„This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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The mothership Hope was moving away from the planet, gradually increasing speed. Even from this distance it seemed immense, as hope should always be. I waited patiently for it to pull away, not so much to be within the letter of the regulation as to feel at peace of heart. I didn't begin the descent until after Hope disappeared in the blue sparkle of the jump into hyperspace.
Beside me, Pauline looked up at me, smiling encouragingly. She liked me as I liked her. In fact, mutual attraction was one of the prerequisites for forming a terraforming pair. If all went well and the terraforming went acceptably, we could send a signal to the mothership to stop at our planet on the next pass and dump its multitudes of people who were looking for a new home in place of the destroyed Earth. Of the thousands of shuttles launched before we left the mothership, none had sent such a signal. For hundreds of years it had been wandering through space, and when it came near a planet with characteristics remotely similar to Earth's, it would wake up another pair of terraformers and launch it to their new possible home. If the terraforming failed or didn't fit within predetermined parameters we'd spend our days side by side until we decided otherwise.
I smiled back, put on my suit, buckled my seatbelt, still according to the regulations, entered the descent data, pressed the lever and leaned against the backrest: from now on everything would be automated. I got about two kilometers above the planet's surface when I realized something was wrong. Even though there was no turbulence, the shuttle was shaking as if it was about to fall to pieces. Just a moment later the seatbelt snapped and I hit my head on the dashboard, then lost consciousness.
*
I don't know how long I lay unconscious, but from all the signs it seemed to be quite a long time. When I came to, I was lying on my back on a hard surface with a few reddish rocks at the edge of my field of vision. I took a deep breath, gathered my strength and lifted my head a little. The shuttle, which was supposed to be indestructible, was showing off its wreckage stretched out for nearly a hundred meters. The terra-forming module, which had its own resistance capsule, was crushed, and the seeds and embryos we were to put in the incubators were also scattered in the red dust between the rocks. But worst of all, only a few feet from me lay Pauline. Her helmet broken and her legs twisted at an impossible angle. I put my head back and started to think, but I didn't have much choice. I had oxygen for another five hours or so, but even if I'd had it for five days it would have been the same. My hand went to the opening flap of my helmet, then stopped: apart from a dull ache in my right shoulder I couldn't feel anything else, so I could wait. I lifted my head again and tried to look at Pauline who was staring blank-eyed at the starry sky. Beyond the terraforming module were the food tanks, and a little farther away, a thin, crystalline stream trickled from the water tank. The water would run out in a few hours if I didn't do something in the meantime. The planet definitely had both water and oxygen, the terraforming teams weren't just randomly launched, but to what extent we could use both was hard to say without the portable lab up and running. I leaned back again, took another deep breath and opened my helmet: if I couldn't breathe the planet's air, there was no point in prolonging the agony. I choked trying to breathe in the foul-smelling mixture of gases that assaulted my nostrils. To my surprise soon the air quality around me seemed to improve suddenly and, apart from a faint smell of dust, I soon smelled nothing else. The air seemed thicker than I was used to, so I took a couple of deep breaths to make sure that everything was okay and that I could breathe normally, then, using only my left hand, I took off my suit. I didn't faint, but the effort exhausted me, so I lay on my back again on the dust-covered stony ground. I felt sweaty with exertion and as I stretched my hands in the red dust my first and most unrealizable thought was, "I'd like to take a bath" I whispered and my voice sounded strangely loud in the thick air.
- Bae, bae, it seemed to me that someone was answering my whisper and I began to laugh softly at my own auditory delusions.
I thought I heard some sort of echo of my laughter, so I stopped and listened carefully. Nothing could be heard but a sort of rustling, as if somewhere in the distance the wind was passing through the willows.
Where on earth did the willows come from? I thought to myself, and then I heard the whisper again, as if it had been carried by the wind:
“Bae, bae.”
“Yes I want a bath, I said before I realized what I was doing. A warm bath, in a huge tub and lots of suds and a rough sponge.”
For a while there was silence, then there was a thud a few meters away from me and right next to the teraforming module a bathtub appeared. I looked up and saw that it was filled with warm water covered in foam, and a heart-shaped sponge was on the edge of the tub, and I recognized it immediately: a sponge just like this one my grandmother had. Even the bathtub was similar to my grandmother's: it had golden handles and the feet were shaped like lion claws. I sighed deeply and got to my feet, staggering to my feet, but there was no pain in my shoulder. Was I dead and in heaven? I must have been in Heaven without a doubt, because if I had been in Hell there would probably have been a cauldron of boiling pitch instead of a bathtub.
