Chapter Eleven

In recounting this tangential phenomenon, I do not wish to imply that Josef6 was silent throughout this time. He continued to post and to respond to questions. Moreover, he seemed determined, despite the efforts of his followers, to deter any attempts to make him into the object of spiritual or political fascination. In response to one query as to whether he was sent by God, he responded:

No. I believe in God, but he didn’t send me.

This missive was largely ignored by the growing number of participants in the virtual pageant, who were tending more and more towards the spiritual exegesis put forth by the High Priestess with each passing day.

This may have been the reason that Josef6’s communiqués began to take on a sharper and more irritated tone as time wore on. He seemed to be becoming more and more impatient with both his believers and his detractors. In response to one critic, who believed his story but accused him of founding a religious cult, he wrote:

Listen, I can’t help it if people misinterpret my words or draw the wrong conclusions from them. As I said in the beginning, I am looking for interaction and dialogue. I am not urging anyone to buy anything or do anything. I am not interested in giving you life advice or political advice or guiding your spiritual path -- or whatever you want to call it. I have made one exception to this for altruistic reasons and it is a decision I am beginning to regret. You are all free and intelligent people and I leave it to you to make up your own minds about me. If this leads some people down a spiritual path, or if they think I’m some kind of messiah, they’re completely wrong and they’re allowed to be wrong. Whatever they think, it isn’t my fault and it isn’t my problem.

His interlocutor seemed satisfied with this, or at least satisfactorily intimidated, because there were no further communications from this particular naysayer.

Josef was also beset with people seeking all manner of practical advice, from how to construct underground cisterns to whom to vote for in the next presidential elections. To the more innocuous inquiries, Josef generally steered them towards the available literature. Towards others, however, he evidenced a noticeable tendency towards frustration.

For God’s sake -- He wrote in response to one request for political advice -- make up your own minds. I’m not here to do your thinking for you. I’m here to tell you about me and where I come from to the extent that I am permitted to do so without violating my military oath or my own personal ethics. You can’t possibly be so ill informed that you would base your vote purely off of what some guy says on the internet, whoever he is! I’m not any different from you are! Make your choice based on your beliefs and your life experience, not mine! You live in this time period! You are far better qualified than me to decide your own political or social questions. I’m just an observer, not a seer! I have nothing to offer you that you cannot find within yourself.

This particular admonition was followed by a regretful apology from the questioner. Several other posters, however, did note that Josef may have overreacted. A fact which Josef later acknowledged and made a brief apology. This did not, however, in any way salve Josef’s increasingly obvious dislike of his new, exalted position.

This was most obvious in his relationship to the FPCJ6 and its leadership. For the most part, he declined to talk about them at all. When he was finally forced by weight of inquiries to respond, he simply said

I do not endorse them and I am not connected to them in any way. I support some of their positions, especially regarding organic farming and other similar issues, but I am not a part of their movement nor do I have any special contact with them. If they take positions with which I disagree and claim that my words justify this, I will say so. Until then, I would prefer not to talk about them. They are totally irrelevant to my life and my mission.

Of course, this only increased the fervor of the FPCJ6 themselves. The reluctant prophet is a staple of human myth, and Josef’s persistent refusal to engage with his most energetic followers served to provide them with a goal towards which to strive. Josef6 became a Holy Grail for the FPCJ6, something physically existent but fundamentally mysterious and impossible. They were trying to find him and he did not want to be found. His refusal to part with his mystery made them adore him all the more.

And there were those individuals who simply wanted to know more. Who had endless inquiries into the where the how and the why of the predicted apocalypse. To these heartfelt and often slightly desperate requests, Josef always responded in precisely the same way.

I cannot say any more than I have already said. To do so could have serious consequences for both you and me. I think I’ve bent the rules as far as I am able. I will simply repeat what I have already said: there will be a major event on the East Coast of the United States in 2010. You may want to be elsewhere when it happens. That is all I have to say.

And this was all he had to say. Throughout the rest of the next year, responding to hundreds of questions and challenges, Josef never revealed anything more about the event he had so ominously prophesied.

