In the year 2055, a new Christ was found, manufactured, and immortalized. How the U.S. government discovered the new Christ, how they determined their validity, remained carefully guarded classified information. The Freedom of Information Act had its limits, and nosy journalists had their own well-beings and families to think about. Regardless of how they came about, the Christ existed.
Despite the desperation to keep the Christ as secretive as possible, of course, no secret stays that way for long. Only a year into the reveal of the Redeemer, the photographs were leaked. Their eyes were vacant and upturned, fingernails scraped clean off. Their skin was peeled back and their genitals burned off, revealing fleshy and anonymous humanity underneath. By the time the people learned of the new Redeemer, they were barely recognizable as a person. A worthy sacrifice. A proper Christ to rival the misery of Jesus.
How the machine worked was anyone’s guess, besides the elusive somebodies who manufactured it. A spire that jut into the sky and snaked underground, wires running through its exposed interior like live nerves. Exposed and leaning down, connecting to the Christ in the center. Arms akimbo, slumped in an eternal stupor. Someone they could place all their societal ills onto. Neither man nor woman; skinned and hairless, genitals nonexistent. They were the pink interior of an Organic Being, nothing more.
Of course, in reality, they weren’t “nothing more”. They were everything. The free electricity that powered the U.S. electrical grid. The food that sprang from black, fertile earth. Rising birth rates. Miraculous recoveries. Healthier, hardier people. As water that rained over America carried sacred properties, the bottling industry bloomed. Even the air was sweeter in the Redeemer’s Country, carrying with it the subtlest spice of incense and rose. Naysayers were discounted, and the truth of the Christ’s divinity became widely accepted.
The theologians, theorists, social scientists, and biologists were quick to weigh in, but the general populace was louder in their opinions. Immediately, eyes turned to the skinless, sexless creature upon whose shoulders lay the health and wellbeing of the country.
Speculation stirs.
***
“I understand that people have questions, and the President is willing to answer to the best of his ability.” The Press Secretary subtly adjusts her bright blue blazer, her chestnut hair in photo-perfect curls cascading down her shoulders. The shutter of camera ripples through the audience; the press pushes against the tide of their peers to ask questions.
“Who was the Redeemer?” One reporter asks. The Press Secretary doesn’t skip a beat and answers immediately.
“The identity of the new Christ is highly classified information, unfortunately. We cannot give out any information at this time.”
“Why is the identity classified?”
“It’s a matter of national security.”
“Where is the Christ being held?”
“A secure federal location.”
“Can you tell us anything about them? Sex, appearance, age…?”
The Press Secretary’s expression tightens. “Not at this time, no.”
“Have they said anything? Will they say anything?”
“They only indicated that they wanted what’s best for everyone in the United States. The President is determined to use this sacrifice for the good of the American people.” The Secretary looks into one of the cameras, posing with a gesturing hand up, back ramrod straight, the image of closed ranks. “The President does want to make one thing clear: we will not let anything happen to the Redeemer. We will do everything in our power to prevent Christ from falling into the hands of a foreign power. As God is our witness, Christ will remain safe in the hands of the United States.”
A flurry of shutters and shouted questions. A wide, white grin; the mouth of a nation.
***
“Okay, and what if he is Black? Then what?” The podcast host shifts in his chair, his own name in neon blue signage casting strange shadows on his face. “What do we do with that? Like, we gonna bust in, January ninth style -” A ripple of rasping laughter from his peers, “-and bust a nigga out? Like, be so forreal.”
“Y’all, we gonna go in like at the end of that movie – y’all seen that movie, They Cloned Tyrone? Yeah yeah, we going in like that.”
“Nigga, you got asthma, you ain’t comin in like They Cloned Tyrone!”
Laughter filters into disembodiment through the microphones.
“Okay, but forreal, like… we all know he’s Black, right? They would never do this shit to a white person.”
“Maybe he’s something else, I dunno -”
“Nah, man, he’s gotta be Black. Look at the patterns, okay? Look at the data. Which other group has had to deal with some bullshit like this?”
“Y’all, imagine slavery. We were all basically nailed to fucking crosses, or our ancestors were. This is, like, to be expected.”
“Enslaved for white people’s lazy asses again.”
Laughter folding in on itself, layering.
“I’m just saying. If they’re gonna crucify anyone, it’s gonna be a nigga. It’s gonna be us. Who else is gonna carry this fucking world for lazy-ass white people? Not other white people, that’s for damn sure.”
***
The influencer pats yellow-white liquid foundation into the human crevasses of her face, the studio lights forcing into perspective every pore, every fine line, quickly brushed away by makeup. The redness of blood under her skin disappears under her practiced hand.
“Like, I know it’s important to know cause there’s history there, but, like… isn’t it better if we don’t?” She pulls out a stick of mascara and smears it onto her lashes, flicking her wrist delicately. “I know there’s a lot of talk about ‘what if Christ’s a woman’, and ‘what if he’s Black’, or ‘what if he’s white’ or whatever. But, first of all, I don’t think it really matters. Like, I thought we were all about not caring what gender or race people are. I’m over that shit.” She wipes a smear of mascara from under her lash. She doesn’t catch it until she goes back to edit her video, but the smear creates a sense of depth to her face that makes her look older than she actually is.
“If we know, then people are gonna get mad and violent. If we know what the Christ was, or who he was, or whatever, I honestly think it’d be the end. Like, the END end. I think shit would burn down. So it makes sense we don’t know. We don’t have to know everything, like, I don’t gotta know whether or not there’s aliens out there. Not to compare Christ to aliens, but you know what I mean. I don’t have time to deal with that.
