The Garden of Eden Read online

had no meaning when you were alone in a spaceship between the stars. And then a series of lights illuminated across his board. Then another board lit up, followed quickly by several more boards. The ship shivered slightly. Things were beginning to happen. What should he do?

  He stared at the blinking boards like a little kid staring at Christmas lights. It was overwhelming. Flashes of Earth 2’s future hit him. They all looked like Earth 1’s past. More flashes of the future—many planets, all the same futures—the same as the past.

  There was a button on the board, a big red one, the only one he’d been told to hit in case of emergency and he stared at it. Should he hit it?

  What good would it do?

  If he hit it, it would simply awaken the crew and they’d finish his job for him.

  But there was something else he could do. He’d figured out that there were directional controls next to the override button. It was pretty obvious that’s what they were—they had arrows indicating directions. What else could they be? There was even a thrust or brake button, although he was guessing that’s what they were since the icons next to the buttons didn’t really make sense to him. It’s just that the placement of the buttons made it seem like the most logical choice.

  Impulsively, he toggled one of the directional buttons for just a single second. Nothing seemed to happen. There was no shiver, no shimmy, no shake, no noise, nothing. Maybe the controls were locked out, just like the Engage button. It made sense.

  Well, couldn’t sabotage anything if I wanted to, I guess.

  He went back to watching the news feeds from Earth. His new home disappeared as the feed replaced it on screen. But after only several minutes, he was once again disgusted. He shut the feed off and the screen defaulted to the outside view. The planet was gone!

  One near heart-attack and one hour of ‘realtime’ later, a tan sliver appeared at the left edge of the screen. Oscar thought he was seeing things, but the sliver slowly grew. It was the edge of the planet reappearing!

  Oh thank God!

  He watched as the planet crawled across the screen. For some silly reason, he assumed that the planet would stop moving once it was centered on the screen, but it didn’t. It kept going.

  What the…?

  He couldn’t comprehend why the bells and whistles and alarms and thingies hadn’t screamed into life. If they were off target, then surely the system would have tried to correct itself or alert him of the danger.

  “So if the alarms haven’t gone off, then we aren’t off target?” He guessed. Maybe I hit the “spin left” button. The impulse to try other buttons welled up within him and became an imperative urge. He wrestled with the urge but he was weak. He had always been weak when it came to controlling his urges. It’s how he ended up with eleven children.

  He hit a button, counted to three and hit the button again. Lighted buttons on the board sprang into life. An alarm sounded.

  "Well, that's it then," said the old man to no one in particular as he pushed a single square red button on his console and leaned back in his seat. He watched the approaching planet ever so slowly fill the screen above his console and remarked on his achievement. "The ridding of man from the Universe."

  It was happening! Oscar found it exciting and dreadful. What a terrible thing he'd done. Terrible but necessary. Mankind was a destroyer of worlds. Flora, fauna, it didn't matter. Humanity would kill it all just like they'd done on Earth, which necessitated the Garden of Eden in the first place.

  A deep hum rose within the guts of the ship. He could feel it in his chair. Something was happening. He knew not what, nor did he care.

  More buttons lit up on the dash. One of them blinked off and on. It was an angry, urgent red color. He pushed it. It stayed on.

  "Hmm," he shrugged. "Wonder what that did." A minute later it seemed to him that the planet was shifting to the left again in his viewer. Three minutes more and the planet had slid off the screen entirely. It never came back.

  He played with the directional controls until he had the ship aimed directly at the planet once again. Then he pushed the button at the center of the directional controls, which he assumed was the acceleration button, and waited, watching the planet grow bigger and bigger on screen. It was simply a matter of time. His mind drifted off, replaying happy memories from his Earth life. He smiled.

  When the planet was so large that he could begin to make out mountain ranges, a klaxon began to wail and several more panels lit up angrily. His heart leapt into his throat at the sudden shock. He grabbed his chest, calling out for his maker.

  Then he noticed a yellow light on a panel above him and to his left. It was the crew panel. The ship was waking up the real pilots. How long would it take, he wondered? Minutes? Hours? He wasn't sure how much time was left till impact. Perhaps one of the crew would actually be able to thwart his plan. Perhaps not.

