Everyone was taller at parties in Heaven. It all began the moment you ran into an old friend and thought ‘Look at that. Isn’t Hassan taller than he used to be? I’ll grow a bit. Just for a minute, just to say hello’. Before you knew it, everyone was 2 meters tall for the night. That is, unless you’d invited some jerk who’d make himself 2.05 because the smallest semblance of equality made his blood boil.
At 1.95, I was the shortest guest in the marble hall of the floating dodecahedron palace. That’s including the barefoot guests who’d shown up as black and pink baroque statues, presumably to better match the picture perfect adaptation of the palace of Versailles to an environment where the walls provided gravity and the central space of the building was a zero g free for all. Thankfully, most of the statues were kneeling or seating in groups, engaged in typically pastoral activities: Reciting poetry, playing word games, and shapeshifting to play hide and seek.
The atmosphere was welcoming and relaxed. Guests everywhere smiled and moved leisurely. Except me. A deep sense of humiliation flared up inside me with every step, but my pride was riding in the backseat tonight. I knew what I was doing. I was attending this party to ask for a big favor.
“AIs aren’t people,” said Karl amid the roar of the party. “We aren’t even capable of killing them.”
A handful of people surrounded him, including my friend Hassan with his signature feline looks.
“That’s not how we define personhood,” replied a deep voice, appalled. A blue mask of metal condor feathers covered the man’s features.
“It’s how we should define anything we create. Wasn’t there a time when you looked at your son and thought, ‘Holy Mistral, I can no longer take him’?”
“Take him?” asked Featherman. His accent gave away that English wasn’t his first language, but I couldn’t locate it. I couldn’t remember geographical accents anymore. “You mean carry him?“
Karl’s smile shone bright.“No, defeat him in hand to hand combat!”
“I never had children,” I intervened. “The ROI is abysmal and only a moron would settle for passing their genes when your own brain can live forever.”
“Parents used to insist that kids give you meaning and joy,” Hassan replied. His voice sounded stiff, like he was quoting a blog post he’d read centuries ago.
“Losers. Even back on Earth, happiness was just a function of body chemistry. Feeling down this morning? You’re having a Russian novelist kind of day? Take some MDMA or have a doctor design you a mood cocktail. Keep it simple.”
“Is that what you did?” asked Featherman.
“I followed my own advice and didn’t regret it for a second. My chemistry wouldn’t let me.”
Karl and Hassan laughed, satisfied by my wit.
“Brother!” Karl said. “It’s so good to see you, Luke, welcome to my party. You have a point, but it’s strange to hear it from the guy who made his trillion with education AIs.”
“Kinda. Yes, okay. I guess those kids did get me here, but you can’t find them anywhere in Paradise. Or their parents. They’re all corpses buried in the cold earth. Their consciousness is gone while ours shines on for a million years.”
A wave of cheers greeted my remark. I bit my tongue and reminded myself not to get too theatrical, but they were loving it. All of us enjoyed reminders of how good we had it and how superior we were by virtue of being alive two centuries past our sell-by date. Better a neural network in a cloud server than food for maggots.
It was time to make my move. Dozens of guests surrounded us now. Everyone smiled and the air felt electric. I swallowed discreetly and opened my mouth again.
“Which reminds me, the living are fallible. There’s reasons, you know. The grinding low-level stress of inevitable death and all that. Errors slowly become the norm, and eventually they just make a big one. An angel visited me last night.”
Murmurs and scattered applause. Everyone observed me with renewed interest. I glanced up and my pupils dilated at the sight of two beyonder meditators floating above me in their blue silk robes, intrigued despite their best efforts. Their red-white eyes blazed like fire as they studied me. To my left, a woman in a white and yellow ceramic body waved at her friends to come over. Her arm’s art deco camouflage patterns vibrated randomly, creating a powerful sense of 3D hypnotic disorder.
Standing between a statue with a helix head and another with five smiling mouths, Hassan rushed to interrupt me like an excited child. “How many wings!?” he asked. The helix nodded. Others echoed his question. The room’s enthusiasm was predictable: Admin angels live among us, but they’re supposed to be invisible. The law prohibits them from communicating with us except for life or death reasons.
“Four wings” I replied. A woman with a larynx vocoder echoed my reply for the crowd and everyone gasped in admiration.
“Four wings is amazing! That’s a…!”
“An archangel, I know. But that doesn’t matter.” I turned to Karl. “The point is, she said my fee hasn’t been paid this month. That my account’s in the red and will be shutting down in 48 hours, which is obviously nonsense.”
Karl’s smile vanished.
“That’s annoying,” he said. He folded his arms tight.
“I’m so glad you understand, Karl. I knew you would. Can you pay my sub until this silly mistake gets corrected? Can any of you?”
