Children of Paradise

The Children of Paradise  

Prologue: "Where's Molly?"

Molly was clinging to the sink as the water continued to pour. She put
on her jumpsuit. Quickly drying her hands and face, she took a quick
glance at her reflection in the mirrors. Nineteen year old Molly stared
back at her; her hair was short, straight, and black and her skin
extremely pale. Her insides were turning. She wasn't a public
figure-head, just a spokesperson for everything she'd learn to hate.

"Molly," She heard from somewhere subliminally. It shook her up. The
migraines had started again, causing her to faint with vertigo. "She's
always so unprepared." It usually went this way, just before a public
presentation, waves of anxiety made everything sharp and jagged.

THE WASTELAND: 2023

“Molly…” she whispered through the glass window from her confinement.
“Don't let them tell
you what you are.” Molly watched as her mother sat down on the padded
floor staring off into the white walls. Her mother stared up into her young daughter's eyes
if she might never see them again, and then she looked to the floor.

Molly's mom folded her arms to her chest and sobbed. Looking in through
those glass windows, Molly wondered if this was what it meant to feel
cared for. Nothing was how it was meant to be. The
nurse guided eight year old Molly away to The Control Room.

Her chubby fingers reached up and swatted a mosquito. The instructor
lifted his
book up with one hand and chiding her, attempted to begin her daily
lesson. “Sit still Molly.” The tiles stretched out before
them in spiraling hallways to nowhere. It was 9 pm and Molly should have
been in bed. Molly loved to stare at the lights, she felt like they
carried some secret. When she stared at the
light, she had visions.

Molly’s father had flown away on a plane one day, he was recruited for
the wars. Her mother was kept
locked inside the treatment center; and when a normal child would be
socializing and having fun, this was her family. Her
mother could not care for her. Molly grew up inside this institution
because she had nowhere else to go. She was cared by the people
inside. The people there, who understood that she was
too little to understand her place in the world.

New Age: 2200

Molly hid herself from the eyes following her everywhere.
It had been years since Molly had left The Treatment Center. She had
forgotten her memories. She buried her face in a book,
and for a moment she was lost to another place. She was there, in a
massive city filled with spiraling kaleidoscopic towers, colorful
architecture…nothing bland…nothing boring. She could hear the voice
speaking to her from somewhere deep within, and soon enough her
migraines took over.

For nearly 200 years had the memory of a once-powerful city remained
solely in our minds, while its broken walls, ruined towers, and highways
lay buried deep within its filth.

I lived in The City of Steel, far from the ancient buildings now crumbling
to dust. There was no crime and no poverty. It was protected and had enough imported goods for us to live
comfortably. Although it was considered one of our country's best
cities, The City of Steel did not come with a happy story. This city was
once the capital of the world empire before chemical warfare destroyed even false peace.

Diseases wiped out thousands of
lives. No matter how terrible it was, our country could not do anything
to stop it. It spread and could have threatened other cities as well if
it had not finally been gotten under control. People discovered the
source of the virus. Days went by and nothing could be done about it,
other than to not drink the water. Day by day the death toll climbed the
charts. The virus was unstoppable and nothing could be done to cure it.

It was fatal to all. Finally, after days of silence and
emptiness, our country got the germs under control. When this City was
finally repopulated, it was renamed The City of Peace.
Despite that it was over-polluted, it thrived. Despite its
mechanical fumes and hazardous chemical waste reservoirs, it was the
most free of corruption and a safe place to live.

Only the very wealthy lived there, in an almost surreal city, where the
decapitated remains of our machines performed their daily tasks,
machines we’d created for only us.
We were asked to participate, cooperate, doing only what was necessary
to survive. The City of Peace could be compared to an elephant graveyard
with bones made of steel, and from the stench of toxic gas could one
smell its rotting corpses.

There was a time once when we had more opportunities to change the world
we lived in. Then, before the beast had taken over our land and put us
to work for it, had we not surrendered our hopes as we had yet trembled
before its all seeing. There was once a time of peace, of
disobedience, of freedom. And if you think about it, it is truly beautiful
compared to the quietude of blind obedience. They were individuals with
choices. They could make up their own minds, and they didn't have to slave away
just to live. They didn't live for this beast that still inhabits The
Quiet City today. But that was a time when things were still good.

There is yet to be a standing history of cities long ago. Here, the
words that have survived all wars in all but their meager and
fragmentary form will be analyzed and reorganized. These were our
secrets. Secrets, mingled with accumulated myths and legends of the
coming beast. They are the conspiracies.

