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Climate Change? PARADISE GARDENS begins when Earth can't support human life. Chapters Here.

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If a cautionary tale has a function, it raises consciousness of what can happen—to ward it off. This novel may be the equivalent of shamanic practices, where a tribe wards off a disaster by transferring negative energy to an object. Some also use earth to cleanse negative energy, water or fire to change its nature. Perhaps negative visualization has a similar function. This novel can purge our fear, allow a passage for changing dark “unthinkable” visualization to a positive future. Paradise Gardens is a passage and at the end, there is unity—of people, place, and nature.

Why I am publishing chapters from the of 2017 New Edition of Paradise Gardens. A dark vision begun in Reagan’s 80′s hauntingly coming to reality in Trump’s 2018.

Chapter 2 File Cabinet, Database. The Sheraton Hotel



Year 3011, Underground, the United Business Estates

 

Chapter   1Year 3011, Underground, the United Business Estates

First Came Superstition

Janet McCarthy wasn’t proud of her compulsion to cross-reference her life with the horoscopes in women’s magazines but she no longer hid it. Her boundaries were within sanity. Horoscopes in monthly magazines were one thing, tabloid Jean Dixon blurbs quite another. Just a human need for entertainment, she told herself,a diver- sion from her tough responsibilities as claims adjustor at Rudimental Life, the chief underwriter for the United Business Estates. Horoscopes gave handy archetypes, a way to understand your life within a time period. Com- forting outcomes that were not entirely in her hands.
Janet’s business decisions often set precedents for pol- icies of the Estates, because she could be clear-cut about claims that were ambiguous. She was  unusually skillful at reconciling facts within the limitations of policies, except for the Robinson case. She couldn’t figure out why. The facts were similar tomany claims that crossed


Chapter 1

her desk. It was the particulars that were disturbing: the man’s appearance, the date of the accident, the sequence of events. And this nagging feeling of familiarity with a complete stranger.
A little discipline, she admonished herself, switching on her computer terminal for another look.
Robinson appeared a hard-working man in his 40s with light-colored chamois gloves hooked into his belt. He wore a tentative smile and thinning hair pushed back for the camera. He looked solid, except for the chance accident that brought him to her attention.
Seven years ago Robinson had been injured on his job at a cement factory in South Bend, Indiana. He’d been mixing ceramic components but the substance used as a catalyst had been substituted for a binder used in larger quantities. Robinson had been in the way of the explo- sion; a single error, a lone victim, no witnesses—too convenient? Coworkers had corroborated his wife’s story about increasing lapses of memory following the acci- dent. A month afterward he disappeared. She was peti- tioning the United Business Estates for widow status to receive the benefits of Rudimental Life’s insurance policy for Average employees. Injury on the job leading to death was a legitimate claim for payment. And the result of Robinson’s injury—his possible brain damage—was rel- evant, though unproven. But all too often in the U.B.E. the consequences of such damage, alleged amnesia or another disorder, meant disappearance not death.


Year 3011, Underground, the United Business Estates

Janet should have informed Robinson’s wife that if her husband had been killed on the job there would be no question of her eligibility. She didn’t have the heart for that, especially when the facts contradicted her hunch that Robinson was alive. (Abandoned wives were sad parentheses in any report.). Janet brought Robinson’s image into closer focus. She noticed two dots, which she guessed weren’t dust. Magnification confirmed what she suspected—a tiny scar resting above the eyebrow and one on the side of the wrist. The first was half-moon shaped, the second a vertical line. Neither was listed in his file under the heading, BODY MARKINGS. Yet both were significant indications that his personal plastics work, surgery required for employment, had lagged behind the accident.
It was probably one in a series that had marred his body, yet allowed him the floating status prized by mem- bers of the Unconnected. Seizing false identities, these illegals damaged operations within the Estates, before dis- appearing with an untraceable condition. They cheated the U.B.E by subverting labor pools and increasing the tithe burden on the public. Janet just knew Robinson was alive and wouldn’t mind nailing him, if it weren’t for his wife. Why should she suffer for her husband’s treachery? And why did Janet care?
SORRY, DESERTION ISN’T CONSIDERED THE
EQUIVALENT OF DEATH, Janet typed. The sentence dismayed her. She knew the claim was false, the tip of a small but growingthreat to the U.B.E. Robinson’s wife


Chapter 1

was probably involved. So why did was she letting them off with a simple denial of benefits, instead of investiga- tion?
There was the odd coincidence that the date of the accident, seven years ago last spring, was also the  date of her first “peak” experience as an employee of Rudi- mental; the first day she felt connected to her job in the significant way desired by the U.B.E. There were the scars she could have described without  magnification and the peculiar sense of déjà vu she felt about Robin- son’s whole appearance; as though he were a good friend masquerading in some clever costume. It was incompre- hensible that she felt sentimental about him. Janet’s psy- chologician might have an explanation though she would resist that call. Autonomy might be a regressive instinct but she stubbornly retained it; deep as DNA and beyond reprogramming.
A cheery female voice chirped Rudimental’s lunch- time theme. She would finalize the Robinson case after her break. Janet put her screen to sleep and opened her refrigerator drawer. She removed a tuna on rye, along with her horoscope chart and an envelope of raw copy from her life and popular magazines. She bit into the sandwich mechanically, thinking she couldn’t help her attraction to astrology, a fact her new boyfriend, Michael, seemed unable to accept. “When did you start reading horoscopes and why?” he asked repeatedly. “It violates the rationalism so vital for your occupation.”