Silence fell on me, awkward like getting naked in front of someone undeniably hotter than you.
“They want to disconnect me, Karl. They’re gonna kill me.”
“We don’t have access to the money. Like you don’t know that, right?. And handouts are criminal anyway. You gotta earn it, bro.” Karl hadn’t moved, but his eyes now looked to my right, focused on a group of deathly pale women in Roman togas and red berets.
“Earn what? Hey, listen to me, Karl. We’re not allowed money. We’re not allowed work. We’re not… you know this. I need a guarantor.”
Our host shrugged like a VC dealing with a nobody founder he’d just exited from his portfolio. And that’s what did it for me, the sudden indifference. Can you believe the fucking nerve? I introduced this ungrateful piece of shit to 24/7 nanodosing, back when he was a billionaire starting to grasp that money wasn’t an end, not when your body’s funeral march gets louder every day. And now this unbelievable coldness, this betrayal. My rage burned like the magma of the Yellowstone eruption.
“The first weekend Karl dosed, he was sweating bullets so hard, he’d text me every 20 minutes,” I shouted, trying to make eye contact with as many people as possible. “Constantly begging for reassurance that he wasn’t losing his mind. And I held his fucking hand all the way! You’re a snake, Karl. That’s all you‘ve ever been, and 200 years of immortality haven’t done you any good. What a waste.”
“We were having so much fun,” Karl replied. “Parties are supposed to be fun.”
The group nodded in unison.
“Snakes in the Garden of Eden,” I continued, my voice filled with poison.
The ceramic woman took a step forward.
“But the snake represents wisdom, Luke. Adam and Eve were despicable neets. The snake taught them to hustle,” she said. Her face was a flat mélange of tasteful desert-colored splashes. Her baritone voice was unfamiliar to me.
“Whoever you are, keep in mind the snake was expelled from the Garden too.”
“Bro, you’re not yourself right now. You gotta leave.”
I kept my mouth shut as emotions long forgotten overpowered me. Trepidation. Stress. Fear. Blind, animal panic punched me in the stomach like a heavyweight boxer. Its bile filled every corner of my mouth.
It took me a while to calm down and notice my surroundings again. The party had stopped dead and a thousand eyes were on me, all projecting the same gaze of disgust. I could hear their thoughts in my head, a thousand reproaches combined into a single line:
If you don’t belong here, just don’t be here.
My legs would shake if paradise permitted such weakness. My body would collapse.
*
Was I going to die? My rational mind estimated the odds at a solid 80% and recommended I act immediately. My instinct, however, felt calm, self-assured, and in control, because I wasn’t some random human with an 80-year lifespan. My peers and I were the boomers that got away with it. The apex of mankind’s prodigious history, only us checkmated time, the ultimate enemy. After all, death erupted as a by-product of time’s relentless, erosive attack on all life. Yet it was us that emerged victorious. In the past, access to Paradise required a lifetime of prayer, good works, and picking the exact religion God was partial to. A life of ridiculous fables with a built-in obstacle course. So Sandro Mistral, the greatest genius of the 21st century, built us a real Paradise. Thanks to him, dodging the big sleep only took a firm handshake and a cool trillion, USD.
It’s worth it Eternal life is the best invention since free trade, and with eternity on your side, the psychic burden of mankind’s struggle for survival melts like an ice cube. And then you know life, real life. It’s beautiful.
It suits me, but I’d always known I was built different. The rationality that drives me is exceptional. Like liberty, immortality would be wasted on the masses. The herd needs a firm hand, and History is the name we give to sequence of rulers holding the cattle prod. We escaped History, my peers and I, but suddenly time is knocking on my door again like a toxic cofounder. And it holds the cattle prod. Forty hours and counting.
My cry for help quickly became the juiciest gossip in Paradise. Which was hardly a surprise: No one had been evicted from our playground ever since it booted up two centuries ago. Our trillion dollar trusts are supposed to be recession-proof, plague-proof, and even nuclear war-proof. But mine hadn’t been for some reason. A stupid mistake, that’s what it must have been. A deathly mistake.
I paced the hallways of my mansion in a ruinous mood, theorizing about all the ways that this nightmare might have originated, fantasizing about all the ways I’d take revenge on those moronic admins. In my reveries, their legendary six-winged commander wept at my feet as he implored forgiveness.
What on earth happened? I kept on wondering. What on earth happened?
I asked myself the question a million times, for there was no one else to ask. Communicating with Earth was completely forbidden, no exceptions. World governments had always known how crafty we were, so when Sandro built Paradise, they established iron-clad rules to prevent us from becoming a permanent oligarchy: No contact with Earth and no updates on the state of the world. No new movies or video games. No memes and no music. Newcomers would retain their memories, but also be unable to discuss events that took place after Day Zero. If you grotesque trillionaires want history or culture, build your fucking own.
