The Acts Of The Holy Ghost
a barely biblical tale
by Philip Thrift
© 2012, 2013 by Philip Thrift
Cloudversed Publishing
cloudversed.com
~ Intro ~
So much has happened over the past year that I wanted to record as much as I can remember.
My name is H.G. Taylor. The H.G. doesn't stand for anything, though. I have been with my loving partner, Harold B.D. Lord, for ten years. It turns out his middle name, B.D., doesn't stand for anything either. To our friends we are Harold and H.G., or Lord and Taylor.
The name of our planet is Heaven. I refer to it as our planet because in the story I'm about to tell, there is another planet I will be writing about. More about that later. For now, it is enough to say that Harold and I are happily married and living on Heaven. Harold is a research physicist who operates a supercolliding particle laboratory, and I am a coder who develops apps for a mobile software company. We have two houseboys: Michael, the cook, and Gabriel, the gardner.
I will begin my recollection at the beginning, which was one year ago today.
~ Act 1 ~
Harold and I were in bed reading. I don't remember what I was reading, but the glowlight from my tablet was beginning to make me sleepy. I put the tablet down and turned to Harold.
"I've been thinking, Lord."
"Now what, Taylor?"
"Let's have a son."
"That again. I'm too busy with my physics research. You know my lab has the biggest particle accelerator anywhere and there's a conference coming up."
"Yeah. Harold's Hadron Collider, they call it." I was being a bit snarky. "Your little kingdom." I became serious. "And I want him to be yours, I mean with your, uh, stuff. You know, 'Thy kingdom come'?"
"Oy."
"Here's my idea: That other universe that you discovered with that collider of yours, the one with a planet they call 'Earth'. Suppose we find a surrogate mother and have a son. That would be an interesting experiment. We can bring him back here to our universe after his surrogate mother raises him."
"You know with the technology I've developed, due to limiting energy consumption, I can only make a limited number of material transfers back and forth between our universe and theirs."
"Ohh, explain it to me again. It gives me goose bumps on my balls."
"The device I created that lets us access this another universe also lets us transfer matter between ours and theirs. But due to the Interuniverse Commerce Conservation Principle, there's a limit to how much can be transferred in a certain amount of time. That means we can transfer only a few of us back-and-forth for a while, and then that's it. So we have to make the right decisions. And there's the difference in our time dimensions, a scale factor of ..."
"When you talk physics, it gives me a big hadron."
Harold looked down at my lap, just to check. "If I go along with this, I want him to call me 'Father'."
"And he will call me 'Dad'," I said.
"So what do we do?"
"We find a suitable mother on Earth. In that country they call 'Judea'. You've sort of showed an interest in them."
"Don't be cute. Yes, here is the app you made for me that connects to the lab and let's us see what is going on in Judea." Harold turned his tablet so I could see. "With the integrated Noodle Translator, we can hear what they say in their own language. They are very religious. They believe in a deity named 'Lord'."
"Hey! That's your name! Tomorrow, I'll take some of your 'kingdom come' down and impregnate her."
I took out a beaker from my bedside table drawer. I was prepared for this. "Ready?"
"Now? I have a headache." Harold wasn't convincing.
"I can make the headache go away," was my reply. Let me just say that after a few minutes the beaker had all the content it needed.
"Well that's taken care of," I said. I'll put it in the fridge and take it down in the morning. Got the syringe handy too."
"I want Gabriel to go with you." Harold was getting authoritative again. He called up Gabriel on his tablet. "Could you come in here please?" In a couple of minutes Gabriel came into the room.
"Yes, Lord?"
"Taylor is going in the morning on a little mission. He'll fill you in. Be an angel won't you and go with him?"
"Yes, Lord."
That was the beginning and ending of that day. The next day Gabriel and I transported to Judea, Earth.
~ Act 2 ~
"What a dusty place. Who chose this again?" Gabriel looked around.
"Harold. Who else. Turn on your Noodle Translator app. It will let us speak and listen to these people in their own language."
There is one aspect of the Noodle Translator — or NT — from my company that I need to mention. It translates words between Earthly and Heavenly languages (in this case), but it attempts to translate them semantically. So there may be some confusion in NT translations in words and phrases between two languages.
"So we are supposed to find a pretty but pure female to implant the Lord's stuff. You got the cum-tainer?" Gabriel asked.
"Yeah. And a syringe. I want you to do the insemination. I want to keep my hands clean."
"Bitch."
A young woman appeared, pushing away some hooting and hollering young men who wanted to get it on with her, from all appearances.
"Scram punks!" Gabriel shouted. Gabriel is a massively-muscled dude, so there was no question they would run away. And they did. I stayed behind a bush, out of sight from the two of them.
"Thank you." Mary was grateful.
"No problem. You must be a good woman, not letting those punks have their way with you."
"I have a boyfriend. I'm keeping myself for him."
