“It’s just math.” His tone was almost detached. Icy. “Have you ever heard of the birthday paradox?”
She shook her head.
He moved his hands around a lot as he explained. “Okay, so you take a room and fill it with a random number of people. How many people have to be in the room to guarantee that at least two will have the same birthday?”
She thought for a moment. “Hmm…Three hundred and sixty-seven? Accoutin’ for the leap year, ‘course.”
“Right. Awesome. Now here’s the mind-boggling part. How many people need to be in the room for a ninety-nine percent chance that at least two people have the same birthday?”
Another pause for thought. Finally, she shrugged.
“Fifty-seven,” he said.
“What? For real?” Everyone was always surprised.
“Yes. And there’s no coincidence involved. Just math. Statistics. Your odds of dying in a car crash are one in seven thousand, yet it happens to lots of people every day.”
“So…is it safe to assume you don’t believe in fate? In destiny?”
There was a rumble of thunder. The lights flickered. The sound of rain battering the roof of the restaurant reverberated off the walls, drowning out the strings of the band.
“That’s not quite true,” Sam said hesitantly. “I believe in fate. I just don’t think the one we want’s handed to us. I guess it’s a matter of choice. Or at least that’s what I hear.”
“Well, if you really believe that,” she reached across the table, caressed his hands, and looked deep into his eyes, “then why have you spent your whole life just waitin’ for things to happen?”
More thunder. Water dripped from above. It landed on his forehead.
“What the…?” He looked up. Rain splotched the ceiling. A leak. It continued. Growing, growing, growing, until—
The lights zapped out.
Pitch black.
Humming. It was gentle, rhythmic, the song of a mother to its child. A lullaby. One he recognized. There was warmth on his forehead. And moisture. Beads of water ran down his face. It felt soothing, relaxing. He could’ve lain down forever.
Beyond the darkness, he heard a voice. It was singing. Heavenly. Seraphic. “When the blazin’ sun is gone…When the nothin’ shines upon…”
Familiar.
“Then you show your little light…Twinkle, twinkle all the night.”
He stretched. Started to open his eyes.
“Then the traveler in the dark…Thanks you for your tiny spark.”
A wet washcloth. That’s what he felt. Warm. Calming.
“He could not see which way to go…”
His vision was blurry. There was a silhouette above. A figure.
“If you do not twinkle so…”
A woman.
“Well, welcome back to the world, stranger,” she said with the cordial accent of a southern belle.
Sam was lying down, the back of his head propped over a pillow. He was wearing his jeans and black jacket. Sitting next to him on a little bed was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Round face, ponytail, bangs, two locks of dangling hair on each side of her head.
Delaney.
Relief, shock, bewilderment. You name it, he felt it. Most importantly: bliss.
“You’s gonna be alright. No bruises or nothin’ I can see,” she said. She was wearing a weird jumpsuit. It was gray. There was a little ring of blue light glowing over her heart, sewn into the fabric. “Found you out in the road. Good thing I came along before someone else did. Who knows what mighta happened to ya.”
“Thanks,” he murmured through fatigue. He chuckled. “Sorry I missed our date. I just dreamt we were at dinner, if that makes you feel any better.”
She raised her eyebrows, confused by his comment. Then she sighed and went back to patting down his forehead with a dampened rag. “Hmm…coulda been wrong. Maybe you got some head trauma or somethin’ of the like.”
He sat up and took a deep breath. He felt tired. Exhausted. But there wasn’t any pain. He’d been hit by cars before. Everyone who lived in New York did at least once. But never like that. It was never anything more than a scrape or a bruise.
He scoped out the room. It must’ve been her apartment. It was even smaller than his, but was surprisingly modern. Glossy black tiled flooring and pure white walls, glazed with some sort of lustrous paint that gave them a metallic sheen. An aluminum desk and chair sat right next to a sleek-looking flat television embedded in the wall, no thicker than a sheet of glass. There was a platform bed with black sheets and a sliding door made of frosted glass looked like it may have led out onto a balcony, the cityscape blurred behind it. A strip of light in the ceiling gave the room an azure glow.
