Eve's Perfect Lineage

September 29, 2239 C.E.

Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility

Newport News, Virginia

My name is Dr. Aliyah Hart, and this will be my last recording in the Common Era (C.E.). Hundreds of years of science, and decades of my life’s work of research on black holes and singularities, have brought me to this moment, in a lead box big enough for one person, writing as I sit before a small digital screen and a keypad. My palms are sweaty. I just need to input the date, time, and location and hit Go. My body and the things touching it will be vaporized and subsequently materialize, intact, at 12:01am on October 29, 4004 B.C.E. in Mecca, Saudia Arabia.

Have I brought everything? There is a gravity-powered recording device taped to my hand, schematics to build a return device in a pocket close to my chest, and a backpack with food, water, basic medical supplies, and personal hygiene items strapped to my back. Everything else – my life as I know it – must be left behind. I will not be able to return because the amount of time that it will take to build a mechanism to come back to this day and age is far longer than my human lifespan.

A wave of nostalgia sweeps over me, and I am filled with love for our poor, broken world. I hope to change all of that.

It’s now or never. I will see you on the other side.

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October 29, 4004 B.C.E.

Mecca, Saudia Arabia

I am lying on something soft and wet and every cell in my body is vibrating. All of my body parts seem to be attached to me, which is a good thing. Light shines through my eyelids, and I open my eyes. It is so beautiful. I could not have imagined how beautiful it is.

I am in the middle of a garden. There are vibrant greens of every hue scattered with generous amounts of plump fruits and/or vegetables and so many species of rainbow-colored flowers that I cannot even attempt to describe them all. Temperate breezes gently flow by, bringing with them the sweet fragrance of jasmine and woodsy must. I can hear the rush of water all around, a chorus of happy bird chirps, and joyous singing in the distance.

My watch reads 3:00 a.m., and I realize there is no sun. Where is the light coming from? It is all around, casting little shadows. I am not sure what is happening right now. I prop myself up on shaky legs and move toward the sound of the singing, and as I do so the light gets brighter and brighter. And then I see it. Them. A group of tall, radiant winged men grouped around something on the shore of a bubbling rocky brook. Suddenly they stop, the crowd parts, and I cannot breathe for the splendor in front of me.

It is the great I Am. The Primium Mobile. The Beginning and The End, The First and The Last. He is kneeling down in his white robes, forming something with his hand. Then he pauses and turns to me, love radiating from every fiber of his being, and beckons me forward. He looks like every man I have ever seen, yet no specific man. Now I see how we were created in his image. He turns back to his works of art, life-sized dust molds of a man and a woman.

Suddenly silence washes across the garden, and he puts his mouth to the man’s nostrils and exhales breath into them, and muscles stitched, bones grew, and flesh covered the man, then hair and every external feature. He draws his first breath of air and then sits up and watches God breathe life into a woman, shorter than him with long, dark hair and curves. I stand with the crowd of angels, looking down at the most perfect beings in the history of creation. Perfectly beautiful, and clean, and pure.

Great numbers of animals of every kind gather around us, listening intently when God names the man Adam, and Adam names the woman Lilith because her hair was as dark as the universe before God spoke light into creation. He bestows upon them – the man and the woman – the authority to rule over the garden, everything in it, and every winged creature, fish in the sea, and over every living thing on and below the ground. While they will have no need for food or drink, the garden is filled with an ever-growing variety of fruit and vegetables that are delectable to the taste bud and sweet in the stomach. In return, he asked for Adam and Lilith’s obedience in one (seemingly small) thing – that they not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, for if they eat it they will surely die.

Then God invites the man and the woman to name everything in the garden and explore, and leaves with his angels and a promise to stay near to them every day of their lives.

We stand there, looking at one another.

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November 6, 4004 B.C.E.

Garden of Eden

Mecca, Saudia Arabia

I have tried for several days to explain who I am and where I am from. They listen eagerly, eyes wide, and nod with a detached interest as if it is a fairy tale like Hansel and Gretel or Red Riding Hood. I have also tried to tell them what I can remember from the Bible creation story of Adam and Eve and the fall of creation.

At the mention of Eve’s name, Lilith’s eyes narrow and her forehead crinkles in confusion. She turns to Adam and he shrugs. He doesn’t know who Eve is, and how could he? From his perspective, he and Lilith were the first – and only – people in existence other than me.

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November 13, 4004 B.C.E.

I love it here. I wish I could stay here forever. It is like Heaven, or a dream. Adam and Lilith endless roam about, naked, talking to the animals and plucking flowers with which to adorn the lean-to they constructed from ferns and palm fronds. Nakedness is becoming a foreign concept to me, and I long to feel the breeze on my bare skin and soft, spongy grass beneath my toes.

I am growing accustomed to the 24-hour otherworldly light that softly wraps this garden and everything inside it, and then it dawns on me that I have not slept in about two weeks. I have not needed to, nor have I felt hunger, or thirst. I am filled with boundless energy that should exhaust me, but it does not.

Why have I come here? I think I had an important job before, but the concept of a “job” is easing out of my mind as quickly as the beauty and presence of God can fill it. I could probably remember if I tried really hard, but this “job” concept and context are rather unpleasant, as is the though that there was anywhere else I ever was, and I dismiss the notion that they are worth remembering.

Lilith giggles at me for talking to this small silver object in my hand. I explain to her that it is for recording one’s moments and later listening to them. I am now doing it more so for the habit than anything else.

