[SKRIVA] Jul/nyårsnovell: "Jeezus!"
- From: Ahrvid <ahrvid@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "skriva@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <skriva@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "novellmastarna@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <novellmastarna@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "sskak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <sskak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 19:46:21 +0100
(Jag har traditionen att försöka skriva en jul/nyårsnovell, som en liten
hälsning, anknytande till jul och/eller nyår. Här är årets. Den skrevs på
engelska så att jag kan posta till div utländska mailinglistor också - och
eventuellt putsa litet och prova utrikiska sf-blaskor. God Jul & Gott Nytt År!
--Ahrvid)
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Jeezus!
"...and more details are in the handouts, which we will provide when this is
over", professor Svante Pääbo said, world authority in analysing ancient DNA
and director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in
Berlin. "But I'll be happy to answer your questions now."
The press conference was so crowded that a rush-hour Tokyo metro train would
be jealous. A forest of waving hands instantly sprung up. One of the more pushy
ones won.
"Millennium International, Mikael Blomkvist speaking. How did you get access
to the Jesus relics for your investigations?"
"Most churches won't refuse a generous donation to fix the badly neglected
roof. Or they have hefty legal fees after their priest and a choir boy...
Anyway, the Institute has economic resources from a group of anonymous
backers. But I think our scientific breakthroughs are more important. We had to
use the sharpest cutting edge science in reconstructing the DNA of Jesus of
Nazareth."
You couldn't hear a pin drop as TV cameras were buzzing, keyboards were
clicking, tape recorders were recording, and flashes were flashing, in a rising
CO2 concentration of the room that would make IPCC cartwheeling with joy.
"Clark Kent from the Daily Planet. Professor, how can you say it is his DNA?
Your methods must be super-sensitive!"
"Several methods were employed. Out of many thousands of relics we from our
extensive historical research selected the ones least likely to be medieval
forgeries. Then we used our newly developed extremely sensitive C14 dating to
see if it was from the right period. We took the samples from deep cracks and
such, least likely to have been contaminated. Finally we did comparative
analysis of all the DNA obtained."
"Jack McGee, The National Register. Other scientists must be green with envy!
How did you succeed with your DNA analysis?"
Professor Pääbo tapped on a controller in his hand. A number of slides rushed
by on the screen behind him, until he found the right one.
"Here it is. Maybe I did my presentation a bit too fast. It is like this: We
went through many steps. We obtained authentic DNA from the Roman province of
Palestine in Jesus' time and before. From this we could build a database of DNA
markers that people from there must have. Whoever the father of Jesus was, half
of the genes come from his mother Mary. This way we could establish that
certain DNA was potentially genuine. We also built a database of known forgers
and in a similar way we could exclude quite a lot of DNA. Finally we measured
the age of the person having the DNA, which we can do from the length of the
telomeres at the end of the DNA strand. We know the age of Jesus, in his mid
30's at the time of crucifixion. And among the potentially correct samples,
there was one set of DNA of a man of the right age, from the period, from
Palestine, that showed up a few times, and there were no other candidates."
"Sarah Jane Smith, Reuters. Doctor, who will be the new mother Mary when you
clone him?"
You could hear several gasps among the assembled reporters. There was a
moment of silence. Pääbo started at the frisky reporter. A strange group far
away in the back, who had sneaked in with dubious home-made press passes,
became very exited:
"Professor! Melvin Frohike, Lone Gunmen newsletter, you know there are people
who believe that when Jesus comes back to Earth..."
"Yes, I know!" professor Pääbo said with a sigh. "The religious claim that it
would be Judgement Day - our Doomsday! But, Miss Smith - and yes I have a PhD
too - I'm far more worried about the ethics, apart from that human cloning
presently is impossible. Clones of animals this far are extremely difficult to
make and have genetic deficiencies and a shortened lifespan. A human child
would never have a father or mother, and think of the enormous pressure on the
poor boy... Cloning is not on our agenda, but we found something else that
might interest you. I have intended to finish this press conference by
revealing it."
There was roar in the audience. A big, boorish man stood on his feet. His
mere presence somehow made all the others silent.
"Before you go on professor. Charles Foster Kane, you may know about me! I
have here in my pocket a check with a lot of zeroes on it, for you and your
institute if you would make this announcement an exclusive for the New York
Inquirer, the finest newspaper in the world!"
Professor Pääbo stared in disbelief. Then he responded in a sharp voice:
"Mr Kane! Our institute has quite adequate funds and I'm satisfied with my
salary. But most of all, this is science, the strive for knowledge for all of
humanity! By the way, I guess it is your people who have been going through
our garbage cans, harassed our staff and held us under siege with batteries of
telelenses and generally behaved like neanderthals... I suggest you give your
check to the UN refugee programme. Now, where was I..."
Another slide appeared on the big screen.
"There was mostly nothing strange with the DNA of Christ, except in the Y
chromosome which is the specific male one and must have come from whoever or
whatever was the father of Jesus. In the junk part of it - parts with no
genetic function - there were long single-letter sequences. You know that DNA
is made up of bases called A, T, G and C. It was as if whoever put it together
knew it was of no importance and lazily put in a single base, say AAAAA, in
these strings of the junk DNA. Natural DNA would have a more or less
pseudo-random composition. And then..."
Another slide turned up.
"...there were parts of the junk DNA which had messages! There are ways to
encode letters through the ATGC bases. There are also ways to analyse entropy
and frequency in it to say it is from a language, even if you can't read it. We
simply don't know this language. We have gone through every possible tongue. It
is of course speculative, but our conclusion is that Jesus was somehow partly
from another world! Created by visiting aliens, no less - otherwise the
language used would at least resemble something we could regonise. That would
also explain all the miracles scriptures attribute to him. A species from far
away stars would have technology to do this. Whatever the point of it all was,
when it was over Jesus would of course as the Bible said ascent to the heavens,
probably with a rocket belt or so, to rendezvous with his people in Low Earth
Orbit."
The crowd of newsmen turned into a dentological convention. Jaws dropped
everywhere. Jesus, an alien from space? A young journalist in a corner fainted.
His pen and notebook fell on the floor with a loud "thud!". But professor Pääbo
wasn't finished.
"Whatever the point of creating Jesus was, it wasn't to start a new
religion," he continued. "We can tell you this, because there was a short
sequence of the unknown language parts we could dechyper. As said, we tried all
possible languages and then it turned up - in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic and
Aramaic, the latter the language of Jesus. Our alien visitors guessed we
someday would be able to read DNA and wanted to be sure we didn't misinterpret
the events..."
"Come on, professor! What did this message say? Peter Parker, freelancer for
The Daily Bugle, asking."
A final slide lit up, in the five mentioned languages, and in translation.
"Well, it may be a strange coincidence, random codes creating a
pseudo-message by over-analysing. But the message was the same in all
languages, so I don't think so. And as you clearly see it says: There is no
God."
--Ahrvid Engholm
--
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historier i mycket sannolik framtidsmiljö"! /Nu som ljudbok:
http://elib.se/ebook_detail.asp?id_type=ISBN&id86081462 / Läs även AE i nya
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YXSKAFTBUD, GE VÅR WCZONMÖ IQ-HJÄLP! (DN NoN 00.02.07)
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