The Garden of Eden (Part 2)

The world did everything it could to welcome her. The hall's lighting softened to a calm blue, the sigh of trees filled the air, and the scent of roses flooded her sinuses—all according to personal taste. Still, it failed to do anything; Aster may as well have set foot on the moon.

Very little had changed. The corridor was as deathly serene as ever, and Aster remembered just how much she had always hated that, as if its peace were only ever the glassy surface of a pond waiting to be broken. Around every curving turn, where the end of the hall vanished from sight and thus the mystery began, lurked untold faux-pas and social humiliations waiting to ruin all her days.

Huge vases of pink carnations dotted the shimmering, white-as-freshly-harvested ivory-hallway at even intervals. These fistfuls of spring thrived in the natural light streaming in from the huge bay windows—which were not actually windows but a projection of the city outside—lining the expanse, and they led down the otherwise sterile path like a verdant finger showing the way. Her parents were already moving toward the transport pods a block down the hall.

“Maybe this'll finally show you how ridiculous you're being,” her mother said over AR Telepath. “Even you, I think, will have a hard time sticking your head back in the sand when you see the splendor and honor and love they have in that hall.”

Aster said nothing. She kept pace behind them, eyes fixed on the floor, trying to swallow her anger—if only to avoid a public spectacle. She knew what scant peace her future held was entirely conditional on how little she upset her mother. She glanced up at a mural of the Czars, carved in obsidian relief, holding back the corruption of the past with their bodies. Her reflection, with its huge diamond earrings, thick eyebrows, and stupid shawl, was captured in the glassy stone, and she tore her eyes away. The group stopped to let her mother pray.

Aster watched with quiet disgust. She was probably asking for Aster to be struck dumb with repentance. Her mother had reminded her too many times that 'she and Dahlia would not be around if not for the Czars to not see the apology in her prostration, as if bringing Aster before this mural was akin to carrying a human-sized growth. After a minute her mother rose, a determined look in her eyes, and the group moved on.

Before long they reached the end of the corridor, where she saw signs of movement. A shadow crept along the wall, followed by a heavy rustling sound. Aster's skin went cold, clammy, and she forgot how to breathe. Every synapse in her brain began to fire at once as she desperately sorted through the greetings a neighbor might lob at her—Good day. How are you? Off to the ceremony, eh?—and for each of these Aster's thoughts came up as blank as bleached stone, with no recourse but to flap her lips like a suffocating fish while the person inevitably watched on, puzzled and concerned.

The two parties approached; contact was imminent. Aster looked instinctively at the ground and began to awkwardly mouth a reply to a greeting not given yet. When finally the family rounded the bend, the mere sight of an object in her peripheral vision prompted her into an early, forced stutter—a sound in which somewhere, possibly, could be found the ingredients for a 'hello'.

A cleaning servo, humming as it mopped the floor, passed them.

Aster's self-worth plummeted. The very little social battery she was counting on for this dinner was now almost depleted, and as the transport pods came into view she felt like even the slightest breeze would reduce her into an inconsolable mess. The unanswered lesson request suddenly came to mind, and anger flooded her.

As if you could even teach lessons, you fucking idiot! What would you even do? Stare at the guitar and stutter? They'd think you couldn't play; you'd look like a freak and a phony!

And this thought convinced her that it could be nothing but a trap. After all, who in their right mind would want anything to do with her? Who would willingly put up with behavior like hers?

Her father, who had been keeping an eye on her psych-stream, fell back a step; Aster had gone sullen and distant.

“You're doing fine,” he told her. “We're almost at the bay.”

This did nothing to help. The night was only getting started. Every manner of misery and embarrassment still had an opportunity to befall her, and she, in her present state, she was certain it would. There was no hope, after all. She was a destroyed life spinning out of control. It was only up to random chance now where she would burn out.

Her mother was looking back suspiciously at them. Her father, giving her a pat on the shoulder, caught up with her.

“Remember, I want respect tonight,” her mother said hotly over Telepath, not even bothering to look back. “I don't want you entering Rose Mary hover-eyed and looking like a total delinquent. Just because your chance has come and gone doesn't mean they can't still have use for you. You may be anti-social, but they'll always need human eyes to witness everything; make sure everything is carried out to the letter. I'm sure Dahlia can get you a good administrative position. Maybe even let you aid her.”

