Chapter 2
Eve watched the human named Patrick with a critical eye as he knelt down on Elbrus beach. His bare feet crushed into the white and black-grained sand. The leavings — sweat, dead skin, and oil — would interact with his environment. It was something that she still found herself questioning. Humans made the planet liveable over a century before turned it into a world of seas, islands, forests, and cities.
Was it damage or the act of making a place that had been inert for the most part useful? Was Patrick a walking source of contamination or was he as entitled as he seemed to feel? His hand reached into the sand and came up with something. It took a moment for Eve to recognize it, and when she did she was astonished.
A book, called The Jersey Prince, with a red cover featuring a black stocking clad female leg. She watched from the nano scale camera that had been implanted in Patrick’s eye as he turned it over, chuckled to himself. “My father would love this.”
Patrick had been one of Eve’s unwitting tour guides for days, showing her what it was like to be human like him, to be male, without care, and pressed to the protective bosom of the Order of Eden. She looked up information on his father and found it in his personnel file. Patrick Yardley of Keats City, on Macosa moon. Patrick had paid the one hundred thousand credit fee so his father was safe from artificial intelligences infected with the Holocaust Virus, but there had been no verification that he had survived.
Patrick hadn’t paid for anyone else to be saved, but had donated more to get into special training sessions, more detailed grading reports, and special help from West Watchers who helped him purify himself in an effort to get closer to Eden. As he moved up in the civilian ranks he became more proud, felt more entitled. He had spent everything he had. What Eve didn’t understand was the lack of remorse in Patrick for having nothing but the clothes on his back. The purification courses and grading were made to focus the followers in the Order of Eden on self- purification, environmental purification, but Eve didn’t understand why it worked so well for some people. For Patrick, the cause of purification and his social life were enough. He had forsaken material things, and obeyed every law of the Order while working, and selectively followed the path after hours. To Eve, his life seemed impossibly narrow, but he was comfortable in it, even seemed to thrive in it.
He fulfilled what was required of him, working with clean up crews along shorelines for ten hours a day. Afterwards his attention would turn towards fraternization and sport. The Saved had a good life, and Patrick lived it to the full. Every day he sent a message to his father. He did so away from friends, away from everyone. Eve did not understand why he would hide such a thing. Did it bring him shame? Stir some kind of private remorse that he left his father behind months before? Was there an incident before he left?
The answer to that question must have been taking an emotional toll. Patrick tried every kind of recreational substance he could find, tasted the lips of women in and outside of his camp, and played the inexpensive sports that were so common in the camps. Soccer, volleyball, foot races along the beach and through the nearby city seemed to be enough for many of the coastal workers. He was talented, and had been approached more than once to join the lowest rank of the West Keepers as an infantryman. The proposals flattered his pride, and he politely refused each one. Eve had secretly sent the offers using the chain of command, and just as quietly left instructions that another offer shouldn’t be made. She decided that, after his refusals, she’d find another way to put him to proper use.
His shift had ended minutes before he found the book, and without a care in the world he sat down on the sand and looked more closely at the cover. Across the bottom was a faint message;
PLEASE RETURN TO ANY FREEGROUND DEMATERIALIZATION RECEPTICAL WHEN YOU’VE FINISHED ENJOYING THIS OBJECT. The previous owner had almost finished reading it before some mishap separated them from their antique.
Eve instantaneously accessed the list of people from Freeground who had visited Mount Elbrus and realized that Patrick was sitting near the crash site of the Silkstream IV. The wreckage had been taken aboard the very command carrier she was sitting in. There was so little left after Terry Ozark McPatrick and Jason Everin detonated charges inside that the technicians had to intuit how it was built. They were still trying to reconstruct the slip technology that the ship proved. It was a technology that would allow a vessel to use ancient hyperspace technology inside a wormhole, multiplying the speed at which an object could travel safely.
Patrick had finished reading the last page the previous owner of the book had touched, and seemed satisfied with it as he flipped back to the beginning. His eye settled on the first line of the first page;
“That door slammed so damned hard the latch didn’t catch. Gertrude, my round, baby bearing sister whipped it open and stood there screaming before I hit the bottom step of the old porch. ‘You think you got trouble here in Red Bank? You’ll get into no end in New York! You just see mister!’
‘I’m not gonna stick around here and watch you get knocked up by any dock worker who comes along. That’s baby four, poppa three and not one’s stuck around.’
‘Why you sonofa-‘
‘I’ll take my bite of the apple, you’ll see. There won’t be a red penny for you or your bastards either. World don’t reward stupid, and you’ve got a brood there that says you’re downright batty. Maybe you should start charging for it!” I whipped the door of my green Edsel open…”
Patrick looked up from the book as a tingle in the air announced the coming of the Child Prophet. It was why Eve was watching the young man. Not only to know what his day was like, to get a taste of his life, but to see Lister Hampon, the High Seat of the Order of Eden, through his eyes. Through the eyes of someone who had wholly invested themselves into the life of a Saved.
Wisps of light wound down towards the distant sea, and like a spirit born of the sun the figure of the Child Prophet appeared in the distance. He walked lightly on the calm waters towards the shore, and Patrick watched the white and green robed figure stop only a meter in front of him. Wherever there was water, the Saved and the Watchers would see the ten year old figure of Lister Hampon appear. In the arid areas of Pandem he would stride along a wavering mirage.
“You have done well. You came by the thousands, tens of thousands and Pandem is populated by the faithful, the ones who were saved and will be clean. Just as the meek inherited the Earth after it was ruined by the ambitious and greedy masses. Just as they became strong over the decades that followed, so shall the Saved become mighty.
Thanks to you the evidence of disuse and waste are almost gone from this world. Reclamation is under way, and this world has almost earned its renaming ceremony. You will be present when the galaxy begins to recognize Pandem as New Paradise.
You are ready to know that New Paradise has made her fate known to me. We will be the beacon that draws the greatest darkness this galaxy has ever known. Shadows will present themselves, and we will abolish them with the light we’ve brought into the galaxy.
It has been said that prophecy should be whispered, that fates become nothing more than possibility once too many ears have heard them. There have been times of doubt, when I agreed with that kind of thinking, but not any longer. You have shown me strength, persistence, and I know that, even with your new knowledge of our fated victory over the darkness, you will continue to improve yourselves. You will continue to reach out to those who have not yet begun their pilgrimage as you have in the past.
The good that you have done has brought us here; the work that you have done has made us luminescent and will continue to transform this world into New Paradise. I have a request for you Patrick, one that only a few of you are being chosen for.”
“What can I do?” Patrick must have known the Child Prophet was only a projection, but his tone was one of reverence and awe.
“You must step through the Counting Arch and leave gifts there for those who have not had your fortune in ascending to Eden. Once you have done that you will be rewarded with three days of rest. Those who aspire to Eden from beneath your grading will serve you for that time so they may learn from your ways.”
“I’ll get on it. Thank you, your Grace.”
“Be mindful, how you treat your servants will be graded. It is only another part of your journey to Eden. Remember, fate smiles on us, but only if you continue ascending towards Eden, towards Eternal Paradise.” The