“Heaven, Heaven,” whispered the distant voice, and I stripped leisurely, immersing myself in the warm, feathery embrace of the water. I rubbed myself long and hard with the rough sponge and tried to think rationally. But how could I think rationally when I was lounging in a bathtub that logically had no business being there? I opened my eyes and looked at the surreal landscape around me. I was in a tub with pink suds and gold handles in the middle of an apocalyptic landscape: pieces of the shuttle scattered all over the red rocks, Pauline dead, and me a prisoner of absurd hallucinations.
“Heaven, heaven,” the distant voice whispered again and I shook my head.
“This isn't heaven,” I said, and unwittingly remembered the children's Bible my grandmother used to read to me from and the colorful pictures of the book. Heaven has green grass and sweet-smelling flowers, and birds of all varieties delight our ears with their wonderful trills under the bright sun and cloudless sky... And through heaven flow rivers of milk and honey and...
I stopped only when I realized I was reading from the old children's Bible. And I had an unpleasant feeling that someone else was reading along with me from my memory that had become a kind of public library. I tried to slam the library door, but it seemed to be too late: softly rustling down from the surrounding reddish hills, a silky carpet of incredibly green grass descended towards me. From place to place, multicolored flowers broke the green monotony of the grass and a few trees appeared out of nowhere. Some appeared to be fig trees, but there were others I couldn't recognize, though they all seemed laden with fruit. A flock of birds of all sizes appeared from behind the hills and settled half in the trees, half on the shattered remains of the shuttle, and the stars were disappearing and against an impossibly blue sky a pale yellow sun caught to shine merrily. I tried to close my mind so that the rest of it couldn't be read because it was clear to me now that my hallucinations had taken the form of the image I had formed of heaven as a child.
“No harps please,” I whispered but apparently it was already too late.
I felt a light touch somewhere in my inner self and after only a moment I gave up: at the foot of each tree appeared a harp that seemed to be made of gold and whose strings moved gently, seemingly moved only by the barely perceptible buoyancy that was rising around them. I closed my eyes, squeezing them as tightly as I could, but it was all in vain, for it was only a few moments later that I heard a soft blink, and when I opened them I saw a rivulet of milk flowing merrily by my right, frothing as if it had just been milked. Slowly rippling slowly, a stream of golden honey appeared out of nowhere and started to flow to my left. I approached in disbelief and dipped my finger into the stream: from the taste, it seemed to be linden honey so, although unlikely to catch cold in Heaven, just in case I did, I had a herbal remedy handy.
Remembering the broken water tanks, I said:
“There was a river in heaven with crystal clear water. After all, if it was my dream, at least I could make it good.”
And the light touch through my mind and the same whispered voice said sadly:
“Not water. Only milk and honey. No water.”
I hesitated a little, but swallowed my words because I didn't really think a swear word would be well received, especially in Heaven. Maybe I should have done it differently. I closed my eyes and imagined that just beyond the river of honey flowed a clear, clear, sparkling stream. Then I said:
“I'm sure there was a clear stream of clear water beyond the honey stream. It was sitting there because every time I eat honey I get thirsty and I have to have water handy.”
A few minutes of silence and then a clear stream appeared beyond the honey stream. It blinked for a few minutes, then disappeared. I was just about to protest when there was an exasperated sigh and the stream appeared again, this time for good. I rolled my eyes through my personal heaven to see what improvements I could make to it because I was sure I was going to find myself momentarily knocked backwards among the red rocks.
There were gyms and a games room on the mothership; I tried to superimpose the two gyms over the image of my childhood heaven, somewhere beyond the trees in the distance, and I sensed that something was wrong. My mind's touch had been less light this time than before. It was even insistent, somewhere on the edge of pain, but when it stopped I heard a desolate sigh.
“No gym, no games, the voice whispered and I shrugged resignedly: at least I tried.”
A long moment's pause followed, but I could feel the air vibrating gently around me as if struggling to form the words. Eventually they formed, and if they had seemed neutral before, this time the question seemed downright accusatory:
“Are you Adam? Or Pierre?”
I began to think with the greatest speed I thought myself capable of was the shuttle pilot with the dislocated shoulder, trapped in a survival suit with only five hours of oxygen, hopelessly lost in an apocalyptic landscape of sharp, inhospitable rocks. Adam, on the other hand, was pampered with plentiful air, a feathery bath and rivers of milk and honey. But how would the creator of my little Eden react if he realized I was lying to him? I moved my shoulder and was delighted by his mobility so I said decisively:
“Adam I am now. When I was there in the shuttle I was Pierre but here in Eden I am Adam. That must be it!”
I heard something like a disbelieving grunt then the voice a little less cutting this time asked:
“Then where is Eve?”
I looked hopefully at Pauline's torn suit and pointed:
“There's Eve. When I was in the shuttle it was Pauline, but here is Eve.”
An inquisitive, inquisitive claw was again searching my memory minutes that seemed interminable I saw Pauline begin to move slightly, and her legs bent at that impossible angle straightened as if of their own accord.