News travelled with powerful wings in Heaven, and my world quickly became one of shut doors and closed windows. Friends and admirers turned their back on me without a word, left me to rot and die. Death. It was getting closer, wasn’t it? My panic grew so intense that I didn’t notice the warm pulse of the notification system for an hour. A new friend request. I took it as a sign to get a hold of myself. I rushed to the kitchen slapping my cheeks, made myself a strawberry and mango joy cocktail with a triple dose of serotonin stimulants, drank a big gulp, and opened the calling card as my mood improved by the second.
Luke,
I heard the news and would like to discuss at your earliest convenience. But let’s not talk about the fee. A better solution is at hand, one you never imagined.
Kind regards,
Douglas Mult
I played an action movie soundtrack in the whole mansion for motivation and rushed to look up Mult. In a world where labor and money were half-forgotten dreams, social calls and status games were the main avenue left to satisfy our need for achievement. There were plenty of online resources to help with that banal mission. However, none of them could produce even a picture of Mr. Mult. Weird.
I extended my hand towards the wall and turned it right. The door between Douglas’s mansion and mine unlocked with the booming, crunchy sound of a vault’s lock. He was free to visit day or night. The house would alert me whenever the door opened, so I turned back to the kitchen, eager to top up my drink. Mood enhancers. Don’t go past noon without them.
A watery synth bell chime stopped me before I even left the room. My head turned to the door in surprise. There he was, Douglas Mult. I’d had no expectations about his looks, but he was surprising nevertheless. His head was covered in short, blond hair and his eyes were wide and hazel. Sharp features all over his face, including a small straight nose, perfectly symmetrical lips, a strong neck and male model cheeks. His body was well proportioned, like a professional swimmer’s who refused his coach’s advice to take steroids. But his outfit was the most shocking part of his appearance. It made me dizzy as I scanned him head to toe: A white t-shirt, blue jeans and white sneakers. Unheard of. The TV ad normalcy of it all was borderline criminal, designed to disturb and shocking beyond belief.
“I get that look a lot,” he said. His voice was hesitant and friendly. “Is it going to last long? One of us is running on borrowed time.”
Speechless, I shook my glass in the direction of the kitchen.
“I’ll follow you, Luke. Thanks for agreeing to my visit, by the way. You must be in the middle of a hundred plans to get your sub money or make the angels admit their mistake or whatever. Wrong approach, Luke. I’m sorry, but it’s the wrong approach.”
I entered the kitchen with light steps and opened my blue metal fridge. A hundred nourishment vials rested inside at an optimal temperature. You could eat all you wanted in Heaven, but why would you? Food is nothing to glorify. I’d dulled my palate back on Earth and saw no reason to change that when I ascended.
“You said it, Doug.”
“Douglas.”
“Douglas, of course. You said it: a mistake. Someone screwed up. The bank, the admins, I don’t know yet. I could devise a hundred ways to learn the truth. But that takes time.”
Douglas shook his head.
“Wrong approach, Luke. The root of the problem lies deeper. Why did we move here at all?”
I couldn’t believe my eyes and now I couldn’t believe my ears.
“Do you consider yourself lucky to be here?” he continued.
“Listen, Doug. I don’t know what flavor of kooky you’re trying to push down my throat, but I have 39 hours to live.”
“I’m not wasting your time, Luke. Think about it. They hated us, but they let us go so easily. Why?Our success, that’s why. The world felt intimidated, so they kicked us out. Immortality, what a racket! Immortality for what? Parties, costumes and gossip? Chemsex and romance by numbers? We didn’t need this bullshit back when we were alive. We had missions, visions and we changed the world. The press slandered us as vulgar hedonists, but we had purpose.”
I shook my head in disbelief.
“We moved here because Heaven’s an oasis. As good as we had it on Earth, death would have come for us too.”
“No. We would have found a way. A way to exist beyond death and still engage with the world. The bureaucrats and the young could feel it in their bones, so they kicked us out the moment Mistral invented this glorified dollhouse. The perfect excuse! You ever wonder where he is, Mistral?”
“Somewhere around, under an assumed name.”
My visitor smiled mischievously.
“No, I don’t think so, Luke. And do you ever wonder why the flow of newcomers has slowed to a trickle?”
The conversation was going from pointless to irksome. I took a long gulp of my drink and shrugged.
“I haven’t spared a thought on Earth since Day Zero and now you want me to guess what became of them? I don’t know. Maybe they’ve gone religious. Or maybe rich people have become scarce. It doesn’t matter.”
“Or maybe something better’s available in good old Earth. A better Heaven. Or immortality in the flesh. What’s the reason Heaven never gets updated? We all thought we’d be flying across the sky by now, possess absolute control over our environment, but we make do with skinsuits and little toys instead. Mistral failed., Luke We’re not lucky, we’re in prison.”
