Exile of Eden

Eden waded in the indigo stream of a mystical valley. The sky overhead, colored as though someone had painted the scene with the essences of twilight, shimmered with thousands of butterflies. The butterflies served as closer versions of the stars. They seemed to generate light from their own delicate and mysterious bodies, each one shining the unique hue of its wings. On both banks of the stream, exotic flowers edged with silver bloomed, faithfully budding and opening as Eden came closer to their stems. There was no current in the water but the sound of a running stream persisted, adding an air of nostalgia to the scene. Magnificent, fiery koi swam slowly north to south and back again, taking their time because it never mattered where they ended up.

            This would have been the picture of tranquility, but Eden ruined it. She stomped and splashed in the stream clumsily, just to see the bubbly waves and feel the cold water lash her legs. The dull rocks on the bed of the stream jutted up into the soles of her feet at painful angles. Well, almost painful. Eden couldn't feel pain nearly to the extent she wanted to. It was one of those real sensations she longed for all her life but never had the opportunity to experience. All she could feel was a diluted, gentle ache as the rocks jabbed her feet. When she became more frustrated with the feeling that should have been pain, she danced more violently in the water. After twirling in the air so fiercely that when she landed, she should have cracked her ankles, Eden threw herself, face down like a dead fish, flat onto the streambed. Although a branch had stabbed her squarely in the eye, she only felt the equivalent of a subdued paper cut. Eden plopped herself angrily onto a bank of the stream, crushing one of her flowers.

            She didn't always act like this. Sometimes she actually enjoyed this world she called home, impressed by the way her own mind worked. She really was impressive, too; she had one of the top imaginations in her community. When she was younger, she had accepted her friend's invitations into their spheres and had seen the way their minds worked. Their worlds bored her. Usually, they were barren, except the occasional indistinct object here and there. Most people in the community would invite several minds over to their spheres at once so their worlds could be filled with something. Spheres had evolved, over time, into social gatherings. People had decided long ago that imagination came secondary to the entertainment other minds could offer. Creating individual ideas required too much effort. Instead, they would use their imaginations for anything they could get a cheap thrill from, like a good sex fantasy or murder scene. Usually, they would invite their friends over to showcase their profound "creativity."

            Eden had stopped accepting invitations to other people's spheres long ago. Even before that, she had stopped inviting people to her own sphere. The community gained wind of her vivid imagination when she was still very young. She had adopted the reputation of a "prodigy child," and soon enough, everyone wanted to enter her sphere to experience the world she was building. Quickly, everyone's intrusions grew annoying. Eden isolated herself. The community considered isolation to equal damnation, but she thought it felt more like peace.

            On her bank, Eden stilled her body, sending a shiver of calm down her spine. She looked like she was meditating but she was actually just trying to listen very, very closely. Somewhere, beneath her, Eden knew The Martyrs were working. They were the ones who chose lives of exile from the community so they could work to preserve the people and their spheres. Eden knew just as much about them as anyone in the community; the Martyrs played the stories of their exceptional lives over and over at different points in people's lifetimes through Interruptions. This meant they would draw people into the great Martyr sphere when they reached certain ages, the only time people would be brought out of their own spheres against their wills. The Martyrs were revered in the community, but something in Eden's stomach told her not to trust them. She was alone in her distrust. The people depended on The Martyrs for very basic needs-- food, water, clean air, means of defecation-- so they paid The Martyrs back with love, like loyal, affectionate puppies. The Martyrs also took on the overwhelming task of maintaining their spheres, keeping in check everything from the virtual, sensual realities to the communication waves.