“This is your place?” he asked.
“Yep, home sweet home, I guess...” She didn’t seem happy about it.
“We can trade, if you want.” He was impressed. It was like something he’d expect to see in a catalog. Ultra-modern. “Looks a little cleaner than mine.” He stood and stretched. The washcloth fell to the floor, landing with a little squelch.
“You sure you feel all right?”
“Yeah, actually.” He walked past her TV. He obviously was in the wrong job if he couldn’t afford one so nice. And her apartment looked nothing like he expected it to. The crumbling brick of its exterior must’ve just been a façade. But it all seemed—oddly—somewhat familiar. “I feel…really good.” He wiped his forehead. It was still wet.
“Well, I noticed you don’t have no mark. And no livery. You ain’t from around here, are you?” she asked.
“Huh?” He walked toward the sliding door. “I’m from DC. Don’t you remember?”
“From where?”
He pulled the metal handle on the pane of glass and slid it open.
“DC,” he repeated. “You know, the capital of—”
He stopped.
He was expecting to see the faint lights of New York City. The deteriorating walls of rundown apartments. A fleet of yellow taxis honking at each other in the streets.
He was wrong.
Very, very wrong.
Enormous metal towers of hexagonal cylinders with frosted windows pushed into the distance, connected by a myriad of glass walkways. Green lights dotted every building in vertical columns. Thunderous electricity danced amongst black storm clouds that blotted out the sun. To his right, he could see the edge of a moat surrounding the metropolis. A single flat bridge ran across the roaring water, leading out of the city and into a seemingly infinite desert beyond. Below, he could see thousands of people, no larger than ants from his perspective, scurrying in the clean streets. And to his left, he could see a colossal central tower. It was twice the width and twice the height of all the surrounding skyscrapers, which increased in height as they approached it. Its apex was adorned with an enormous glass pyramid. A red spot of light glowed atop the structure like a sentinel in the night.
He turned back to Delaney. His words were shaky. Trembling with fear. His face was ashen. Pale with astonishment. His eyes were wide. Frozen in awe.
He whispered, “Where am I?”
9
The City of Paradise
People gathered on the sidewalk to watch as paramedics lifted a young man onto a stretcher, the red and white flashing lights of an ambulance illuminating the row of dilapidated buildings on each side of the street. Many took pictures on their cell phones. Some squinted through the night, vain efforts to see what had happened.
The victim’s eyes were closed. His body was limp. Shards of icy rain struck his face. The paramedics hoisted him into the back of the ambulance. A policeman in a rain-slicked poncho approached. “Anyone see what happened?”
“Hit and run, it looks like,” one of the paramedics grunted. “Storm knocked out the cameras. We’ll never know who hit him. Wrong place, wrong time.”
“ID?”
“Samuel Pierce.” The medics secured him. One placed an oxygen mask over his face. An
other handed the officer a driver’s license. “He’s got a Maryland license.”
“I’ll run it.”
They closed up the ambulance, removed the flares on the road, and drove off, the siren radiating through the concrete jungle.
A few blocks away, a woman sat alone in a restaurant, her eyes constantly darting between her phone and the front door. After nearly an hour, a waiter asked her if she was still anticipating a guest.
“No,” she said bleakly. Disappointed. “I think I’ll just go home…”
“What do you mean?” Delaney—or whoever she was—asked.
“Here! Where the hell am I?” Sam turned back to the open window. The clouds hovering over the metropolis stretched toward the horizon. He couldn’t tell if it was day or night. The small slivers of sky not blotched by the perpetual billow of rolling storm clouds were a deep, greenish blue. The skyline twinkled in the darkness. Green strips of neon light lined the streets. They pulsated, giving the cityscape an electronic heartbeat. A gentle rain swept over the forest of concrete, metal and glass. A hazy fog rose from the pavement, casting a bloom around the lights. “This isn’t New York!”
“New York?”
“Yes! You know, the city where we live?!”
