Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,246

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