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

by B. C. CHASE

  “So you must understand I have very little tolerance for your attitude. In my view, everyone deserves paradise. Everyone.”

  “You mean everyone,” Jinkins said, “except him.” He nodded at Babel’s body. The kinkajou on Jinkins’ shoulder scowled at Abael.

  Abael’s face darkened. He asked, “Did you find your scientist Andrews down here? Or any of the others you trapped and condemned to die?”

  “Yes, actually,” Jinkins replied. “I did.”

  “Where?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  They were peering into a wide open room with two walls of clouded windows and a high ceiling. Modern chandeliers in the moldy ceiling were clouded with pink algae. There was a stage with a podium and chairs and tables strewn all over. Crumpled on the floor and in chairs as if they had fallen where they stood were hundreds of skeletons. Abael walked up and, stepping over one of the skeletons, leaned down to pick up a cracked stemmed glass.

  “These are the ones we left behind, including Andrews,” Jinkins said. “They took their own lives.”

  “Why?” Abael asked, seemingly perturbed.

  “In the perfect paradise, with everything they could want at their fingertips, they decided they would rather die than live. Why, indeed?”

  “Maybe because you trapped them here?” Abael accused.

  Everyone jerked their heads up when a loud bang on one of the windows came from outside. A person was desperately thrashing his arms on the window so hard it bobbled. A muffled shriek sounded and he was knocked down and dragged away, screaming. A nine-foot-tall, bipedal silhouette with a long tail, curving neck, and pointed snout leaped on top of him, stooped, and raised its head, the shadow of something tattered dangling from its mouth while he flailed under its feet, still screaming. A second figure joined it, approaching the window. Aubrey’s heart skipped a beat when the second figure ducked its head and a blazing red eye appeared through one of the windows, searching the darkness.

  Diyu

  Her eyes conveyed a deeply intelligent preeminence as she surveyed them. Without any emotion, she said, “You were right, Zhou. I am now spirit.” She did not look happy to see him.

  “Jia Ling!” he whispered. His heart was thumping in his chest and his hair still stood on end. She was tall, the height of one-and-a-half men, and was perfectly symmetrical, smooth, and flawless. But she was translucent like a ghost. Her bright eyes shifted to gaze at each of them. Then she stared right at him, “And yes, your wife and daughter are here.”

  “Where?”

  “They know you are here. They have always known. If they find you worthy, they will reveal themselves to you.”

  “Find me,” he choked, “worthy?”

  Her eyes flashed, “Yes. If you are worthy. We now see you for what you are. We see you with perfect clarity. And you are repulsive in every possible way.”

  He stepped toward her, “But, but what can I do?”

  “There is only one thing you can do to become like us. Then you will see all, as we do.”

  Zhang, who had not spoken a word since Jia Ling’s apparition appeared, now demanded, “Zhou, what are you talking to? Who do you see?”

  “You don’t see her?”

  Zhang was looking right toward the apparition. He exclaimed, “See who?”

  “Jia Ling! She’s standing right here!”

  Slowly Zhang turned around and pointedly cast his gaze on Jia Ling’s corpse. Then he said, “Jia Ling is dead. Are you telling me you see her standing over there?” Zhang looked around at everyone, “Does anyone see her?”

  Everyone shook their heads.

  “They don’t see you!” Doctor Ming-Zhen said to Jia Ling’s apparition. “Show yourself to them!”

  She opened her eyes wide, saying, “They don’t believe.” And she vanished.

  He stood for a moment, his heart palpitating. But she did not reappear and he quickly remembered the object he had been holding in his hand. When he lifted it up, he saw that it was a chain with a Star of David pendant.

  Doctor Ming-Zhen stared at the dangling pendant in disbelief. “Chao!” Doctor Ming-Zhen said. “Do you know what this is?”

  Chao stepped forward and explained, “She kept it secret for your sake. We both did. It was embedded with the fossils we discovered—the deinocheirus and the homo sapiens. Jia Ling found it and she showed it to me. Because everyone was already claiming the fossil was a hoax, I told her that we should tell the world the truth—that the fossil was a hoax. She finally agreed, but she refused to show the evidence, this pendant.”

