Paradeisia: The Complete Trilogy: Origin of Paradise, Violation of Paradise, Fall of Paradise

by B. C. CHASE

  Drily, Lady Shrewsbury said, “We hired you. That, at least, you must consider a decision worthy of approbation.”

  “I will go sign the documents with Ms. Franklin. I do not expect to see you again until the grand opening in two nights.” He then walked right past her toward the group of executives, “Ms. Franklin. It’s time.”

  As Henry passed, Jinkins said, “Mr. Potter, might I have a word?”

  “Not now, Jinkins.”

  “There is something I must insist on telling you!”

  “Not now!” Henry shouted and started up a flight of stairs.

  Keelung, Taiwan

  The soldiers Gary drove past had not been looking for a Mini, so he had gotten by easily. They were moments from reaching the place where he thought Stacy and Chiang-gong would be waiting, and indeed he saw Chiang-gong's little car sitting there under the overpass. He looked in the rear view mirror at the little monkey's face. To his surprise, he saw its eyes well up with tears as it stared out the window.

  Gary said, “Jeffery?”

  Both of the Jefferies replied.

  “I mean,” he spun around for a second to look at the monkey Jeffery, “I mean you. Jeffery One.” Looking back out the windshield, Gary said, “Is there something wrong?”

  Silently, Jeffery shook his head.

  Softly, Gary said, “Then why are you crying?” He checked the rear view mirror again, meeting the monkey's eyes.

  Jeffery One hesitated, then voiced, “Will mommy still love me?”

  The question hit Gary like a ton of bricks. It hurt that, on the moment before being reunited with his mother, his son's chief concern was whether she would love him because he was no longer the boy she had known. For a brief second, the terrifying idea flashed through Gary's mind that maybe the shock would overwhelm her, that she would reject the monkey and accept only the boy. But Gary reasoned that, if he had not experienced an issue, she wouldn’t either. So he said, “Of course your mother loves you, no matter ... no matter what.” He brought the car to a stop near the other car.

  Stacy had seen Jeffery Two, the boy, and immediately dashed out of the other car and toward the Mini. She threw open the door and swept him up in her arms, leaving the monkey to sit with a dejected stare at the floor. It wasn't her fault, Gary knew, but she hadn't even seen Jeffery One. Now she was crying out loud as she squeezed Jeffery Two to her chest.

  Gary took a deep breath, opened his door, and stood. “Stacy,” he said.

  Her eyes filled with unimaginable joy, she said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank God!”

  “Stacy,” Gary repeated, seriously.

  “What?” she sniffled, holding Jeffery Two out for another satisfied once over, as if to verify he was really with her.

  “You are holding Jeffery, but he is the second Jeffery. We have two Jefferies now. He is a ... a twin. They duplicated him.”

  Stacy narrowed her eyes at him, then slowly nodded, “Okay...”

  “Come meet the original Jeffery,” Gary said with a soothing tone. He stared her dead in the eye, trying to convey through his expression the desperation he felt that she accept the other Jeffery, “He can't wait to see his mommy again, Stacy.”

  Gary went over to her and pulled Jeffery Two from her arms, handing him to Chiang-gong, “Mommy is going to see Jeffery One, now.”

  “Okay,” said Jeffery Two happily.

  Gary took Stacy's hand and led her over to the other side of the Mini. He opened the door, revealing the little Jeffery One who looked very tiny as he sat, still staring down at the floor. Stacy shot Gary a questioning glance, to which Gary held his palms up and gave a half-hearted shrug. Then he raised his chin toward the monkey.

  Stacy knelt down to Jeffery One, looked back up at Gary and mouthed, “Does he talk?” Gary nodded. When she turned back, a tear glistened as it dropped from Jeffery One's eye. Gary could tell by her shoulders sagging that she was moved. She said, “Jeffery?”

  The child sniffled in response, quickly wiping his nose with a little fist. Sitting on the edge of the seat, his tiny feet were swinging anxiously.

  “Jeffery, it's mommy.”

  Hesitantly, the small face turned up, the large eyes blinking away tears of uncertainty. Clearly overwhelmed by the sight of his mother, his small voice breathed, “Mommy.”