I let out a laughter with undisguised contempt. This entitled freak deserved it.
“We’re alive, buddy. I don’t give a fuck about cruising the skies like a hawk or shapeshifting into a fucking unicorn. Mistral was a saint. Use your head for a moment, Doug. Even the best video game risks destroying its players if a routine update goes wrong. What do you think could happen if they updated Paradise? A tiny malfunction could fry 25% of everyone’s brains and we’d all end up witless morons like you.”
“There’s no need for insults, okay? I came here to offer help. Our help. Crap. I’m really no good at talking.”
“Get to the point then, because I want you out.”
“Okay. We’ve found a way to go back to Earth. Alive, with human rights and access to whatever technology they’ve developed in the last two centuries. This golden cage is a distraction and we’ve had enough. Tiffany was right to call it a dollhouse.”
A shiver ran down my spine.
“Tiffany Danshoko? Are you serious? Why didn’t you mention Tiffany?”
“We’re not supposed to, but I’m terrible at proselytizing and conversations are so unpredictable,” Douglas said, his eyes on the floor. “Tiffany’s our leader.”
“Will she come visit?” I asked “Everyone’s wondering where the hell she’s been hiding.”
“She’s eager to talk to you, but she refuses to use doors these days. That’s the reason she stopped attending parties a year ago. Plus, she’s grown suspicious as we get closer to Turnabout Day. I proposed we call it Liberation Day, but she laughed it off.”
Stolen story; please report.
“When’s that?” I asked. My body leaned towards him now, and my voice wasn’t nearly as detached as I would have liked.
“In the next 39 hours, if you do your part. Tiffany will explain.”
*
Haters and know-it-alls will argue that Tiffany Danshoko inherited the fortune that made her the world’s first 100-trillionaire. “She was a singer!” they bellow with disdain. As usual, these pedants are wrong but will weasel out of their claims if you challenge them. The fact was, Tiffany did inherit about 500 billion when her husband died in a wind-surfing accident off a small Caribbean island, but that’s just the beginning of her story. A new widow, the singer ignored everyone’s advice, locked her in-laws out of the inheritance, and made herself CEO, kicking off a 20-year saga that turned an unremarkable Southeast Asian industrial corp into the largest rare earths, processing and transportation conglomerate in world history. And then, at 49, she left for Paradise.
I knew her by sight, but we’d never chatted in our two centuries of dolce far niente. Her voice I did know. I’d seen her sing once, at a party whose host I’ve since forgotten.
Now the wind hissed around me as I rode a maglev bike at fast as it could run. Douglas had shared Tiffany’s coordinates with me and insisted I avoid windows for the journey. Sinister forces might be at work, meddling to prevent the culmination of the freedom fighters’ plans. I was happy to see him go.
The coastal areas where I spent my life gave way to an endless sea of grass that Genghis Khan would have been proud to call home. Beautiful as the horizon was with its perfect fusion of dense green grass and a cerulean sky, the lack of sea or mountains made me feel exposed. I stepped on the acc.
Paradise was a pocket patchwork of climates and landscapes from every corner of Earth, ready to host a million immortals. But Douglas had a point: how come they never arrived? Three hundred of us ascended on Day Zero. Two thousand more joined over the next five years. And then, the trickle. I checked the numbers as I drove. Two newcomers last year. Less than 50 over the last decade. Something was off before everybody’s eyes and only Tiffany had noticed.
As the steppe transitioned into a conifer forest, the road became uneven and sinuous, forcing me to slow down. Gigantic firs and red cedars surrounded me. Their foliage shone in a hundred shades of green. Half an hour through progressively denser forests, and I finally stopped my bike. I took off my glasses and stood by a forest clearing presided by a breathtaking wooden cabin tall as a skyscraper, built in sharp angles and very Scandinavian. Polished wood and glass were the only materials. Sunlight filled the diaphanous interior of the house, but everything was still.
“Over here.”
The voice came from behind my back, right in the opposite direction to the house. The woman I saw when I turned stood in a regal pose between two firs, watched me with serene eyes, and had the oldest face I’d seen in Paradise. I knew immediately: That’s what she’d looked like on Day Zero.
“These Canadian forests are beautiful, but I’ll always prefer the dorian trees of my childhood. And the orchids, so many of them, and always so beautiful. What do you miss from home, Luke? You’re an American, right? No, Australian?’
The question hit me like a sharp rock hits a bare foot. I said nothing and walked next to Tiffany in silence as we moved into the forest.
Tiffany laughed.
“I know what you’re thinking, but the truth is undeniable, Luke. Our birthplace does matter.”
“It’s purely accidental.”
“Culture, then?”