"I respect that. Do you believe in the Lord?" Gabriel was being sly, speaking to her in her terms.
"Oh, yes. I love the Lord," Mary replied. Only Gabriel could see me from where they were standing, and I gave him a thumbs up.
"My name is Gabriel."
"Mary."
"I don't know how best to explain this to you, Mary, but I am an angel of the Lord." I had planned with Gabriel before we transferred here how we would talk to the people in this land, in a way they would understand. They wouldn't know anything about M theory and a planet in another brane. (They didn't even know they were on a planet.) "And you have been chosen to bear his son. And you will name him 'Jesse', because he is the Lord's gift to you, and you will raise him as your own here on Earth."
"Are you kidding me?"
"It will happen in your sleep tonight. You won't feel a thing."
"I don't know what to say. What will I tell Joseph? That's my boyfriend."
"Go home. Get Joseph drunk and put him to bed. Then go to sleep yourself. In the morning, tell him you two 'got together' last night. He'll have to marry you soon before you start showing or people will stone you to death. But keep it your secret and let him think it's his."
"I am so blessed! To have the Lord's son! I'll do as you say."
So that's how Jesse was begotten. That night, Gabriel did what he said he would do: He sedated Mary with a zapper and impregnated her in her deep sleep with the syringe filled with Harold's cum. After he did that, we crossed our fingers and returned to Heaven.
~ Act 3 ~
I'm jumping ahead thirty weeks now, about seven months. First, I have to explain the time differential between Heaven and Earth, or really between the times in our two branes. In our universe, one week corresponds to approximately one year in the universe containing Earth. That means that as we view events on Earth, they appear to us to go by like a fast-forwarded video.
Harold and I were in bed, and I turned to him. "It's been thirty years, in their terms on Earth, Lord, and our son Jesse has grown up handsomely."
"But look at him: He's lousy at his pretend-dad Joseph's carpentry business, spends his time reading scripture and philosophy, wanders around mumbling to himself, gets into arguments with religious people ... and he still lives with his fucking Earth parents! His younger brothers have already left home to make it on their own. I thought by now with my genes he would have wowed that planet."
"Maybe its time for me to go down to Judea and have a good talk with him."
"That's a terrific idea. Go down tomorrow morning. But this will be a shock to him. His mother has kept our role in this a secret from him. And she wouldn't be able to explain it, anyway."
I transferred to Earth, alone this time. Jesse was wandering around in a field, and I approached him.
"Holy Ghost!" Jess shouted. That's how the NT translated it to me.
"Hi, son."
"Huh? Son?"
"Thirty years ago I was here and visited your mother, Mary. Have you ever wondered if Joseph was your real father."
"What the hell are you talking about? I know Mother has always said I was 'the Lord's gift', but ..."
"Your real Father is the Lord in Heaven. 'Harold' is his name. 'Harold B.D. Lord', actually. I'm his partner, H.G. Taylor. But you can call me H.G. Or Dad.
"Wait. You're saying my Heavenly Father is gay. I have two gay dads? That's just great. But I'm not gay." The NT again was taking words that he said in his language and putting them into mine.
"He's worried about you."
"Well that's a fine howdy-do. Here I am, thirty years old and don't know what to do with my life. And all this time my real father didn't take time to help me out."
"Things not going well with Joseph?"
"Carpentry's not for me. I'm still close to Mother of course, but never that close to what I thought before this moment was my dad. I've mostly been wandering the countryside, teaching scripture on the side. I got some big ideas for changing things up, but I don't know."
"Lord and I have been watching you from Heaven. You've always been as sharp as nails. But I have something to reveal to you."
"Anything to get me out of my doldrums."
"Lord and I didn't have you just for a lark. We knew you would be special, and you would have something to offer the whole Earth."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Begin a ministry to shake up this place. I'll help you out here and there. Just a few tricks, mind you. But people will listen. You'll draw huge crowds."
"I do have a few radical ideas I've been working out, and I'm no good at manual work. They'll crucify me out there though."
"Nonsense. They'll listen!"
"Tell me about Heaven. And Father." At this point in Jesse's mind, he was thinking of those names in his own terms, not for what they really were.
"It's not like what your scripture says. It's a world of science."
"What's that?" The NT didn't provide a word he could grasp.
"The closest your world has come is the Greek, Democritus: 'Everything comes from atoms and void.' We have built on that."
"I've read about Adam and Eve," Jesse puffed.
"Not 'ADam'. 'ATom'!"
"I'm so confused."
"There's so much to tell you, Jesse."
Before returning to Heaven, I went into a little explanation, though allowing him to keep thinking that 'Lord' was his Father in Heaven, and I was Lord's Spirit and Comforter.
I'm done writing down my recollections for this week. I have to get back to work now, but I will return next week to tell you what happened next to our son, Jesse.
continued in part two
Update 2013/09/01: parts one through four combined
© Copyright 2012, 2013 Philip Thrift