Escape from Paradise

Chapter 27: The New Beginning

In a dark room illuminated by tiny blinking lights moved a silhouette of human shape but it was not human. The body of the thing lacked elasticity and was almost mechanical. Every movement produced a silent noise of moving gears and cylinders. It rose up from a coffin stuffed with hoses drenched in oil. The thick liquid dripped down the thing's arms and splattered onto the ground. Two sun-yellow sockets on the apex of its shape gleamed in the dark.

"Lights, turn on the lights," the thing said in a lively robotic voice. There was a hint of joy in its words.

White lights turned on and the yellow glare diminished. Inside a human-size coffin that lay on the ground stood a faceless, featureless creature. It was naked but there was nothing to hide because its sand color body contained no reproductive organs or other intimate parts. The only organs that carried any resemblance to a human besides the limbs were a wide mouth and two glassy eyes. It resembled a car crash dummy more than anything else, only this thing had no visible joints – it was covered in an elastic rubber.

Levers clicked and cylinders squealed; others sounds of rusty machinery followed. The room became alive. The thing inspected its surroundings – there was at least a hundred more coffins opening up, a hundred dummies getting up, wiping oil off their synthetic skins, a great surprise in their movements as if they were aliens in an alien world who had forgotten who or where they were. The sand doll stepped out of its coffin. In slow poorly coordinated steps it scrambled to a container, one of many scattered around the great hall. Inside the container, there were clothes of all imaginable colors and shades. The thing picked up an olive cloak. Wrapped in the cloak. It moved to a stairway at the narrow end of the hall passing its undressed copies.

Many mechanical dolls just stood in the open and stared at their hands, their fingers, at other machines rising out of their coffins. They whispered to themselves in awe, "What is this? We finally made it haven't we?"

The cloaked thing came to the stairway. In front of the stairs leading down it was written, 'Paradise control, authorized personnel only.' In front of the stairway leading up, black letters said, 'Control rooms. Living quarters. Transportation equipment.'

The machine walked up. Moving in a straight line had been an excruciating task. Going up proved to be even more complex. To keep the balance it required incredible concentration. When it focused on walking it could not think of anything else. It was a body the thing had never used. The consciousness inside the machine had a human body once consisting of flesh and bone, not one of oil and cylinders. This body lacked sensitivity, fragility and appeared heavy. Nevertheless, the consciousness lurking inside this emotionless shell was in exultant joy. 'Free. Finally free.' it thought.

It paused on the first flight of stairs. There, behind a thick glass stretched an ocean of stars. A blue cloudy planet covered one-tenth of the visible space. Never before the thing had seen it but he loved it. It looked like home.

***

Two days had passed. The sand dolls now appeared more like sand people. The face covering rubber adjusted into shapes according to owners identities. They grew no hair, nor had any muscle lines or sinews. The creature in green rags had a distinguishable sharp nose and narrow cheeks. Even though the eyes were still a glass they carried complexity and insight of an intelligent person. It was the face of Jessie Green.

She and her colleague of male features operated a computer which to her disliking had too many buttons and too few manipulations using holographic imaging but the tiny things did not matter what mattered was that the spaceship worked like a clock. Everything functioned as it was supposed to, perhaps even better than she had expected. After all, machinery was turned on more than two thousand years later than it was supposed to.

The two robots worked by a window to space which stretched through the entire longest wall of the room. Behind the window, rocket-shaped spaceships darted towards the planet ahead in almost a perfect line. In a less orderly line, identical spaceships returned to the mothership. During the few days, the coffin room (as Jessie called it) produced human copies non-stop. When a machine left its coffin, the lid closed and in the box tentacles and hoses brought parts, melted them together and in an hour released another Sandman. There were thousands upon thousands of humans being restored to these clumsy shapes.

The ship contained human tissue samples and many embryos that were still locked up in the numerous freezers. Jessie was sure that using available laboratory equipment she will be able to recreate living humans. Mechanical bodies might break or rust, clones might die but they would reproduce and humanity would live on in one shape or another, or perhaps both. She was glad. Everything ended as it was supposed to end. Stupid Larry Smith and his games. She still couldn't believe how much it took to get out of his sandbox.

"I think we've done our work, Jessie," the man said. "Let us go and check it. I know you are anxious to see it."

"Indeed I am."

"Robert and Joey can look after the procedures when we're away. Can you?" The man raised his tone and two dolls clad in white coats standing a few meters away from them turned to him.

"Of course we will."

"Sure. No problem," they replied one after another.

Jessie and her colleague left the control room. They walked with ease, the artificial bodies moved with such a grace that they appeared more floating than walking. Their hips did not move up or down and the upper body was not affected by the leg movements which cut the distance a jot faster than those of humans would. After navigating through a maze of corridors they entered a steel elevator. Control panel inside the elevator contained more than twenty buttons. Jessie pressed the lowest and the smallest one.

A mechanical voice exclaimed, "For the floor of Paradise authorization is necessary. Please identify yourselves. Besides the panel of buttons appeared a digital window with hand contours. Jessie placed her yellow hand on the contour. Her skin rippled. Tiny metal rods shone through the transparent rubber as scanners light pierced it. "Approved."

The elevator moved down for ten seconds and the door opened. In front of Jessie's eyes stretched a dark room of unfathomable proportions. Fist-sized diamonds shone as far as the eyes could see – million of artificial stars. The diamonds were encased in vacuumed glass, their top and bottom tips held by polished golded rods. Most of the fist-sized diamonds were no longer working only a few still showed signs of operation – rainbow lights dancing inside them. Wires stretched from every crystal into complex machinery which contained a multitude of enlarged versions of the little diamonds. Light in some of them had diminished, one third of them did not work, few blinked just like light bulbs about to expire. Uncountable kilometers of wires stretched around the room joining and splitting up in between thousands of intervened devices.

Frozen in astonishment Jessie stammered, "M...m..my god, Jack, at what lengths did he have to go to assemble such a device. How much did have to cost? The price of all these things back then would have costed at least an entire GDP of the United States and China combined. To synthesize one diamond was what, a few hundred thousand bucks? When I watched at his project this thing was no larger than an ordinary living room."

Jack said, "The man must have sold his soul to the devil to get the money for at least half of it."

Together they stepped down from the elevator platform and entered the contorted womb that a few days ago held humanity imprisoned. It both terrified and astounded Jessie. She knew the skepticism the people had for Larry's project. What he had built here was incomprehensible, the costs and work power necessary to accomplish this wonder astronomical. Did he do all of this for the twisted love? She pitied the poor fool, his story was so tragic. The man must have had some mutated wrinkles in his brain to do this all for a woman. Did love had limits? What she saw in this room answered that highly unlikely.

"Jessie, do you want to shut it down?" Jack asked.

"Why would I? Of course not. Why would I wish to destroy a miracle? We had destroyed the first home, why do the same to the second? We should leave it as it is and perhaps one day even fix it, send it to another place. Its greatest prisoner had lost a lot, had had his revenge. Perhaps, he deserves to live. After all, he saved the human race. Didn't he?"