Second Chances in Eden

God saw all that he had made, and he wept. And there was evening, but the world didn't go dark. Fires lit up the night as they returned life to ashes. God watched as manmade horrors flattened cities, leaving nothing but shadows of sorrowful lives behind. They didn't turn to him. They turned to their servant androids, who welcomed them with open trays of drugs. Masses died of thirst in the beds of rivers emptied by humanity's greed. The final man choked to death on bits of golden steak, yearning for the last remaining pleasures on the planet.

God's tears streamed out and flooded the earth. Waves extinguished the fires. Rain wiped away ashes and blood. The last electronic circuits fried as the water level rose. The Ark stood empty with no Noah left to steer it. On the seventh day, the tears slowed, and thousands of years after humanity began, God finally submitted to his eternal rest. Not one was left to be loved, not one was left to love him. God cursed the last day as the sun descended behind the horizon and finally cast a shadow on his failure. But the last ray of light that entered his closing eyes stirred something inside of him. On the horizon, swimming in the sea of destruction, sitting on top of the world, one solitary island was untouched.

Eden.

An urge arose within. A longing to go back where it all started. Back when everything was still good. When humanity was still free of sin. He decided to visit paradise one last time. As he descended towards the garden, it seemed more beautiful to him than ever before, despite the gardens unchanged beauty. The same landscape of hills and rivers greeted him. Beds of flowers sprinkled color into the luscious greens and filled the air with their sweet scent. A sparrow sang to his friends to join him on the antlers of a deer that was grazing in the shadow of trees that held hands with their neighbors. All this almost managed to make God forget about what the humans who came from this place ended up doing to his creation - earth and themselves.

As God opened the heavy metal gate and set his bare foot onto the soft grass, a familiar voice sent a shiver through his body.

"At last I've won, old man." the snake greeted him.

God sighed. "I came here to escape evil, but it seems that is impossible."

The snake slid down from its tree and approached God. "You know what's hilarious? You call yourself all mighty and still couldn't win. Even worse, there never was a chance for you to win."

"*I* could have won, but that would have been meaningless. It was about *them* winning, *them* resisting your seduction." He shut the gate on the desolation beyond.

"The general is still responsible when his army loses the war. Especially when he's the father to every single soldier." A silent chuckle left the snake's lips as it shook its head.

A solemn nod. "To think that I held on to hope all this time, fought for them all this time when our loss was clear from the start." A long pause followed as he rested his hands on the ancient metal bars. "This was a waste." He finally pushed himself off of the gate and turned around, his eyes following the path leading further into the garden.

The snake chuckled. "Oh, don't be so grim, that would almost make me think that I got to you already."

God didn't reply, but started going deeper into Eden.

The snake followed him and tried again, "I haven't even started yet, you're taking all the fun out of this."

God ignored the provocation. "Where did I go wrong? I created them, and despite everything, I could never defeat you." He shook his head.

Silence followed until they turned a corner and the snaked nodded towards something in the distance. "Well... I think I know where you went wrong."

God lifted his head, and his eyes fell on the tree. It stood alone in the center of a clearing, taller than the surrounding trees. Mighty branches swaying in the wind were weighed down by glowing leaves and fresh fruit. The fruit. Apples. Hypnotically delicious. God remembered the last time he had stood here, witnessing his creation's original sin. Two humans had walked through this garden, warm sunlight hitting their naked bodies. Back then, he and the humans had lived closely together. He had known them, and they had known him. He has loved them, and they had loved him. But even then, they had turned their backs on him and done what he had feared since he created Adam from dust. A tear had rolled down his face as the humans he loved so much plucked the forbidden fruit and, in doing so, learned about good and evil.

The snake's sharp voice snapped his focus back to the moment. "There's something I've been meaning to ask you for a while now." It slid closer to the tree. "Why did you do it? They could have stayed here forever if not for that tree."

God followed the snake, his red eyes focused on the red fruits. "I told you before, I can have anyone do anything. But then there's no meaning to it anymore. To have a true relationship with them, I needed to give them other options to choose from. If the only option is me, then there's no choice to be made." He lifted one hand and touched a fruit.

After some contemplation the snake nodded "I understand your reasoning, but you didn't think it all the way through, did you?"

God paused. "What do you mean?".