  With that, she reached down and swept him up in her arms, “My baby boy! My baby boy—” her voice broke into sobs.

  As she held him to her chest, Gary could see his face fill with rapture as it rest on her shoulder. The tears flowing freely, he cried, “Do you still love me?”

  Holding him back to look into his eyes, she said, “I love you, Jeffery. Mommy loves you so much!” Then she kissed his head, and wept joyfully.

  With Gary in the front seat and Stacy seated between the two kids in the back, they followed Chiang-gong's car out of the area. He had invited them to his home to recuperate and formulate a next step.

  Once on the highway, the sun slowly lowered red behind the trees. Gary tried to stay awake, but he dozed off intermittently, seeing double, triple. He saw six red suns setting. He shook himself awake. It was a seemingly endless drive. Stacy and Jeffery One slept soundly, but the monkey Jeffery was awake, staring out the window, apparently deep in thought. Gary thought talking would keep him awake, so he asked, “What are you thinking about, Jeffery?”

  The big eyes looked at him through the rear view mirror, “God.”

  Gary was astonished. Jeffery was much too young to be pondering the Almighty. But then, he reminded himself that the monkey Jeffery was much older in monkey-years. He asked, “God? What about God?”

  “Is there a God?”

  Gary felt himself cringing at the question, a question he had so categorically answered “no” for himself. But to tell a child that God did not exist ... it just didn't seem right. What was the point? If there was no God, what was there to live for? That's why everyone told children that Santa Claus was real, wasn't it? To give them hope. Gary said, “Of course there is a God.”

  The monkey's eyes were pensive, then sad. He started to speak, then paused. Finally, he said, “Did God make me?”

  Gary tried to check the hate that the question incited within him, but it was too late. He could tell that, in an instant, Jeffery had seen in his eyes everything Gary thought: God didn't make you; some people did in a senseless act of evil. And a good God didn't make them, either, because a good God could not make such vile people and allow them to commit atrocities on others. If God existed at all, he was a maniacal, detached, irresponsible, or purely evil being whose only purpose in creation was to watch suffering and terror wreak chaos in the life of everything he had made.

  Gary said, “Of course God made you; he made everything,” but Jeffery looked down into his lap. Gary continued the ruse, “And God loves you very much, Jeffery.”

  “Dad?”

  “What?”

  “Can you please just call me 'Jeff?'”

  Gary said, “Okay...”

  The monkey shrugged self-consciously, “Jeffery is for little boys.”

  Finally, they arrived in Chiang-gong's village. It was mysteriously silent and empty. Chiang-gong's car slowed to a stop in front of his house, and Gary pulled up behind him. The door to the house was hanging ajar on the bottom hinge. Inside, it was black as death.

  Stacy met her Gary’s eyes with a look of concern.

  Chiang-gong rushed out of his car and stepped up to the threshold, calling, “Mei-Xing!” in a panicked tone.

  “We shouldn’t be here. They must be watching,” Gary said in a low tone.

  Chiang stepped into the darkness.

  Gary told his wife to stay in the car and stepped up toward Chiang-gong’s house. Suddenly a scream of anguish erupted from within, followed by despairing cries in Mandarin.

  Gary, the monkey Jeffery on his shoulder, moved forward through the door. When his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw Chiang-gong crumpled on the floor, weeping in a
whisper, “Mei-Xing! Mei-Xing! Mei-Xing!” over and over without ceasing.

  There before Chiang-gong, sprawled out unnaturally, with eyes wide open, was his wife, a single bullet hole in her forehead. And behind her, toppled together like two china dolls, the lifeless forms of his children, dried blood trailing from their heads.

  It was too much to absorb. He felt dead, as if his mind could no longer think, his heart could no longer feel, his body could no longer move. He was stopped in time, unable to process what he saw.

  And then he heard his wife shriek behind him, and Jia Ling began weeping. And the guilt that came from the knowledge that his man, Chiang-gong, had helped him out of charity to save his son and, as a result, had lost his entire family, washed over him. Gary wanted to step forward and place a hand on the man's shoulder, but he couldn't. He couldn't bring himself to move. Then, suddenly, his guilt transformed to anger and a terrible hate. Hate for whom, he didn’t know. But he raged like he had never done before.

