Paradise Downgraded By Orlando Robson
Eve sat under the pear tree, the gentle caress of the evening breeze tickling her naked body.
‘Oh, go and tickle someone else!’ she snapped but the breeze took no notice.
Today she was having one of her off days and decided to leave Adam to do the gardening alone.
It was impossible for her to know what the trouble was. Her body told her she needed chocolate and a
king-sized tub of fudge ice cream but hadn’t the faintest idea what either of these things were. Adam -
not meaning to be cruel, she insisted - was of the simpler pleasures. When he felt restless, he either
wanted sex or he went off on his own to kick a watermelon about the garden and shout strange words
like ‘Offside!’ and ‘Man on!’ and had arguments with an invisible friend called Ref. Eve had tried this
once, hurt her foot and found the whole experience rather unsatisfying. Once she’d been able to get
God alone and ask Him about it and God had smiled benevolently at her and, placing his hand on her
shoulder, said, ‘Don’t worry, my dear, it’s a man thing.’
What Eve pined for with all her feminine passion and instinct was a TV and six or seven
episodes of Sex in the City. She hadn’t a clue what it was and it worried her because it sounded much
more serious than that whole Ref thing of Adam’s. She was trying to imagine what type of tree a
“teevee” might be when she heard something rustling through the leaves somewhere to her left. The
snake emerged from under the leaves and Eve looked at in in wonder and said:
‘You have the most beautiful skin, would you give it to me to make a handbag?’
The snake had put it about the Garden of Eden that it was the most astute of all creatures but it had to
admit it was flummoxed by Eve’s request. Wasn’t there a good reason why snakes didn’t go in for this
kind of negotiating? The snake decided it would be prudent to change the subject:
‘Did God really say you weren’t to eat from any of the trees in the garden?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Eve, ‘When he goes off on one I just smile nicely and think about
something else. But, mmmm, I don’t think he doesn’t want us to eat from any of the trees in the garden,
just that biggie in the middle, the one with the long name’
‘Ah, really, the tree of knowledge of good and evil?’
‘That’s the one, not a very good name for a tree, is it? Who’d want to eat fruit from a tree with
a name like that, anyway? I’d stick to oranges, mangoes and pears: easier to pronounce and pretty
delicious.’
‘Oh, yes,’ went on the snake, ‘but I’ve heard that Apple is an excellent brand, everyone’s always
going on about how beautiful the design is and how efficient...’
‘Oh yeah, but Adam says their all stark-raving bonkers: it’s just publicity. Who needs apples
anyway, and efficient ones at that? I’ll stick to my blackberries and apricots.’
‘Well, your decision, of course. What’s there to miss if you don’t know how good it is?’
Eve was beginning to doubt, she had to admit that there was more to life than blackberries. In
the centre of the garden stood the enormous tree, it’s proud, silver logo protruding from the top,
gleaming in the orange of the early evening sun. The snake was right: the design was very enticing,
Eve felt perhaps she could live without the snakes skin which was now looking decidedly dull in
comparison. The Apple, she realised, was sure to be able to tell her all about teevees and might even
have something on Sex in The City and even - she felt a shiver of excitement - Desperate Housewives.
On the other hand, she knew that life with the new knowledge this tree would supply would
mean suffering. God had said not to go near the tree, not to touch its fruit or eat it under pain of death.
She had not experienced pain or death, couldn’t they destroy her happiness? She looked around at the
garden again; it was all so perfect. Couldn’t she suppress her desire to know and understand things and
just be happy? The apple, she felt might give her immense power, access to an unimaginable amount
of... what? Of information! Information about what? Things, of course! Things?
‘Why don’t you go and talk it over with Adam,’ suggested the snake, ‘He’s bound to know what
to do.’
Forgetting her quarrel, Eve went over to Adam who was busy tending to some plants and collecting
fallen fruit from a mango tree.
‘Flesh of my flesh!’ she called out to him, he looked round with a shameful grin. ‘Do I give
him what he wants first?’ wondered Eve, seeing that he was aroused, ‘or do I tease him with the tree
first?’
‘Darling,’ she began, ‘It’s time you took a rest, come to a special spot with me.’
Adam allowed himself to be led by the arm but violently pulled back as they got close to the
tree.
‘What’s the matter, baby, aren’t you in the mood?’
‘Eve, you know about that place, that’s out of bounds, we have the whole garden...’
‘Well, I might not feel like doing it just anywhere. Besides, look how beautiful it is.’
