Billy Jones could say one thing for sure: the plain satellite images of the corporate headquarters he had pulled from the internet not long ago, out of sheer curiosity, must have been from a time when the Central Park HQ Zone was still open to the public. He vaguely remembered walking here as a little boy with his mother (who, in truth, was a stranger), strolling through what was then called Central Park. Today, it looked completely different: larger, grander, more sterile, and with a new name. The Garden of Eden welcomed its residents with a towering statue of Professor Doctor Henry Thandros, about half as tall as the walls enclosing the self-proclaimed Paradise.
The bronze statue of Henry Thandros leaned on a cane, a detail Billy found surprising—it seemed like a symbol of weakness. But then again, he thought, when you’re holding the globe in your right hand like the statue was, even with a cane, you’re still plenty powerful.
Billy made a wide arc around the monumental statue and ascended the stadium-like steps leading to the terraced park. At the highest level stood a tree so magnificent that Billy assumed it must be fake. Its dense foliage shimmered in the artificial breeze, stretching across the top terrace and casting shadows beneath the artificial sun. Unlike a real sun, it didn’t radiate heat, only a soothing warmth, like a comforting embrace.
Strange weather, Billy thought, considering that beyond the Paradise walls, behind the force field, a snowstorm was raging.
The energy shield, a dome spanning the entire Central Park HQ Zone, not only kept out the elements and prying satellite eyes but allowed the residents of Paradise to live in a perpetual summer idyll.
"Speaking of Paradise residents," he muttered under his breath. That’s when he saw, for the first time, a person beyond the walls. The man wore linen trousers and a shirt, tending to a flowerbed in the shade of the tree. It was a near-perfect garden, an absolutely symmetrical arrangement of brightly colored flowers. From the man’s stature and the way he moved, Billy was almost certain he knew who it was.
"Are you… a clone of my father?"
The old man didn’t turn around or respond. He continued calmly digging a small hole in the soil and planting a flower in it.
"Answer me," Billy demanded.
Still, no reaction.
The man worked the soil with a casual indifference.
"I’m done playing these games." Billy reached out and grabbed the man’s shoulder. But something—fear, perhaps, or a gut instinct—stopped him from spinning Nicholas Curtis’s double around.
Instead, he let go.
Resting his hands (one still holding the small spade) on his thighs, the old man straightened his back and fixed his gaze forward, on the trunk of the tree. He paused like that for a moment before turning to face Billy.
What Billy saw made him scream.
He stumbled backward over one of the tree’s roots and fell onto the grass.
The man wasn’t Nicholas Curtis.
But what was he?
The old man stood, abandoning his work. He had no ears behind his white hair. No eyes in his face. No mouth to speak with. His face was blank, as if erased. He waved the spade frantically in the air, clearly agitated by the intrusion. With wild gestures, he made it unmistakably clear that Billy shouldn’t be here.
As the man stepped toward him, Billy scrambled to his feet and bolted across the brilliantly green lawn. He skipped the steps on the far side, instead clambering down the terraces until he reached the other side of the park. There, a figure stopped him on the walkway—a figure that was his exact double.
Tall, lanky, with long limbs, a large head where dark veins pulsed, and enormous black eyes as deep and empty as the void of space.
"You shouldn’t have gone up there," the double said kindly, but with concern. "The one who lives on the top level is the Senseless. No one but him is allowed to tend the Tree of Life. No one but him may set foot on the top level. No one except…"
Billy took a deep breath, still shaken by the encounter. That ghastly, nightmarish visage—that technically wasn’t even a visage—still haunted him. He managed to get out a single word: "Except?"
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"Except our Creator."
Billy inhaled sharply, studying the being before him. Now he understood—it must have gone through the same horrors he had.
"And your Creator," he began cautiously, "is his name by any chance Hen—”
"Shhh!" the being hissed. "We must not speak his name."
A woman in a white robe came running down the street, waving. As she crossed the path of a cyclist, he rang his bell once, warning her of her carelessness. She smiled apologetically, and he gave her a friendly wave in return. Both the cyclist and the woman shared the same features as Billy and his double: translucent skin, spindly figures, and large, empty eyes. The cyclist’s bald head gleamed as he pedaled off.
The woman, haggard and bald like the others, was distinguishable only by her long robe. And her voice, maybe. Otherwise, the Paradise residents were completely androgynous.
"A new brother," the woman said cheerfully. "What’s your name?"