            Eden understood that The Martyrs must be exceptionally compassionate and selfless people to give their lives so freely, but she still disliked them. They were like a bad taste that wouldn't go away. Of course, she enjoyed her sphere. She could transform her own dreams into reality with the slightest contortion of her mind. She could see, hear, taste, smell, and touch everything there was to be experienced through sensation in her imagination-- to an extent. Everything was dulled, of course, so that she wouldn't experience any negative feelings; pain, anxiety, and misery had been deleted from the world, thanks to The Martyrs. People didn't even have to move; their imaginations moved themselves, mimicking the rhythms of real human movement. And Eden knew The Martyrs had made significant strides in the well being of mankind, fulfilling all its desires so it could achieve its ultimate goal: satisfaction. That was what the spheres were made for, satisfying all of humanity's needs and eliminating all its wants. Eden still felt something was missing. Sometimes, she had dreams, sleeping dreams, that there was more to life than the instant gratification her sphere had to offer. She dreamt that, maybe, people were meant to experience emotions naturally and to their full intensities for a reason. As a consequence, Eden longed for real feeling. Just for once, she wished she could step on a sharp rock, a real sharp rock, and it would cut open her foot. Maybe, in some distant time, skin felt pain when it was cut.

            Eden sighed and reached her hand to the twilight sky. A violet butterfly, shimmering with the magnificent hues of amethyst, graced her finger. It shook fitfully, sending off a shower of purple sparks, then flapped its wings in flight-mode. Eden waited for its fluttering wings to breathe tiny puffs of air on her cheeks, but the wind never came. It flew off elegantly, and, she reminded herself, unrealistically.

            Blue green grass, glossy as licorice and fine as silk, swayed soothingly across her valley. Cloud puffs, rosy and golden gobs of cumulus feathers, glided delightfully across the horizon. Eden wandered, how did these objects move without wind? And, why, if I can feel my own breath, can't I imagine that same air swaying my grass and moving my clouds?

            These thoughts drifted lazily across her mind as she was seduced by her twilight world into dream speckled sleep.

            When Eden woke up, she was just as she had left herself. She could feel herself in the same position, yet she refused to open her eyes. She tried to hold onto those last moments of sleep as fervently as she could, as though they were an old, comforting stuffed animal she would never willingly let go. It was in sleep, she knew, that her sphere shut down. It still provided air, but its connection to her mind went into power save mode. The Martyrs used sleep as a time to revive the spheres' energy because of the most obvious reason-- people couldn't experience that they were in reality. Of course, the sphere only shut off during legitimate REM sleep, so it turned on long before Eden woke up. However, she would try to imagine during these times that she was still in reality, an effort she also realized was fruitless, but tried nonetheless. In Interruptions, she had learned that The Martyrs regulated imaginings very closely to make sure people weren't experiencing anything dangerous to their wellbeing. Trying to experience reality was particularly hazardous to people; it was like suicide. They never allowed ideas like that to invade a person's sphere.

            Acknowledging the futility of her attempts, Eden opened her eyes. There she was, in her beautiful world, blanketed in a kaleidoscope of radiant butterflies. Her feet dangled in the stream, coated in indigo silver like liquid mercury. Small, furry animals with snow white fur wrestled playfully near her head, adding a certain childish charm to the environment.

            The same amethyst butterfly floated down toward Eden, stopping to hover above her still body as though asking for a perch. Eden extended her hand, offering her finger, and immediately the butterfly settled. A still calm hushed the valley. The sound of the stream stopped running and the grass and clouds stopped moving-- everything was silent. Eden noticed, then, that everything was silent because it wasn't there. Nothing was there except the butterfly. Malfunctions happened in her sphere occasionally, due to her own carelessness of imagination, but nothing to this extent. She assumed she had gotten too careless.

            As she attempted to summon her world back into existence, the butterfly flexed its wings into flight position. Eden forgot about her world for a moment and watched attentively. It fluttered inches above her eyes, its radiant amethyst wings especially blinding in the pitch black of her forgotten sphere, and settled on the bridge of her nose. Then, in a graceful swoop, it beat its wings. Eden felt air-- yes, air, she knew-- gently kiss her cheeks.

            It flew toward a shiny, convex thing, almost like the sky but not quite like it, and landed. Its wings were facing Eden so, from that angle, it had to be attached to some sort of surface. A second passed, and then, a white crack began to form beneath the butterfly's feet. It traveled quickly, spidering into a thousand tiny tributaries. In no time at all the cracks covered the surface area that Eden could see. And then, the surface exploded. Clear, crystalline pieces soared out into the dark space around them.