I do not know if it was clear to Josef that this was, in effect, handing himself over to those he accused of hijacking his message and his identity. In his silence, the FPCJ6 and their followers could formulate whatever they wished, and their websites began to fill with all manner of speculation, from plagues to bioterror to the nuclear exchange between the US and China which had absorbed so much of Josef’s early messages. A literature of Armageddon was growing up around Josef6 and yet he appeared to be oblivious to it. Perhaps, as one of TimeLords’ denizens once joked, he had really been sent back to make a study of group hysteria in the early 21st century. This was amusing in so far as it was so obviously true. For Josef’s self-appointed disciples, 2010 was taking on a millennial significance, and there were already reports of east coast chapters making plans for mass evacuations. A necessity which was becoming more and more onerous as the church membership skyrocketed and its profile ever higher.

Fueled by discontent over the Iraq War and embraced by seekers and pilgrims from every corner of godless modernity, the FPCJ6 had seized on something. Its basis in scientific plausibility and absolute pacifism made it the perfect refuge for the materialistic and terrified zeitgeist of the age. As its popularity grew, as it became the subject of 60 Minutes reports and celebrity endorsements, as it began to be openly embraced by state and even the occasional national politician, the object of its worship became ever less relevant. By the time the mass pro-disarmament demonstration of 2007 descended on Washington DC, the FPCJ6, despite being one of the largest represented groups in the crowd and its organizing committee, said little or nothing about its anointed prophet. They had their own Josef6 now, and little need of the original.

In some ways, only I remained Josef6’s true chronicler. My hard drive was filled to capacity with his communiqués. Stacks of paper on which I printed hard copies of every one of his posted messages filled my drawers and spilled out on to my tables and chairs. My desk was a mass of research materials and carelessly scrawled notations, all relating to the Traveler and his mission. My work on the Voynich Manuscript remained indefinitely suspended. The fact that I was meeting, face to virtual face, with the same phenomenon -- the unknown writer -- not in the distant and emasculated past, but here in the living now, was too much for me to resist. They had created Josef6, but I knew him. Or, I knew him as much as it was possible to know him. Since, for me as for all of us, he remained a stranger.

It was a few days after the 2007 demonstration had blanketed the news and the administration had announced the formation of an independent study group to assess the possibilities of its implementation that I received the message.

It appeared one morning in my Inbox. It had arrived sometime in the early hours of the night before, long after I had switched off the cortex-warping screen and gone to dream my own dreams. It was from a bbsturgen117839 and contained no text whatsoever. Its subject line, in broad capital letters, was its only content. I read it before giving it a second thought. It said only this:

I KNOW WHO HE IS.

Chapter Ten

Following the early history of the FPCJ6 is not exactly an easy task. It requires both fortitude and patience. Even given my extensive research into the subject, enormous gaps remain in the historical record and are likely to remain so. Quite often, the origins of a thing are counted from the moment of their eruption into the world. But this is never the beginning. There is always the further back, the shadows were the thing took shape. Gestated. Began to become itself. This begs the question, of course, of whether there is actually a thing at all, or merely what we make of it. Is the thing there, or do we create it? This is elementary philosophy for college freshman, and yet no one has thus far provided us with an entirely satisfactory answer. I have no pretensions of my own in this direction. Like the Voynich manuscript, I decided the thing was what it was and proceeded from there.

What is clear, however, is that from the very beginning the San Francisco chapter of the FPCJ6 was the largest and most influential congregation, with its neighbor Berkeley coming in a close second. Indeed, for most of its early years, the FPCJ6 was a completely Californian phenomenon, with coincidental offshoots in Seattle, New York City and, surprisingly, Austin, Texas.

It was no surprise, therefore, that within two months of the founding ceremony the High Priestess Guinevere, nee Jennie Ruptha, nee Virginia Peasley, moved herself and the central ministerial committee to San Francisco and established the national headquarters for a religion which, at the time, barely existed.

