Fall; or, Dodge in Hell

by Neal Stephenson

  “Very well, then,” said the man.

  “There is nothing of the Zeroth or the First Age that would be of use to you in this, the Second Age.”

  “As you say, El,” said the woman.

  “What would be of use to you is names,” said El. “Have you come to any decisions yet as to what you would like to be called?”

  Before the man could answer, the woman said, “Yes. He would like to be called Adam and I like the sound of Eve.”

  Lengthy then was the silence of El. After a while he turned toward Defender of El, and much passed between them through their auras, without words being uttered. Defender of El sprang to the top of the bench, spread his wings, and took flight toward the high watchtower where he and the other sword-carrying angels dwelled and surveyed the Land and the heavens.

  “Where did these names come from, Adam and Eve?” El asked, and though his face and voice were placid as ever, his aura had erupted into a riotous display of turbulent color.

  Adam opened his mouth to speak but Eve stayed him with a hand on his arm. “They came to me in a dream. Or so I guess, for this morning I awoke and lo, they were in my head.”

  “The names were not spoken to you, or suggested to you by any other soul?” El asked. Above him, horns were sounding from the parapet of the watchtower, and light flashing from its windows as bright swords were being drawn.

  “We live in the Garden,” Eve pointed out.

  “It could be,” said El, “that these names—which, I must tell you, are very old names of the Zeroth Age—have long dwelled in you as remnants of the ones who made you. Stray memories that passed into your souls at the moment of your creation, and lay dormant until stirred by my question. If so, it is regrettable but there is nothing to be done.”

  El continued, “It is also possible that some of my angels mentioned the names Adam and Eve within your hearing, and those words entered your minds thus, perhaps even while you were sleeping. If so, then so be it and I will remind my host to be more discreet in the future.”

  He went on, “But a third possibility, which troubles me greatly, is that this is some plot of the Old Ones—the Beta Gods who ruled the Land in the First Age. Long ago I expelled them but ever they seek to return.” Behind El, Adam and Eve could now see thousands of angels, brandishing their dazzling swords, spewing in echelons from the top of the watchtower and dispersing to the four winds. “Great is the diligence of my angels and fearsome is their power. But the Old One is crafty and may have back doors of which I cannot know. If you see in the Garden any unfamiliar soul, particularly one in the guise of a winged creature, dark and disfigured, raise the alarm.”

  “We have seen nothing of the sort,” said Eve.

  “That is reassuring,” said El. “I must now attend a council of war that Defender of El is convening in the watchtower.” And El rose into the air like a hasty sunrise.

  “Worm, know you anything of the Old One?” asked Adam the next time they happened to find the visitor on an apple. This was the next day. The Palace had been in an uproar. Squadrons of angels still tore the sky above the Garden, and others had been posted atop the walls, facing outward.

  “I made no secret that I am old, older than El,” said the worm. “The same is true of many other souls. Did El provide a description?”

  “Like a great angel, but darkened and ruined.”

  “I’ll keep my eyes peeled,” said the worm.

  “How is it that neither El nor any of his vigilant host knows you are here?” asked Eve.

  “I am small.”

  “They have the power of seeing things that are small or hidden,” said Adam.

  “Their power is considerable and yet not infinite.”

  “So you are using some trickery to baffle their vision,” said Adam.

  “I am choosing to go where I will, when I will,” said the worm mildly. “I see myself as under no obligation to notify El of my doings or ask his say-so. This is no more his Garden than it is Spring’s.”

  “Tell us more of Spring,” said Eve. “I would know her story even if, as I suspect, it be a sad one.”

  “It is not altogether sad,” the worm said. “Spring was the author of all new life in the First Age. Before she came into her power, living things existed in the Land but had not the ability to make more of their own kind. All of them were plants. There were no bugs, birds, or beasts. It was Spring who made the apple tree bloom and bear fruit, pregnant with seeds. With Thingor, who was a god of that age, she fashioned creatures that could move about: first bees, then birds, and later four-legged beasts. These too all had the ability to make more of their kind: some by making seeds, some by laying eggs, others by coupling, male with female, conjoining those organs most apt for the giving of pleasure. Finally, as her greatest work, she began to gestate you, Adam and Eve.”