“I never felt part of mine. Nobody with any brains did. Culture and nationality are contingent on time as much as they are on space anyway. What did it mean to be Indonesian a thousand years ago? Did the concept even exist? Does it exist now?”
Tiffany nodded like I’d scored a point.
“That very question changed my life. Do you know much about Indonesia? No? Perhaps you’re feigning ignorance. Nationality is such an taboo over here. Just ridiculous. You see, when the number of newcomers fell so drastically, I couldn’t help but wonder. If Indonesia is the hegemon of Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, where are all the Indonesian trillionaires?”
“No offense, but you could ask the same question about every other nation.”
“I wish. Every other first world country kept on sending people. In smaller numbers, sure, but they still came. Do you know the last time an Indonesian joined us? Ninety years ago! A catastrophe has taken place in my country, and whatever happened, I’m going to return and fix it.”
Her eyes were set on me, resolute and daring. I could easily picture her as the cruel corporate bulldog of legend. Rumor was, she’d dug out the foulest dirt on her board members, forced them all to resign and shamelessly replaced them with a group of 25-year-old business school lackeys. When her in-laws resorted to media war tactics, she told them exactly how she’d use her mafia connections to destroy their lives unless their journalists stopped calling her ‘Asia’s merriest widow’.
“I know returning to mortal life isn’t what you had in mind, but helping you stay doesn’t suit my plans, to be honest. Taking you back to the real world does. Who knows, maybe you can make another trillion and come back, if you really enjoy this sterile place so much. Listen, I know you don’t have time, but I didn’t feel safe having this conversation at that house. It’s not even mine, it belongs to a supporter. What I need is your commitment that you’re willing to do this. It’s time. Are you with us?”
“Maybe you could explain what you mean by that. I’m willing to try anything at this point, but it has to be something real, something that works. And going back to Earth doesn’t…”
“Doesn’t sound realistic?”
“You know it doesn’t.”
Tiffany nodded and walked again. Her steps were small and very quiet.
“I’ll tell you something no one’s ever revealed at a party: Admins walk among us a lot more than people think. Hundreds of them. And I’m not talking about AIs in a white-robed mannequin. There’s zero of those, actually. Did you know that? Some law requires that all admins be full humans. I think it’s a job creation program, but that’s besides the point.”
“I had no idea.”
“It’s true. Those hundreds of peeping angels constantly fly around us, invisible, safe and secure. But software being what it is, they get stuck every once in a while. They can’t disconnect from Heaven. The first time it happened, some poor kid was stuck with us for six days while his colleagues fed him via IV and cleaned his messes. They came up with a manual fix after that, a backdoor exit. Now, admins who get stuck fly to a secret location, get on a boat and sail into the horizon at dusk, straight towards the twilight Sun. They call it doing the turnabout. “
“They return to Earth that way?”
“And so we will.”
I struggled for words. The impossibility of back communications with Earth was the cornerstone of our existence. This was like discovering that the law of gravity had been optional all along.
“What about our bodies?” I asked. “It’s been two centuries.”
“Our bodies are fine. They’re forced to keep them alive and connected. We’re not dead, legally. They just never bothered telling us. Imagine, they can keep bodies alive for 200 years but they never offered to send us back. I still get angry when I think about it.”
I wanted to vomit. The thought of my body still alive back on Earth revolted me. It must be hibernating, or maybe connected to a hundred devices, with needles violating it everywhere. But if I could take control of it again, if that was the only way to avoid death…
“You excelled at sailing, back on Earth, didn’t you? That was your thing as a trillionaire, sailing these beautiful low-tech ships. The press gave you a lot of love for that.”
“It wasn’t a stunt. I loved my keelboat more than I loved my dog and I competed in the Olympics twice. No medal, unfortunately. I thought I had one more chance, but the next games got cancelled, you know. It was my childhood dream and I never made it. But a passion for the sea stays with you forever. Sailing was the only Earth activity that I kept after Day Zero. Every day, I sail.”
“I know,” replied Tiffany. “I’m told you know the coasts of Paradise better than anybody. I’m so excited that you’re going to find the admin’s boat for us, Luke. A greater achievement than a gold medal, in my opinion. You’re going to sail us back to Earth.”
*
If my friends had seen me during the last hours of my afterlife, they would have thought that I chose to spend them doing what I loved most, sailing. Except some details were unusual. My trusty schooner Son of Corto was nowhere to be seen. I sailed a flashy lime and yellow powerboat instead, the fastest catamaran you could find. My friends would have also been surprised that I chose to spend these precious moments with a handful of people no one had ever seen me with. But that’s all. I wouldn’t have let them aboard, sparing them endless conversations about snippets of admin gossip collected here and there. It turned out that Tiffany’s little circle had been operating for years, ever on the lookout for rumors about angels.