At this point, records become extremely sketchy, though a slow and measured rise in membership seems clear. Within a year, the number of chapters had grown from four to eight, a sizable increase percentage-wise, but remained primarily based in northern and central California. The members were generally educated and relatively affluent. What is most remarkable about these early statistics is the age range of the members. Most new religious movements -- what detractors refer to as “cults” -- are largely composed of people under the age of 35, usually tending towards the lower end of the age spectrum of 20-35. In the case of the FPCJ6 there was a remarkably even distribution across the age spectrum. The largest group was within the expected 20-35 range, but only by one or two percentage points. In the case of some congregations, even less than this. Participants between the ages of 45-60 made up fully 38% of the national membership and there was a sizable percentage of senior citizens as well, particularly in the San Francisco chapter. The broad appeal of Josef6’s message, or the message of his interpreters, would appear to be statistically quantifiable in this case. However, one must make allowances for the fact that, at this point, one is still dealing with a movement which numbered barely over two thousand members.

The real action, at this stage, was in the virtual arena. This was to be expected. The influence of the FPCJ6 extended well beyond its membership due to the swiftness with which it monopolized the virtual exegesis of the Josef6 phenomenon.

The official FPCJ6 website, which was operational within six months of the founding ceremony, was something almost unprecedented: an electronic codex dedicated to the enigmatic recitations of a single, unknown figure. Its homepage consisted of a series of links through which one could connect to a compendium of Josef6’s original messages, including the images and the astounding moment of prophetic revelation regarding 2010, arranged according to date, subject and perceived importance. These in turn led to a series of related pages. Some of them were simple theoretical expansions on Josef6’s missives. Others involved detailed scientific speculation on the actual workings of the Traveler’s craft, based on “the latest in theoretical physics” and the indistinct clues teased out of the copious original texts. Some of these included quotations or transcriptions from recent scientific papers on the subject of quantum manipulation and the space-time effects of artificial micro-singularities. Most of these were, by common consensus, totally incomprehensible.

The next exegetical level was concerned with a careful extrapolation of future conditions as described by Josef6. This included theories on the political, religious and economic systems of the post-cataclysmic future, visual reconstructions -- some drawn, some computer generated -- of the post-nuclear landscape, extrapolated population figures based on government estimates of survival rates following a nuclear exchange, and estimations of crop and power output in a sustainable, non-corporate based agricultural economy. One dedicated disciple even posted a theoretical constitution for the revised United States deduced from Josef’s occasional hints at totally non-centralized government.

From here, the commentators left the future and returned to the present by way of the past. Building on survivalist ideologies and environmentalist practice, they constructed a body of recommendations, advisories, and systemic practical applications to be followed by the concerned citizen of the present who sought to emulate the Traveler in the here and now rather than in the later or never. These included lengthy missives on organic farming, water storage, solar power, gun maintenance and safety -- for the more aggressive survivalists -- canned foods, the effectiveness of do it yourself bomb shelters, methods of minimizing the deleterious effects of radiation, iodine treatment of contaminated water and numerous other real world solutions to the virtual world problems presented by Josef6.

Inevitably, these musings on the practical gave way to the political. The primary cause of the FPCJ6, its members and its non-denominational followers, the charge given them, they believed, by the Traveler himself, was to prevent the catastrophe and the future it would bring. It was, in effect, the cause of erasing the Traveler himself. Josef6 may have been the first prophet who called upon the people to make his own existence impossible.

The primary cause to which the Traveler’s disciples attached themselves was total nuclear disarmament. Since the weapons had been, or were to be, the instrument of the cataclysm, this was entirely understandable. The FPCJ6 site contained a multitude of links and information urging involvement in the disarmament movement. It presented a calendar of events -- demonstrations, petitions, protests, civil disobedience -- some of them organized by the FPCJ6 themselves, and exhorted the concerned and the faithful to take part. It presented detailed lists of political candidates to support -- some of them from very obscure minor parties -- and organizations, movements and issues with which to be concerned and committed.

Secondary to the disarmament issue, certain specific topics were addressed. Most notable among them was the necessity of rapprochement between the United States and China over Taiwan. According to the disciples, the independence of a small island nation, artificially created by now obsolete geopolitical considerations, was not worthy of nuclear Armageddon. It was necessary, so it was said, to choose the lesser of two evils, and the lesser was unquestionably a Chinese takeover of Taiwan. The handover of Hong Kong, after all, had not proven to be much of a disaster. There was no reason to expect any different in the case of Taiwan. To risk nuclear war over such an issue was, in the opinion of the disciples, psychopathic and evil.

