Chapter 26: Missing Page

DEEP STATE

I looked at my album called Enemies and Allies, where my own name was at the front of the book. Or rather, it was after counting a torn out spot at the very beginning. I sighed, "How did it turn out this way?" Most of the pages updated now and then, except for my own and this one page, because most of the others had died over the years. Some new heroes and villains had replaced them, but I was no less at peace. Truth be told, I had far too many enemies and not enough allies in this book. Being a hero or nemesis didn't necessarily make a person allied with me, as many villains were simply selfish and not about to support my programs, while heroes were all over the place politically. Only those who thought the world ought to be ruled were my allies.

I sighed once again, and placed the torn page in the gap that filled that page. I was a jagged tear with shreds paper missing, so it couldn't exactly be placed in evenly, but a quick look revealed who actually occupied that spot. I sighed a third time, understanding just how deeply I had let the man down.

He had said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their superiors exercise authority over them. It shall not be this way among you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many." And he had told us not to look for some violent revolt in the name of justice, but to seek God's kingdom instead. I turned away from him, and formed my own group. After all, each of us had received a blessing from God, and it was time to share our kingdom with others, by force if necessary. The ruling powers were always using force to oppress us, and it was time for justice. He sighed, and he called me by name, "Don't you understand? You want what you think is coming to you. Then other people will do the same to you. Where does it end? The more tightly you hold on to power, the more other people suffer." But I didn't listen, and when he died, our desire to rule over humans forever was granted. The six of us had endless youth.

You probably know the story of how this man was able to have such power as to not only grant wishes from beyond the grave but also to sustain my life all this time. For you see, you know this man's name.

GOD

Remember, this timeline is not the same as Town of Winter. In that universe, Jesus came much earlier, and Judas was Rena the fox, who later had to become an impostor Jesus because the world had forgotten about the Savior. Here, events played out at a slightly different timeline, with a slightly different Judas, who behaved much differently from Rena. But Jesus is and has always been the same. It's only our interpretation of him that changes.

DEEP STATE

I thought back over the last few thousand years. My given name had been Ariyah, the feminine form of the word meaning "lion." I was just an angry young woman when Jesus took me as a disciple. But Jesus called me Judas because I was deeply loyal to the Zealots, an offshoot of the revolutionary groups that opposed Roman invasion and believed in a sovereign Jewish state.

Ironically, when I discovered that Jesus wasn't who I wanted him to be, I increasingly worked with the enemies of Judaism. The Roman soldiers. The Roman Catholic church. The Muslim Arabs. The Russian and Chinese communists. But then, so did the Pharisees. Seeking to cover up Jesus's death and resurrection, they worked with the guards to tell a story that they are still telling to this day. "Jesus didn't raise from the dead," they said, "his followers took his body." I knew the truth. It is dangerous for a large state to have regular people not fear death. They only obey laws that are right, and no threats will work on them. But then, I said nothing, because it was my aim and that of my group to also rule over others.

And so, under many names and guises, I subverted the mission of Jesus. But there was a problem, which I'll get to later. First, as Cerinthus or as people knew him "John of Patmos." Thanks to a temporary alliance between Jews and what would become the Roman Catholic church (but was currently the Roman pagan temple), a lie spread that Jesus had not come again but was up in heaven somewhere until end times. I then publicly admitted my plans in this book of Revelation, but all the Christians were fooled into believing that this was inspired word, while all the secular people and enemies of Christ understood that this was really not religious writing at all, but a manual to the enemies of Christ. Under the name of Muhammad, I spread a message of submission, fighting those who still supported Jesus and knew of my plans. And I let history do a large part in muddling the Gospel. Even though there were letters from actual Christians explaining what the real Jesus was like, people began to pay more attention to the end times writings of judgement than they did about passages of love, grace, and forgiveness. It was only those who believed that Christ either had already returned, or those who understood that Revelation was at odds with the Gospel and the letters of the early church that knew how the true church was to operate. Lastly, many who were touched by Christ had blessings granted by God. I called these "powers" or in some eras "witchcraft", and spread the notion that those who had such abilities ought to be put to death. I spread a false tradition that Satan had been bound up, and the western world was at peace under Christianity for a thousand years. Christianity, they were taught, was about works and particularly sacrifice. As Jesus had sacrificed himself, so we also ought to sacrifice. Living your life in harmony with others was taught to be selfish, instead all but stating that Jesus was a communist.

But as I say, I had a problem. Jesus had in fact come again, contrary to the wishes of Muslims, Jewish rabbis, and the Roman Catholics. I say Jewish leaders, because among my plans was to keep the Jewish followers ignorant of the actual teachings of Christ. This seems like it should be impossible to do, with the Bible fairly easy to distribute, but there was an entire text called the Masoretic text, which had rather egregious translations, in particular downplaying or outright forbidding Isaiah 53 and certain Psalms. These leaders were not Jews at all, but rather my followers. Likewise, many of the Catholic Popes and bishops were ultimately controlled by governments which I pretty much controlled.