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October 10, 4011 B.C.E.

Lilith tells me that she is growing restless and wants to leave. One of the animals told her that there is a place by the Red Sea littered with caves and interesting hard-shelled creatures. Crabs. Or maybe sea turtles. I have seen these things before, and I am nervous about going with her because I don’t know if I will be allowed to return to the garden if I leave. I tell her that I will stay here.

We sit on a log in the middle of a bright green field covered with tulips as far as the eye can see. I am chewing on a stalk of wild grass, pondering creation, and Eve is petting a nearby fawn.

A serpent spoke to her yesterday, asking “Did God really say you can eat anything except for the fruit from one tree?”

It scoffed at her nod and told her that if she eats from that tree, her eyes will be opened to the ways of the world and she will be like God. She would also be gifted with wings with which to fly as high and far as her imagine could take her. She rubs her round belly lovingly, then stares wistfully into the sky.

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January 17, 4012 B.C.E.

Lilith ate the fruit today, despite my warnings and pleas. I saw her sneak off after she birthed Cain, telling Adam she just needed to rinse the both of them off and would be right back. The sky over the Tree of Knowledge darkened, and I saw a winged creature take off.

Adam has been searching for her for hours. He does not believe she would disobey God. I do. I also know that she will never be allowed to return to him, or to this paradise.

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February 17, 4013 B.C.E.

I have been in Eden for almost nine years, and every day there is still some new joy to be found in the wonder of creation – a flower I hadn’t seen before or animal I had not met. I cannot remember the last time I had an ache in my body or in my heart. Most of all, I can feel God everywhere and he visits us sometimes.

The world outside the garden has changed so much this past year. Adam came back when he could not find Lilith, but he has gone to search for her other times and returned with stories. His need for constant companionship is growing, and I have been doing my best to be a friend to him. But nothing more. He is my distant grandfather, and besides, I am not attracted to him in that way. That doesn’t stop him from asking to court me. He struggles to understand the reason for my rejection, but respects me enough to not press the issue too much.

Adam and I take walks every day through this utopia, and I keep pinching myself because I cannot believe it is real. As we walk, I recite poems from Robert Frost or Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and describe writing by Kahlil Gibran, Maya Angelou, and Steven King. I tell him about electricity, airplanes, and the Internet. My heart hurts as I tell him about World War I and World War II, Chernobyl, and 9/11. He soaks all of this in like a sponge, always wanting to know more. In his innocence, he believes every word that falls off my tongue, despite how far-fetched it may sound.

Today God, our Father, visits us while we splashed around in the brook, laughing as the trout made figure 8’s around our thighs and minnow nipped playfully at our toes. Light, love, and warmth emanate from him. We sit on moss-covered boulders, listening aptly, as he told us the reason for his visit.

Adam would soon have a companion. “At last!” he exclaimed.

As directed, Adam finds a comfortable spot in the spongy grass in which to lie, and closes his eyes. A few minutes later he is snoring, and Father takes a rib and, with it, creates a woman. Her blue eyes sparkle with joy, and her long blonde hair falls over her perfectly-shaped collarbone and down her back. She looks at Father with amazement, and he bids us farewell while we get acquainted and wait for Adam to wake up.

I hug her, tell her who I am and give her a brief history lesson on Adam and the paradise in which we currently find ourselves. I leave out the part about Lilith because it is Adam’s story to tell, not mine.

He wakes up after several hours. I can tell he is immediately taken with her, and she, him. He names her Eve because she is the mother of life.

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June 16, 4013 B.C.E.

God has joined Adam and Eve, and they have conceived a child. I have noticed a wistful look in his eye at times and can tell that he wonders about Lilith.

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December 2, 4013 B.C.E.

It is almost time for the baby to arrive, and Adam is nowhere to be found. He has been missing for several weeks. Eve is sick with worry, and I assure her that she will be okay no matter what. I cannot believe he left her to again search for Lilith. Since he has never been gone this long, I suppose he finally found her and chose to stay with her over Eve, their child, and life in the garden.

I will stay by her side and help her raise this child. Father has told us that in time she will bear many, many children by the Holy Spirit and thereby give rise to a humanity that has never known sin or suffering. They will remain in the garden, protected from Adam and Lilith’s progressively vile offspring, until the Earth itself is created anew for Eve’s children and their children to inhabit forever. This includes me, for I was borne from her in my previous life and have now been purified by the new lineage of perfect obedience to Father.

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Jan 18, 4014 B.C.E.

This will be my last journal entry.

Earlier today I listened to prior recordings so I could remember my life before. It seems unreal, like a fragment from a dream. I have been contemplating building a return device and sending the recorder back. Back to the other Aliyah. The one in the future who set the gears in place to bring me to where I am today.

I have accomplished what I set out to do, and it is beyond what I could have imagined. I am also beyond what I could have imagined. The strength in my bones and boundless bounce in my step tell me that I have found my home, here, with Eve and the generations that will follow. There is no point in going through the trouble to send this recorder on a return trip, because that other Aliyah no longer exists.

You may wonder what became of Adam and Lilith. Father tells me that he will try to return to the garden, with Lilith in tow, and be denied entrance because he had descended too far into sin to be allowed back in. Adam and Lilith will make their home on the shores of the Red Sea, and their offspring will become increasingly polluted until they no longer exist on this world. They will also not exist in the world hereafter, which will be an endless universe of every kind of Eden one could imagine.

With this I say farewell, until we meet again.