I rushed towards her and took her in my arms watching in amazement as her eyelids fluttered slightly then her grass-green eyes beneath her looked at me questioningly:
“What's going on, Pierre?” And I quickly put my hand over her mouth then, I helped her to undress her heavy suit: on her gorgeous body she didn't have a single bruise. As I helped her her eyes fell on the scratches and rips of her survival suit. She wasn't at all the silly girl I had thought she was when I first met her, for, after glancing briefly at the torn suit, she glanced at the grass and flower-covered remains of the shuttle. Unlikely that any person would escape without so much as a bruise from such an impact. Her eyes began to light up with the beginnings of comprehension, but I quickly clarified for fear lest she start asking again:
“I am Adam and you are Eve and we are in the Garden of Eden. Don't ask me more because I don't know. But if you want to stay alive that's the way it has to be, I said as seriously and as flatly as I could.”
Without fully understanding me, I saw her nod affirmatively. We had known each other too long not to know when I was serious. A moment later I saw her grimace slightly and I suspected her memory was being scanned. Apparently her picture of Eden was slightly different from mine because small, almost imperceptible changes began to take place all around us: the number of flowers increased spectacularly, a blue bird of paradise emerged from behind the rocks and perched on the nearest tree near us, clung to a branch and with its head down began to sing so loudly and rhythmically that I thought it had some kind of amplification station hidden somewhere. To my delight, the harps were gone like the wind, but so was the little stream of crystal clear water.
I took Pauline, or Eve, gently by the elbow and explained:
“If what I suspect is true we shall live nine hundred years exactly as long as Adam and Eve lived. In all that time we shall eat only milk and honey, so we shall certainly get thirsty after a while. Put the river back!”
“Eve asked me puzzled.”
“The same way you've taken it out!”
She closed her eyes and after only a few moments the river reappeared and was now much wider and richer in water. On the banks there was a fine gravel, and here and there a golden sand stretched along the banks forming a little beach.
“It's a good thing you didn't build a swimming pool, I grumbled,” but Eva ignored me. She approached one of the trees and broke off a small branch. She cleared it of leaves, then patted a stretch of beach with finer sand with her foot and wrote with the end of the twig in block letters so I could read it:
"What's going on?" then held out the twig for me to answer.
To be able to write a few words you have to think them first, so it seemed pointless to use the makeshift pencil: it would have read my thoughts anyway. So I weighed my words as carefully as I could and then told him:
“The shuttle was damaged on impact with the ground, and we, along with its components, were thrown out. A desolate landscape surrounded us everywhere: barren rocks, red dust and no hope. You had a broken suit helmet, broken legs, you looked dead, and I had a dislocated shoulder and only a few hours of oxygen. There was nothing I could salvage from the shuttle, the mothership had already made the jump and was in hyperspace decades of light years away, so I decided to take off my helmet to finish faster. I asphyxiated for a few seconds, then the air began to become breathable. I thought I was dying and having a final dream, so I decided to enhance my dream and wished for a tub of warm, sparkling water. It showed up, I got undressed and got in the water and it felt so good I decided I was definitely in heaven. So the red dust and boulders around me began to turn into what you see... I kept thinking it was a dream until... you came to life. Draw your own conclusion if you can.”
A soft snort of laughter echoes over the rhythms of the bird of paradise and I saw Eve frown thoughtfully, staring blankly:
“That means that our minds have been scanned, and this heaven is a mixture of what was found in our minds with what we wished for.”
“Scanned by whom, Eva?” I asked and looked around for an answer.
“I don't know,” shrugs Eva. An all-powerful entity capable of all these changes. An entity that lived here on the planet and was probably bored so we appeared to her as an interesting digression from the daily monotony.
“Interesting hypothesis, I said. And what should we call this entity?”
For a moment it seemed to me that the rivers stopped their flow, the bird of paradise folded its wings and fell silent, then the whisper came again, this time clearly and seemingly a little timid:
“You may call me God.”
*
The days began to pass one after the other, then so did the years without being bothered by God or whoever he was.
We didn't have much to do so we ate and had sex almost continuously. Our lovemaking became more and more passionate and Eva's screams of ecstasy as she climaxed filled heaven.
Because all women were required to be sterilized before boarding the ship Hope, there was no chance of giving birth to a Cain and Abel and thus re-enacting the biblical legend to the end. But we didn't even think too much about it lest the entity that was putting everything at our fingertips might come up with such an idea.
After a few years, then decades, passed and we noticed that our appearance was unchanged, we realized that we had also been blessed with eternal youth, just like in the fairy tales of our childhood.
We ate and fucked, just as the heroes of the fairy tales probably did, only that being for children we couldn't say so explicitly, but they certainly did it too.