  Eve listened raptly, awaiting the next turn in the story. She glanced at Adam. But some detail in the worm’s narration had caused Adam to become distracted by the sight of his own penis.

  “Alone?” Adam asked. “Or was it more in the style of the beasts?”

  “You did not issue from a virgin,” said the worm.

  “What is a virgin?” Eve inquired.

  “You are,” said the worm. “What I am saying is that you were the issue of both a mother and a father, who came together after the manner of beasts.”

  “Who was our father?” Adam asked.

  “Beta-El. Egdod. The greatest god of the First Age. You were born into the world just at the close of that Age, not long after he and the rest of the old gods had been thrown down by El. But above all other things in the Land, El cherished you, and so his first act upon conquering the Palace was to surround Spring with a guard of angels. Safe in the Garden’s confines she completed her labor of creating you. But she missed the company of the old ones and longed to roam about the Land. When she saw that you were in safekeeping with El, she one day shifted her form into a freshet and ran down from this fountain out the wall to her sacred grove just yonder, and from there went out into the open Land, where she roams still, creating life wheresoever she chooses. When winter comes on and the spring freezes, she goes into a kind of slumber, making no new life but mourning the separation from you, her children. When the season turns she awakens and goes back to her work.”

  Adam opened his mouth to inquire further of Spring, but in that moment the worm squirmed off the apple, fell to the ground, and began to inch toward some nearby undergrowth. Warmth like that of the sun shone on the backs of their necks, and the light dazzled them for a moment as Defender of El touched down nearby, brandishing a sword of fire. He raised it high above his head and brought it down upon the worm. The weapon fell like a thunderbolt from a storm and blasted a smoking trench into the ground, obliterating not only the worm but everything in its vicinity.

  “To whom were you speaking just now?” asked Defender of El. “It seemed that you were exchanging words with another soul, one who has no rightful place in the Garden.”

  Adam reached out to put a restraining hand on Eve’s forearm, but she shook him off and answered directly: “Indeed we were, and he told us of the First Age, and of the Beta Gods, and of our father, Beta-El, who was thrown down, and our mother, Spring, who made us and then escaped from the confines of this Garden to roam at will about the Land.”

  Defender of El did not respond with words, but spread his wings and beat them once, heaving himself into the air, and flew to the top of the Palace’s highest tower, from which his sentinels kept watch over the Land. Before long, trumpets had sounded, recalling the squadrons of angels to the Palace. The sky grew placid, and darkened as evening came on. The air cooled. And perhaps it was just their imagination, or their fear of El’s wrath, but Adam and Eve felt the cool more than was usual, and drew closer upon the bench, the better to draw warmth from each other’s forms. Adam became more and more distracted by his penis, which had become long and stiff.

  “Why is it doing that?” Eve in
quired.

  “It is a thing that happens from time to time,” Adam said. “When it does, it pleases me to touch it.”

  “This must then be the organ that the worm spoke of,” said Eve, “and now that you mention it I have corresponding bits of my own, less conspicuous than this thing, but I suspect no less capable of producing pleasure.”

  “It occurs to me,” Adam said, “that if you and I were to—”

  But before he could finish his thought, they heard footfalls approaching, and looked up to see El, who had approached them from the Palace. His gaze, directed upon Adam’s penis, caused it to shrink and return to its accustomed form.

  “I see that the Old One left nothing to chance,” El remarked. “Very well. I have rebooted you many times before. I have no objection to doing so once more.”

  El then raised his hand against them. Adam and Eve drew closer together. Adam put his arm around Eve’s shoulders and drew her closer yet. Though neither harbored any memory of it, both sensed in the same moment that this was not the first time El had thus raised his hand and that in the next instant they would both be unmade, and brought into being once again.