Beyond this, there were, of course, the usual urgings towards anti-globalization, anti-industrialized agriculture, and anti-militarist political stances, although the presence among the disciples of a considerable number of survivalists limited the extent of the movement’s pacifism. Several “Traveler’s militias”, organized -- though officially disavowed -- around the FPCJ6, clearly exerted considerable influence in this regard.

It is my belief that it was through these tangential connections to broader political issues that the FPCJ6 first began to receive some measure of public recognition. The participation of the San Francisco chapter in a pro-disarmament demonstration, nearly a year after the founding ceremony, managed to garner some considerable attention from the local media, concentrating particularly on the bizarre sect which believed it had been shown the future by an internet prophet. The FPCJ6 represented an exciting -- “sexy” is, I believe, the professional term -- departure from the usual drab and aging Woodstock refugees who generally populated such occasions. Although the tone of most of the reports was skeptical leaning into outright mockery, it provided an invaluable boost to the church’s profile. Picked up by national affiliates and then by talk radio programs specializing in “paranormal” or bizarre phenomenon, the story became something of an underground sensation in the second year of the church’s existence. A cause celebre, or at least a celebre, just barely under the radar of the mainstream press.

The primary cause of this trend was the High Priestess herself. Jennie never lacked for talent in performance, and her sincerity, not to mention her bizarrely convincing fashion sense, gave her a charisma which proved essential to the growth of the sect she had founded.

The distance provided by the virtual was the key to her success. In person she was disconcerting, ponderous, bizarre and slightly frightening. Over the air waves she was appealingly different, articulate, quirky, sometimes touching and deeply sincere. Her obvious goodwill contained none of the oppressive religiosity exuded by her physical presence. In a space once removed from the real, she was charming, even slightly lovable, even if -- sometimes especially if -- one was convinced that she was utterly deranged.

It was during this period that the FPCJ6 truly established itself. Within two years of its founding it had formed coalitions with over a dozen anti-war, environmentalist and specifically pro-disarmament groups, which is not to mention the mostly unspoken connections it maintained with various survivalist militias which, while skeptical about organic farming, were more than interested in the idea of de-centralized government. Because of this energetic networking, the church began to achieve a measure of local political influence, particularly the San Francisco and Berkeley chapters. Their growing membership, coupled with their obvious sympathies towards some of these communities’ most treasured political goals, made them a small but at times indispensable source of manpower and authority. While no politician went so far as to publicly court their endorsement, the local FPCJ6 chapters were capable of easily turning out disciplined and enthusiastic cadres of believers to man phone banks, canvas voters, request donations and all the other uncomfortable and thankless tasks essential to local political victory. When Pervis McElvoy, a former assistant professor of peace studies and fervent advocate of disarmament, won the chairmanship of the Berkeley city council, it was widely rumored that the foot soldiers of the FPCJ6 had been instrumental in his victory. Although not a word was spoken publicly, it was assumed that favors would be forthcoming. Despite this fact, it went unnoticed by the press when, six months later, the FPCJ6 won local tax exempt status in both Berkeley and San Francisco. A victory the church would soon repeat on a national scale.

By the third year of its existence, the church had doubled its membership yet again, and small chapters had begun to spring up across the East Coast of the United States as well. It proved particularly successful in New York. Rumors also swirled about several prominent Hollywood stars who may or may not have been sighted -- behind the obligatory dark glasses and baseball caps -- at local recitations of the Traveler’s Benediction.

It was this final development that most likely prompted the massive publicity coup that marked the end of the church’s third year of existence. Namely, the High Priestess’s appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show.

The most surprising thing about this appearance, in retrospect, is its relative banality. However, this is not difficult to explain. By this time, the talk show genre had already run the gamut of the bizarre, the strange, the paranormal, the perverse and the outright appalling. Winfrey’s previous guests had included psychics, child molesters, psychotic serial killers, men who hated women and the women who loved them, and an infinity of other greater and lesser psychopaths, all of whom were accepted with the modicum of decorum expected of a national television audience. Admonished with the unspoken admonition to keep an open mind, and provided with the perfectly credible insurance policy that it was all entertainment anyway, there was no particular reason -- and there remains none -- why the High Priestess and her oddly compelling tale of perfectly scientifically plausible visitation should be greeted with anything but a respectful hearing and the most copiously observed official niceties.