They weren’t easy to come by. The narration of my own unhappy encounter wouldn’t have caused such extraordinary delight otherwise. But Tiffany was a patient woman. Obsessive, some might say. A commendable trait in my book.
We only had a few hours, and I quickly realized that our mission was almost impossible. All we had the theory that Tiffany had revealed to me during our forest hike. It was too tenuous for me. I was a man of hard proof, and wouldn’t have given these theories the time of the day if it weren’t for my desperation. Time was running out, and so was my patience.
“Is that really all you have?” I shouted at the faces surrounding me on the boat. “There’s just three hours left and we don’t have a clue of where this cave might be.”
“You said seaside caves are rare.”
“They are, because who the hell’s going to use them. We’ve spent the last 30 hours sailing from cave to cave all over the coastline and we’re out of options. There’s just no more caves. I need more information, Douglas.”
“That’s it. Those are the only rumors that made sense, Luke. We’ll have to remain patient.”
I grabbed Douglas by his t-shirt and spat in his face as I spoke.
“I have three hours to live, you fucking moron. Haven’t you been listening, you self-centered piece of shit?”
“Sorry, sorry!”
A woman named Alma grabbed me by the arm, forced me to sit down and asked me to relax with the softest whispers her voice could emit. Indifferent to our scuffle, Tiffany stared at the coast through her chocolate sunglasses.
That was the whole group. Tiffany, Douglas, and Alma, a dark-haired woman with a bobcat and jumpy eyes who kept on rubbing her hands while she looked around, I assumed looking for invisible angels. I wouldn’t trust her with a sharp knife.
“Let’s discuss the rumors that don’t make sense,” Tiffany said. The others stared at her in surprise. She must have have enacted strict standards about what makes for worthwhile information. “Luke is trying to help us, after all. It’s the least we can do.”
“There’s the ones about sex,” said Doug.
“Be specific.”
“This beyonder was trying to convince me to give up sex, and claimed that angels watch us have sex all the time. It’s the best part of their job, apparently. I thought it was a weird belief, like thinking that God watches you masturbate. Beyonders will say the craziest things.”
“I can’t see how that helps us,” I said.
“Well, someone else claimed that you could take things further and shout for the admin angels to make themselves visible while you’re having sex.”
“And they have to show up?”
“They will if they think it could be fun. Then, you can negotiate, ask them for a gift in exchange for following their directions in bed. You have to do whatever kinky stuff they’re horny to watch.”
I laughed. What a bunch of children.
“What do you say, Tiffany? We could ask for directions to the cave.”
The woman didn’t move an inch.
“They don’t show up,” she said eventually.
“That rumor is false,” said Douglas. “Then there’s the paradox I could never figure out. It’s not about sex. My friend Calla heard that the boat will only leave Paradise if you’re sailing towards the Sun while you feel its warmth on your back. It doesn’t even make sense.”
Lightning struck my body and mind. A hundred thoughts raced inside me. Memories, surging forward, igniting my hope for the future.
“Oh, but it does make sense,” I said, thinking back to quiet summer days by the rocky islands of the Cyclades. “It makes plenty of sense.”
I ran back to the ship’s control panel and switched the engine on. Doug and the others tensed up, excited by my sudden mood shift.
“This guy just drank a cocktail and I didn’t notice,” said Douglas patting me on the back.
“Are you serious, Luke?” Asked Tiffany.
“Hold on tight. I’m gonna be pushing this beast to the limit in three.”
“Wait a minute, Luke, tell me this is not a joke.”
“Zero!”
My hand pushed the speed gauge faster than ever. Alma had been the only one to heed my warning, so Tiffany and Doug tripped. She fell on the surface of the boat, but the poor guy dove straight for the sea. Luckily for him, the others rushed to grab him by his legs and struggled to get him back in the powerboat. Tiffany’s mouth was open in astonishment. I heard a chorus of voices shouting, probably at me. I ignored the distraction. They had no idea how little I cared.
*
South of Paradise, the coast is barren and rocky. Yellowish grass dominates the landscape with a splash of rickety olive trees thrown in for good measure. The climate does mirror the Mediterranean coast on an exceptionally punishing summer, I guess, but the overt exaggeration had always irritated me. I loved the Spanish coast, had met more than one girlfriend yatching in Croatia and became a trillionaire shaking hands with Chinese businessmen across the white and blue houses of Santorini. I cried that evening, looking at the gorgeous town, thinking about my future now that I had the money to ascend. Would Mistral’s creation include anything as beautiful as the wonders of mankind, built on sweat and tears? I had to believe so. Death was no option for me.
Heaven’s South Coast lacked the beauty and charm of its real life counterpart. The reason for the neglect was unfathomable, but most attributed it to its catastrophic location. Sailing further south into the ocean got you literally nowhere. You’d think and feel like you kept on sailing, but the coast wouldn’t get any further and your coordinates would remain the same. Congratulations on finding the dull borderlands of Heaven.