Yet Jesus lived among people, and the truth tried to creep out again and again. Despite my efforts, people who got to know Jesus understood that Cerinthus's (my) writings couldn't be true, "For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him." There was also the matter of the whole Mark of the Beast story being at odds with Romans 8 mentioning that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God. Jesus gave many people his blessings as he met them, which started witch hunts in Salem and other places. And Jesus helped Martin Luther see the truth about the current Christianity and start the Protestant Reformation.

Or would have. Instead, after tracing the timeline back from where it changed, one of my helpers took us back in time, where I met a previous version of myself. Sort of. One of the rules of time travel is that you don't actually meet yourself. If you enter an area where you are close enough to meet yourself, future you gets bumped forward in time, past you gets whatever you brought with you (including knowledge) and the timeline gets changed accordingly. Knowing what I knew about the Protestant Reformation, I caught Jesus in the past before he could haunt Luther's dreams to the point where he rebelled against the Catholic church, then I chained him up and hauled him off. The Protestant Reform still happened because the king of England wanted to divorce his wife. But it happened with far less fanfare, and the Catholic church never truly reformed. A few hundred years later, this meant that the horrors of the Holocaust were not really prevented. Hitler was able to buy off the Pope, and the Jews were basically hunted down to near extinction. There were no efforts to smuggle them out of Germany, no sovereign Jewish state known as Israel. It was funny, but I had wanted a Jewish state, yet not supporting real Christianity cost me a land for my people and their safety. I thought every day of going back in time again, but now I was wary that any change I might make would in fact make things worse.

As much as I had hoped that this would make all my plans happen now, I was more miserable than ever. Before I chained him up, he uttered these fateful words, "Let all of the people on this Earth be blessed, and let them be inspired in what they do." This sounds like wonderful words, but ultimately what it meant was that writers, engineers, and artists subconsciously knew the true history through God's inspiration, and I could no longer stop these blessings from coming to the entire population. This means that the Lost Timeline that was replaced by averting the Protestant Reformation, and everything that came after that, would be known by writers and the like. It was called the Void Century in One Piece, where about a hundred years was lost to memory. Still other shows and books had similar themes of lost history. As for the other one, after several failed attempts to declare these abilities "witchcraft", I finally had to call them "powers" and help set up a bureaucracy of laws to help keep things under control.

As for this Jesus fellow, well… "Oh c'mon! I've been here for nearly a thousand years!" she said, "At least give me something to read!" Jesus bore a crown of thorns on her forehead, she was stripped naked to the waist, and her wrists and legs were nailed to a wall inside a cell. The nails were chained in several places to the rest of the wall, and she could not move. Giving her something to read would have meant relieving some of her agony, and I knew better than that. Strictly speaking, she could have gotten out centuries ago if not for one tiny precaution. The Spear of Destiny. Also known as the Lance of Longinus or the Holy Spear, this was used to pierce his side when he died the first time. He could not die anymore, but as you know, one of the major limitations of a superhero is their secret weakness. While she was pierced, she could use no new prayers which meant she couldn't pray to be released, for example. I told her, "No way! You'll just try to get out." Jesus said, "With or without your permission, your own false prophecy predicts 'Satan' will only be bound for one thousand years. You won't be able to keep this up much longer." I neither loved God nor mankind, but Jesus persisted in her complaints. Finally, I sighed, realizing she would not leave me alone until I granted her some justice for my actions. "Fine," I said, "We're both women here!" Technically, I was born a woman but spent a great deal of effort hiding the fact, while Jesus was able to be as he or she wished at any time as a part of having overcome life and death. But my point remained as I showed her a small mercy, "I will arrange for some manga. And I will put up a television for you to watch. And I'll adjust your hands so you can move them some. But see if I don't choose shows that you hate!" With that, I changed her chains, pulling her towards the ground, her arms were moved then tied together so they couldn't go to her side (where the spear was) but could move around up and down enough that she could hold a book. "You'll spend the rest of his existence kneeling to me!" I said. But Jesus knew he owed no deference to other men.

In the weeks to come, I installed a television and gave her a nonstop session of magical girl shows, everything in order from Himitsu no Akko-chan, to the more famous like Creamy Mami and Sailor Moon, all the way to the most recent entry of 2011 (a cute looking show called Puella Magi Madoka Magica). I left the room before seeing too much of that show, though, as I had other business to take care of. But my intent was to torture her, and she seemed to be enjoying that too much, despite some of these being far too cutesy and insipid for me to stand. I tried notoriously bad anime like Parade Parade, Angel's Egg, Dragoon, Garzey's Wing, Skelter Haven, Wounded Man, Ex-ARM, and Psychic Wars. So I switched to isekai genre, and aside from a few gems like Magic Knight Rayearth, gradually over the course of the week, Jesus became unsettled where nearly a thousand years of solitude hadn't had an effect. Jesus wept… at the state of anime.

bulmabriefs144

If this seems anti-Semitic what happened to the Jews here, this is not my intent. It's instead trying to show that constantly trying to stick it to other people gets you nothing you want or need, and the people most in position to help you out are often the sorts of people who you hate the most. Because there was no Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Popes were bought out by Hitler and the Holocaust became way worse. Also why you shouldn't try to change history.