Inside Eden

The thing is, the view is rather different, depending on whether you're on the outside looking in or the other way around. It's the Garden of Eden I'm talking about, and I can tell you, after a few years of trying to squeeze something organic out of rock and sand, it looked downright heavenly to me. So, imagine my relief and gratitude when Adam and Eve invited me in to take the vacant Gardener III position.

"You'll be a Gardener IV in a year," promised Adam.

"And you'll have a chance to learn the latest gardening techniques," added Eve.

But as I implied up front, every dream job has its lurking nightmares, just as every ointment has its fly. The first fly I noticed was this snake character. He kept slithering up to me, offering some noxious looking fruit and saying, "Don't be taken in by the PR blitz, ducky."

I refrained from eating the fruit. As I said, it looked dreadful.

I wanted to tell Adam and Eve about the snake, but they hustled me off to take my Computer-Based Training on Garden Security. Required training for all Garden staff. It consisted of basically three things:

1. Don't let anyone tailgate you coming into the Garden.

2. Report any suspicious-looking fertilizer immediately.

3. Never, never, never eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

No problem for me, although I had no idea what the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil looked like. I just wouldn't eat anything I wasn't sure of.

"Come on," urged Eve, after I had finished my CBT. "Let me introduce you to your Team Lead."

She led me to a cubicle a couple of doors down from mine.

"Have you two met yet?" she asked cheerfully.

It was the snake.

"Welcome aboard," said the snake nastily. "I've got your first assignment for you."

"Um, cool!" I stammered.

"I want you to fix the irrigation system," said the snake.

"Ok, sure," I replied, feeling a little more comfortable. "Irrigation systems are a specialty of mine."

"I'll just leave you guys to it," bustled Eve, bustling off.

"Fruit?" offered the snake wickedly. "It might help you think."

I declined, saying, "No, I'll just get on with the irrigation system, then."

I pored over the damn thing for a week, and believe me, I did all the poring. Out of it, nary a drop. I scrutinized it from top to bottom, from beginning to end. I took it apart. I put it back together. I couldn't find a thing wrong with it.

At the end of the week, I returned to my Team Lead in confusion.

"I don't get it," I said. "It looks fine to me, but it doesn't work."

"Eat," said the snake, shoving a segment of rotting fruit in my direction.

I gave up. I popped the fruit in my mouth and spit it out immediately. It was worse than it looked. As soon as fruit touched tongue, however, I had a revelation.

"There's no freakin' water here!" I cried. "Of course, the irrigation system doesn't work. You can't have a garden without water!"

If the snake had had shoulders, he would have shrugged. "Yeah, that's what I keep telling them."

I was getting confused. "What was that foul stuff you gave me ... Oh, no! I'll bet that was the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil!"

"Bingo," said the snake, "but I've always felt that 'the Tree of the Knowledge of the Difference Between Reality and Fantasy' would be more accurate."

"Whatever you call it," I wailed, "I'm screwed! That's the biggest no-no in the CBT!"

"Oh, don't sweat it," interjected Adam, who poked his head into the snake's cube, seemingly from nowhere. "Everybody eats it."

"I beg your pardon?" I gasped. "What about Garden Security?"

Adam, who did have shoulders, did shrug. "Yeah, well. Appearances, you know. Got to mollify upper management."

"But what about the water crisis?" I asked reproachfully. "Didn't you know about that?"

Adam shrugged again.

Realization dawned. "Everyone knew, except me. This isn't really much of a garden, is it?"

"It's not so bad," he said. "Some things grow, anyway." He gestured toward a stunted, bedraggled plant with a few sad fruit hanging from it. "You can always get fruit from that one, if you're very careful."

"It's a cactus," I said, after looking more closely.

"No," the snake corrected me. "It's the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It may not be much, but after you lose your illusions, that's what you've got to work with."