A dull pressure was building in Aster's skull, which she felt—and even somewhat secretly hoped—might explode. She was only as strong as her ability to withdraw, after all, and her inability, by law, to mute her parent, stripped away even the quiet sanctuary of her own thoughts. Her inner monologue was evicted, leaving only her mother's voice, nervous and authoritative, filling her ears alongside the growing thump of her heart, until even the sighing trees could no longer be heard.

A man, thin and awkwardly tall yet resolute, stood beside a pod. They had reached the floor station.

“Look, they sent human staff!” her mother whispered in surprised delight.

"Good evening, I am your private concierge for tonight,” the man said, stepping aside from the pod door. With a sweeping bow, he gestured for Margreta to take the first seat.

She obeyed, looking at him with eyes overflowing with gratitude, and then back toward her family with a proud, bashful look, as though she could not believe she was being received like this.

Aster followed her father into the pod, thinking that she had never seen her mother so happy. It was jarring to see that a mood beyond irritable hatred existed in her, and the discrepancy discomforted Aster and made her angry. It was clear as day that her mother was basking in Dahlia's achievements, not her own. It's why she got so angry at Aster; because Aster could never provide this vicarious elation for her.

Furious, Aster took her seat beside her father.

The concierge came in last, and the door closed.

“Next stop: Salon Floréal,” announced a disembodied voice, and Aster felt her grip on the world slip as the pod came to life and began silently ascending toward the top of the tower. The specter of the dinner, that calamitous social minefield, was now transforming from abstract fear to concrete danger, and she could feel her psyche numbing itself in defense. She became hyper-aware of all that was happening around her: the beautiful murals on the pod windows that hid the machinery of the tower, the tight clasp of her father's hands as he sat in silence, and her mother's nervous tic of cracking her knuckles as she raved about Dahlia to the concierge.

"You must be proud of her," the man said to Aster, pursing his thin lips in a weak smile.

Aster snapped her head in the other direction as though she hadn't heard. She wasn't proud of anything, least of all someone who simply followed a life laid out for them.

"She's extremely proud," her mother said tersely, looking almost apologetically at the man. "Please forgive her rudeness. She's been out of sync and is just a difficult one to begin with."

"No more difficult than Dahlia," her father remarked over Telepath.

Her mother gave him a surprised, slightly offended look, and he turned his attention toward the holo-ad promising the perfect songwriting partner in digital Jim Morrison that played across the pod's windows. Aster, of course, knew he was seeing a different ad, and wondered what it could be to make him so pensive.

"How have your projects been going?" he asked, as her mother and the concierge broke off into chit-chat.

Aster frowned. Oh, my latest six-month project got zero views, was not something she wanted to tell anyone—least of all the one person who supported her. Because he would continue to support her, and that was the most unbearable pain of all.

“I'm working on them,” she instead said weakly, hating herself for yet again offering no progress.

“What about that sixties-ish one you were working on? You were really happy with it,” he asked, before adding in a sing-song voice, “On a bed of roses. . .”

“Stop!” she said, flushing crimson.

He smiled.

“It wasn't good,” she said, her eyes smarting. “It was a boring structure with a weak melody.” In reality, it had excited her more than any song she'd written in a while.

“Well, I liked it,” her father said decisively. “It'd be a big hit if you released it.”

Aster tried her best not to explode.

I did, and not a single fucking person listened to it! It was downloaded by a thousand bots who remixed and released it under different names!

“Your songs are good,” he concluded. “Don't throw them away.”

It felt like soda fizzling in her head, this state of powerlessness and shame. She'd do anything to get out of it, to pick her art up out of the mud. How was it possible for something so important to her to be met with such disdain? How did the world fail to react to her, no matter how hard she tried to make it notice?

The lesson request flashed in her head again, and she grew furious. This thing, this shining, tempting promise of salvation, wasn't real—wasn't an actual chance—only the painful symbol of what a chance could look like.

It had no state ID, after all—she couldn't reply to it. Even just viewing it for too long could get Aster flagged or worse. Yet, there was also part of her that wanted to believe it was genuine. That it was somebody interested in her. Maybe it was a rogue record executive clandestinely putting together a human roster to topple the AI music industry, or a rockstar from the past wanting to form a band on the sly? She became excited with these possibilities—why had she not considered them before?

She re-opened the message. One sentence: Do you teach guitar? hovered in front of her in the flowery cursive font she liked, massive with potential. She could now see everything in that message—a weight off her father's shoulders, a rebuke of her mother's doubt, the life of a musician. All of it was there, just waiting for her to say 'yes'. Her entire body coursed with such excitement that it suddenly felt like anything was possible. The message wasn't a terrible threat—it was her singular hope!