And this is precisely what happened. To mark the occasion, the High Priestess forwent her white robes and instead appeared in jeans and a t-shirt emblazoned with the now immortal “WWJ6D?”. She and Oprah laughed together about their busy schedules, discussed various lamentable developments in national and international politics and culture and looked sympathetically into each other’s eyes while the High Priestess recounted a handful of sad, and one tragic, anecdotes from her days as Virginia Peasley. At one moment, viewers swore that they could see a mutually shared tear crossing the faces of the two women. The cameraman, unfortunately, did not exploit his opportunity for a close up and the tale must remain, therefore, apocryphal.

The highlight of the show was, of course, the High Priestess’s retelling of the visitation, the message of the Traveler, and her belief that it represented hope for a better and more peaceful future. This led to a long discussion of the only real issue at hand: him. Who was he? What was he like? Was he, perhaps, in the audience right now?

When this question was asked, the cameraman turned his lens upon the assembled audience, and all heads turned towards each other and themselves, each person seeking Josef6 in the face of the person next to them. It was electrifying television. Those eyes roving the stands. The stage momentarily forgotten in the search for the cipher, the phantom, the hidden presence who might be concealed in plain sight. Seen by millions. Recognized by no one.

With her unerring instinct for spectacle, the High Priestess rose from her seat and said that if the Traveler was present, would he reveal himself to the faithful at last?

There was a long and completely unbroken silence. Then they cut to a commercial.

Chapter Nine

The First Parrhesic Church of Josef6 opened its doors in September 2001. The event was largely lost in the tragic storm of that tumultuous month. There was no media present, and not a word was written about the organization for the better part of a year. In the face of fire, death and the trace of Armageddon emitting from the bowels of Manhattan, no one even noticed the most significant event of the coming decade.

They would have been disappointed. The opening ceremony of the FPCJ6 was not auspicious. Only fifty-five people attended, and the central ministerial committee consisted of only three individuals: Robert Burgundy, who thanks to the miracle of ophthalmologic laser surgery, was no longer bespectacled, Riverrain, who was now known as Butterflyhope the First, and the inevitable Jennie Ruptha, who would now and henceforth be known as the High Priestess Guinevere. Those who attended were handed a white slip of paper upon which the following was clumsily Xeroxed:

The FPCJ6 is dedicated to fearlessly speaking the truth which has been revealed to us by the Traveler, Josef6, who came to our time in order to rescue us from the dark future in which he lives. We bless and sanctify his sacrifice and his bravery and seek to build our lives through his extraordinary story and teachings. We believe that by changing ourselves we can also change the world. Our beliefs, based upon the messages of the Traveler, are these few, basic, human truths:

1. The Traveler speaks the truth.

2. The Traveler has made his journey for a reason. There is no such thing as a coincidence. The revelations of Josef6 are a gift to this time period and must be honored.

3. In order to honor Josef6 and his courage, we must seek to change both our own lives and the lives of others in our time period by heeding his message and his warnings.

4. The existence of nuclear weapons and the use of war as an instrument of policy must be forever abolished if the future of the Traveler is to be avoided.

5. The political and spiritual leaders of our time have not fulfilled our political and spiritual needs. We look to the Traveler for guidance and not for the outdated and corrupted institutions of our time, which are leading us into the dark future which the Traveler has described to us.

6. We call upon the Traveler to reveal and make his presence known to us, his believers. If he chooses not to do so, we understand that there are reasons we cannot know or comprehend for his refusal and will continue to follow his teachings.

7. We support organic farming, sustainable economics and peace. We reject war, industrialism and social injustice.

8. We believe in the power of organized and dedicated people to make a real change in the world. We seek to make this change through teaching, love and faith in the words of the Traveler.

9. All people, time periods and universes are one and simultaneous. We are responsible not only for ourselves, our time and our universe, but for all the others to whom we are connected. We are them and they are us.

