned for the clone to step up to the microphone. The Jesus clone glanced sheepishly from the researcher to the microphone and back again. Finally, he walked over. He looked over the crowd, surveying them. It was silent enough to hear the digestive activities of most of the people in that room.

The Jesus clone opened his mouth, as if to speak. He leaned down to the microphone. In one swift motion, he scooped the fuzzy part of the mic into his mouth and started chewing. The whole room remained silent, thinking there was some sort of profound meaning to what the clone was doing.

When he was done eating the microphone, the Jesus clone reached down and took off one of the Old Navy sandals that had been provided for him. (At no cost it should be added, since it was a no-brainer of a product tie-in for Old Navy.) He started gnawing on the sandal before looking at the crowd and bellowing in a guttural fashion.

In a matter of seconds, everyone in the room had ripped off one of their shoes and jammed them into their mouths. In perfect synchronization, the crowd did their best to mimic the primal yell they had heard from the clone of Jesus. The Mass was going along swimmingly.

Sensing that the cloned messiah might be a little thirsty, the lead researcher handed Jesus a glass of water. The clone cautiously took the glass in his hand and stared at it in wonder. In an instant, the glass’s contents turned a dark shade of red. The Jesus clone knocked it down in a single gulp. He reacted in spectacular fashion to the wine’s taste, like a baby that just tasted a lemon for the first time. He motioned to the lead researcher for another glass.

Within a few minutes, the duplicated Christ was extremely inebriated. He had his robe pulled up over his head as he danced in circles around the podium. The rest of the room did the same. It was something.

After tuckering out from his dancing, the Jesus clone gestured for another glass of water. The lead researcher had seen enough. He refused. The clone didn’t understand the concept of a shaking head meaning “no”, but he understood the feeling of his buzz going away just fine. He started to throw a tantrum.

The lead researcher attempted to calm Jesus down, he took hold of his arm. Bolstered by the wine, the Jesus clone pushed the researcher away. In an instant, the poor man fell to the ground, dead as could be.

The room erupted into chaos in an instant. It was all too overwhelming, and the screams weren’t helping the clone’s mood at all. He grabbed onto several passersby as they attempted to escape, amused with his game of tag in which whoever he grabbed didn’t seem to get back up for some reason.

Government agents tried to grab hold of the murderous clone, but he vanished in an instant and reappeared just as quickly in Times Square, hovering in midair as if that were a normal thing to do.

A wave of the hand here, a violent glare there, and the clone of Christ was vaporizing everything in sight. Fighter jets were scrambled, the National Guard was brought in, but nothing they did made a difference.

The war went on for years. The clone went from city to city, tearing apart everything in sight and turning entire bodies of water into massive stores of wine for his own enjoyment. The entire world eventually united in a quest to take down the messianic menace.

When all was said and done and more than 500 years had passed, the Jesus clone got tired of random pillaging. One day he simply teleported off to another galaxy and started the hell raising up where he’d left off.

Finally recovering from its scourge, the world decided that such a mistake could never be made again. They set themselves to rewriting the history books. The only problem was that 500 years of propaganda had skewed the reality a bit. When it was all said and done, they told tale of a horror novel called The Bible that provided the origin story for the deadliest terrorist the world had ever known: Jesus Christ.