Escape from Paradise

Chapter 1: A Morning in The Paradise

Sun rose in a strange world of Paradise— a world subtly different from the one humans had once known and called their home. Paradise was a beautiful place in which things always changed for the better, in which disease, death, and suffering had never existed. It had many things the world called Earth once had, one of the things was time and even though everyone here had all the time in the world, one man often lacked it.

Hurrying Larry Smith rushed down a stairway. His light and silent steps were overshadowed by a loudening echo of a chiming clock which reminded him that he was being late. Dim sunrays pierced lingering dust through arc windows on landings in between the flights of stairs. As he passed a reception table with an idling robot floating behind it, Larry marveled at mechanical administrator's ability to ignore the violently beating clock above its head. To anyone leaving, the floating one-eyed-can of-trash which had two vacuum-cleaner hoses for hands always wished the same.

"Have a nice day," it said in a cheerful lively voice that sounded almost human.

"Have a nice day," Larry murmured, squeezed through a heavy double door, and entered the light outside.

The rising spring sun greeted him with a blinding smile and bleak, almost non-existent warmth. Larry covered his eyes with the back of his hand. He paced to the middle of the avenue covered in long building shadows, which would take a few more hours to retreat.

Two lines of matured birches and oaks with tiny buds stretched on both sides of the wide pedestrian path as far as eyes could see. Outside of the right line ran a soothing water stream which could be crossed with a single step. Silent apartment buildings -- five-story cubes that differed only in color -- twisted along the avenue that connected city outskirts with its center.

Sand color straps covered Larry from toes to neck. The common cloth of Paradise inhabitant wrapped around his feet, legs, waist, and arms. The lines it formed were thin, almost invisible. If Larry wished, with a vocal command he could change its color and shape and indicate what body parts should be covered. People shrunk them in the summer and widened and thickened in the winter.

Larry passed a gloomy young couple coming from the direction of the city center. They had tired eyes and walked wearily. They recognized Larry from a distance and waved him. He waved back with a smile and a nod that asked them if they had fun last night. With a shake of his head and a painfully spread thin lips, a man acknowledged that the pleasure was not worth the sleepless night.

The number of people in the avenue increased with every passing minute. They moved alongside Larry, away from the living districts and deeper into the city. Sometimes they passed him driving on bicycles, sometimes standing on flyboards and sometimes they ran by. Everyone, including Larry, was young, beautiful and energetic. They had been this way for as long as Larry remembered. No one got old and no one died. No one had permanent diseases or body disfigurations. No one had depression or other mental problems. They were perfect people living in a perfect world.

As Larry neared the city center which was still at least ten kilometers away from his current position, building shapes became stranger, more daring and taller. Soon they differentiated from the usual, identical apartment buildings he had left behind as day from night. There was a donut shop in the shape of a donut placed on its round edge. Its fluffy brown and black cover resembled the real thing so much that quite a few people must have bitten it or at least licked it to test the taste. On the right, there was a stack of rectangular glass cubes. Larry saw figures standing inside the cubes ducking, jumping, punching and kicking the air. Stranded in distant and imaginary worlds of video games they did their morning exercises. Next to the cubes stood a ten-meter high artificial indoor plant. On its room-sized leaves, protected by transparent waist-high walls, people sitting at the tables chatted while enjoying their breakfast. As Larry passed it, a smell of warm bread and sausage filled his nostrils.