  Anxiety coursed through his veins. But why? Why should he be anxious about ridding the universe of a truly pestilential species-- a galactic cockroach that could survive anything?

  It makes me anxious because I’m afraid it won’t actually happen.

  For a second, he wondered if that made him evil.

  Probably. I don’t care. Humans suck. Better to crush them now before they populate the galaxy.

  Oscar sat back in his chair and watched the planet grow, a little quicker than before, but not quickly enough for his liking.

  "Que sera sera," he hummed, tapping his heel nervously on the floor.

  Did he have any regrets? Maybe one or two. His little niece, long dead now, was really about the only reason he might have a regret. But he had to push that away now. Humanity didn't deserve to live, even if it meant killing a million Charlies before they ever had the chance to live. 

  She was such a darling, though, he thought. Crazy hair, impish eyes, a smile to charm the Devil. Ornery as the day was long. She was all that and more. And he loved her.

  Images of her dancing and singing in his house rotated through his head, softening his heart. He was losing the desire to carry out his goal and he knew it, but the decision had been made. The plan had been executed. Charlie was dead anyway. Still, there was doubt.

  The planet was now so close that he knew there was no way to back out. The Grinch that Stole Christmas popped into his head and he saw himself for what he was—selfish. An old selfish bastard who was trying to steal not just Christmas, but every Christmas, and it wasn't just the town of Whoville he was punishing, but every human who was and who would be. And that's the moment that his heart, like the Grinch's—and to his own dismay—suddenly grew two sizes.

  As he leaned forward, not knowing exactly what buttons to push to abort this heinous, ridiculous scheme of his, there was a voice behind him.

  "What's happening?"

  He spun his chair around and was face to face with a middle aged but well-shaped man arrayed in a form fitting sleep suit.

  "I..." Oscar started, wearing a guilty face like a child caught stealing cookies.

  The pilot sized up the situation and rushed to the instrument panel. He pushed a few buttons, swiped at a few switches. Nothing happened.

  He peered at Oscar, unsure of what to make of the old man and asked, "Why didn't you wake us?"

  Oscar just stared at him, too ashamed to respond.

  The pilot turned back to the board and attacked the directional controls.

  "Dammit!" he cursed. "No response."

  Oscar sat dumbly on the verge of tears.

  The pilot explained, or rather questioned the Universe, "When did the controls go dead?"

  Oscar shrugged meekly. "I don't know, I..."

  "Yes, yes, I know, You're no pilot, you don't know anything. It's why I was against having you onboard. It should have been a real pilot. Well, Hell's Bells! Can you at least move? I need your seat."

  Then he more or less shoved Oscar out of the seat, sending him crumpling to the floor. It was one of the few times Osca
r wished for no gravity.

  The pilot ranted to himself, furiously working the dashboard. He gave no thought or attention to Oscar, who stunned as he was by the apparent rudeness of the pilot, was picking himself up and surveying the room.

  He spied a fire extinguisher, not something he'd noticed till that moment, and shuffled over to it. It was much lighter here in space than back on Earth.

  He carried it with one hand, moving towards the pilot. When he was within arm’s length of the man, he raised the steel canister above his head and with all his might he brought it down.

  "Good God!" screamed the pilot as the extinguisher crashed into the edge of the dashboard, scaring the daylights out of him. "You damn near gave me a heart attack! And at the worst moment of..." He flipped a switch. It responded. He flipped another. It responded too. Buttons. They worked.

  "Oh my God," the pilot whispered incredulously. "I think you've just saved us all!"

  Sure enough, Oscar had managed to bring the very control panel he'd locked out back to life with a single smash of thousand-year-old technology. What luck!

  I wonder if I somehow caused the lockout?

  “Ha! Haha! Typical American technology!” the pilot roared. He burst into a full belly laugh even as he worked feverishly to bring the ship back into its proper trajectory. He quickly pushed the ship into an orbit, one that was much lower than they'd aimed for, which heated the ship a little more than its tolerances were built for, but not so much that the ship would be damaged beyond