Year 3011, Underground, the United Business Estates

Her superstition had become an issue in their rela- tionship. She had to find a reason that would satisfy him. It wasn’t easy. How could an aristocrat understand her needs? Michael had declared his loyalty the U.B.E. in the usual rituals but he was unhindered by the will of    an estate. He chose  his occupation, while she was merely  a professional dreaming of a future without continual overtime.
Janet laid out blocks of copy. The stars had ancient descriptions of personalities like hers. Why couldn’t Michael be more tolerant? After all—she almost blushed—he was unorthodox about more dangerous compulsions. Why pick on her horoscope?
“You live like an Indian staring at the moon,” he said, when she first confided her secret. “You’re too passive, just letting things happen. Wake up, Janet! How can you call an escape a system for living?” Janet was sorry she had revealed herself. She liked his muscular legs, which looked more than cosmetic. She liked his genuinely crooked teeth and the way he smiled not trying to hide them. She didn’t want Michael to think she was flakey. New York men were touchy. You took your chances.
She had decided to sleep with Michael on their third date, in harmony with his forecast for romance. They had turned up Bleeker Street on the way to his apartment. If he proved too weird, she could always leave. But things would probably be okay. Michael came with fine refer- ences from their mutual friend in the records depart-


Chapter 1

ment. Even so, walking on his arm that first night, Janet felt paranoid. In front of a parrot store, she noticed a girl with waist-length blonde hair looking fixedly at a pair of million dollar love-birds. The girl’s pure profile was inter- rupted by a growth of beard. She turned and displayed the stub of an arm. The freak was wearing a gingham dress over a lace-trimmed petticoat.
Michael was unmoved. Freaks were not all that uncommon. Even average people were no longer dis- playing an expected surface appearance but some hidden opposite. Ambiguity was no longer just an intriguing aspect of personality. Janet wished she knew Michael better; wished she knew the safe precincts—taboos negotiated warily by competent family psychologicians. Michael did not fit the ordinary personality profiles.
“I think I’ll call it a night,” she said half-way up Bleeker Street.
“You have no reason to be chicken,” Michael said, “I’m a decent human being.”
“Please explain.”
Michael kissed Janet on the lips, insistent on emo- tional connection. His intensity shocked her, hinting at the forbidden forms of sex. Sleeping with someone was one thing, direct contact quite another.
“I’m Caucasian,” Michael said, “I’m educated and I make money. I live on Earth in a functional, if not extrav- agant place. I like women, you in particular, and want to sleep with you. My tastes are not quite missionary but


Year 3011, Underground, the United Business Estates

neither are yours, I imagine.”
Michael ran his hand lightly up her side, ribs to armpit, careful not to wander to her breast—not without the right equipment. Janet was relieved. He could be trusted to keep within the legal boundaries for safe sex.
“I travel. Tonight, tomorrow, next week I’ll be around. After that, I can’t say,” he said, seeming genuinely rueful.
Janet surprised herself by kissing him hard on the mouth, implying all the risks he had allayed. “I find it difficult to accept the implications of my feelings,” she said. “If you’re not around much, it’s all right.”
Old habits die hard, Janet thought in retrospect, knowing why she had disregarded the sexual bans. Her past may have been reconstructed but her emotional ori- entation remained primitive. She hated the stultifying price of conformity in the U.B.E. So in a moment of illegal intimacy, she had confessed her horoscope com- pulsion placing her professional integrity at Michael’s mercy—a man she barely knew!
How had this happened?She was a marital floater, who had remained uncommitted for years! Human resources had erroneously sent men attracted by the maternal, compassionate aspects of her personality profile. Most applicants wanted less emotional, more aggressive—she didn’t know what these men wanted. She did know she wanted Michael. Why did she have to decipher her life from the oblique advice in women’s magazines?
Janet knew commercial slants. “Bizarre” was silver-


Chapter 1

spoon oriented for the chic businesswoman socialite. “Glimmer” focused on lateral career and apartment moves for the young working woman. Myself focused on phys- ical development and emotional swings of middle-level careerists, while “Copula” combined sexual and redec- orating know-how. Janet’s weeded out romantic hooks, marketing ploys and her own wishful thinking, when she interpreted her horoscope. She was left with “Spruce up your appearance,” “Pay attention to family matters,” “Attend to household chores,” and “Humor a loved one’s demands.”
Janet hoped for coherent direction for her life. GOD DOES NOT PLAY WITH DICE, the motto over the portals of Rudimental Life, offered little inspiration. If there were patterns for existence, only Einstein could read them, she once told her psychologician. She was seated cross-legged on a pillow, her eyes closed in medi- tation, when she confessed that she wanted to believe in the U.B.E.
In a gentle voice he had asked, “When did you develop a need for inner conviction?”
“I don’t know there was a specific time.”
“Past emotional content is key to your devotion to Rudimental Life. I know it was traumatic when…” he led her with a compassionate voice.
She opened her eyes onto his  white  robed  figure. His shiny head was bowed. Mesmerizingly, he intoned “oom.” The sound transported her back to the witness


