Escape from Paradise

Chapter 2: The Waterworld

For a moment Diana and Larry paused in front of a dinery. Behind the glass windows guests comfortably sat and lay in soft beddings. On its flat black roof tilted at a slight angle lay a great bun with bits of ham and melted cheese so vivid that you could almost taste it. From the outside, the building smelled of sausage, butter, cheese, and all other ingredients used to make a proper sandwich.

They stepped through a heavy single door and a thin ringing bell informed a floating robot by the bar table of their visit.

"Welcome," said the one-eyed, four-handed, ball-shaped floating robot in a most polite manner. His colleague of identical appearance buzzed out of a doorway from behind the bar and flew to one of many glass rooms circling the perimeter. The robot added, "Please take a seat in one of the empty rooms and make your selection. Rooms with a green light are empty."

Green lights gloved above four-fifths of all doors. Diana pulled Larry to a room in the corner, facing the street from which they came in and an empty narrow passage.

They sat on soft round stools which inflated the moment the couple sat down. Moving up along their backs and forward under their feet, the stools turned into armchairs. When Diana and Larry twitched their muscles or adjusted the seating position, the armchairs moved and changed to perfectly fit their body shapes. A knee-high table in between the stools also changed. It grew larger, broadened and elongated, forming a great leaf shape on its top until it was within an arm's reach of both visitors.

Holographic menus popped out in front of them. Moving the tips of his fingers, Larry scrolled through a grid of a dozen drinks and twice as many morning meals, most of them sandwiches. Diana finished her selection in a matter of seconds. She then entered a menu which controlled the appearance and background sounds of the room.

One could turn the room into a space rocket with a window to Paradise on one side and a window to Waterworld on another. It could become an underwater dome or a booth in a stadium of a recorded football game. Diana knew precisely where she wanted to be. Slowly the dinery around them disappeared and became achromatic space. Billions of sand grains slid under their feet. Transparent ocean blue water flowed in from the opposite direction and joined the line where the sand ended. Calm waves rushed along the shore stopping a step away from their seats. A palm tree grew out of the ground behind Diana and provided a light shade from the dazzling sun which shone brightly but provided no warmth.

"Much better now," she said.

A robot pierced the illusion coming from the direction of the door. It asked, "Are the guests comfortable?"

"Yes," Larry and Diana replied in unison.

The robot said, "Coffee with milk and two bacon sandwiches with a garlic sauce for the lady. Black coffee and an omelet with spiced butter bread for the good sir. Am I correct?"

"Yes, you are."

"Do you have any other requests?"

"No."

"Ok, then. Be right back." The robot flew off to the direction it had come from.

Diana crossed her legs and laid back. Swinging the top leg, staring Larry into the eye, she cut through the silence, "So, darling, how were your two weeks without me? Any adventures or mischiefs I should know about?"

After a brief giggle, Larry explained, "By mischiefs do you mean those dangerous habits of mine to feed pigeons, water the plants in my room and the stairway, go to library, visit galleries and of course the most extreme of them all: to play background characters that stand still or speak like fish are very adventurous."

"Well, there must have been something interesting that must have happened in your life over such a long time."

"I was working by my book most of the time. Can't think of the ending. My publicist is calling every day and I am running out of excuses. I had promised him to delvier the story in a week but it will take at least three more"