Help me identify this story.... {NEVER MIND! - Got it!}

[Kaa]

One of my favorite short stories in the SF genre was called something like "A Handful of Mustard Seed" or anyway something about mustard seeds and/or grain.   It was a time travel story about an atheist and a True Believer with access to a time machine, and one of them is going into the past to determine if Jesus really was the Son of God.  I remember the whole plot, but don't want to reveal it here for spoiler purposes.

Problem is...I can't remember the exact title, the author, or the name of the publication in which I read it.   Mind like a steel sieve!

The real problem is that this was never in "print" as such.  It was in one of the very first e-zines.  We're talking mid-80s time frame. Like, before the world-wide web was even conceived of.  I had an account on my university's IBM 3090 mainframe, and I subscribed to it via a LISTSERV.  I feel like I can ALMOST remember the name--as if the name is hiding just around the corner from my conscious mind, but keeps darting into an alley when I peek around to catch a glimpse. Stupid mind.

So...does any of this ring any bells?  I hope I'm not the oldest person on the forum, and that you aren't all thinking, "BEFORE the WWW? How did they LIVE? What did they DO for fun? Was there even ELECTRICITY back then?"

[Anarkey]

The real problem is that this was never in "print" as such.  It was in one of the very first e-zines.  We're talking mid-80s time frame. Like, before the world-wide web was even conceived of.  I had an account on my university's IBM 3090 mainframe, and I subscribed to it via a LISTSERV.  I feel like I can ALMOST remember the name--as if the name is hiding just around the corner from my conscious mind, but keeps darting into an alley when I peek around to catch a glimpse. Stupid mind.

Name of the LISTSERV?  Some of that stuff is archived on the web, believe it or not.

[Kaa]

Yeah....therein lies the problem.  I know it's probably all archived, but I don't remember the name of the 'zine, the story, the author, or the LISTSERV.

At one point, I even zipped up all the stories so I'd not lose them.  And I probably put them on a diskette. A 5.25" diskette. Which is...only the gods know where.

All day long I've been getting tantalizingly close to remembering the name of the e-zine, but then it slips away.  Perhaps it'll finally come to me.

Perhaps if I give more of the plot?

[Anarkey]

Perhaps if I give more of the plot?

Perhaps for someone else, for me the plot is doing no good.  LISTSERV title I could totally work with...plot not so much.

Alas, I failed my genius librarian roll, it seems.

[Kaa]

Woohoo! My mind finally coughed up the name of the e-zine, and it was Quanta!  From there I was able to not only find the story and the author, but a site where all the stories from Quanta are archived.

Whew! What a grueling couple of days.  I flogged my brain, and for once it paid off.

Now, I'm looking for another story....

[DKT]

I sense a cycle

[slic]

Hey Kaa, you aren't going to spill the beans about the site, or at least the name of the story??

[Kaa]

Hey Kaa, you aren't going to spill the beans about the site, or at least the name of the story??

I didn't think anyone would be interested.

The story is called "A Grain of Mustard Seed" (http://www.etext.org/Zines/Quanta/grain.html), so I had it so close to right it wasn't funny, yet my Google searches came to naught. Interesting.  The author is Eric W. Tilenius, whose main claim to fame on the Internet appears to be a collection of cow-related ASCII art (http://www.textfiles.com/art/cows.txt).  The e-zine was called Quanta (http://www.etext.org/Zines/Quanta/), as I said.

It's not the most technically well-done story, nor is it particularly well-written, but the idea of the story--and in particular the "twist" ending--have stuck with me for 20 years.

Now I just need to find that story where the main character is tracking Satan using the number 666 in various bases (Satan's apartment is 29-A; 29A is 666 in hexadecimal) and I'll be happy.  Well, happy about that, at least.

[Thaurismunths]

Wow.
What a cool story! And I really like the twist!