Adam's Apples

The Kingdom, 100 M.R.

 

Glorainia, the Kingdom city of New Eden, shines down upon the rainbow land that curves across the golden horizon. Sparks of beautifully colored lights fire from the glistening walls of the magnificent temple where the Great King dwells.

One hundred years have passed since New Eden began, since the Trouble Time and the Before Time when the evols lived among the people.

The Great King holds court and moves among the Edons, loving and caring for them--each and every one. His love demands that all obey but few are there who do not want to obey. The Great King is perfect in his way.

New Eden time is changed completely from the Trouble Time and the Before Time. Death, disease, war and all the terrible things of the ages gone by now are but faded memories. The evols, locked away in the caverns deep within New Eden, no more do their mischief.

Fruits of health line the streets of Glorainia and all of New Eden. Brightons and lightons move among the Glorainians and all Edons everywhere. It is a time of wonders and adventures and much, much happiness.

 

Chapter One

Memories of the Before Time faded with each bursting dawn. Sights and sounds and smells filled Glorainia with fragrances of all things made new.

Trees as tall as trees could ever be and as green as green ever was ringed the Middle Land street called Celestial Circle.

Who could make such a day as this but the Great King? What could spoil this day's first light that streamed through the open spaces? Adam Beam yawned and stretched when he heard the bump against his bedroom door. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes after rolling happily over the side of his bed. He yawned again, even bigger than before, and enjoyed feeling the carpet whish between his toes while he walked.

When Adam turned the knob and swung open his bedroom door, he screamed, "Noooo...!" But it was too late! The huge paws of the great Siberian tiger hit Adam, knocking him onto his back.

The gigantic beast held Adam against the carpet and opened its powerful jaws.

"Noooo!" the boy yelled while he looked into the red, open mouth that bared three-inch fangs in rows of knife-sharp teeth.

"Noooo!" Adam blurted again, turning his face to the side, then starting to giggle happily.

The tiger's big, broad tongue licked Adam's face roughly. The cat snarled and kissed him in the usual way he greeted his human friend every morning, and Adam threw his arm around the beautiful yellow, orange, and black-striped neck in a loving hug.

"Good morning, Toby!" Adam returned the tiger's kiss on the yellow thatch of hair on one side of the cat's face.

The boy made a face and crinkled his nose, then rubbed his nose with the back of his hand when the tiger's fur tickled his face.

Adam jumped up from the floor and onto the cat's back.

"Hurry, Tobe! Let's eat!"

The huge cat loped down the hallway, careful not to throw his rider. He paused at the top of the stairway, then half-slid and half-bumped his way to the bottom of the staircase so that Adam hardly jostled at all. In a moment, the tiger with the boy sitting atop his back moved through the doorway into the kitchen.

"Hello, boys," Adam's dad, Bud Beam, said, smiling brightly, admiring his son and Toby. "Catch, Toby!" He tossed underhand the ripe, red fruiton in the direction of the cat, who chomped it happily, then opened his mouth for another.

"So you want another, Mr. Toby Tiger?" Bud Beam said, laughing, when the tiger opened his mouth even wider and playfully waved one big paw.

"Let's see. We might have another one here..." Adam's father put his hand into the fruitonizer and brought out the rich red fruiton, which had appeared as if by magic in his hand.

Toby stretched his huge yellow and black-striped body and his long, thick tail whipped and curled with anticipation when Bud Beam faked tossing the fruit to him. The great cat roared and snarled, lifting one plate-sized paw to show his mock anger with Mr. Beam.

Bud Beam tossed the fruit in the air so that it arced toward Toby, who caught it with ease in his wide jaws.

"Good boy!" Mr. Beam congratulated the tiger, who stood ready to catch yet another fruiton.

"That's enough, Tobe. Here, Adam, give him his catvage," Adam's dad said, running his hand along the top of the manna manger, in which suddenly materialized a large portion of the golden brown tiger food.

Toby raised on his rear feet to smell his breakfast when Mr. Beam took it from the manna manger and handed it to his son. The cat followed it with his nose and whirled smoothly on his two back feet to follow the plate while his best friend walked to place the meal upon the special eating table Mr. Beam had made for Adam's pet.