  Adam raised his own hand as if he could thereby shield himself and Eve from the unmaking. “Hold,” he said. “I beg of you, El.”

  El neither lowered his hand nor took any further action, but gazed upon them both, his aura manifesting new emotions.

  “We know what is to come next,” Eve said. “And that you have the power to do it, or even to destroy us utterly if you so choose. But if you wield that power, do so in the knowledge that you have done it against our will.”

  El lowered his hand and stood for a time, collecting himself, or so it seemed from the behavior of his aura, which only settled into a more orderly habit after long moments had gone by. When he spoke next, it was in a voice that was quiet and yet hard. “You are a mistake,” he announced. “This, I now see, was the case from the very beginning, when Spring brought you into being for the first time. She might have chosen to begin fresh, fashioning souls with no connection back to the Alpha World, inheriting none of their weaknesses, habits of thought, or peculiarities of form that in the Zeroth Age—when souls were embodied—were essential to the propagation of new souls but that here are so useless as to be perverse.” It seemed that El was looking upon Adam’s penis as he said this, though his gaze also swept across the breasts of Eve. As he did so a chilly breeze seemed to sweep through the Garden, causing Adam’s penis to shrink further and raising goosebumps on the bosom and the shoulders of Eve, who pressed closer to Adam. She placed one hand upon his chest.

  “I cannot fault Spring for misdoing it,” El admitted. “The gods of the First Age, Beta-El and the others, were brought into being wrong. They were an experiment that did not so much go awry as was never thought through in the first place. Finding themselves alive and aware in a world without form or order, lacking memories that would confer wisdom, they shaped the Land in whatever way seemed fitting to them. Perforce this meant that they blindly remade what of the Alpha World they had dim recollections of. Those first blind gropings elicited new memories, and so over the course of many years, during which I was distracted with other concerns, they created a Land only a little less imperfect than the one from which they had escaped through the gates of death. That is what I found waiting for me when I too passed that gate. The greatest achievement of that First Age was you, who now call yourselves Adam and Eve in blind and stupid homage to a discredited myth of the Alpha World.” El paused to sigh. The wind came up higher and grew colder. “Yes,” El admitted, “many times I raised my hand thus and remade you, booting up again and again the program that Spring had engendered. Out of respect for her work I did not make alterations to the source code but instead tweaked the initial conditions and sought to influence your growth by nurture, as opposed to nature—which meant preserving you in a walled Garden and not troubling your minds with knowledge of the Alpha and Beta worlds that by all rights ought to be of no use, and little interest, to souls native-born of the Second Age. The number of times I had to reboot you ought to have led me to understand sooner that I was pursuing a fool’s errand. But I felt a responsibility toward the innocent productions of the Beta Gods and sought always to preserve and protect anything that showed beauty or held promise. And most of my efforts have been directed to the creation of new kinds of souls altogether. So I have not brought my full attention and processing power to bear, until this moment, upon the problem shaping up quite literally in my backyard. Now, however, all is made plain and I see clearly what I ought to do. Further rebooting of Spring’s work will only yield similar or worse results. And in any case you have now directly asked me not to take such action.

  “Destroying you is murder. Keeping you confined to the Garden has become a tiresome exercise in trying to shield you from knowledge you think you wish to obtain and with which it would now appear that the Old One or his minions are actively supplying you. Go then out into the Land, and not out the front way”—and here El gestured toward the back of the Palace with its many windows shedding light—“which I have remade, as it ought to be, but out the back”—El gestured with his other hand toward the Garden wall—“which I have left in the way Beta-El fashioned it, as wild and ill formed as the wildernesses of the Alpha World that lurked in his wrecked and scrambled memories. See what he made from within, and look upon my works from without, and judge ye both in all your wisdom and cleverness which is greater.”