Only now through electronic records can we decipher all that once had
been of the great world's City. In these remnants of our ancestry,
contain all that can be derived from references in the Order and the
compilations of classical myths on human acts of justice. There's
nothing left of our future, only the past remains in a form we are
forced to dissect.

As we march on towards full oblivion, centuries of human progress are
being fed in through our machines…only with these bitter recollections
that we gather, through our willpower and constant speculations, do we
have the chance to ever unveil the real truth. As we collect and piece together bits of
information, we are drawing ever closer to the ultimate truth about
Project 0blivion.

Will it ever be passed under the scrutiny of our future scholars? This
is something that we all have hoped for. History still remains the same.
And only through this compiling, can a world blinded by our own human
folly change. We learn to recognize patterns that influence this new
world we live in now.

There were intervals of silence that our cultural influence seemed to
perpetuate. Our City was hot with anger and protestors lined the streets
with signs screaming for answers. And although their voices were not
strong enough to shake the walls of their falling foundations, they were loud enough to
be heard across the world.

What justifies another person's rights over our own?
There was a bombardment of hearts that screamed: “They're our hostile
Enemies! They need to be punished, and WE need to be safe.” As
propaganda traveled far and wide through vast cities of the coast,
reaching intersecting streets of the rich and spreading across the
world, more and more questions exploded.

People wanted to know, and it could not be kept a secret for much
longer. A sudden surge of rebellion threatened our leaders’ agendas. All
eyes were upon them now. The people became our leader's criminals.
Somehow, the questions diminished like fading reflections, and
eventually all surrendered silently.

Silence is all that we seem to remember now.

When the intelligence of the attacks was put forth, who was
concerned in it? Who had our interests in mind? It seemed our leader had
had dreams of re-establishing democracy. Yet Democracy had failed.
Now all our secret information would be gathered through trade. We
collected memory sticks from friends with common interests through the
underground network. Not all remained silent. A new underground order
was in place. It was a group of people just like you and I, who would
not be kept quiet and so together, formed a massive world-resistance,
and called it the League of Dreams.

My name is Molly; I once worked for the people who sought to destroy
every dream ever created. Yet, my mission as a historian had not always
been to erase the truth. I was once a part of a system that was
specifically brought about to educate the people about their past.
Things have changed since then.

The Airport, Tuesday September 12

Molly walked into the airport and headed directly to the changing room. A
large policewoman checked her pockets. Then she removed her jacket. The
woman checked the pockets of the jacket, and then commanded her to move
along.

Molly always hated the changing rooms. Everyone did. This was the only
way that they could be sure no intruders or terrorists, or black market
traders could come aboard the plane. The plane took off as Molly looked
down at the palm trees, streets, and city lights through the small
window. The sandy shore disappeared.

“Goodbye…” She whispered to the city as it gradually faded from sight.

SARAH

The Great World Order had come, but by then the people welcomed it. After the
United States had lost its power, nothing but chaos had ensued for so long
that people wanted to believe in order again. We had thirteen years of
nothing but war and anarchy across the globe. Rebels led the
takeover of lands across Earth. People were used for them as merely
soldiers or tools. War and conquest had become such a routine of life.

It was a game of who would wipe out whom first, and who would pay
humanity’s price. Only those with enough control and power could ever
ask those questions. It was our best choice when The Great World Order
presented itself. Yet it was never a revolution. Everyone believed it
would set them free and we were ready for peace. So we made the biggest
or pettiest sacrifices to achieve it. We voted for it and ignored our
fears of propaganda. The majority of populations across the world wanted World Order and peace.

And then it was as if we had forgotten, as if we had carried on without
the slightest notion of our history. Only this time, it
had no sectional representation, and there were no Nations. It had
become everything the people hated, loathed, and wanted to destroy. It was all that we ever knew as kids.
 Every person over eighteen had a say and to vote on issues on the world’s issues. People had
no opportunity, busy as we were, to realize that this was still completely wrong.

It worked like this, the socialists were ruled by the capitalists, and
the capitalists were ruled by the Architects, the designers. The
designers organized everything, every fundamental way we lived our lives
from day-to-day. The designers had the most power on earth. In publications by the designers whose identities remain
highly secret, they’ve said only that God was their divine motivator,
their inspiration, and the source of the new foundation of progress. God is
so much more than that.