“Anyway, here’s the final look!” She purses her lips, just slightly, tilting her painted face from side to side as if it were a gem catching the light.
***
A documentary comes out. There’s compelling evidence that the Christ was a kid from Watts. More documentaries; now they’re a college student from Boston, an orphan from Atlanta, Santa Fe, no, they were found at the border with immigrant mothers, in a well-to-do family in D.C.. The Watts theory, being the first one to come out with solid evidence, sticks.
***
Organizing takes time. It takes two years before a proper protest is planned, a protest bigger than a few neighborhoods and a handful of major cities. A protest large enough for riot police, for the National Guard, to see the flames from almost any metropolitan area in the U.S. Over twenty dead, even more missing. Cries for a freed Christ.
Many of the protestors are Black. Many more are not religious. The Christians were split on the nature of the Christ; some believed they were a conspiracy, made to bring the religious right to heel behind a Democrat president. Others believed that suffering was the Christ’s way, and did nothing to save the Redeemer. Others still remained complacent, using prayer and claiming that if it was God’s will Christ suffer, then they shall suffer. Regardless, many of them were in agreement on one thing: the Redeemer was a man, and was probably white.
Of course, a militant subsection came out in droves for the riots of ‘57. They carried guns, waved around Bibles, damned anyone who opposed the Christ and, in their words, “disbelieved in His glory”. They, of course, were against anything the non-religious advocated for. Those who would show up to riots with guns were not the type to show grace. The vast majority of Christians kept their opinions close to their chests, or debated them at dinner with family members of opposing viewpoints.
The topic of race is brought up in screaming matches that are recorded and posted online. One woman with thick yarn locs weeps, yelling, pointing accusingly at the camera. An unseen audience stands stoically in response.
“We know what y’all did!” She cries. “The fuckin’ U.S. government, y’all done it before! Y’all keep holding us up! We know what she is! Bring her out! Show us who she is and what you’re hiding, or this whole place fuckin’ burns!”
Behind her, someone lights a Molotov, rears back, and chucks it through the window of a Walmart. The flames create a halo around the woman, turning her tears into red and orange blood; stigmata, nimbus, prostrate to a higher power that refuses to turn over its secrets to those they father. As powerless as the rest of us. The video goes viral.
***
A game on the playground, years after the revolutionary spirit of the riots cooled and PhD candidates started penning their dissertations on the subject. The game, uncondemned by the adults but not encouraged, either, is called Wires. One child lifts their arms, rolls their eyes back, limps like a zombie from an old movie. Makes like Christ and gurgles from inside their throat.
The kids then flee from the Wires. Whoever is touched by them is out, while the others run circles around and around the Wires. Dodging shuffling, limp-armed prayers.
A teacher watches the kids pretend to be the Christ, chase each other, unaware of what exactly it is they are mocking. She takes a long, thoughtful sip of her coffee, swirling the concoction around her mouth, letting it settle in the back of her throat before she swallows.
She remembers childhood pews, the singing like mournful wind, hands raised in supplication. Aunties catching the spirit, brightly colored Southern dresses and gauzy church hats whirling around their bodies in a bur of color and faith. The kisses on her cheek by a thousand strange women that smelled like santal and florals. She remembers the time the church held a special Mother’s Day celebration for the congregation. She remembers her mother standing in line to receive a special gift basket, then being turned away for being unwed. The seed of bitterness that germinated in her. The later realization that the church would abandon her if they knew what she really was. A homosexual in a holy place with an addict mother.
The children she is charged to watch flee from the new Wires. The teacher remembers the fires of the riots, the howls, the churches that shuttered their windows and doors to nonbelievers. She lets them play the game, twisting limbs and laughing at the grotesque faces they make to mimic a holy being. She couldn’t care less if she was blasphemous. She hopes her blasphemy spreads to the children, takes root in them, sends them into the world with fire at their hands and a wish to burn everything down around them.
***
There’s an old woman, bent and nearly blind, hair wispy and mouth mostly toothless, who slithers past the National Guard and into the Spire where the Redeemer is kept. How she does this will be debated in documentaries, theorized in novels, fictionalized in movies. Perhaps she is the Antichrist, infernal abilities flexing so she can look at her adversary? Or an international spy? A mole, some religious fanatic with strings to pull. Regardless. However it is done, it is done, and isn’t that enough in the end?
When she gets to the figure, she stares at the one held aloft with hundreds of veiny wires and tubes, flesh bulging with the weight of them, giving the illusion of rotting flesh teeming with maggots and other parasites. Their flesh twitches sporadically, animalistic in their agony. She stares up and does not blink.
Though she is old and bent, she reaches up and touches his foot. Then she moves around the room, to the terminals on the walls. She runs her fingers over each, and slowly, like a knot being pulled, the wires give way. The Redeemer, sexless, skinless, touches the ground in a rasping heap.
The old woman moves to them, arms outstretched, as though she is greeting her grandchild. Her hands run over them, and her palms redden with their blood. The Christ’s eyes crack open, still mostly white with fear. But a sliver of brown peeks out. Flickers. Disappears.
The woman’s arms reach under them to grasp their shoulders. Pull their limp body under hers. Run fingers over a skull that would have hair, if only they were allowed to grow any.
Together, they leave the federal compound, and they are in her arms like a newborn child. The cameras capture her saying only one thing to them. Good child. And then they are seen walking out the doors. Then there is no more footage left to analyze.