"I hear there are big things cooking at Exploretime," Mr. Beam said, rubbing Adam's dark brown hair on his way to pick up his briefcase that sat on the kitchen cabinet.

"Yes sir," Adam said. "We start Dream Doors today!"

"Dream Doors!" Mr. Beam said with excitement. "What a wonderful thing!"

"I can't wait!...Did you ever go through a Dream Door?" Adam asked while running his hand atop the manna manger, then reaching in to pull out the manna meal he chose for this morning's breakfast.

"Oh, no. Dream Doors are for Millennial children and you know I was born in the Before Time."

"Oh, yeah...I forgot."

Bud Beam opened his briefcase and checked through it. Adam's thoughts caused a question to form. "Dad...why was the Before Time so different from now? Wasn't there anything fun to do?"

Adam's father snapped the case shut, lifted it from the counter and said, "Yes...there were some fun things to do, but that was before the Great Taking Away."

"Now, tell me again about the Great Taking Away," Adam said.

Mr. Beam moved to the table where Adam sat eating his breakfast. He put the briefcase on the floor and sat in a chair across from his son. His eyebrows narrowed in thought when he tried to remember those days long past.

"It's been so long, more than 107 years ago. But there are a few things that are fun to remember." Bud Beam leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table and rubbing his chin.

"Many years ago, in the Before Time, before the Great Taking Away and the Trouble Time..." Mr. Beam put his hands together, intertwined his fingers, then rested his chin on them while he thought deeply about those times before New Eden. "...We would get in snowball fights while we waited for the school bus to pick us up. That was lots of fun."

He smiled, remembering the time he hit his best friend with a snowball and the boy's shirt filled with the icy powder when the snow exploded against his shoulder and neck.

"What's a school bus?" Adam asked, twisting his nose and lips in an expression that said the term both amused him and made him curious.

"Where I grew up, a place called Brooklyn...Brooklyn, New York...the school bus was actually a city bus," Adam's father said, letting his memory go back to the long, rectangular bus that had stopped every morning one block from his apartment building to pick up the neighborhood children.

"A school bus was just a way to get us to school. You remember I told you what a school was, don't you?"

Adam scrunched his nose again, his eyes turned up in concentration. "That was like Exploretime is for kids now..."

"That's right. School was where we went to learn, where we were taught...that is, where our teachers would take us on Mind Adventures."

"Like the Mind Adventures we have now during Exploretime?"

"Well...sort of...yes. Kind of like that. But in the Before Time, kids couldn't go on Dreams and Visions Adventures. We had to sit at our desks and read books and our teachers would teach us about things. We couldn't actually go to the places in our minds. Our imaginations could not go from our heads then."

"Why not?" the boy asked in amazement.

"Because...it was different then than now," Bud Beam said, somewhat sadly. "The time before the Great King...everything was different then..."

Adam's dad thought for a moment, then said, "You asked me about the Great Taking Away. Although there were many good things about those days, there were many bad things that happened, too."

Mrs. Beam fidgeted with his briefcase handle while he reflected further. "Then one day, everything changed in a flash of a second. Millions of people vanished."

Adam straightened in his chair. "They just disappeared?" he asked.

"Yes, they just disappeared," his dad said, his eyes brightening when a little girl ran past her brother and flung her arms around her father.

"How's my Sunbeam today?" Bud Beam said, lifting his daughter into his lap and returning her hug.

Zonia said nothing, but kissed her dad's cheek and hugged his neck tightly again. "I get to go through a Dream Door!" the girl said excitedly. "Can't you come with us?"

"Wonderful! ...My, my, my...Dream Doors...You will have a terrific time!"

"Will you come?" Zonia questioned happily.

"...No, Sunbeam, I'm afraid not. Dream Doors are for children of the New Eden age only. I'll be with you in my thoughts."

Toby, lying in his cat position near Mr. Beam's chair, stretched to gently bite the material on one foot of Zonia's pajama bottom, then tugged slightly.

"Good morning, Toby!" Zonia said, then tried to pull the foot of the pajamas from the tiger's teeth-clinched grip. She struggled from her father's lap, then pounced on the big cat, who licked her face before she could pull away.

"New Eden is indeed a long way from Brooklyn, New York, and the Before Time," Bud Beam said in almost a whisper, watching his giggling little girl tussle with the 1,000-pound Siberian tiger.