The event was held in a white tent in a public area, with organic vegetables and steel kegs of well drawn water served for refreshments. High Priestess Guinevere gave a short speech and recommended that the assembled purchase the new self-published book by the central ministerial committee. Entitled “The Traveler: the Revelations of Josef6”, it was a crudely bound softcover with Josef’s military insignia emblazoned in black against white under the title. The cardboard box containing one hundred and seventy five copies was empty by the end of the ceremony.

Following her speech, High Priestess Guinevere, newly christened, urged the congregation to join hands and recite her self-composed benediction, which had now been retitled “The Traveler’s Benediction”.

Only a single photograph remains of this founding moment. It was taken by Butterflyhope in the moments before she joined the assembled circle, bowed her head, and intoned the post-modern hymnal.

It shows a blissful group of perfectly ordinary people captured in a moment of transition. They are rising off their chairs, leaning awkwardly towards their neighbors, reaching out towards outstretched hands. They are dressed in the motley, disintegrated collage of styles so typical of the age. Jeans, dresses, scarves, blouses, shoes of all shapes and sizes, it was the amalgamation of the transcendent ordinary that is in frozen movement in this strange, ominous image. The only anomaly is the High Priestess herself, dressed completely in white, her strangles of brunette hair drawn back and tied in a bun above her forehead. The virginal robe touching the toes of her bare feet. She is already looking downwards, her eyes closed, her arms outstretched, palms turned upwards, prepared to receive the tentative fingers of her flock. Behind her is a raised dais assembled of stray, industrial stands liberated, perhaps, from the storeroom of a government welfare office or dissipated public school. Above it hangs a blue placard with yellow lettering. It reads: “WWJ6D?” in enormous red letters.

I obtained this photograph from the TimeLords message board itself, where the High Priestess had happily posted it along with a brief missive describing the elegant and moving proceedings. Many of her fellows posted their approval, along with frequent praise of the spiritual and aesthetic content of the ceremony she had described.

For myself, I relegated the image to the innards of my personal computer. To rest among the static electrons of the billion transistors, alongside my hundreds of files on the Voynich Manuscript. Pulsing in the silicon emptiness that was the perfect shadow of our own memories. Fragile and transient, there was no longer need for them. These blurred and unknown figures, reaching for each other around the impassive High Priestess, were stored forever among the atoms, waiting for the moment when they would be called upon again. To be gazed at in all their candid, deformed, inscrutable virtualness. While the rest of the world was examining, in the minutest detail, down to the anatomy of Armageddon itself, the wasteland of destruction ripped through the urban fabric, I was content with these strange, dancing ghosts.

It was two days after this initial meeting that the High Priestess posted again, informing the virtual assembled that the FPCJ6 were currently in negotiations for non-profit status and were applying for government recognition as a religion, or, as she put it, “legitimate spiritual movement.

Underneath her message was a link to a newly established website. Those who followed through the tear in the electronic architecture found themselves at a single page of text, showing various details and instructions for obtaining the soon to be self-published pamphlet: “Join the Travelers! How to start an FPCJ6 chapter in your community.”

Chapter Eight

The first note of dissension was sounded shortly after this in the person of Doctor Allen Remington, PhD of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who signed on to the TimeLords board as DocRem85. Whatever his words, the fact that a distinguished professor of theoretical physics had descended into the depths of the virtual abyss to render his opinion constituted a bizarre and fitting acknowledgement on the part of the established institutions of knowledge that things were beginning to get very out of hand. In this regard, of course, Remington was ahead of the curve.

Its difficult for me to believe -- He began -- that a group of ostensibly intelligent and well informed people could fall for such obvious pseudo-scientific nonsense. It would take far too long to list all the scientific problems with “Josef6”’s supposed time machine, but I will simply mention that there is no proof that a micro-singularity even exists in nature, and to artificially create one would -- even in theory -- require an energy input roughly equivalent to a supernova. The idea that this could be contained in a vehicle the size of a minivan is completely absurd. The minute such a device -- which is impossible anyways -- were activated it would destroy the earth and most of the solar system along with it.