“But what does that mean?” asked Doug, his wet blond hair all over his face. “Did the houses of Santorini reflect the Sun?”
“Not to the point of burning you back, but there’s a spot in the South Coast, an area full of white cliffs. The first time I sailed by, the Sun’s reflection blinded me. I thought it must be a programming error. Later, Later, I joked about that place at a few parties. I named it Finisterre’s Shining Cliffs, but it never caught on. Nobody visits the South Coast.”
“Do you know the caves in that area?” asked Tiffany.
“There isn’t a single cave in the Shining Coast, not one. But there’s something else that I thought was funny. An anomaly. Look.”
The boat turned sharply and the vistas of Finisterre’s Shining Cliffs opened before us. The Sun was falling, but its reflection off the cliffs burned with unwarranted rigor.
“Jesus,” said Alma covering her eyes. Even Tiffany had to avert her gaze despite her sunglasses.
“We could come back tomorrow, but you probably have an hour of sunlight, Luke,” she said.
Like I didn’t know that. I ignored her comment and focused on the stony white walls. I knew my way, so I kept straight towards the cliffs despite the blinding light. My eyes narrowed, looking for a patch of lime green. It must be close, really close.
“There is it!”
“What?”
“What is it?”
It took the others until we were next to it to understand what I’d been looking for. A 20-meter-tall stripe of green bushes, leaves and branches breaking the monotony of endless white rock. Not Mediterranean flora, not at all. The green branches belonged in a German forest, and the wide Amazonian leaves looked out of place like a brutalist apartment block in the middle of the palace of Versailles. It was an annex created in a rush with no attention to detail. And now I knew the reason: to hide a secret cave with an exit boat.
The catamaran kept on sailing at the green patch.
“Careful,” said Alma. “there might be a wall behind it.”
“No, there isn’t,” I said, and I accelerated into the leaves and the impenetrable branches.
Everyone screamed again, and I did pay attention this time. I loved it.
“We’re in, we’re in!” said Doug.
The catamaran had crossed the green veil, and now sailed calmly inside a huge marine cave.
“Look behind us!” Alma said.
We all did. The green wall was gone and the dusk sunlight filled the cave.
“The camouflage works one way only. Funny.”
The water gave way to a cozy little beach with a stone staircase on the right side. The entrance, probably. The beach sand was clean and intact. No one had been here for a very long time. Only us four were here to see the white and green fishing boat floating in the shallow waters just a meter from the sand. The boat’s name was hand-painted in blue letters: The Many-Colored Land.
I stopped my ship as close to the beach as possible. We exited the catamaran as a group without exchanging a single word and surrounded the fishing boat. The roar of the waves waxed and waned every few seconds with the rhythm of the tide. Water covered our legs to our knees.
Finally, Douglas broke the silence, tears running down his face. ”You fucking did it, Tiffany. I always believed, but to see this with my own eyes, to be a part of it...”
Tiffany nodded, trying to hold back the tears. She couldn’t.
“Let’s just wait a second here,” said someone else. Alma. Her voice sounded shaky and accusatory at the same time. “Do we understand what we’re about to do? Do we really? Sorry to be the voice of reason, but someone has to be.”
She took a step back towards the beach and held up her hands like she was scared of being shot by a bank robber.
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. We can’t just, like, take it for granted that this fishing boat will send us to Earth. We’re not admins. Rumors brought us here, gossip. This is all pointless if we’re going get ourselves killed.”
Douglas looked at her in disbelief.
“Does it work? We’re about to find out, okay?” said Douglas. “Luke found us the backdoor, Alma. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. The admins will block this route as soon as they notice us waking up. What’s the problem?”
“Well, there’re no, I mean, give me a break, Douglas, you… dying is the problem! Really dying! What if the boat only works for admins? You didn’t answer that. What if they kill us on the other side? Our escape wouldn’t make them look good! They might prove determined to cover up this incident. Start making sense, people! Sandro Mistral said we could never return. Shouldn’t we take his word for it? All I’m saying is, there needs to be a discussion.”
Tiffany waved her hand, dismissing Alma like a boring guest at a birthday party.
“You can quit, Alma, no one’s forcing you to be here.”
“I’m not saying I want to leave. Are you kicking me out?”
“Just fuck off, okay? I don’t have the time to validate your cowardice and I never liked voyeurs. Leave now!”
She did, running towards the staircase as fast as she could. Her steps echoed in the cave long after she disappeared.
The last sun-rays of the day shone on us. Tiffany looked solemnly at Douglas and me in the eye. I nodded. We felt strong and fierce, about to awake from a slumber of 200 years.
“It’s time,” she said.