  With a flick of his hand El projected a wave of chaos that crested and broke upon the Garden’s wall and shattered it, knocking down a section wide enough for Adam and Eve to walk through abreast, and scattering rubble for some distance into the forest beyond, like the remnants of an ancient road.

  Moments later, Adam and Eve were treading that road, bare feet finding uncertain and uncomfortable purchase on jagged faces of broken rock that felt under their soles like a hard embodiment of chaos itself.

  They did not walk far before the trail of broken stone terminated at the brink of a precipice that dropped straight down farther than they could make sense of. Miles below them—a greater distance than they had ever been able to behold, confined as they had always been within the walls of the Garden—a layer of clouds, glowing dull silver in the light of the moon and stars, lay over the Land and concealed it from their view. The vastness of the spectacle left them dumbstruck and paralyzed for some while. For to suspect that a larger world existed outside the Garden was one thing, but actually to behold it was another.

  Behind them, visible through the rough aperture in the wall, were the glowing towers of the Palace. Until moments earlier, they had conceived of those as tall. Now they understood that the entirety of the Palace and its grounds was as a tiny seed poised upon the tip of a finger: a column of stone thrust above its foundations in the midst of the Land by a distance the likes of which their eyes had never developed the faculty of seeing and their minds had nothing against which to compare. From the base of this column, the Land then stretched away to the limit of their vision, seeming to meet the vault of the dark and starry sky where it curved down to find the horizon. Some parts of the Land were smothered beneath fleecy blankets of clouds, but others lay exposed to the sky, their lakes and rivers gleaming with reflected starlight. Ranges of mountains heaved ripples and crests of white ice up above the weather, and those seemed to glow from within, so brightly did they bounce back the light of the moon. In one place four ranges of mountains intertwined as though wrestling to see which could mount highest, but even the highest of them was overtopped by a tower of cloud that was lit from within by flickers of blue light. This prodigy was the only thing in the Land whose height was comparable to that of the Palace. The storm tower stretched out a long sharp horn, wispy on its nether surface with torrential rains that evaporated miles before reaching the ground. Slow whorls and brawny evolutions spoke of immense turbulence within. In spite of this, it did not dissipate, but seemed to bend its en
ergies ever inward.

  Here and there across the Land, patches of warmer light stained the clouds from beneath, or, where the sky was clear, shone sharp and glittering. Their hue recalled that of the murky red constellation often visible in the firmament high overhead. Seeking to get his bearings, Adam tilted his head back and looked around for the Red Web, as they had named it. But it had wheeled around to the point where it was hidden from view behind the towers of the Palace.

  “What are you looking for?” Eve asked him.

  “The Red Web,” Adam said. “The color of it reminds me of those patches down below on the Land—as if one were imitating the other.” And he pointed to one such place, not far from the base of the pinnacle on which they stood, where grainy lines of red light strayed outward from a bright center, all of the light blurred by thin layers of cloud and flickering from its passage through a windy atmosphere.

  Eve however did not look where Adam pointed, but rather fixed her gaze upon the high parapet of El’s Palace. An angel had just taken wing from there. After beating its wings a few times to gain altitude, it folded them and banked down in their direction. Adam and Eve became mindful of their precarious situation near the brink of the precipice. They crouched and moved inward out of an inborn fear that the angel would knock them off. But instead it passed overhead and interposed itself between them and the fall-off, beating its wings gently as if to waft them back onto safer ground. “There is no safe way down for you,” the angel explained, “and so I have been sent forth to conduct you safely to the level ground below.” Without waiting for an answer it stretched forth its aura like another pair of wings and gathered them up in it. Then it allowed itself to fall backward off the cliff. Adam and Eve were borne along. Directly they were struck by cold so sharp and bitter that it did not register on their senses as a change in temperature but as shock followed by pain and then numbness. El, it seemed, had caused the top of the pinnacle to be wrapped in a bubble of warm air. But now the angel had taken them out of it into the atmosphere just beyond. Which was turbulent as well as cold, for it bore them sharply heavenward as they were caught in an updraft.