She turned aggressive, wagging her finger. “Okay, mister, you’s gonna have to calm down or I’m gonna have to ask you to leave. Now I did you a kindness takin’ you in, but I won’t think twice about throwin’ you right back out for the Sentries to getcha.”
“Sentries? What the hell are Sentries?”
Panic-stricken, he looked back outside. The green neon lights started blinking white. The people below stopped in their tracks, then all started making their way into various buildings. Within seconds, the streets were empty. A few moments later, the white was replaced by purple. Slowly, people began trickling back out.
“What was that all—”
A door chime interrupted him. An electronic bell. Drawn out for three seconds.
Delaney looked up anxiously. A suspiciously friendly female voice, obviously prerecorded, came through a speaker in the ceiling: “Please be advised that [Sentry Unit 603] has requested access to your quarters. Because we respect the privacy of all our residents of Paradiso, we are allotting ten seconds from the end of this message before entry. Thank you and have a wonderful life!”
The recording switched off. Delaney looked at the door, alarmed, then pointed to the bed and whispered, “Hide!”
“What?!”
She mouthed: Get under the bed NOW!
There was a clicking sound from behind the metal door, like tumbling locks.
Sam wasted no more time. He got down and squeezed under the bed while Delaney took some deep breaths and brushed off her hysteria, then shuffled through her hair, giving herself bedhead. It was a tight fit, but Sam managed to jam himself underneath. He crossed his arms, head down, and stared up at the door as it slid open.
He couldn’t believe what he saw.
It spoke in a high-pitched, electronic whine, muffled by a hint of static. Certain words sounded deeper, like they were inserted into an audio strip: “Good evening [Ms. NB4590]. I was recently alerted to an unauthorized presence in your quarters by means of [voice recognition anomaly].”
“I ain’t know what you’re talkin’ about.” She leaned against a wall and yawned. “No one but me’s been in here in somethin’ ‘round a year. If there was I wouldn’t be keepin’ the battery shop in business.”
The Sentry Unit searched her face for some hint of a lie. Its red eye turned blue. It froze, in a trance. Then, the eye switched back to red and it sprang back to life. “Correct. Scanning of citizen records reveals [zero] transgressions for [Ms. NB4590]. However, Paradiso regulations allow for [unscheduled search]. Please be advised.”
A moment passed. Finally, Delaney sighed, “Fine. Make it quick now, I’m tryin’ to get some shuteye before my shift.”
“Of course.”
The robotic entity was simple in design, yet menacing in appearance. It was composed of a single metal orb, around the size of a basketball, that bounced as it hovered around. A glassy red eye dotted the center. Five mechanical tendrils dangled below its body, like the tentacles of a cybernetic octopus, each ending in a pincer.
It hummed show tunes as it zipped around the room in order to cool the tension. A poor emulation of humanity. Sam watched with unease. Delaney leaned against the wall and continued to feign yawns. It was only a matter of time before—
“Ah, what’s this?” The Sentry moved to the bed.
Sam held his breath. Delaney balled her fists.
“This is a violation of code [RB12988].” One of the tendrils snaked to the ground and picked the wet rag off the floor. The robot approached Delaney. “Aesthetic neglect promotes the proliferation of harmful microbes. You have been fined [eight credits] for this transgression.”
“Fine.” She rolled her eyes. “Is that all?”
“Yes. There are no further transgressions to report.” It flicked the rag into a nearby waste bin, then sprayed it down with sanitizer.
She nodded to the entrance. “Then there’s the door.”
The Sentry hovered into the hall and turned. “Have a dandy day!”
The door slammed shut. Sam exhaled. Safe. He crawled out from underneath the bed while Delaney returned from checking out the peephole, ensuring that the robot had gone. When she stormed back, she was fuming. “Alright, mister, I just stuck my neck out for you so I better start gettin’ some answers!”
“You get answers?”
“Like just who the hell you are and what you were doing lyin’ in the street!”
“In the street?” He tried to remember. “A car. You. I was on my way to meet you!”
“Mister, you ain’t never met me…of that I can assure you.”
He ignored her. He stood up, staggering, thinking. “And I crossed the road and…a car…I was hit by a car!”
