The Divine Dissimulation [Complete]

Chapter 36 The First Birth on Eden.

Nine months after Abraham's intervention Jon and Nadia had a baby, which was the firstborn on Eden. Abraham considered whether he should claim credit for this birth or not among the Edenites. He decided not to.

It had taken Abraham weeks to influence every couple on Eden and ensure that their s*x lives were flourishing for the sake of procreation. If people believed that his influence was necessary for them to conceive, they would regularly petition him for help. Being asked for favours was NOT how Abraham wanted to rule as a god. He wanted his subjects to worship, obey and fear him; he had no interest in being a wish-granting genie that was continuously evoked to solve trivial matters in his subjects’ lives.

Abraham was relieved that his subjects were able to procreate. Although he had not foreseen any reasons why their reproductive health would be dysfunctional; It was unknown what effects the combination of memory wiping and spending an extended period cryogenically frozen would have on the human reproduction system. There had been earlier expeditions to other star systems where people had procreated once they landed but these expeditions had brought advanced technology aiding human reproduction while his Eden project did not.

Abraham commanded Jon and Nadia to name their firstborn daughter Lillian. Abraham chose this name to honour his late wife Lillian Goldstein, but he left this part out of the narrative. It did not fit the story that the divine and eternal Grandmaster Abraham was mourning his dead wife.

The fact that Abraham knew the gender of the child in advance furthered his subjects' belief that he was divine. Although the real reason was more mundane; before the birth Lucifer had visited the couple with a small handheld scanner to determine the s*x of the coming child.

Abraham commanded everyone on Eden to attend the baptism of Lillian. As she was the first-born in Eden, her baptism would set the ceremony for all future childbirths. The baptism was led by the Angel Gabriel, who oversaw the Gad tribe. The masses sang a song to praise Abraham for his mercy to save humanity, and how humankind would live on forever. Gabriel then splashed water on the head of the newborn to symbolise that water was the source of all life. After doing this, he inserted a human chip in the newborn so that the Angels and Abraham would able to communicate and read the mind of their new subject. Gabriel described the microchip as a part of the Grandmaster Abraham's soul that he gave all newborn babies to bless them. Finally, a small cut was made in the child's finger so he could drop blood on the stone of eternity, which was an advanced DNA analyser disguised as an ornamental rock.

Abraham was satisfied with the ceremony. The baptism ritual went through without any incident, and it solved two practical issues:

-          It made sure everyone had a divine technology microchip in their heads so that they were easy to control and dominate

-          It gathered DNA from every individual.

Collecting DNA from individuals was important for Abraham as it allowed him to further his understanding of how the behaviour of his subjects was linked to their genetics. It also provided him with a framework for how he could utilise selective breeding to alter the features of future generations without using modern technology to do so. The genetics of everyone on Eden was saved indefinitely in the mainframe for the Eden project for future research.