  Doctor Ming-Zhen’s mind flashed back to a memory of interrupting Jia Ling in the lab as she labored over the slab of earth, cleaning the rock from the bone bit by bit. She had quickly hidden something in her pocket. “So,” he said in despair, “the fossil was a fraud. Everything we have done, everything I have devoted my life to, was a lie.”

  Chao looked down at his feet.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t feel it was my place. She couldn’t.”

  Doctor Ming-Zhen gazed down at the pendant. “Poor Jia Ling. What a burden to bear.” He opened the necklace and slipped it over his head, tucking the pendant under his shirt. “It was an act of love.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “She was protecting me.”

  Chao nodded. “She loved the rest of my family.”

  “Do you really think you were talking to Jia Ling’s spirit?”

  Doctor Ming-Zhen hesitated, then nodded.

  “Then why didn’t I see her? I loved her, too.”

  “She said you were all not worthy.”

  Chao warned in a low voice, “You should be very careful. You don’t really know who is talking to you.”

  “Enough!” Zhang shouted. “We are getting close.” He looked up at a towering mountain just peeking over the tops of the trees in the high distance. “We must hurry. They’re ready for us.”

  “Wait,” Doctor Ming-Zhen said. He was staring at the flock of sinornithosaurs, which had raised their heads to listen. They jerked their heads back and forth, eyeing the forest. Clucking to one another, they sprinted away in unison and spread their wings to flap off into the woods. Doctor Ming-Zhen stared in the direction opposite the way they went, but saw nothing.

  “We need to—” Zhang began.

  Doctor Ming-Zhen cut him short in a drawl, “Shut your mouth!” He watched and listened intently. There was only one reason a predator left a perfectly good kill: a superior predator. He watched and waited for several moments, but saw nothing. He relaxed, “Okay. Looks like nothing.” Then he caught a tiny movement out of the corner of his eye and he realized he hadn’t been looking high enough.

  His hair instantly stood on end. Perched high on a branch was a creature as tall as a man if not taller. It’s piercing, eagle-like eyes stared straight down at them from a long, scaly head. The body was covered with black feathers and it had a long tail with a fan at the end. Its powerful legs were featherless and it effortlessly balanced its weight on one enormous talon of each foot.

  It stared patiently at them, motionless. Once the pattern was in his mind, he immediately recognized at least a dozen other animals in the trees around them, silent and staring.

  The closest animal spread wide its muscular, feather-lined arms, its three-clawed hands exposed to menacing effect. With a bone-chilling shriek, baring rows of hooked teeth, it gracefully leaped off the branch and glided down directly for Doctor Ming-Zhen and the others.

  Paradeisia

  “It’s Zhang! Get them inside!” Abael shouted. “I need that Preseption!”

  They backed out of the ballroom and closed the door. Soldiers rushed to the glass wall of the atrium and opened the doors. Zhang, Gary, Stacey, Jeffery, Donte, Chao, Doctor Ming-Zhen, and a stream of soldiers rushed through. When Gary saw Abael, he stopped short, aghast.

  “Ah, Doctor Riley. I thought you’d be dead by now, but it’s nice of you to come all this way just
to see me.”

  Gary was so appalled he was speechless.

  The doors were slammed shut against a black-feathered dinosaur. The soldiers quickly secured the doors and everyone listened intently to the calls and shrieks that echoed outside. Through the clouded glass the shadows of the animals could be seen quickly darting back and forth, sometimes rushing up to angrily knock the windows.

  The biobots emerged from the shadows of the rooms, their eyes all white, and began to step up the stairs like a trail of ants. Once the newcomers had caught their breath, Abael said, looked to Zhang and said, “I take it you had some trouble on your way. Glad you made it, though.”

  “Yes, I lost my medic and most of my equipment.”

  “And he is the Preseption, I presume?” he nodded to little Jeffery.

  Gary and Stacy brought their son close.