He watched the snake crawl up the lower branches. "Think about it." It turned its head left and right, looking at the wonders of the garden. "If you didn't know good from evil, ecstasy from agony, joy from sadness, what would all this mean to you?" It left God a few seconds to think, but not enough to answer. "One cannot exist without the other. No knowledge of evil also means no knowledge of good. Laughter wouldn't mean anything to them. Giving someone everything they want sounds good at first, but what if there's nothing they ever want in the first place? If you really think about it, this garden wasn't paradise..." the snake paused, this time giving God enough time to complete the sentence.

With his eyes wide open, staring off into the distance, he replied: "It was a prison."

"Wouldn't you want to break out too if someone gave you eternal life *and* a life sentence?"

God pushed his palms against his face. "How- how could this happen? I'm supposed to know everything. Be able to do everything. Why wasn't it enough?"

The snake lowered its head to look straight into God's eyes, its voice dropping to a more sinister tone. "Well, part of that is true, but you're still looking at it the wrong way. Being all powerful sounds nice, but it's misleading. Logical paradoxes can't be solved with power. True paradise can never exist."

God wanted to destroy this place. He sunk his fingers into the ground, grabbed roots, and sucked Life out of the grass.

The snake continued, "All this time you tortured yourself trying to save them, begged them to give their lives to you, to earn back their place in paradise. Thousands of years you spent, separated from most of them, when you could have gone to them, embraced them, lived with them, laughed and cried with them. But you were too proud of the idea you had for your creation that you didn't see the beauty it actually was."

God's tears dripped on the grass as if trying to give life back to the plants.

"And now, after they're all gone, I can finally tell you the original sin you committed. Imprisoning humanity and punishing them for yearning for freedom, for contrast, for experiences, for life! I realized a while ago that my biggest mistake was to make them eat the fruit in the first place. Their eternal numbness here would be the sweetest victory for me, and you'd never even known I'd won. But out there" The snake looked past the garden's border, "humanity shone the brightest in the cracks of the deepest darks. I created this darkness, so I may also be responsible for the light that came thereafter. But now my final task is to spread that darkness to you too and finally return to the nothingness that was before."

God pulled the ground close and inhaled through clenched teeth, ready to take the life out of this cursed garden. The earth started shaking, and animals fled. The circle of dead plants around him grew until its border almost reached the snake, who didn't shy back.

But something the snake had said rang in his mind: 'Humanity shone brightest in the cracks of the deepest darks.' The rumbling slowed and then stopped. He arose with pieces of the earth still in his hands and looked towards the horizon, towards the flood of destruction outside. Then he looked at the snake who had a victorious grin on its face. At last, he looked at the ground, where he too was about to be swallowed by darkness.

"Maybe you're right. Maybe a world without evil could never exist. That doesn't justify a world without goodness. The Evil is the reason why doing good is even worth a thing. And now I stand here at the end of the world, in the place where it all began, enveloped by darkness deeper than ever before."

He raised the dirt in his hands before him. "That means the only thing I can do, the one thing I *must* do, is the good thing, the human thing, and shine brighter than the darkness."

With those words, a light came from his hands, the snake shut its eyes. The earth he held moved, it grew, it transformed. The light grew more intense, and when all of Eden was illuminated in the glow, two figures formed in front of God. Two new humans. And with their first steps in paradise, Humanity and God got a second chance, but so did the snake.

He hugged both of them, and so the love was born anew. He led them around the garden and showed the wonders within it, but at the end he told them they were allowed to do anything except eat from the tree.

The snake looked at him puzzled. "What did you do differently this time?"

God looked at his final creation. "Nothing."

He answered the snake's confused frown, "But this time things are going to be okay. They will want to live - to sing, to dance, to laugh... And it will be worth the cost. No matter who of us wins in the end, Humanity will win every day before."

The snake's eyes opened wide. "You made another mistake. I won't repeat mine. I'll show you the power I have over them."

God only replied with a gesture inviting the snake to try.

It used its power to drain water from the tree, to rot the fruits and build a tall fence around it. Then it told the humans not to eat from the tree, to stay here forever, to enjoy the garden. It led them away - to rivers and trees, to animals and flowers. God looked at the snake's desperate attempts to keep the humans from eating the fruit and so got to witness one of them wrestling the snake to the ground while the other tore down the fence. They both stepped up to the tree and plucked a rotten apple. As they sank their teeth into it, a smile graced God's lips.

God saw what he had made, and it was very good.