I believe now that God, if he is the true master Architect, is not the
original God of our lost world. They were not motivated by an all loving
God, a divine source in the stars. I never believed God was a dictator, and that’s partly because of where
I’m from…where I’ve been outside cast off from all the respectable
people. God isn’t a dream or a hope for mankind. God is not the
puppet-master, and we are not his strings.

The forces that have engineered our dreams and fueled our electric life
for ages cannot be undone. And so the designers hide behind the shadows,
the elites, the corporate leaders who claim that our new order is now
the highest peak of civilization. No longer must we have to struggle to
survive, the path has been laid out before us, brick by brick. It is the
path of the future.

In the Technocracy of The Foundation, we have martyred, murdered, and
fed ourselves to our machines. These machines have carried out tasks no
mortal could or would want to. They crippled lost nations, defeated
empires, and brought peace to the world. Men toil behind the machinery,
no longer casualties, but accessories. The scientists who create our
machines lead our industries. Our industries lead our world.

Our Foundation is just industry. What purpose is it? Those who did not serve God’s Foundation will never
know such a purpose. The rest of us are worthless.

The industrial revolution had begun as a revolution of progress, but in
2001 the Industrial age was turned counter-clockwise. It was an
industrial dream
turned nightmare, turned against simple folk. Machines began to dictate
everything, how we ordered food and not only what we learned but how we
learned. Everything went digital, everything communicated instantly over
channels. Pretty soon, all channels were moderated by The New
Foundation.

The master architects designed a beautiful and imperishable paradise.
They created virtual lesson plans for schools so that children could
learn without teachers. Any child could play along, and any who refused
to advance was disciplined and stabilized so that he or she would know
how much they were valued. We became passive slaves, drugging ourselves
into child-like complacency, to dance on the edge of defeat.

As each opportunity had slipped away, we learned to sacrifice our
consciences for a sociopath's economy. As every minute escaped, a greedy
mouth swallowed another placebo. The world had lost all love and
meaning. And so we prostrated ourselves to billboards and worshiped
technological madness. That was how we traded our souls for an empire of
greed. That is how we made a prison for paradise.

My name is Sarah. I was born on the outskirts of modern society to the
city of Meridia. Meridia was built upon the ruins of the United World
Empire. Meridia was a station that evolved during WWIII, when people
began to hate the idea of a one world government. Meridia is a sea city,
because there is no land on Meridia.

It was a safe zone for weapons and technology that were manufactured solely for war, no matter who bought them.

These sprawling metal-scapes later made up our new system of life post
World War Three. It became a place for those who opted to live in
solitary, to wait out the re-habitation of the Foundation. These people
were the ones who had secretly feared The Foundation, and therefore
wanted to stay as far from its influence as possible.

Shifting platforms that used water and steam could move us from place to
place across the vast city on the water. Life in Meridia was sometimes
isolating, but it was nothing compared to life on the territory of the
Foundation. For many years, Meridia was the only place where people like
us were left alone. My mother taught me many things about life after
the war. She spoke of the radical government that was formed when the
United World Empire fell. When the Foundation finally came to power, the
lone government gave way to a simple court of dissenters of influence.

These were people who had had authority in the United World Empire
before it fell and after it too. They knew more about governments than
the New Foundation’s bag of muck and scum. They were now
revolutionaries. The classes sometime called them terrorists. But they
stood their ground, and did not provoke others to hate them. They had
money, and power, and influence in their small city. Mother emulated our
government. It was the last and only government left outside the
Foundation’s iron fist.

In this unwanted realm of constant flooding and ghetto technology, we
were at home. Yet, there was always something innately calling to us. We
were discards and anti-establishment rebels by nature—it was in our
nature to crave revolution. It was also in our nature to crave freedom.

I remember how I would sit in my bedroom and stare out into the rolling
waves. I felt a sort of dependency there. Perhaps it was even more-so a
longing caused by ebb and flow of the tides. Every so often when I
traveled, I could feel a secret rage rise within me. I had a good
family: my sister Molly, my brother Bobby, and Mother who loved and took
care of us.

Of course, Father had left for war long after I was born. This was more
normal for most families; even the higher class couldn’t escape the
drafting imposed by the Foundation.

The story I am about to tell you is one of searching for meaning in the
past and the future of our world.. This is the story of how I came to
find out what my freedom really means to me. It is a story that only
outcasts and dreamers and revolutionaries will ever understand.