Grandma’s story of «Once upon a time…»
Once upon a time, on a beautiful morning, the spaceships of the newcomers soared up into the bottomless blue sky of Earth. Now, that the mission had been accomplished, the gods were returning back home. They disappeared from the face of the Earth once and forever, leaving behind a whole colony of clones. The Law clearly stated, that any trace of the god’s presence on a planet should be erased, swept out. Nevertheless, those have survived. How come?
That night a career of his lifetime was risked by the Satan — an unforgivable sin was made in the name of love, in the name of the goddess, who Satan would follow beyond any limits, if she had only asked. He wouldn’t think twice to do anything impossible for her, of whom he dreamed all his sleepless nights. In the name of Eve… Eve — a goddess, his girlfriend at the school times. Eve — a sweetheart with a timid-gentle smile. It’s by Eve he was doomed into a pain of loneliness to wander in a space of boundless grief, hiding the mystery of that last night on Earth.
This story began a long-long time ago, faraway from Earth, on the god’s home planet Paradise. To make it short, there were 3 friends: Satan, Eve and Adam. An eternal trinity of inseparable friends, they were growing up, dreaming since that childhood to go to a school of angels (which means «pilots») and then fly to distant planets to explore the world together… Working hard days and nights, all three of them passed the tests to enroll. Years of study had flown by like a comet in the sky. It happened to be that Eve and Adam felt in love and engaged… Satan got so upset, that he changed his course of study to be an archangel. He would be the one to clean up any evidence left of the god’s visit to a foreign planet. After the school Adam and Eve went on a few missions, navigating spaceships as they used to dream. But Satan was not there, they never heard from him, until their ways got crossed on Earth.
That was a last night on a beautiful blue planet. Next morning Archangel would say «goodbye» to it with a huge explosion, leaving behind a ridiculous bloody grin of death. Clones were created in an image of gods. They took after gods in appearance, but could use only a fraction of brain that contained the data accumulated during a current life. Clones had a mind of a child, just enough to perform a norm of rough, heavy work. When the gods leave, all clones had to be destroyed, were supposed to disappear as a kind, as a form that came from the outside. The echo, the trace of coming, clones could not be left to live on any planet. And the road to Paradise was undoubtedly closed to them.
Archangel of Death, Satan, was ready to execute the Ceremony of Purgatory. Everything that came from the gods — right and wrong, would disappear in a flame of explosion. Suddenly — alarm!! A bolt from the blue — there was trouble… Eve was crushed by the news — Adam’s body got killed in an accident. She cried and from down on her knees begged Satan;
«Let me see Adam before he has left completely! Help me to clone a new body for him… last night… give me a chance to say goodbye!»
«Eve», said Satan, «it would not be him, that’s impossible, you should know! The clone of Adam will only have a recollection of Adam’s recent life, don’t get fooled with a surface similarity!»
«The life when we met… will he remember our love?»
«Yes», Satan nodded.
«That’s enough. I beg you…»
It was obvious to Satan that this situation would lead to no good. His answer would be «No» to anybody, but Eve… Even if he had to serve his next lifetime in Hell for this crime, he couldn’t be stopped. Didn’t he know right then that that was the last time for him to see Eve? Didn’t he understand that with his own hands he was helping her to walk out of his universe once and forever? Having plunged into the sad eyes of Eve, Satan didn’t think twice, he was there for her no matter what.
A rib of the god Adam’s body had been taken out. Not hiding her fright, Eve enclosed Adam’s rib into a sarcophagus. Hours of waiting went by in a silence… Adam loved Eve so much, that he decided to accept a cloned body and live within it. And so, a new person was created before Eve and Satan: spiritual half — god, body half — clone… with a childish mind in between. New Adam he was… human, sentenced by his fortune to forget at the very first body death all he had known.
«Wake up, Adam!», Eve kissed him, the sleeping beauty, «Open your eyes!»
Did she really believe then that after saying «goodbye» to her Adam she would leave him on the planet to die amongst other clones? Did she really think that she wouldn’t fall in love with a New Adam at the first moment she saw him again? Had she forgotten that by the Law, any god that fell in love with a clone would have to share the clone’s future for his lifetime and would not be able to return to Paradise with him? Had she forgotten or there was no time for her to consider all that? I know the one thing for sure, Eve was in love.
Adam and Eve, holding hands, having broken any possible flight rules and regulations, went down to Earth.
Night was short… not enough time to embrace all the love that Adam and Eve felt for each other. They found and walked a footpath to the river and over the bridge. They were going to a village of clones, that shined by the window lights through the night. They were going to stay there and live as long, as gods would let them. Adam and Eve were walking into their future and there were left less and less lights, as earthmen would fall asleep. Silly people, they dreamed to fly to a Paradise… Silly people, they put their dead men in «sarcophagus»… Sending their praise to the sky, they directed hands and thoughts towards an upper world, where a Father should be… Poor creatures, left to live on the planet forgotten by gods.
Time passed by and the original clones in due course degenerated into monkeys, into the spiteful gorillas and thoughtful orangutans. Whether in the program there happened to be some defect or simply they got bored with no work to do… who knows? But from Adam and Eve a mankind was led, and from the essence of gods it was conceived. Children of unearthly love, granted with a great gift of soul that came from their parents, survived a glacier and a flood and invented ways to relay their knowledge and experience to a next generation.
Adam and Eve had lived in love ever since, until the moment of darkness came to break them apart. Adam couldn’t make it through the long night of body death without having lost all of his memories. For Eve, it was no different than any gap between her falling asleep and waking up, clearly remembering her previous life as well, as she remembered yesterday. As Adam was human, he woke up into his next life not only having forgotten Eve, but not even remembering himself. «Who am I?», «What is the meaning of life?» — People have been asking themselves ever since. «How do I find my love?», «How do I recognize it?» — They keep asking now. People on Earth are searching for their «best half» running into each other as blind kittens, when Eve can see her loved one in the eyes of any and every one of them, but… «Good night», Grammy kissed her little boy, who fall asleep while the story was told, «Sweet dreams to you, my dear Adam! Sleep tight, as one day you will wake up to remember who you really are.»
Апрель, 2005
