Escape from Paradise

Chapter 14: The Prophet

"Patience, my friend. Man did not learn to walk in a single day. Nor can you understand and learn everything in one. You must come to your senses step by step. Your temper is your greatest enemy, not me, and not even Jessie."

Again the anger surfaced from Larry's depths. His breath rate increased. His chest became heavy. He furiously demanded, "Do you know her? Are you in league with her?" For a moment, the space between him and William rippled. An uneasy silence followed, during which Larry realized that he was losing control of himself. Why was the man in front of him capable of arousing such bursts of never before felt emotions? Who was he to be capable of manipulating a human so potently without a touch, without machinery?

With a calm, soothing tone, William said, "She is my acquaintance, yes, but we're not in league. We're working towards the same goal but our methods are different. I have patience and she has none. She is a typical human who wants to have everything and quickly while I use slower methods. It might have been my mistake to wake her up. I had not realized before, the full spectrum of emotions humans may have. I had not weighted their influence on human behavior. How could I have known the extent that frustration, pain, and anger has when everyone in this world is so jiggly jolly?

"You need to stay calm, Larry, because we won't be able to solve the great problem if you keep sparking like that. I want you cool and composed even though there will be many things you won't be happy to hear from my lips. Now, tell me, what did you see in my movie?"

Larry closed his eyes and after a brief recollection explained, "A mixture of beauty and ugliness. I saw a place, both very familiar and strange. I saw images fascinating and disturbing it's hard to put into words, perhaps 'thought invoking' would fit best."

"Then you saw what I intended to show. The world you witnessed was my interpretation of the world of human origins at its worst moments. There was a world from which you all came to this place for a very important reason. Though the purpose was lost along the way." After a brief pause to allow Larry to digest the new information, still focusing on Larry's inquiring stare, William continued, "I appeared to remind you of humanity's purpose in this place. You have a particular role here, Larry. You had to make sure that this world helps humanity to survive, that when the time is right everyone should return back to where they came from but you decided otherwise, you decided that life here was much better than in the world from which you came, so you turned this place into a thing it was not meant to be. It was a very selfish act for which Jessie hates you so much."

Again, hearing Jessie's name anger exploded inside Larry. It was overwhelming, uncontrollable. It sent shivers through the entire body, his willpower unable to suppress them. It manifested in the form of rippling air, only this time anomaly was stronger and managed to flutter the scarce hair on William's head. The origin of these terrible emotions that came to him couldn't be only because she had attempted to hurt him. They came from behind the same curtain where the unknown word had come from. After cooling down, he said, "You talk in riddles. Can you go straight to the point?"

"I can't. Can't you see that you can't handle what lurks inside you? We need to approach the issue step by step. It took quite a bit of effort to get to this point and I'm not going to blow it all away only because of your impatience. I did not take my time with Jessie, did you see what she has become?"

"I don't care. I am not her. If you showed me all the cards I would be able to connect everything. I am sure that no matter what the truth is I would be able to understand and handle it."

"Larry!" William's shout seemed to invade Larry's mind and blank all his thoughts. William explained, "Don't assume that you can handle everything. No need to rush. You lived in the dark for such a long time, your eyes would burn if you saw the truth. Trust me on this one, Larry, will you? I really think you're a great man. I'm your great admirer. What you did with this world is truly remarkable."

Larry noticed a lack of sincerity in the last few William's statements. That left him suspicious of the man's true intentions. Once again he inspected the deformed figure, the twisted visage, the crooked crossed fingers and the dark bag of rags on top. A person of such an appearance couldn't have had a positive agenda.

As if William had read the visitor's thoughts, said, "You think I'm ugly, don't you? You think why of all possible appearances a man could choose, he would choose as ugly as this one? Well, Larry, I am the truth and the truth is never pretty. Same goes to 'After the World Ended.' Now, let me show you something."

The lights in the room dimmed until the place became pitch black. Then, on Larry's right appeared a giant brown ball with covered in gray foam through which a few places away an uneven surface could be seen, full of cracks, sharp extrusions, and flat patches. Tilted at a slight angle the ball turned on an axis which if imagined would have pierced it straight through the center. Its landscape somewhat reminded Larry of the Paradise seen from space, only Paradise was flat and this object was almost a perfect sphere. Around the object circled another sphere, pale, whitish and lifeless. This sight evoked the same feeling of deja vu Larry had experienced while watching William's movie. These objects were so familiar, yet unrecognizable that it put a heavy strain on his mind and as he focused to remember, once again he hit the inner curtain that blotted out all memories behind it giving him a dreadful sensation of being only a half-man whose one half for better or good had been split apart and thrown into the deepest pits of oblivion.

William said, "The object you see is called Earth, a place of your origin. The image is recorded right before your leave. The scale of this object is difficult to comprehend. If you unfolded it and put onto a plane it would be more than five thousand times larger than Paradise. It had been a beautiful world once but you, humans, managed to destroy it. There is something I wanted to show you.'

The brown object and its smaller companion began to turn into opposite directions, the larger gaining more color, the grayness surrounding it thinning down until more and more landscape complexity became visible. The spinning slowed down and the sphere grew larger and larger. As they darted towards a point on its surface, Larry saw a dark net stuck into the ground with massive nests standing out of the landscape where net lines connected. As the nests grew larger he recognized them as cities, cities less spectacular and smaller than the Paradise. With a nauseating speed, one city grew larger, before the camera reached the ground, it turned and entered a building. There the image came to standstill.

In a room alone by a table sat a woman. Her skin had a cracked, pigmented texture similar to the one Larry had seen in William's movie. Her long golden hair at places had turned pale. Her intelligent eyes were sunken, lips formed a natural, time etched frown. She was clad in a pure-white coat which perfectly fit her gaunt figure, narrowing at the waist and spreading downward. Judging from her focus on a thick open book in front of her she was worried about problems of vast proportions. After a moment of thorough inspection, Larry could not believe his eyes: it was a deformed Jessie Green.

A door to the room opened and through them entered Larry's copy, with a face with many etched lines, a grim face which, it seemed, had never produced a smile. In a suit, he appeared self-confident and important.

Jessie got up, walked to Larry's copy, and after a firm handshake said, "I've been waiting for you, Larry Smith. I need your help. Come, let us discuss matters of great importance."