That night, and the interminable months that followed, were full of otherworldly delights that defy words, suffused with harmony so intense it eclipsed the barriers of self.
In other words: it was hell.
This Paradise—designed to cater to the ideas of enjoyment most normal people shared—was, for me, almost uncannily constructed from my deepest hang-ups.
At various points, often simultaneously, I was forced to endure the unholy trifecta that defined my biggest fears: eating around other people, taking my shirt off around other people, and, perhaps most terrifying of all, other people noticing how much I hated those things.
The first night’s romp alone (which, at some point, blurry to me now, fused with a competing celebration thrown by the Bruno Brigade, sworn enemies of the Hedonist Hive, all on my account) featured no fewer than twelve distinct rounds of grotesque binging and purging, broken only by brief intermissions for “Cuddle Puddles.”
A name which, I assure you, does nothing to capture the true extent of the debauchery therein.
Seeing as these festivities were ostensibly held in my honor, I felt it would be rude to opt out entirely. Still, my tendency to hover at the margins, cracking dry jokes with the more irreverent Liaisons, did not go unnoticed.
Nor did my juvenile habit of laughing uncontrollably at the mere sight of the female form, a penchant which earned me my most hated sobriquet: “The Giggler.”
**
All of my days in the Garden were packed from end to end—from the moment the Rooster belted out its chorus of unimaginable beauty to the time the night sky was switched on and the meteor-group shower began—with activities meant to satisfy my every yearning.
The days, though statistically engineered to vary just enough to feel sublime, had a general shape to them which I was able to begin anticipating over my godforsaken eons of enjoyment.
Each morning would begin with a yoga session held on a hill overlooking a verdant valley which every day teemed with different wildlife meant to inspire awe at the wonders of nature. Cotton Candy Hawks and the Rainbow-Tailed Tiger coexisted in a delicate dance with system-borne inventions like the Vospin and the Hingeeli.
Often, I’d wonder as I contorted my body into strange shapes that the other Citizens’ engineered bodies seemed better suited for: did the animals feel sorrow when they were deleted at the end of the day?
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Meg assured me it was best I didn’t think too much about it.
After yoga and an excruciating session of cathartic crying, we’d head to the Gourmet Gardens for breakfast. The buffet line, always just long enough that you had time to decide what you wanted in your omelet, was a place for warm greetings and benign gossip and rumors about what the day had in store.
The fact that each day was more or less a blissed-out reflection of the day before did not seem to occur to my fellow Citizens. Or, if it did, they seemed not to mind.
Back at the communal table, which was edible as well as pleasantly free of sharp corners, I’d frequently hold court, regaling my followers and doubters alike (who were becoming fewer and fewer by the day) with predictions about the plot of that afternoon’s movie.
It was a fun party trick, which served to bolster my reputation as a prophet, but which could be entirely attributed to the fact that the films we’d be shown—supposedly daily creations of the purest cinema imaginable—were mostly just remixes of plots from the Dev Quasar franchise, which only I remembered.
After our stint at the Beachfront Cineplex, which would more often than not devolve into some kind of orgy I’d cleverly avoid by affecting the posture of a devoted cineaste, it would be time for Unstructured Exploration.
This stretch of time, the most unpleasant of all, was set aside for each Citizen to explore the limits of their supposedly boundless capacity for creativity. A few times I’d earnestly tried my hand at it, once writing an opera so “concerning” as to require an addendum to the guidelines forbidding “persecution narratives that require an 80-piece chorus.”
Of course, I couldn’t be entirely sure this was about me, but nevertheless, it put a wrench in the already troubled production of The Duke of Despair.
My ambitions predictably thwarted, I’d usually just use the time to check in with Meg, who, by this time of day, would report to me with the solemnity of a war correspondent the bloodbath that was my Tranquility Metrics.
JOY: -23%
INNER CHILD: Hospitalized
AURA: Pitch Black
GRATITUDE: Not Detected
KARMA: Better Luck Next Life
Invariably, I’d spend the rest of the day with a resolute desire to turn around the failings of the first half, but by the time the night gave way to the Fiesta of Feasting and Flesh, I’d usually be just about spent.
I don’t need to bore you with more details about the debauched nightly raves that would follow, but let’s just say helping the hardworking Liaisons who operated the Vortex of Voluptuousness unionize didn’t exactly endear me to whatever forces decided my scores.
And so it went on like this, day after day, for longer than I could possibly keep track of, seeing as time, as a concept, had early on in my stay been obliterated in the Conquest of the Clock.
Eventually, it felt vain to hope for some kind of breakthrough. I ceased, for ages it seemed, to even imagine I could improve in absurd categories that tried to encapsulate concepts as elusive as Enjoyment or Delight.
That was, of course, until Ascension Day arrived.