She had been so stupid, had gone so long without answering. What if they no longer cared to hear from her? She panicked. She had to reply—

The pod came to a stop and digital Jim Morrison gave way to a wide-open view of more people than Aster had ever seen in her life, scattered over that city within a city they called the Rose Mary Terminus.

“You have arrived,” the voice said sweetly. Aster went cold.

—

Of the five neighborhood centers within Elysia, Rose Mary Terminus was the largest. It was the most populous and affluent as well, being the hub for the tower's most prestigious neighborhood blocks, and thus was where everything of consequence happened. Neither Aster nor her family had ever set eyes on the place before, having had no reason to ever venture this high into the tower, and as such it had gained a mythical air almost as strong as that of the Penthouses, except humans actually dwelt here. Her mother all but collapsed as they exited the pod.

They were standing on the top floor of a gigantic, open room, the size of which dwarfed any neighborhood center Aster had ever seen. Three tiered floors, each more opulent than the last, descended in a sweeping curve toward a central plaza the size of a small town square. At its center was a massive garden, more art piece than horticulture, teeming with rare birds and ponds filled with extinct fish, while a kaleidoscope of people, androids, and servos moved through it like escapees from a Fête galante. Boutiques, spas, theaters, parks, restaurants, bodyworks—every luxury you could imagine or want was gathered here, in the jewel of the tower.

“This isn't even the best view,” the concierge said with a note of pride, leading them away from the inset pod hubs, where countless more, attired for the ceremony, continued to arrive.

Shops and restaurants whose windows were fogged for privacy and covered with menus and gorgeous ads passed by, and her mother craned her neck to look at each and every one. Her father kept a measured pace, playing oddly with his fingers while he talked with the concierge about the history of Rose Mary.

“Smile,” Margreta told Aster over Telepath. Strangers, noticing their ceremonial sashes, were nodding as they passed the group. They were looking at Aster like they'd known her for years. She wanted to scream at them, ask why the fuck they were focusing so much on her; why couldn't they just act normally? Aster could barely make her legs move, let alone raise her eyes and smile. She was too focused on reaching the bottom of this winding floor, where she knew even more people, with their curious eyeballs, would be waiting: tower dignitaries and Sunbeams representatives eager to pose for commemorative photos with the family. It was a zoo with an open-air exhibit, and they were the draw.

The group reached a glideway heading toward the bottom floor, allowing them to rest. All the while, the nods and plastic smiles never abated. Their pink and cream sash was like gold reflected in the sun, catching the eye and inspiring an almost insane convulsion in the bodies of those they passed as they tried desperately to not let their opportunity to pay deference slip. It was obvious they were selfiying, streaming the moment to their feeds as they passed. Never before had Aster felt so commodified or less the owner of her person; she had no more control over her image and the spread of it than an inanimate landscape.

By the time they reached the center of the plaza, Aster had already detached herself from everything going on around her. The dead silent procession of hundreds chatting within their personal bubbles, the sticky eyes of those who saw their sashes, her mother's intermittent corrections to posture that came almost every other minute—a campaign of shock and awe for somebody who couldn't even shake another's hand; a complete and total nervous shutdown.

Her mother fell to her knees. Above them, taking up the full scope of vision was a vast turquoise dome, almost as large as heaven itself, covered in a seastone mural depicting the Czars beheading the old society. Aster, despite herself, looked up in awe.

It was the Rose Mary Dome—one of the masterpieces of the 21st century, and the first by an AI to be critically accepted. Aster had seen it countless times in history streams, in AR field-trips with her family, but in person it demanded your attention. So impressive was its grandeur, its architecture—drawn up by the modeled consciousnesses of Byzantine masters—that Aster's anger at its artificial origin was dampened, replaced by the disbelief that something like this could fit in their tower. She could not believe she was setting her eyes on it—the beginning of all her pain, in a way.

Her father and the concierge were helping her mother to her feet. She was half-yelping, gasping with joy; she wasn't just seeing the art, but what lay beyond it.

“The Penthouses,” her mother told her father, who put his arm around her.

The concierge, with a cloying smile, brought up his AR display and gestured to Aster to move closer to her parents for a photo.

She walked toward her father as though to the gallows, and lowered her eyes.

“One, two. . .” the concierge began to count.

Her parents looked up, and Aster wondered if heaven to them began with the sky or that ceiling.

“Say cheese!”