A victim of kidnapping and deeply worried, she wondered what complicity she might be accused of. Would she be expelled from paradise? Would she be sent to hell to languish forever beside her abductor? These questions led Marilyn to a troubling conclusion: “Anxiety exists even in heaven.”
Once they had passed through the gates, Henri could scarcely believe his eyes—his third eye included—even though it was becoming less and less visible. A fabulous landscape unfolded before him, as though all the landscapes of every habitable planet in the universe had been gathered there. His instinctive understanding of things even allowed him to grasp that.
“Unimaginable! Better than Toy Town! Better than all my toy-kingdom projects. It’s as if we’ve stepped into a super-ultra-high-definition six-thousand-K film filled with intelligent holograms,” he confided to his victim, who was listening only because she wanted to escape. One quest for freedom leads to another.
Like a child seeing faces for the first time, Toutrec smiled at the panorama. He babbled foolishly.
There was fauna and flora from everywhere. And even more. In this fairy-tale vision—if that expression is not too modest—he saw trees of the past, the present, and the future; trees that had never grown, hybrid trees… Among them were banana spruces, palm trees bearing fluorescent red apples, sequoias laden with cocoa-filled cherries, and pink baobabs. Unimaginable flowers perfumed the air: dandelions exhaling intertwined scents of lily of the valley and lavender, grass smelling of grapefruit groves, and cacti releasing spirals of lemony pepper.
There were known and unknown animals, extinct species, and even species yet to come. Audacious crossbreeds with gourmet names: winged ponies puffing fresh onion-scented gas like miniature Pegasi, fruit-loving butterfly-flies that never ate (since hunger does not exist in paradise), vanilla-milk cows, hummingbird-pterodactyls with enchanting songs, and even refined tyrannosaurus rexes with innocent gazes.
Marilyn revealed to him that all creatures in paradise can rediscover the pleasures linked to the digestive system: the joy of eating, salivating, swallowing, digesting… even the pleasure of relief without having ingested anything. Here, all one needs to do is think of it. Everything is felt and flows through the mind, triggered by a simple glance.
“There are species I’ve never seen. It’s incredible,” he said, his eyes wide as telescopes.
“After what the books call his seventh day—let’s put it that way—he went back to work on the eighth. Since then, he has never stopped creating. A tireless worker. Everything destined to be born on hospitable planets passes through here first. Paradise isn’t only an end; it is also a beginning,” she told him.
Henri finally took a step. Then another. Then he stepped back, then sideways, like a hesitant cha-cha-cha dancer.
“Hey, Marilyn, I’ve got air cushions under my feet!”
“Don’t you think they might be in your head?… You’re not on Earth. Our feet do not touch the grass, nor do our hands rest on flowers or insects. It is all our auras gently brushing against one another. Except for you—because you refuse to let go of my wrist.”
“If I lie down in front of an elephant, it won’t crush me?”
“You could always try,” she replied.
Suddenly, Henri pulled Marilyn behind a grove:
“Don’t say a word. I need to breathe. And there are so many people everywhere. Even if they don’t recognize you, I might attract attention. A surprise at every step. A true hallucinatory frenzy. It’s like being nourished from within by a giant magic mushroom. There’s no comparison for it!” he whispered.
“God is not only what we know; He also arises from the unknown. It has nothing to do with drugs,” Marilyn added, philosophizing in order to distract her captor.
“Uh!… What a strange way of putting things!” murmured Toutrec, loosening his grip as he reflected.
The tactic was almost working.
Another celestial phantasmagoria appeared. He tensed again. A question troubled him…
“Marilyn… Have you ever seen God?”
“No, never!”
“Look! Marilyn, do you see those floating holes coming toward us? They’re moving! Are they going to attack us?” cried Henri, alarmed.
“Relax,” she said softly, though her attempt to reassure him seemed poorly timed. “Those openings, like floating portholes, are memory holes. Not the kind you know. At first, we all think they help us forget. In truth, they do not. They are anti-nostalgic portals—something like memories in a reality show without cameras. It depends on your mood. You simply call them, and they come closer. In doing so, they sweep away the weeds of reality in seconds and offer you the truth of life on a silver platter, without your even asking.”
“Amusing… but above all interesting. Still, we don’t have time to dwell on holes… do we?” he said.
“Do you remember a cicada that sang for only a nanosecond while you were alive? Here, the perception of time in its entirety is that cicada’s song. And if that saddens you, there’s a heavenly saying that goes: ‘For every sad thought, an angelic squad of healers will arrive,’” Marilyn added.
“What! There are heavenly sayings?” Henri replied in surprise.
“Yes! There is even a Master of Sayings. His role is to write them. Unfortunately, I have never had the pleasure of meeting Uncle Maxime. In fact, no one has. He is as absent from the landscape as God.”
“Quite a nickname for someone with such a reputation!”
Then Henri tilted his head, furrowed his brow, and slowly swayed in place, full of questions.
Marilyn would have loved to escape. But no opportunity had yet presented itself. Trying to break free from Toutrec’s relentless grip was almost futile.