I held the green rim of the fishing boat with my hands and Tiffany raised her left leg. It landed on the deck’s flat wood and Heaven turned black and white for a second. I was breathless with confusion, but color came back almost immediately. Tiffany finished climbing aboard and walked to the back of the boat to help us join her. She smiled shyly at me and Douglas.
“It’s hard to believe, but I was so nervous that I lost my sight for a second. Not my sight, just the color, actually. It doesn’t matter. Let me help you up.”
“That happened to me too,” said Douglas.
My mouth was as dry as desert sand, but I managed to part my lips with Herculean effort.
“Me too,” I said.
Transparent blue water lapped my legs and the sound of crashing waves filled the cave. Everything else was silence. Confused, I tried to find reassurance in my companions and a shiver of horror gripped me head to toe like a vengeful ghost.
The eyes of Tiffany and Doug were locked in horrific fascination at something behind me. When I turned, mine too were attracted like magnets to the presence floating above us.
The admin was emaciated, perfectly androgynous, and hovered in a perfect spot between the sea and the cave’s ceiling. Halfway between us and the cave’s only exit. Blonde hair fell in perfect locks over her shoulders, and her arms rested limp at her side. Her cheeks and lips were full with baroque exuberance. Her eyes felt like two sharp daggers slashing the palm of your hand. The evening light reveled in the opportunity to bath the ivory feathers of her two, four, six, eight wings. The largest pair spanned three times the size of her body. A Stradivarius voice echoed in the cave, kindhearted and boyish despite the words it carried.
“Douglas Mult and Tiffany Danshoko, who would believe your ingratitude and your selfishness? Immortality doesn’t satisfy you. Paradise is lacking. The truth is, your heart screams for power and domination. It yearns to matter. You’re lucky I’m not as emotional as you are. The punishment will be fair and fit the crime, this new, terrible crime. Hear me: You’ll walk in circles around this boat that you desired so much, but your body’s speed will be reduced to a thousandth part of what it is. Your minds will remain intact, for you need to reflect on your ingratitude and your recklessness. The lack of food and water won’t kill your bodies. Your sentence will last… ”
“Wait a moment, wait!” Tiffany shrieked.
“What’s your name?” asked Doug smiling. He looked like a teenager in love.
“Alem is my name, but you know that already. Come on.”
“We demand an appeal!” cried Tiffany.
The admin angel floated absently, like Tiffany’s words made no sense. Her wings moved with slow elegance. I could have watched those wings move forever.
”Denied,” the angel said. The word came out in the same silky voice, but it wasn’t a compassionate friend that said it. A strict father did. The request hadn’t paralyzed the admin, she’d been processing it. Checking with someone else, but with who? No one had even speculated that an angel with eight wings existed.
“That was quick,” I said, immediately regretting calling attention to myself.
“VIP support SLAs,” she replied. “The fastest response time for my valued customers. So, yes, 10,000 years. Now let’s talk about you.”
*
The cave is rarely empty these days. Dozens of visitors descend the staircase every day, tipsy and excited. They marvel at The Many-Colored Land and dare each other to climb aboard, playfully pushing each other towards it. Every day, a naughty visitor grabs a distracted friend and throws him into the fishing boat. It’s fine. The boat’s nothing but a tourist attraction now. Laughter fills the air.
Humble silence is the most common reaction when the visitors watch the bodies of Tiffany and Douglas. And respect for the punishing angel. There’s no respect for the entitled brats who thought themselves better than immortality. The visitors look at them, smell them, touch them. Sometimes, a cheeky guest even moves them. But most just stare, trying to see them move. It’s good luck if you see them move. Guess who saw Tiffany move once? Alma did. Twice lucky, that woman.
Sooner or later, it’s time for the lecture. There’s always a visitor who knows the code. Two brief claps, a pause, then three longer claps. I can’t resist it. I stand up from whatever corner of the cave is my home today, walk up to my former co-conspirators and begin to tell the story. It’s a long one, filled with ambition, excitement and hubris.
It’s a cautionary tale that enraptures all immortals, because they love it here, and they love to be reminded of how clever they are. They cherish Heaven as much as I did before my world was turned upside down.
In my lowest moments, I remind myself that I succeeded, in a way. Alem reinstated my account so that I can serve my sentence and promised I’ll have a clean slate after that. I won’t die. I won’t disappear. Yet I can’t exit this cave for 10,000 years. Once, Hassan and Karl were among the visitors. My condition appalled them. Hassan kept on shaking his head, and Karl placed his hand on my shoulder and asked me a question in a hushed tone: After all that had happened, did I consider myself lucky? That’s a question I can’t answer. I can’t speak of anything but the tale. Am I lucky? I think to myself. The way I see it, 10,000 years is a fleeting moment compared to the eternity of joy and pleasure ahead of me. My name is Luke, I’m still immortal, and yes, I’m feeling lucky.