Origins

This is how it happened.

Time is circular, so after the serpent convinced Adam and Even to bite the forbidden apple, they were given the knowledge of good and evil, made more like God, and expelled from paradise.  Not being God, they did not understand why, and so they tilled the soil with their hands, and then with makeshift hoes, and then with plows.  They domesticated horses, and built with mud and clay, and gradually learned to stack rocks on top of one another and seal them together, to create the first wall, and then the first city.

They created laws, which they obeyed and broke depending on their prospects.  They fought wars and colonized the earth.  Their only constant was a refusal to stand still – which inevitably became a lust for money and a dream of new technology that they pursued, first because it made their lives easier, and then for its own sake.  They bought and sold to finance the cost of buying and selling, always on the lookout for new markets.  Whole fields of study, whole industries, becoming experts at convincing people with no needs in the world that they needed to pay for something to solve their problems.

Humanity’s eyes grew narrow, and as people began controlling technology through alpha-wave readers attached to their brains, their hands grew small and weak, and as personal transportation devices grew more and more effective, their legs withered away.

Time being circular, this was the snake Adam and Eve saw in the Garden of Eden, who convinced them that paradise was not good enough unless they could have the apple, and who still did not understand why they now had to be sent away.

—–

Benjamin Wachs has written for Village Voice Media, Playboy.com, and NPR among other venues.  He archives his work at www.TheWachsGallery.com.

Read more fiction by Benjamin Wachs

—–

To comment on this story, visit Fiction365’s Facebook page