  Zhang smiled, “Yes. Safe and sound and with all the information and training we need to program the first generation.”

  “Well done,” Abael said. “I was afraid we had lost both of them.”

  “Only the duplicate, fortunately.”

  “And you closed the Antarctica CTC?”

  “Yes, destroyed all the submarines. Nobody will be following us in that way. What have you done about this entry?”

  “It’s secure.”

  “And who are all your guests?” Zhang said, looking at Aubrey, Henry, Lady Shrewsbury, Nimitz, Adriaan, Gonzales, and Doctor Kaufmann with a skeptical eye. “You never said anything about them.”

  “They’re a problem I’m about to solve. I see you brought some stowaways as well.”

  “Let’s just say it was easier to bring the parents and keep the Preseption happy on our journey. Doctor Ming-Zhen I brought for his dinosaur expertise. Doctor Chao was my scientist until recently. He’s now proven himself disloyal.” He flitted his hand dismissively, “All of them, expendable.”

  “Good. As are you,” Abael said with a smile.

  Soldiers which had been defensively standing nearby now turned and surrounded everyone except Abael.

  Zhang appeared shocked and ordered his PLA-decorated soldiers to retaliate, but they failed to obey.

  “I’m sorry Zhang, they won’t obey you. I have been programmed as the ultimate source of authority. It was planned that way, of course.”

  “You treacherous—”

  “Yes, yes. What I am is smarter. More evolved, I guess you could say. Being an invalid in a wheelchair gives you a lot of time to plan and scheme.”

  He stood watching his prisoners contemplatively. The biobots were now lugging the black cases down the stairs and shuffling about erecting laboratory equipment. The windows shook as the dinosaurs pounded against them. “You know, I’m not sure I want to be totally alone as I start this new world,” Abael said. He looked Adriaan up and down lustfully, then shifted his gaze to Aubrey.

  Henry shifted between Aubrey and Abael, eliciting a grin from the latter. “Protecting, are you, Henry? Or just selfishly keeping her for yourself? Hmm, how noble of you. The territorial male-ape, keeping the fertile females to himself.” Abael laughed, “Certainly a species deserving to evolve to a new order.”

  A voice came from the high rail of the visitor’s center, overlooking the atrium, “Abael.” The owner of the voice was a man wearing a lab coat.

  “Doctor Compton?” Abael said in apparent incredulity. “How did you get here?”

  Doctor Compton cocked his head, “We come and go as we please.” He began to walk down the stairs, outstretching his hands toward the Biobots, which immediately stopped their movements.

  Abael’s jaw was slowly dropping.

  As he continued to walk down the steps, Doctor Compton said, “I have many names. Phillip Compton is one. See if you know the others.” At these words, his face transformed to one that Aubrey recognized as Andrews.

  “Andrews! Is that you?” Jinkins said.

  “Yes, Ignatius, my friend,” he said haughtily. “Though you must understand that my feelings toward you are not friendly.”

  “I made you into the great scientist you were. I gave you the opportunity. I treated you well. You were my best and my brightest.”

  “Yes, you did, until I had a vision greater than yours. Until you feared I might shine brighter than you!”

  “That’s not true,” Jinkins said. “I was proud of you. But Paradeisia was changing you. Without any thought to the repercussions, you decided you would unilaterally change the world’s DNA into your version of perfection. It was unconscionable!”

  The voice said, “So you entombed us here! You call that conscionable?”

  “It was the only thing I thought I could do! You lost control of your mind—because of your pride!”

  “My pride,” Andrew’s face suddenly changed into another, this one with a red beard, “is the only thing I have!” He stared directly at Doctor Ming-Zhen. “You know me, too, my friend. I told you before: I have five PhD’s. He morphed back into Andrews and he said with a strange voice, “We are boundless in our potential. Anyone who came here was joined to us as one. We enter the minds of any who are open to us. We can project any reality we conceive. We have one voice and one mind. We have been known as gods and kings, we have been in the world for ages. We have filled the world with delusions and ideas to serve our purpose. We understand the true power of this place. There is a reality beyond what can be seen and touched. Nothing is impossible for us. If we can imagine it, it can be real. After all this time, only one thing separates us from the creator.”