Adam looked up at the tree and the shiny logo. Suddenly his mind opened to the possibility:
gardening equipment to make work easier and quicker so he’d have more leisure time. Leisure and
women. In the logo was the promise of millions of different women’s lips, curves, breasts and hidden
crevices. Blue eyes, brown eyes, blondes, brunettes, exotic, slutty... many, many other women who
weren’t Eve, who would worship his masculinity and force him into a multitude of orgasmic
experiences. Then there were the huge stadiums in which black and white watermelons flew through
the air and there were no end of arguments with Ref; and then he’d be able to glide around very fast in
strange capsules called Audis and BMWs. The tree of knowledge was the answer to all his desires.
‘But Eve,’ thought Adam, ‘she loves me without prejudices and reserves. She puts up with my
foul temper and forgives me. Who wants a world of women when there’s only one woman that loves
you? Who needs black and white watermelons? Where is there to go in a BMW in a garden this
small?’
Adam and Eve stood under the tree looking out across the garden and then back at the fruit, the
thirst for what they didn’t yet know welling up from their stomachs.
‘I see your predicament,’ said the snake to them, cruising over the grass, ‘You lack any kind of
understanding. God said you were free but how can you be free if you don’t have the understanding to
discern right from wrong? How can you truly know that good is good? You would take His word for it,
without questioning His motive?’
‘Why would God want to keep us in the dark?’ asked Adam.
‘Why indeed? It’s a wise first question in need of an answer.’ responded the snake.
‘But you would have us know death and pain, as well? You want us to experience suffering?’
asked Eve. ‘Why would you want that?’
‘Clever girl,’ replied the snake, ‘I see you’re learning not to take things on face value.’
‘Then to know death is to experience it,’ said Adam, ‘so what God said is true: if we eat the fruit
we will die.’
‘He knows you won’t die if you eat the fruit but that you’ll be equal to him in understanding
and when you are equal to him you’ll be able to create things as beautiful as this garden and as
mysterious as your secret fantasies. Audis, black and white watermelons and teevees are the fruit of
human knowledge, not of divine providence.’
‘When we have our own knowledge,’ said Eve to Adam, ‘we’ll be able to do great things to help
God make this garden even more beautiful.’
The picked an apple together, the tree lit up in cool green light as its operating system hummed
into action. Eve bit the flesh of the digital fruit and handed it to Adam, who did the same. Their bodies
glowed in blue, their brains were filled with information and the flood doors of their minds burst open.
They felt the garden around them grow small and a large world around it open up like a water
spreading in all directions on a table: unknown trees to categorise, animals to dominate, mountains to
be climbed, rivers to bridge. The breeze was suddenly a mere change in air pressure, losing its
personality and becoming a climatic feature. They saw the sky fill up with stars, too many to name, too
old to comprehend. Then their minds stretched as the world underneath them bent and curved into a
ball that began to gyrate so fast they felt nauseous, in turn it was sucked into a gravity and the once flat
plate of the sun that warmed them became a blazing ball of fire and gas which sent out lethal radiation.
Other planets spun into distant orbits, great balls of rock and poisonous gas, meteors sped past on a
suicide missions, narrowly missing them. The solar system twisted into a galaxy of numerous other
suns and planets which became one of uncountable galaxies speeding away from each other into
nothingness, too vast for their finite minds to comprehend, too dark, too lonely. Adam and Eve looked
at themselves and at each other, they were tiny, minimal specks in the bigger picture. Their lives not so
much as a flicker in the billions of years that the Universe knew. They were tiny and naked and they
felt ashamed. They covered their bodies with fig leaves, then furs and skins, then wool, cotton, silk,
nylon and intelligent fibres. They fled from the the unfriendly weather into caves, then huts, then
houses, then cities, then blocks and then skyscrapers. They mistrusted each other, then hated each
other and attempting to kill one another with sticks, then spears, then swords, then arrows, then guns,
then missiles and atom bombs.
God stopped visiting them in the garden and talking to them face to face, he became an invisible
guide then a distant observer, getting further and further away, fading into the realm of doubt and
superstition, then stories, legends, traditions and myths, then he ceased to exist altogether.
Paradise became an insect infected thicket of trees which burnt in a drought, the rich soil was
washed away by the rains and it became dry savannah and eventually desert.
Adam checked the time on his mobile phone; the train was running late again. The wind blew the rain
onto the platform but his shoes were already wet. Eve stretched her aching back and rested her eyes
from the computer screen, she looked out through the condensation on the window.
