[ WP ] Write a famous Bible story as if it occurred in 2015 .

`` Hey man, you've got ta come see this.'' 
 
 The guy was homeless, I guess. He had on a ratty old bomber jacket, collar flipped. On the right shoulder there was a yellow patch that just read `` Peace''. He smelled awful. 
 
 `` C'mon man. No lie, you got ta come see this guy. This *guy*, man.'' 
 
 I do n't know what it was, exactly. Something in his eyes, I think. Or maybe the way he talked, all sing-songy. Like those old hymns they had us sing in church. 
 
 `` You comin'?'' He asked. 
 
 `` Sure.'' I replied. I had a couple hours to kill, and he seemed harmless enough. 
 
 -- 
 
 -- 
 
 `` I do n't carry cash.'' I warned him, as we snaked our way down a dozen narrow alleyways. 
 
 `` Do n't want your fucking *cash* man.'' he grunted, brushing aside a few tangled snarls of old barbed wire. `` Do n't *need* it.'' 
 
 We walked in silence for a little longer. The sun was starting to set, and each unfamiliar building we passed seemed to bleed bright yellow-red. 
 
 `` I'm Saul.'' I said, at length. 
 
 `` Peter.'' he said. `` We're here.'' 
 
 -- 
 -- 
 
 There were maybe twenty of them, arranged in a neat circle. There was a space for Peter and me -- and a third, empty space that everyone seemed keen to avoid. Peter's eyes seemed to linger there, glinting like jagged glass. 
 
 In the circle's center there was a man. I ca n't describe him. He did n't look like any other kind of person I'd ever seen. 
 
 There were maybe twenty people in that room, but every sound, every beam of light, every word, seemed to emanate from him. 
 
 `` Paul.'' he nodded. 
 
 `` That's not my name.'' 
 
 He smiled faintly, and the room seemed to glow. `` Yes.'' 
 
 `` I do n't know you.'' 
 
 `` Maybe not.'' he said. `` But part of you has wanted to know me, for as long as you've been alive.'' 
 
 Crazy people talk like this. So do prophets. In the dying sunlight, on a strip of old asphalt worn smooth by countless years, I had a hard time telling one from the other. 
 
 The air felt heavy, sticky. Like a single word might set us all aflame. 
 
 `` You're insane.'' I croaked. 
 
 `` We're all insane. The world we live in is insane. There's no reason for it to be the way it is -- for people to scrabble and bleed and prey on each other to survive.'' 
 
 There was a pounding in my temples now, a roaring in my blood. Patterns of color burst inside my eyelids, veering into phantom spectra. 
 
 *What do you want from me? * 
 
 **Nothing. Everything. ** 
 
 -- 
 -- 
 
 I stumbled out of the alleys, away from the bleeding red buildings and *him*. I found a payphone, and clung to it like a drowning man. 
 
 I called my wife. I tried to explain. The words caught in my throat, insufficient, insubstantial. It was like trying to describe color to the blind. 
 
 `` I'm going.'' I said at last. `` I have to go.'' 
 
 `` Saul, you ca n't be serious.'' 
 
 The name stung -- a wrongness that was almost physical. 
 
 `` I'm not... I'm Paul now. Paul. And I'm going.'' 
 
 `` *Where*, Saul?'' 
 
 `` Where he wills me.'' 

