“This isn’t a camera,” Professor Einstein said. “It doesn’t capture images. It reconstructs phase histories.”

He turned a dial.

The overhead lights dimmed automatically as the device pulled power. A soft vibration passed through the base. Not noise. Pressure. Like standing near heavy machinery that hasn’t started moving yet.

Then the lens activated.

At first, nothing happened.

Then the space inside the frame thickened. Light entering the lens bent slightly out of alignment. The center darkened, not into black, but into layered translucence. Shapes appeared, dissolved, reassembled.

What emerged was not a picture.

It was depth without edges.

A sloping surface formed first. Grainy. Unstable. Brown and gray tones bleeding into each other. The outline of a hill became visible, then blurred again as the system recalibrated.

Jason leaned forward.

Molly crossed her arms.

The image sharpened incrementally. Shadows stabilized. Motion appeared in fragments. Small shapes moving uphill. Flickers of fabric. Dust suspended in air that no one in the room could feel.

Professor Einstein adjusted the phase alignment.

“This reconstruction is anchored to a timestamp,” he said. “Based on stellar background reference and cosmic radiation noise profiles.”

He paused.

“Thirty-two AD.”

No one spoke.

“The location resolves to a hillside outside Jerusalem,” he continued. “Golgotha. Calvary.”

The room shifted.

Some students saw figures. Others saw noise. Some insisted it was nothing more than statistical artifact. One student claimed the shapes resembled erosion patterns. Another said it looked like a poorly rendered simulation.

Jason said it was confirmation bias.

Molly said it was irresponsible.

A few students said nothing at all. They stared.

The image did not show faces. It did not show miracles. It showed movement. Slow, unstable motion. People ascending a slope. A central vertical shape forming briefly, then dissolving as the reconstruction drifted.

Professor Einstein did not claim certainty.

“This is not video,” he said. “It is reconstruction under heavy interference. You are not seeing an event. You are seeing probability density resolved into spatial form.”

Still, no one left their seat.

The lens continued to hum.

The hill remained.