In His Image James

'Hey, I was just following Goodman's first law of achievement: 'The shortest distance between any two points is around the rules,'' Decker responded. But Goodman was right and Decker knew it. His conscience had always bothered him a little about the way he got on the Shroud team. 'Okay,' he said at last, 'it was a lousy thing to do. I do owe you. So what is it you want to show me that I can't tell anyone about?'

'You can tell anyone you like, but only when I say so. In fact, at the right time I'll want you to report it; just not right away. Right now I need a witness and you know I can't stand most reporters. Truth is, you're just barely tolerable,' Goodman added with a grin, trying to lighten the mood. 'I need someone I can trust to keep the story quiet until I'm ready to go public. You've covered the Shroud story from the beginning. People will believe you when you report what I'm going to show you, but if the story comes out too soon it could doom the whole project.'

'But, Professor, if this is about some research you've done, why don't you just publish it yourself in a scholarly journal?'

'I will, of course, publish my work in detail later. But, well… I'm afraid I'll need to break the ice with the public before I reveal the exact nature of my research to my peers.'

Decker frowned in confusion.

'It's just, I'm afraid I've applied a little of Goodman's first law of achievement myself. There are those in the scientific community, who, because of their narrow-mindedness, might condemn my methods. My hope is that once the benefits of my work are well known, public opinion will be too strong in my favor for my peers to condemn my methods. So, in exchange for confidentiality now, you get exclusivity later. As the story evolves you'll be the only reporter to have it. Certainly after you publish each part of the story, I'll have to talk to other press people, but I'll make sure you have the story a week or two before anyone else.'

'What do you mean, 'as the story evolves'?' asked Decker.

'What I'm going to show you today is just the beginning. There will be several installments along the way before you report the overall story.' Decker still had no idea what Goodman had discovered, but he couldn't help but be interested.

'So it all comes down to five things,' Goodman concluded. 'First, I need a witness I can trust. Second, you owe me for Turin. Third, you've covered the Shroud story since the beginning. Fourth, if you provide me with confidentiality, I'll provide you with exclusivity.'

'And fifth?' Decker asked.

'Fifth,' Goodman answered, 'is that if you report the story before I say to, I'll deny every word of it and you'll make a total ass of yourself. You'll never prove a thing.'

'I thought you just said you thought that people would believe me.'

'Yes, if I back you up and you back me up. But by yourself, and with my denial, they'll think you're crazy. Decker, I'm offering you the biggest exclusive of all time on the greatest discovery – scientific or otherwise – in the last 500 years. But in some ways it's also the most bizarre.'

'Okay,' Decker said. 'So let's hear it.'

'Do we have a deal?' Goodman asked, extending his hand to seal the agreement.

'Sure,' Decker said, leaning over the desk to shake Goodman's hand. 'So what's this big scoop about the Shroud?'

Goodman leaned back in his chair, placed his fingertips together, his elbows on the arm rests, and gazed off into space, apparently considering his words. 'Consider the following hypothesis,' Goodman began. 'The image of the man on the Shroud of Turin is the result of a sudden burst of heat and light energy from the body of a crucified man as his body went through an instantaneous regeneration or 'resurrection,' if you will.'

Decker's mouth dropped open. There was silence for a long moment and then he began to laugh. 'You're kidding me, right? This is all payback for Turin, isn't it?'

'I assure you, I am entirely serious,' Goodman responded as Decker's laughter continued.

'But this is ridiculous,' Decker said as he stopped laughing and tried to read Goodman's face for any hint that despite his denial, he was, in fact, playing a practical joke. Finding none, he continued. 'Professor, that's not a scientific hypothesis; that's a statement of faith. And since the Shroud isn't old enough to be the burial cloth of Christ, it's not even blind faith, it's ignorant faith.'

'It is not a statement of faith at all! It's based on sound scientific fact and reasoning. There is a way to test my hypothesis and to prove it.'

Decker's eyes squinted, revealing the puzzlement behind them. 'Okay, I'll bite,' he said reluctantly, 'how can you prove it?'

'By way of explanation,' Goodman answered, 'let me ask you what you know about Francis Crick.'

Decker was a little resistant to Goodman's unexplained change of subject but decided to allow his old professor some flexibility and not argue the point. 'I know he won the Nobel Prize in medicine back in the early '60s… '

'62,' Goodman interrupted.

'… for his co-discovery with James Watson of the double helix structure of DNA. And I know he published a book a few years back… ' Decker struggled to remember the name of the book.

'It was called Life Itself'¹⁰ Goodman said, finishing Decker's sentence.

'Yeah, that's it, Life Itself

'Good!' Goodman said, 'then you're familiar with his book.'

'I've read it.' Decker tried to make it clear by his tone of voice that he didn't think much of Crick's book, but Goodman didn't seem to notice.

'All the better! You will recall that in the book Crick examines possible origins of life on this planet. He raises the question of why, with the exception of mitochondria, the basic genetic coding mechanism in all living things on earth is identical. Even in the case of mitochondria the differences are rather small. From what we know of earth's evolution, there's no obvious structural reason for the details of the coding mechanism being identical. Crick does not entirely discount the possibility that life originated and evolved naturally on earth but he offers a second theory – that perhaps life was planted on this planet by a highly advanced civilization from somewhere else. If all life on earth had a common origin, that would explain the apparent bottleneck in genetic evolution.

'Crick calls his theory 'Directed Panspermia' and it's not unlike a theory propounded by the astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle.¹¹ Crick points out that the amount of time since the 'Big Bang' easily allows for the development of life and evolution of intelligent beings on other planets as long as four billion years ago. And that's if we take a very conservative estimate often to twelve billion years for the age of the universe. What that means is that on one or more planets in our galaxy, there may exist intelligent life which is as much as four billion years more advanced than life on earth!

¹⁰ Francis Crick, Life Itself, (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1983).

¹¹ Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Diseases from Space, (London: Dent, 1979).

'Professor Crick goes on to suggest that if these intelligent beings wanted to colonize other planets they wouldn't start by sending members of their own species. To colonize a planet, it would first be necessary to prepare that planet for habitation. Without plant life there wouldn't be sufficient oxygen for intelligent life, as we know it, to exist. And of course there wouldn't be food for the colonists either. To establish the needed plant life, they would have only to place some simple bacteria, such as bluegreen algae, on the planet and let evolution and the eons of time do their work.'

'Professor,' Decker interrupted, 'I've read the book. What's the point?'

'The point is, so what if Crick is right? What if life was planted on earth by an ancient race from another planet? Where are they now? Well,' Goodman continued, answering his own questions, 'Crick makes several suggestions: maybe they all died; maybe they lost interest in space travel; maybe they didn't find the earth suitable for their particular needs.

'But there's another possibility Crick didn't mention.'- Goodman paused to emphasize his point. 'Certainly earth wouldn't have been the only planet where they would have planted life. Probably they'd have seeded thousands of planets throughout the galaxy. So, what if when they finally got to this particular planet, they found that it was already populated, and not just by plants and animals. What if, through some strange set of parallel