The Paradise Prophecy

orange lava erupting into the air.

The two drudges pushed Jenna to the ground, and Beelzebub-who stood nearby, looking quite handsome in his own ceremonial robe-signaled to Belial that it was time to begin.

She nodded, then moved over and knelt before the girl, still smiling as she grabbed hold of the robe Jenna was wearing.

“I think we can dispense with this.”

She pulled the robe up over the girl’s head and Jenna, naked underneath, flung her arms around herself and started crying again.

Belial leaned forward and kissed her tears, murmuring against her cheek. “Don’t fret, my darling. This will soon be over.”

Then she looked directly into Jenna’s eyes.

Probing them.

Going in deep.

The orange light of the lava was reflected in her tears and after a moment Jenna started to relax, letting her arms drop to her sides, not so concerned anymore about modesty.

“That’s right, my darling. Let us see you, in all your glory. Present yourself to the Lord Satan and ask him to bring you home.”

Then, as if in answer, the earth rumbled again.

This one was a doozy. The earth shifted and everything around them started to sway. Suddenly the road cracked, a fissure opening up in front of them.

Michael slammed the brakes and spun the wheel, the Chevy’s tires burning up blacktop as they came to a screeching halt-

– just as a gusher of lava shot into the air.

They all jumped out and scrambled back, barely avoiding molten patches of the stuff that landed at their feet.

Heat radiated off it, and they fell back even farther as the earth rumbled again.

Batty looked up at the moon and saw that the eclipse had hit the halfway mark. They didn’t have a minute to spare.

“Enough of this bullshit,” he said to Michael. “Where are we going? Where is she? Where did they take her?”

Michael moved over to him, got very close, staring him directly in the eyes.

“Are you ready to do what has to be done?”

Batty couldn’t look away from him.

And he couldn’t lie, either.

“No,” he said. “I can’t do what you want. I can’t kill an innocent human being.”

“Then what do you plan to do? How do you plan to stop this?”

“They won’t succeed without her. I know they can’t. This can be fixed. We’ve done it before.”

“Look what’s happening around you, Sebastian. This is just the beginning of it. What you’re about to witness is hell come to earth. Is that what you want?”

Batty’s head was spinning. What he wanted was to scream.

The world was falling apart around them, but he had to believe. He had to have faith. And he couldn’t bring himself to say what the angel wanted to hear.

“Just tell me where they took her.”

Michael studied him, searching his eyes, then backed away and pointed. “There,” he said. “They took her in there.”

Batty looked across the street. Michael was pointing toward a cluster of ramshackle shacks. A shantytown made of plywood and aluminum siding.

One of the shacks had a word spray-painted across it in Day-Glo green:

Paraisopolis.

“Holy shit,” Callahan muttered. She was standing beside him now, gaping at the shantytown. “You’ve gotta be kidding me? The favela? This is Eden?”

“What does it say,” Batty asked.

She looked at him. “Paradise City.”

51

Batty hadn’t expected this.

For centuries, biblical scholars had been arguing over the location of Eden. Some believed it could be found in the heart of Iraq, while others said they had uncovered evidence of it in the industrial city of Tabriz, Iran. Still others claimed Turkey or Egypt or India.

There were those who pointed to Mount Olivet, in Jerusalem, where Jesus wept, was crucified and rose from the dead. Where he had ascended to heaven.

Batty himself had always thought of Eden as a frame of mind. An ideal. A symbol that didn’t really exist. It didn’t matter where it was located, but what it represented.

The dawn of sentience.

But if Michael were to be believed-and Batty saw no reason not to believe him-then the ground on which this shantytown stood had once been Paradise.

And apparently still was.

Paraisopolis.

Paradise City.

The earth rumbled again, and somewhere in the distance behind him Batty heard cries of pain. He realized that he was still gripping the sword, had carried it with him from the car, and as he thought about what Michael had said, he found himself starting to have second thoughts.

What if he was wrong about this?

What if it couldn’t be fixed without sacrificing that poor girl?

Yes, she was an innocent, but hadn’t innocents died before in the name of freedom?

And wasn’t this about the ultimate freedom? The freedom of thought?

John Milton had fought strenuously, had risked his life in the name of free expression, had burned those pages because he feared they’d fall into the wrong hands and humankind would be stripped of that freedom forever.

And now that they had fallen into the wrong hands-because of Batty when it came down it-wasn’t it his duty to set things right? Not merely slow their progress by snatching the girl away from them, but to create the heaven on earth that so many desired?

Yet it kept coming back to the girl.

That single, breathing, walking, talking, living human being.

And as he and Callahan and Michael crossed the street toward Paradise City, he had absolutely no idea what choice he would ultimately make.

Beelzebub watched as the others gathered around Belial and the girl. Make no mistake about it, Belial was a master at what she did, and he could see young Jenna succumbing to her power, giving in to her will.

It was thing of beauty. A true gift. And as he looked up at the darkening moon he was happy he had trusted Belial’s instincts. Was happy that Michael had betrayed the traveler with his impulsiveness. Had it not been for him, they never would have known that she was one.

That was something he’d have to live with for a long, long time, as he sat in his cell in the seventh city.

Beelzebub thought it only fitting that they had brought the girl here to this rooftop. The place where the tree had once grown. It was, he thought, a final, symbolic fuck-you to their fraudulent, self- aggrandizing father and his precious creation.