Her snakeskin shoes were killing her.
Copyright Orlando Robson 2011
‘Oh, go and tickle someone else!’ she snapped but the breeze took no notice.
Today she was having one of her off days and decided to leave Adam to do the gardening alone.
It was impossible for her to know what the trouble was. Her body told her she needed chocolate and a
king-sized tub of fudge ice cream but hadn’t the faintest idea what either of these things were. Adam -
not meaning to be cruel, she insisted - was of the simpler pleasures. When he felt restless, he either
wanted sex or he went off on his own to kick a watermelon about the garden and shout strange words
like ‘Offside!’ and ‘Man on!’ and had arguments with an invisible friend called Ref. Eve had tried this
once, hurt her foot and found the whole experience rather unsatisfying. Once she’d been able to get
God alone and ask Him about it and God had smiled benevolently at her and, placing his hand on her
shoulder, said, ‘Don’t worry, my dear, it’s a man thing.’
What Eve pined for with all her feminine passion and instinct was a TV and six or seven
episodes of Sex in the City. She hadn’t a clue what it was and it worried her because it sounded much
more serious than that whole Ref thing of Adam’s. She was trying to imagine what type of tree a
“teevee” might be when she heard something rustling through the leaves somewhere to her left. The
snake emerged from under the leaves and Eve looked at in in wonder and said:
‘You have the most beautiful skin, would you give it to me to make a handbag?’
The snake had put it about the Garden of Eden that it was the most astute of all creatures but it had to
admit it was flummoxed by Eve’s request. Wasn’t there a good reason why snakes didn’t go in for this
kind of negotiating? The snake decided it would be prudent to change the subject:
‘Did God really say you weren’t to eat from any of the trees in the garden?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Eve, ‘When he goes off on one I just smile nicely and think about
something else. But, mmmm, I don’t think he doesn’t want us to eat from any of the trees in the garden,
just that biggie in the middle, the one with the long name’
‘Ah, really, the tree of knowledge of good and evil?’
‘That’s the one, not a very good name for a tree, is it? Who’d want to eat fruit from a tree with
a name like that, anyway? I’d stick to oranges, mangoes and pears: easier to pronounce and pretty
delicious.’
‘Oh, yes,’ went on the snake, ‘but I’ve heard that Apple is an excellent brand, everyone’s always
going on about how beautiful the design is and how efficient...’
‘Oh yeah, but Adam says their all stark-raving bonkers: it’s just publicity. Who needs apples
anyway, and efficient ones at that? I’ll stick to my blackberries and apricots.’
‘Well, your decision, of course. What’s there to miss if you don’t know how good it is?’
Eve was beginning to doubt, she had to admit that there was more to life than blackberries. In
the centre of the garden stood the enormous tree, it’s proud, silver logo protruding from the top,
gleaming in the orange of the early evening sun. The snake was right: the design was very enticing,
Eve felt perhaps she could live without the snakes skin which was now looking decidedly dull in
comparison. The Apple, she realised, was sure to be able to tell her all about teevees and might even
have something on Sex in The City and even - she felt a shiver of excitement - Desperate Housewives.
On the other hand, she knew that life with the new knowledge this tree would supply would
mean suffering. God had said not to go near the tree, not to touch its fruit or eat it under pain of death.
She had not experienced pain or death, couldn’t they destroy her happiness? She looked around at the
garden again; it was all so perfect. Couldn’t she suppress her desire to know and understand things and
just be happy? The apple, she felt might give her immense power, access to an unimaginable amount
of... what? Of information! Information about what? Things, of course! Things?
‘Why don’t you go and talk it over with Adam,’ suggested the snake, ‘He’s bound to know what
to do.’
Forgetting her quarrel, Eve went over to Adam who was busy tending to some plants and collecting
fallen fruit from a mango tree.
‘Flesh of my flesh!’ she called out to him, he looked round with a shameful grin. ‘Do I give
him what he wants first?’ wondered Eve, seeing that he was aroused, ‘or do I tease him with the tree
first?’
‘Darling,’ she began, ‘It’s time you took a rest, come to a special spot with me.’
Adam allowed himself to be led by the arm but violently pulled back as they got close to the
tree.
‘What’s the matter, baby, aren’t you in the mood?’
‘Eve, you know about that place, that’s out of bounds, we have the whole garden...’
‘Well, I might not feel like doing it just anywhere. Besides, look how beautiful it is.’
