There is a lot of gossip about why the prehistoric dinosaur world ended and why the Garden of Eden was created to replace it. Since no official explanation was issued, everybody around the universes has felt free to speculate on the subject.

The most accepted story is that God the Creator of All had decided on a lofty and sublime new design for Earth, involving placing humans into a new setting created just for them. Such a unique project would be interesting to intelligent beings everywhere.

You may find it odd, but I realized that I was interested in the new project too. I wanted to work on the fascinating plan to turn the ruined prehistoric Earth world into another lush garden, this time filled with an explosion of modern animals and plants. So, I applied and was sent back to the redesigned Earth.

This new project was officially named the Garden of Eden.

It’s a name that is often used rather generically for the whole Earth at that time. However, the actual Garden of Eden refers to a specific section of Earth that had been created with definite boundaries. Those boundaries were not hard edges or walls, but were simply places where the perfect bountiful environment ended. Adam and Eve, as the first two humans, were intended to reside inside the Garden forever. Their lives were very pampered and every need was provided in the most beautiful ways.

Luscious fruit literally dropped from the trees onto Adam and Eve’s laps. All food just appeared to the pair when they wanted it, often in beautifully woven baskets. Shelter was provided by interwoven vines that grew into pavilions placed just where they needed to be, out of the wind and with exquisite views in all directions. The amount of sunshine and the daily temperatures were always just right.

Every view in the Garden was charming and every animal was enjoyable to watch. Adam and Eve had no need to learn to garden, or to hunt the graceful animals in their domain. This beautiful and most special garden, set as the most superb location in the middle of a vast variety of exquisite landscapes, was a delight. It seemed that only a glorious future was possible here.

I have often been asked about what kind of relationship I had with Adam and Eve while I worked in the Garden of Eden. To tell the truth, there was no relationship at all.

I was under strict instructions from the creator gods, who have the task of setting guidelines for us mere Garden workers, not to have anything to do with them. This prohibition was to ensure there would be no chance of accidentally taking any action that could change the way Earth history was meant to unfold. Remember that we were at the very beginning of Earth’s new timeline, and the consequences of any mistake would be magnified and continue to resonate throughout history. I got to be very good at hiding from the pair as they travelled the Garden.

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I did admire Adam and Eve, though. They had been fashioned to be beautiful to look at, but had been expected to have little more intellect and personality than two statuettes on top of a wedding cake. It seems astonishing that everyone had forgotten that they had been given the capacity to develop more advanced thoughts.

Although all of their desires were met and there was no need for evolution of thought, the unexpected happened. The humans started to develop intelligence.

First of all, Adam and Eve looked at themselves in pools of water and became aware of themselves as living beings separate from each other. They listened to birds twittering and got the idea to develop language, so they could more easily communicate with each other.

Adam and Eve started to look at the teeming life around them and compare observations. They exclaimed out loud at the variety of living things that filled every possible area in their Garden. They noticed that plants droop and die without water, and this led to noticing the great waterfalls and peaceful lakes all around them. They wondered why water flowed, where it came from and where it went.

They puzzled over why we have blue sunny skies and gray rainy days and green living plants. They watched the animals and wondered why each species acted so differently, and why animals even existed.

They eventually started to wonder why they were made so very differently from the wildlife around them, and why they were the only two of their kind. After all, they could easily see that every type of animal had babies that grew up to start their own families.

Also, they could observe that every animal and insect in the Garden enjoyed apples. Apples were an important food source, plus they looked and smelled delicious. Why had apples been ordered to be off limits to humans? Berries and other fruits were just fine for a meal. It was a prohibition they didn’t understand.

I loved watching the two humans in the Garden of Eden. I thought their evolution into thinking humans from a very rudimentary humanoid design was coming along very well. The Garden around them just got more and more beautiful and complex, too. The continuing increase in the variety of animals and plants living there was astounding. There was plenty of room for the Garden to expand, so I felt like the project could develop indefinitely.

I was so enthused that I decided to change my traditional gnome name. My name had existed only as a thought form in the gnome psyche. It contained various references to my clan, the planets I had worked on, work specialties, close friends, and on and on. The thought form would have been impossible for humans to pronounce even if I had tried to translate it. Instead, I took the name Eden as a tribute to this special land and the two humans in it.

Eden is a name quite befitting a gnome who spends his lifetimes working on beautiful gardens throughout the universes. I love the name. However, most people still just call me Gnomy, which works as well, I guess.

As with the dinosaur project, I thought that the Garden of Eden would be a long-term success on Earth. And as before, it just shows how little I understand the thinking of the Creator of All.

The Creator decided that a problem was starting to develop: the humans were too curious. Just because Adam and Eve couldn’t answer the multitude of questions they thought about, didn’t mean they wouldn’t stop asking them. Just because they were forbidden to consume a fruit, didn’t mean they wouldn’t find that prohibition to be puzzling and hard to accept.

Adam and Eve didn’t realize it, but due to their dawning intellect they were about to set off an upheaval that would shatter their perfect world.