This is not even to mention the so-called “compound nature of space-time” for which no proof exists whatsoever. Even in advanced theoretical circles, no one even entertains this notion with any seriousness. The multiverse theory involves multiple universes but not multiple timelines and -- since each of these universes would not share the same physical laws as the others -- it would be completely impossible to travel between them using the physics of a single, specific universe. The multiverse theory is, in any case, only a theory, and the idea that a practical device for traversing it could be created and put into practical service within seventy years by a post-nuclear apocalypse society in which there is no central source of funding and power and which, apparently, cannot even fix a century old computer glitch simply boggles the mind. In other words, it couldn’t happen and it didn’t happen. Yes people, he made the whole thing up.

Even giving “Josef” the benefit of the doubt, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and Josef has given you absolute nothing that even remotely resembles any evidence at all. You have two very easily doctored photographs and a set of blueprints which describe -- as I stated before -- a vehicle which would be impossible to operate without destroying itself and everything else for several million miles around, even if it were possible to build such a device at all, which it isn’t.

I would have thought that the fraudulent nature of “Josef’s” story would have been obvious to you the minute he handed down his list of “time traveler’s ethics”. Every single one of these is clearly designed in order to give him an excuse to give you no specific predictions or other facts which might prove him to be a fake. In other words, Josef6 is unfalsifiable, which according to basic scientific doctrine makes the truth of what he says impossible to prove or disprove. Given the extreme nature of his claims, the proper response should be skeptical disbelieve unless presented with absolute and definitive proof of the truth of his statements. As I’ve said, not only has none of this proof been forthcoming, but he’s been very careful to present you with a series of “ethics” which preclude the possibility of him ever having to do so. In real scientific circles, this is proof positive of fraud. Yes, that’s right, your time traveler is a fraud and nothing more. He’s probably a bored grad student who’s having a good laugh at your expense. Whatever he is, he certainly isn’t what he claims to be.

Doctor Remington should have known better. The believers were upon him almost immediately, and they had strength in numbers.

You call yourself a scientist -- Said one -- aren’t scientists supposed to keep an open mind about knowledge and the world? Aren’t they supposed to investigate every aspect of the universe and not simply dismiss it out of hand. They probably laughed at Einstein too, at first, and Josef certainly isn’t claiming to be Einstein.

Another took issue with the Doctor’s historiography:

You say that Josef has presented us with nothing but unfalsifiable statements, but you yourself claim that his statements about the artificial micro-singularity is falsifiable. Not to mention Josef’s recent statements about near future events, especially on the east coast in 2005. We can definitely wait and see whether that comes true or not. In fact, most of what Josef has told us has been pretty exact and, while a little out there -- as any future technology would be -- isn’t beyond the realm of the possible. As he said, anyone coming with future technology is going to sound pretty out there describing it. How do we know that scientists in the future haven’t solved the problem of micro-singularity energy output. Even Josef himself admits that he doesn’t know how it works! You just set up a bunch of straw men and knock them down, exactly what you accuse Josef of doing! You seem to me like a very close minded and angry man.

A more succinct message read

If Josef is so obviously a fraud, why are you even bothering to post here? Why do you even care? Maybe because deep down you know he just might be the real thing?

This, at least, got the good Doctor’s attention

Typical. You seem consider the fact that people are offended by frauds and lies to be some sort of compliment. The reason why I “care” about things like this is because, as a scientist, I am a believer in the idea that reason and logic can arrive at objective truth. When I see people abusing other people’s credulity and using scientific principles to do it, I am offended. It really that simple. And no, deep down I am quite sure that your friend Josef is a liar and a fraud. I also think he’s thoroughly enjoying himself.

Prettycrazygirl considered the entire affair distinctly tragic.

I just want to say that I think its really sad that Josef has to suffer these kind of attacks. He’s behaved towards us with nothing but generosity and, I think, love. Its too bad that some people are too mean-spirited and close minded to see the beauty of his message. I guess some people will just never get it.

And that was all. Doctor Remington refrained from further comment and his artfully thrown rhetorical grenade was quickly buried under a plethora of exegetic speculation as to the prophecies of his target. In all likelihood, he realized the Quixotic nature of his task and simply lost interest.

As for Josef’s primary disciples, Doctor Remington’s attack elicited no response whatsoever. This initially bizarre silence extended even to Jennie Ruptha who, as we later discovered, was far to busy to pay it any attention.