“A car? Not in this city, you weren’t. I haven’t seen a car in years.”
“The robot. He said something.”
“It said lots of things.”
He pressed his palm to his forehead. Trying to remember. “He said ‘Paradiso.’” The word was familiar. Like he’d heard it in another place. Another time. Another life. It was there, tucked into the back of his mind.
“Yeah? So? That’s where you are…”
Rattled, he glanced out the window. The mechanized city of hexagonal towers lay beyond. Clear as day. A synthetic jumble of uniform, futuristic architecture and neon lights.
Delaney saw the look on his face. The disorientation. The fear.
She toned down her agitation. Became sympathetic. “You really don’t know where you are, do you?”
“I know who I am,” he said. He looked at her. A faint ring of red swelling around his eyes. “My name is Samuel James Pierce. I’m from Washington and live in New York City. You’re Delaney Cooper. From Nashville, Tennessee.”
“Say what now?”
“You’re Del Cooper. From Nashville.”
“I’m who from where?”
He shook his head. “Do you not know who you are?”
“I know exactly who I am. I’m NB-Four-Five-Nine-Zero. And I’m from right here in good ole Paradiso. All my life.” She put her finger to her chin. Deliberated. “Though ‘Del’ does have a nice ring to it…”
“Here? Paradiso?” He sat on the edge of the bed. Stared into space. Zoned out.
She could see his distress. She patted him on the back and went to her television. “Here, this should help.” She touched it and the screen lit up. There was a menu labeled with strange characters he couldn’t understand, yet he still felt an odd sense of obscure recognition. She took a few steps back and swiped at the air toward the screen. The menus slid around. “There ain’t much to watch entertainment-wise, but they make plum sure to keep this stupid thing runnin’ all hours.” A video started. Del—NB4590—sat next to him on the bed.
&
nbsp; On the screen was a planet. Earth. Sam watched fixedly. The female voice from the earlier recording emanated from the speakers. “Our planet is fragile. Our people are even more so.” There was a montage of children playing in the streets. Couples holding hands. Farmers tending to crops. The voice continued. “Which is why the global powers of the world took steps to protect our delicate biosphere after the great crisis of twenty-one-hundred.”
“Twenty-one-hundred?” Sam whispered to himself. Eighty-five years in the future?
The video switched to a graphic of DNA strands mixing together. “The mass interbreeding of humans with incompatible genetic characteristics eventually led to a great collapse. Once the human race reached ten billion, our numbers began to drastically decline amidst an onslaught of genetic defects and dwindling resources.” There was a line graph. The population fell more than half in just fifty years. There was another montage. It was graphic. Disturbing. People being executed in droves. Mass graves.
“What the…” Sam whispered.
“Despite the best efforts to alleviate the undesirable genetic pools—”
“Undesirable?!”
“—the genetic defects continued to arise. So, in twenty-two-hundred-and-one, Operation Paradiso commenced.” The video switched to a 3D model of an enormous city surrounded by a ring of water. It was constructed of tightly-packed hexagonal cylinders. They ascended in height as they reached the middle, where the central structure loomed over the rest. “Paradiso is the world’s first automated metropolis, built to keep the brittle human genome free from genetic impurities.”
It switched to a nursery. Rows of glass containers held squirming babies. Robots, just like the Sentry Unit, examined each infant. “Every baby born in Paradiso is divided into a genetic class.” Blood was drawn from a crying child. There was a graphic of DNA. “Progeny containing harmful mutations are erased from the gene pool.” The silhouette of a baby was crossed out with a cartoonish red X. Sam cringed.
The next clip showed an infant being fitted with a little gray jumpsuit, a glowing yellow ring in the middle. “Children who are deemed fit to breed are divided and marked according to class. Those in the same class are free to interact during the allotted time periods. But remember, intermixing is strictly forbidden.” Sam looked outside. Purple neon lights. Green ones ten minutes ago. It suddenly all made sense. “This eliminates the risk of incompatible breeding, and will eventually completely eradicate all genetic defects.”
Farewell from Paradise Page 5