            Eden learned almost instantly that the surface had been supporting her weight. She learned that because she began to fall, plummeting dangerously into the nothingness below her. The butterfly flew in the opposite direction, up into the nothingness above. But soon, that nothingness wasn't so bare. As she fell, Eden watched a massive structure emerge out of the dark space. She first saw a thick, clear tube, one that had very possibly been connected to the surface supporting her, stretching what seemed miles in distance below her. Then, as she continued to fall, she began to see several more of these tubes, and soon hundreds, twisting in intricate spirals, all coming together as a central unit lower in the sky. At the tops of these tubes, perfectly round, crystal balls squatted. Some kind of form occupied the center of these balls, lifeless and stiff. Eden realized, quickly, that these were people-- the true, real bodies of her friends in the community. Constantly, and at rhythmic intervals, things were being shot up and down through the tubes, creating a spectacle like a synchronized dance. Eden assumed these were the essentials The Martyrs shot up, things like food and water, and defecated substances coming down. The spheres acted as embryos attached to fallopian tubes, ultimately feeding off and depending on a hungry mother.

            As she continued to fall further, at more alarming speeds, she began to see the unit conjoining all of the tubes. It was a huge, grey structure, like a floating warehouse, suspended in mid air. With all of her renewed senses, she felt something terrible inside the building. It looked awful, a huge blot on the sky, dotted with small, crude windows. Something inside looked like it was burning and smelled like it, too. She could hear the low hum of fast commotion and a constant undertone of a sound like cackling. Soon, Eden was passing directly by the building. The air around it tasted like ammonia and sulfur. Thankfully, on her descent, she missed its jagged edges. But, as she passed it, she could feel, as though back in her sphere, an unreality. She imagined her body hurling onto its rough surface, crushing her small frame and exploding her self into a thousand little pieces.

            Once she had passed The Martyr's building, she felt the glow of a revelation-- a revelation that she had just experienced the misery of human existence for the first time through her own, real senses. If she weren't plummeting in a sickening spiral she might have enjoyed it more. However, she decided, if she were meeting her death, which she probably was, she would enjoy her real senses for these last few moments. She swan dived into the blackness below her, sucking in the rivets of air pummeling her cheeks. She felt the resistance of the wind against her body, thrusting her wildly through the open space. Her eyelids shook violently with the merciless friction, forcing the stars attracting her sight to disappear. In one deliriously happy, final effort, she screamed her heart into the wind.

            Eden then met the force of a large surface. She knew this was the end, and she knew that in two seconds her organs would fail because they had been splattered against this hard object. However, she didn't take into account that it wasn't actually a hard object. It was actually a very soft one.

            Cautiously, she allowed herself to open her eyes. A blinding light caused her to squint tightly at first, but her eyes gradually adjusted. Gathered around her was a small group of people. They had sun-kissed skin and long manes of hair. They were unwashed and unkempt, but at the same time, clean and pure and simple and everything a human aspired to be. It was their eyes that especially intrigued Eden. They were kind and wise, with laugh lines pulling their whole faces into wide, reassuring smiles. Curiously, their eyes all shared a common feature-- a radiant, amethyst hue. Eden thought, these people must be the most out casted exiles of all the communities of mankind. And then, she thought, these people are so imperfectly perfect, and so terribly, terribly beautiful.

            "Welcome," they said, and extended their arms.

            The people embraced her. This touching of people, she thought, was the most thrilling sensation she had yet to experience in all her imaginings.

            "Am I dreaming?" She asked desperately, bracing herself for the worst. "Or is this reality?"

            The scene was frighteningly just like the world of her imagination, but better. It was as though her awakened senses added an extra coat of color to the picture, colors she had never even thought of before. Instead of dusk, this might be what dawn looked like.

            Eden gasped in the glory of the sunrise, painting the feathery cumulus clouds with shades of rose and gold. She grabbed chunks of velvety, tilled soil beneath her, constructed to act as a giant cushion. It was mixed with tufts of blue green grass, so healthy it was glossy as licorice and soft as silk. She wondered if it was put together specifically to break the fall of those who escaped the sphere. It had worked almost perfectly for her. However, the pillow of earth had one fault. Under her foot, she noticed a silver rock, its sharp edge glistening in the sun like a coat of liquid mercury. She lifted the sole of her foot to find a painful gash, dripping with fresh blood.

            "You decide."