  Gary moved himself to step forward and touched Chiang-gong, who was now whispering unintelligibly, rocking back and forth.

  At length, Chiang-gong went silent. Then he reached down and lifted a book that was crumpled on the floor at his wife's hand. Chiang-gong reached up with one hand to Gary for support, rising to his feet. He appeared to be weak-kneed as he closed the book between his two hands and closed his eyes. His entire face glistened with moisture. He stared Gary straight in the eyes with his red ones and, his face trembling with emphasis, said, “Praise God! She counted worthy! Give praise!” Chiang-gong reached for Gary's hand and placed the book in it, face up. “Give glory,” Chiang-gong put his hand on top of the book and shook it, “to God! Give glory to God! Give glory to God!”

  When Chiang-gong removed his hand and Gary looked down at the book, he realized what it was.

  A blood-stained Bible.

  Gary searched Chiang-gong’s face in bewilderment. He didn’t know what to think.

  Suddenly, Gary’s wife cried out from behind him, “Gary!”

  The boy Jeffery was hanging limply in her arms. His eyes were half-open and his skin had gone totally white. Gary rushed up and felt his pulse. It was there, but weak. “He needs a hormone,” Gary said. “They changed his genes, he needs hormones to keep up.”

  Stacy looked desperately into Gary’s eyes, “What can we do? What can you do?”

  Gary ignored her, pressed his child’s forehead to his cheek. He was cool.

  “Gary?”

  Sadly, he met his wife’s gaze and held open his palms.

  “You’re a doctor, Gary! Do something!”

  Gary’s eyes were welling up with tears as he cradled the boy in his arms. He felt his body shudder with emotion, “I’m sorry.”

  Jeffery’s head fell backward. His breathing had stopped. Gary felt his pulse again. Nothing.

  Stacy dropped to her knees and held her child’s face in her hands. “Jeffery! My baby, Jeffery!” She looked up pleadingly at Gary.

  Gary’s paternal instinct gave way to his medical training as he stretched Jeffery out on the floor and tilted his head up. He began to throw his weight into Jeffery’s chest with his entwined hands, the ribs cracking. He breathed into Jeffery’s little mouth, then compressed again, again, again, again …. And as he did, he saw the trauma that it did to his child’s small frame, violently jolting him with each shove, and he was overcome. His tears dropped onto Jeffery’s body, and he screamed without words, his scream punctuated by the rhythmic compressions he made into his boy’s chest. He kept going, kept pumping. He wasn’t going to stop. He could never stop.

  He felt a gentle hand on his shoulder. It was Chiang-gong. “Gayee.”

  Realizing the futility of what he was doing, he stopped.

  Chiang-gong then lowered the Bible in front of him, shook it, “God know best.”

  In a fit of sudden rage, Gary stripped the book from Chiang-gong’s grasp, clutched it with a white-knuckled, vicelike grip, groaning, and then threw it out the door of the house where it hit the car and dropped to the ground, the pages fluttering in the wind.

  Quietly, Chiang-gong walked outside and picked it up. He stared down the street and he shielded his eyes, squinting at something in the distance. Then he turned to the others in the house and shouted, “Soldier, they coming!”

  Bolivar, Venezuela

  Layla’s arms had gone numb in the fierce grip of the natives. Her hands were bound behind her back and her ankles were strapped together, the bones pressing painfully against each other. Her neck had lost its strength so her head dangled. Before that she had been able to see Doctor Katz being carried ahead of her. The arrow had been pulled all the way through, leaving his body to bleed out.

  Because of the way they held her, she was contorted backwards unnaturally and her body ached in unspeakable pain. She wished they would just drop her somewhere and get whatever they had planned over with.

  They were not going to the village because if that were the case they would have arrived long ago. No, it seemed that the trek through the jungle was ever higher and steeper until now the foliage was thinning and the natives had to handily climb some rocky outcrops. The air chilled the higher they rose, giving her goosebumps.

