The Kingdoms of Eden

Prologue: In a beginning...

In an age long past, in a place long forgotten, there stood a lonely cottage. All about the tiny structure, a vast, primal forest stretched forth in all directions as far as the eye could strain. The trees of the immense expanse of woodland swayed, and twisted, and pulled, in dead, still air. The youngest of the plants pulsed a thick, black fluid, not unlike blood, through a rigid circulatory system, and some formed muscle and other tissue. The elder trees had given up on such pointless experimentation—they had settled on the still perfection of wood and leaf when they happened upon the means to feed and water themselves. No animals brushed against their mighty trunks or roosted amongst their branches. An eternity would pass before the first birdsong pierced the virtual silence of that vegetative world. Until then, the nameless trees were content to be as they were; animated, pulsing, and slowly grasping for meaning in their existence in a world that they were they incapable of understanding.

The sky above the embryotic paradise was a thin carapace of multi-coloured brilliance; the colours slowly melted and merged as the remnants of the universe-spanning firmament condensed into matter. Behind the colourful shell, a cosmos of wonder took form; it held the promise of fear and faith, and the exploration yet to come. Beneath the shell, on the face of the Earth, a being was taking form. It was not a painful birth, but it was devastating. The pure energy that manifested as the creature had once been connected to everything, and it had seen everything, and it had felt everything. All that was, and all that was yet to come. That connection was no more, and it would never be again. The forced manifestation caused a rent in the being's psyche, which in that moment brought into being all good and evil, love and hate, pain and joy. Paradise was truly lost in that new beginning, and with that commencement came the absolute promise of an ending. The only solace the being drew from the original, imperfect reality, was that he was not alone. His brothers and sisters would be with him, from now and onto the end.

As that first brother made his way through the dense forest, the trees gave way gracefully to reveal a narrow path for him to follow, and for his siblings to follow when they eventually found form and joined him. That virgin pathway would endure for as long as the brothers endured. That pathway would last for as long as the universe of blinded matter lasted—it would become overgrown, and then flooded, and then buried beneath mountains and forests of a different kind; but it would endure.

As the brother approached the cottage, a new awareness overcame him; he was tired. Beyond the initial pleasure of the novelty on its discovery, he did not care for this fresh sensation. Flicking to one side the brown, coarse hemp cloak, which hung about his shoulders, he extended a hand and pushed firmly on a simple door of rough, uneven planks. The hinges creaked as if in pain, yet the door opened with fluid ease to reveal a single room. In the middle of the room sat a table, around which seven chairs of crudely carved stone were spaced at almost equal distance. Atop the table, in front of each seat, there sat seven cups of plain metal; each filled to their brim with water. At the side of the room a mighty fireplace sat cold and free from soot. There was no fuel in the room; the sacrifice of a tree to provide such fuel had yet to form as an idea.

He turned towards the forest before entering. The radiance of his flawless skin began to fade before settling on a human hue. Although he could not see far through the limitation of his new eyes, he could see far enough. No one was following. He turned his gaze skyward in time to witness the colourful shell of sky flicker out of existence to reveal a night sky bursting with tiny dots of light. The specks of light were multiplying, but not quickly enough to banish the instant gloom which had befallen the forest as the shell of colour vanished. His gaping pupils struggled in the darkness, and they failed to contract quickly enough when a ball of white-hot fire burst into life above his head. He turned to shield his eyes from the intensity of the light, and many moments passed before he found the courage to turn back towards the sky. The fireball illuminated the infant world, and it warmed his face. The points of light had gone, as had the deep black into which they were embedded. The sky was now blue; fixed and calming, and somehow right.