  “What is that?” Jinkins said.

  “We cannot make life. But now, thanks to all of you, we will build it. We have everything we need to make this world, this new world. We will make a generation of people we will inhabit—the way they should have been made: perfect in body and mind. Our own creation, in our own image, to do our will alone!”

  He had reached the base of the stairs and now crossed the floor, his body growing and transforming into a ten-foot figure with gleaming, gray skin, a long head, wide-set, black eyes, and a small mouth. The dinosaurs were still pounding the glass. Their loud shrieks grew more and more furious.

  Aubrey felt the floor tremble underfoot as a dark silhouette over thirty-five feet tall at the head came into view outside the clouded glass. It had roughly the same shape as the nine-foot tall dinosaurs. It paused at the glass, tapped it with its snout, testing its strength.

  “Now,” the humanoid figure said with a devilish grin, “You will all join us in death and learn our power.”

  Jinkins stepped up to stand before him and said, “I already have.”

  The figure raised its chin, eyeing Jinkins with arrogance.

  “I came down and saw the truth. I realized that there was only one way to stop you. And I did what had to be done. I am one of you, but I do not share your vision!”

  “But you can never have the power we have!” the figure said arrogantly. “We are a legion of minds!”

  “You don’t understand power,” Jinkins said, clucking. “True power is not in how one thinks,” he said. “It’s in how one loves.” Jinkins turned to Lady Shrewsbury, “Run, run as quick as you can! I will terminate this world. You only have minutes to get out! Here,” he held his little kinkajou out to Aubrey. “Take Lucy for me!”

  Aubrey accepted the animal, though it protested.

  “But what about you, Ignatius?”

  Jinkins said, “I’ve already passed. Think of me as a dream—in the mind as you sleep and gone forever when you wake up. Everything here will cease to exist. I will undo what has been done.”

  “But Ignatius!”

  “It’s the only way! Now run, don’t look back! Run before it’s too late!”

  The figure screamed, “You can’t do this! We’ll stop you!”

  Jinkins chuckled, “Don’t underestimate me, Andrews. My imagination’s at least a little better than all of yours put together, I’d wager.”

  The figure’s eyes burned with rage and then
it disappeared. The biobots and the soldiers suddenly began to close in on the people, but at that moment a huge section of the glass wall erupted inside and the massive figure of a dinosaur stepped into the building.

  “Deinocheirus,” Doctor Ming-Zhen uttered in terror. Its legs were heavily muscled with pebbly skin, but its body was coated in a thin layer of sleek, dark feathers, its tail ending in a fan just like its smaller cousins. Its most dominating feature was its huge, lizard-like head with fierce, hawkish eyes. It jerked its head back and forth as it peered down, quickly assessing its new surroundings. Then it opened its mouth, the giant teeth on full, threatening display, and crowed. The call sounded at first like a small, eagle-like cry. But it quickly grew in volume to an earth-shaking roar that rattled the remaining glass and caused little ripples to form over the pool’s surface. A stream of the smaller dinosaurs hopped between its legs and dashed into the atrium.

  “RUN!” Jinkins shouted at the top of his lungs.

  “Ignatius!” Lady Shrewsbury cried, reaching out for him, but before her hand reached him, he vanished.

  The smaller dinosaurs wasted no time in attacking the first targets in view: soldiers and Biobots, leaving an opening in the chaos for the people to rush for the stairs. Adriaan was the first to react, leading the way, closely followed by Donte. Gary swept his little son up in his arms and ran for his life with Stacey. Nimitz shouted, “I already died yesterday! I’m not dying today!” as he went, his big shorts flapping on his legs. Gonzales punched one of the soldiers and took a machine gun. Lady Shrewsbury raised her skirts to run. And Henry grabbed Aubrey’s hand as he struck for the stairs. The kinkajou grappled her neck, holding on for dear life as she ran.