  Before long, it started to rain. Her clothes, which had barely dried from being submerged in the river, became thoroughly soaked once again. Her teeth started to chatter and her whole body shivered with the cold. Raising her head, she saw that the men were climbing a perilous path up the giant tepui.

  She closed her eyes, trying to mentally disengage. She imagined she was with Doctor Katz on the plane to South America. It had been a long flight, the anticipation building with each moment she spent with him. Why had she followed him here? Was it the adventure? Or was it just him?

  “I miss my wife,” he said, his face lit by the warm glow of an overhead light. “Every day I miss her. And my daughter. Every time I see her face, the pain returns. So I stopped looking, and I’m sure she doesn’t understand. It isn’t fair to her.”

  He put a hand on Layla’s, on the armrest, “My children need a mother. Not an ambitious university student. Not a woman seeking a busy career. A mother. We need to move on.”

  She didn’t know what to say. Was he asking her if she would be that mother? Something within her longed to be needed in that way. But if that was his request, would she acquiesce? There was no doubt she was an ambitious and highly capable student with a promising career ahead of her. Did she want to throw that all away to become a mother to someone else’s children?

  Or there was the other possibility. That this was his way of telling her that he didn’t want her.

  She suddenly felt herself drop as one of her captors stumbled. Her arms yanked painfully against the bonds, and when she opened her eyes she saw that she was hanging off the edge of a rock precipice, being held by her legs alone. She moaned in agony as the men on top dragged her over the craggy rock to the top

  The men just let her lay on the ground of the ledge as they burst into a vehement debate. She wasn’t sure, but it seemed they were deciding whether to continue toward the top of the tepui. They had also dropped Doctor Katz, who lay motionless.

  Slowly worming her way toward him, she said, “David!” as loudly as she dared.

  He groaned in response.

  “Oh good, you’re still alive,” she breathed, edging closer to him. When she reached him, they were face to face. He was becoming pale, she suspected from loss of blood. Drawing a deep breath, he said, “I’m sorry I brought you here. And Fatima.”

  “That’s not your fault. People are horrible. They do evil things.”

  Before Doctor Katz could respond, the Yanomamo turned their attention to them once again, and angrily lifted them from the ground. They resumed the journey up the mountain, now with greater urgency.

  After an hour of travel, they passed into the deep fog of clouds and, eventually above it, where the stars, in all their unpolluted glory, were revealed. The
moon cast a glow upon the endless sea of cloud tops, punctuated by other tepui-tops in the great distance. The air was cold and pristine.

  The vast flat summit of the tepui was mysteriously barren and rocky. The natives, with seemingly endless vigor, took up a quick jog across its surface. This aggravated Layla’s already throbbing neck.

  It wasn’t long before the pace of her captors slowed and they began to speak in hushed tones to one another, their eyes looking almost fearful in the moonlight. When they stopped, Layla summoned the last remaining strength in her neck to look at the surroundings. Before them was a mammoth hole in the ground with sheer vertical walls.

  Dropping her and Doctor Katz, the Yanomamo took up an eerie chant filled with shrill trills and guttural growls. They danced about and, seeming to take on the personas of animals, flapped their arms or showed their teeth. The chant grew louder and more violent, until the men cast their gaze upon Layla and Doctor Katz. Taking their spears up, they stood directly above them and prepared to strike.

  StarLine Paradeisia Hotel

  Fitzgerald Ignatius Jinkins knocked on the suite door. He was standing in a modern hallway of the flagship Paradeisia StarLine Hotel. “Mr. Potter? Might I have a word?”

  There was a pause, then Henry’s husky voice came from inside the room, “Not now, Jinkins.”

  “Mr. Potter, there is something weighing on my mind and I just cannot let it rest until—”

  “No, Jinkins!”

  “But Mr. Potter, I must—”

  “Don’t you get a hint, Jinkins? I don’t want to hear—”

  “But Mr. Potter! You have to listen to me!”

  “No I, don’t. You are nothing to me. You are nothing to this company! Now would you please leave my doorstep?”