Year 3011, Underground, the United Business Estates

stand, when she testified. Her family was humiliated by the spectacle. The benches were full.
What was she saying? Her mouth was open, her face ashen with emotion but she couldn’t make out the con- tent. Public testimony followed the consolidation of the corporations under the U.B.E. How could such a charged memory be so indistinct? She let herself drift further on the psychologician’s chanting. A focus came. She had run away from an estate and been apprehended. With incred- ible despair, Janet recalled words of sad inevitability:
“Information does not make us free. Enlightenment did not bring about economic fulfillment. We are hap- piest when our work is fulfilling. I have lost my previous expectations for life and will handle my assignments with grace. I discard my existential ambiguity and grant my psychologician the burden of spiritual uncertainty. Never again will I run away from responsibility.”
After a nebulous interval, she returned to the stand, swore her support and regained her family’s slot at Rudi- mental Life. She told her psychologician about a dis-  tant feeling of despair, something incommunicable to Michael. He would simply point out that if she  liked her job, she would have fewer doubts to lose in planetary movements.
Most of her colleagues were happy, opting for mobility through internal or lateral moves. They broadened their skill bases and passed options to their offspring. The strategy was not only rational but fulfilled the spiritual


Chapter 1

aspiration for self-improvement cherished by all profes- sionals, except Janet. She had more confidence in her cryptic method of divination.
CUT YOUR HAIR. CALL MOM ON HER BIRTHDAY. TAKE CLOTHES TO THE CLEANERS. BE PATIENT WITH MICHAEL’S QUESTIONS.
Janet copied these actions onto white labels. The last was infuriating. How dare he probe her family background, former lovers, apartment history, occupational base, and even her financial destiny?
Who did he think he was to question her life? He had no need of fantasy. An ancestral stockpile of uranium was the foundation of his independence. His family was an individual subsidiary estate. What could he know of the pain that went with a muted personality? She only dared to do this work manually, under her computer’s slum- bering eye.
Janet positioned her labels onto her chart of the cosmos, remembering the trauma of her first surgery. She had donned youth, the official employment mask, and dutifully schooled herself in optimism. Plastic had given her a new face but her soul was anachronistic. When rebellion crept into the Estates in fashionable compul- sions, was she willing to embrace the first superstition that came along?
Michael had too much freedom to believe in fashion. She would have less to explain, if he was old enough to put himself in her shoes! It was hard to tell. She was in


Year 3011, Underground, the United Business Estates

her 50s and looked 25. Michael, who looked 40, might be 20. Most people couldn’t afford to match their faces with their psyches until retirement. Professional aberra- tion or not, Janet would have to ask Michael’s age. Then she would know how to answer hisquery.
Before pasting the labels onto the chart, Janet scanned for discrepancies between her actions and cosmic pro- gressions. Tonight the process stimulated a bizarre link between her horoscope and the Robinson case. CUT YOUR HAIR brought to mind a vision of Robinson’s thinning hair.
How could phrases trigger fragments of a memory she didn’t possess? Was she simply imagining the case history in an unusual, if frighteningly vivid way? She was over- excited about Michael. Was she projecting personal anx- iety onto her professional identity? She must resolve their conflict tonight!
No confrontation was worth this insanity. CALL YOUR MOM ON HER BIRTHDAY evoked a discus- sion, in which Robinson said it was time for him to dis- appear. TAKE CLOTHES TO THE CLEANERS ticked off visions of chamois gloves and work clothes. Janet pasted the labels onto her chart, focusing on Michael’s reality. He wouldn’t use her confession about horoscopes to his economic advantage. He didn’t have to with his own estate. Objects had been plentiful for so many gen- erations he actually believed a man’s life should merit something greater than himself.


Chapter 1

Dealing antiques allowed him to combine an exciting quest with the merits of history. Michael was definitely noble, not a man you met through human resources referrals. Janet didn’t want to alienate him but NO APOLOGIES, not for her horoscope or any professional maladjustment!.Why was she so worried about Michael? Had the Robinson case unnerved her? It was not an unusual claim, except for her sense not just that it was fake, but that it held some personal importance.
FORGET IT! Janet propped her finished chart against her terminal. Her course of action was clear. She and Michael would be naked, their bodies encircled. She would relate her reasons for doing horoscopes. He could laugh at her idiocy, if he liked. It wouldn’t matter. In that cozy locus, she’d intuit his true feelings.


Source: https://notanotherbookreview.blogspot.com/2018/12/climate-change-paradise-gardens-begins.html



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