Adam looked up at the tree and the shiny logo. Suddenly his mind opened to the possibility:
gardening equipment to make work easier and quicker so he’d have more leisure time. Leisure and
women. In the logo was the promise of millions of different women’s lips, curves, breasts and hidden
crevices. Blue eyes, brown eyes, blondes, brunettes, exotic, slutty... many, many other women who
weren’t Eve, who would worship his masculinity and force him into a multitude of orgasmic
experiences. Then there were the huge stadiums in which black and white watermelons flew through
the air and there were no end of arguments with Ref; and then he’d be able to glide around very fast in
strange capsules called Audis and BMWs. The tree of knowledge was the answer to all his desires.
‘But Eve,’ thought Adam, ‘she loves me without prejudices and reserves. She puts up with my
foul temper and forgives me. Who wants a world of women when there’s only one woman that loves
you? Who needs black and white watermelons? Where is there to go in a BMW in a garden this
small?’
Adam and Eve stood under the tree looking out across the garden and then back at the fruit, the
thirst for what they didn’t yet know welling up from their stomachs.
‘I see your predicament,’ said the snake to them, cruising over the grass, ‘You lack any kind of
understanding. God said you were free but how can you be free if you don’t have the understanding to
discern right from wrong? How can you truly know that good is good? You would take His word for it,
without questioning His motive?’
‘Why would God want to keep us in the dark?’ asked Adam.
‘Why indeed? It’s a wise first question in need of an answer.’ responded the snake.
‘But you would have us know death and pain, as well? You want us to experience suffering?’
asked Eve. ‘Why would you want that?’
‘Clever girl,’ replied the snake, ‘I see you’re learning not to take things on face value.’
‘Then to know death is to experience it,’ said Adam, ‘so what God said is true: if we eat the fruit
we will die.’
‘He knows you won’t die if you eat the fruit but that you’ll be equal to him in understanding
and when you are equal to him you’ll be able to create things as beautiful as this garden and as
mysterious as your secret fantasies. Audis, black and white watermelons and teevees are the fruit of
human knowledge, not of divine providence.’
‘When we have our own knowledge,’ said Eve to Adam, ‘we’ll be able to do great things to help
God make this garden even more beautiful.’
The picked an apple together, the tree lit up in cool green light as its operating system hummed
into action. Eve bit the flesh of the digital fruit and handed it to Adam, who did the same. Their bodies
glowed in blue, their brains were filled with information and the flood doors of their minds burst open.
They felt the garden around them grow small and a large world around it open up like a water
spreading in all directions on a table: unknown trees to categorise, animals to dominate, mountains to
be climbed, rivers to bridge. The breeze was suddenly a mere change in air pressure, losing its
personality and becoming a climatic feature. They saw the sky fill up with stars, too many to name, too
old to comprehend. Then their minds stretched as the world underneath them bent and curved into a
ball that began to gyrate so fast they felt nauseous, in turn it was sucked into a gravity and the once flat
plate of the sun that warmed them became a blazing ball of fire and gas which sent out lethal radiation.
Other planets spun into distant orbits, great balls of rock and poisonous gas, meteors sped past on a
suicide missions, narrowly missing them. The solar system twisted into a galaxy of numerous other
suns and planets which became one of uncountable galaxies speeding away from each other into
nothingness, too vast for their finite minds to comprehend, too dark, too lonely. Adam and Eve looked
at themselves and at each other, they were tiny, minimal specks in the bigger picture. Their lives not so
much as a flicker in the billions of years that the Universe knew. They were tiny and naked and they
felt ashamed. They covered their bodies with fig leaves, then furs and skins, then wool, cotton, silk,
nylon and intelligent fibres. They fled from the the unfriendly weather into caves, then huts, then
houses, then cities, then blocks and then skyscrapers. They mistrusted each other, then hated each
other and attempting to kill one another with sticks, then spears, then swords, then arrows, then guns,
then missiles and atom bombs.
God stopped visiting them in the garden and talking to them face to face, he became an invisible
guide then a distant observer, getting further and further away, fading into the realm of doubt and
superstition, then stories, legends, traditions and myths, then he ceased to exist altogether.
Paradise became an insect infected thicket of trees which burnt in a drought, the rich soil was
washed away by the rains and it became dry savannah and eventually desert.
Adam checked the time on his mobile phone; the train was running late again. The wind blew the rain
onto the platform but his shoes were already wet. Eve stretched her aching back and rested her eyes
from the computer screen, she looked out through the condensation on the window.
Her snakeskin shoes were killing her.
Copyright Orlando Robson 2011