"Billy."
The man and the woman exchanged doubtful looks.
"I don’t believe you," she said.
"Why not? Do you think you know me?"
"None of us have such peculiar names. Our names reflect our finest qualities, the traits we are most proud of. I am Nobility."
"And I am Humility," the man added, as though he needed to explain his name. "Because I honor my existence, remember our Creator, and show my gratitude through prayers and offerings."
"I am Piety," said another woman, who had grown curious and joined them.
Billy frowned, hesitated, and then stepped past them. "I’m sorry, but I need to keep moving."
"You need to? What does that mean?"
He stopped, turning back to face them. These strange figures who looked just like him. "It means I have obligations, and they’re taking me to the Thandros Tower."
"Obli… Thandros what?"
The beings exchanged amused glances. By now, others who had been wandering nearby stopped to greet Billy and inspect him with curious eyes. He pointed to the sky, where the tower loomed above the other buildings—structures clad in gleaming white panels, clinically pristine, glinting in the artificial sun.
"They’re right," he whispered. "That’s not the Thandros Tower. That’s the Tower of Babel."
"You won’t get in there," the woman called after him. "No one does. That’s where our Creator lives."
"And he’s expecting me," Billy shouted back.
The beings exchanged looks again and broke into amused giggles.
"The Special One," one of them said. "That’s what we’ll call you. You’re the Special One. But tell us, where do you come from? Your clothes are strange."
One of the beings stopped in the bike lane, placed a foot on the ground, and gestured toward Billy’s lab coat with a free hand.
Billy felt as though he had stepped through a portal to an alien planet or traveled in a time machine to a distant future, where people had nothing better to do than spend their days making them as trivial and cheerful as possible.
"Let me ask you something instead," he said. "Where do you think you come from?"
The beings glanced at each other in turn. A voice from the crowd gathered around the Special One said, "Our Creator brings us into the world."
Another added, "He created Paradise for us."
"A place where you never have to work?" Billy asked, already suspecting that the very concept of work was foreign to them. But then another of the carefully bred beings said, "The Courteous do all the work for us."
"The Courteous?" Billy repeated.
"Yes, you’ll see them on your way to the tower. They keep the city beautiful and clean. They do everything for us. But we won’t keep the Special One from his journey, especially if he is to meet our Creator. Will you tell us what he’s like when you return?"
Billy didn’t answer. He had already left the curious stares behind and was jogging down the street past an old university building, now a religious sanctuary for the Paradise residents. He saw all kinds of beings spilling out of the doors, each identical to himself. They all wore the same light-colored robes, and many carried the same large book under their arms—like an illuminated manuscript from the Middle Ages, adorned with gemstones and gilded edges.
Despite the air of peace and serenity around them, the Paradise that Thandros had created was anything but desirable. It was a warped hermitage of naive, manipulated beings. What did they know of the world beyond their protective dome? The students greeted him as he passed. He smiled politely in return, nodding briefly, unable to bring himself to raise his hand in greeting.
Those were the teachings of Professor Doctor Henry Thandros, he thought, bound in the heavy books they carried. Books filled with thousands of lies. Professor Doctor Henry Thandros—a megalomaniac who had built a tower to the heavens and created his own little race.
"Excuse me, may I pass?"
Billy, startled from his thoughts, reflexively stepped aside before turning toward the male voice. A street sweeper—Nicholas Curtis—was brushing the path in front of him. Just like Nicholas Curtis mowed the grass on the campus, cleaned the hundred windows of the university building, or drove the shuttle bus that picked up waiting students. Farther down the street, Nicholas Curtis was working at an open manhole as part of a team made up of more identical copies of himself.
Not the Courteous. The Curtis.
They were everywhere in Paradise where there was work to be done.
Billy held his breath for a moment, and his heart seemed to skip a beat. His mind was so consumed with making sense of the strange world around him that even the basic functions of his body seemed to falter. Then, all at once, the thousand puzzle pieces he had collected over the past days assembled themselves into a complete picture.
Billy exhaled in a long, steady stream.
"My God, you’re all just androids, aren’t you?"
The street sweeper stopped, leaned on his broom, and seemed to think for a moment. Finally, he nodded. "Just androids," he said, smiling. Then he turned his back to Billy and walked away, sweeping the already spotless path ahead of him, slowly, methodically, as though he would keep at it until the end of the fucking world.