The Eden Test


 Contents
 
 Title Page
 Copyright Notice
 Dedication
 Epigraphs
 Prologue: The Sixth Day
 The First Day: Darkness and Light
 
 Chapter 1
 Chapter 2
 Chapter 3
 
 
 The Second Day: Heavens
 
 Chapter 4
 Chapter 5
 Chapter 6
 Chapter 7
 Chapter 8
 Chapter 9
 Chapter 10
 Intermission
 
 
 The Third Day: Seeds
 
 Chapter 11
 Chapter 12
 Chapter 13
 Chapter 14
 Chapter 15
 Chapter 16
 Chapter 17
 Chapter 18
 
 
 The Fourth Day: Seasons
 
 Chapter 19
 Chapter 20
 Chapter 21
 Chapter 22
 Chapter 23
 Chapter 24
 Chapter 25
 Chapter 26
 Chapter 27
 Chapter 28
 Chapter 29
 Chapter 30
 Chapter 31
 Chapter 32
 Intermission
 
 
 The Fifth Day: Every Living Creature in the Oceans and the Air
 
 Chapter 33
 Chapter 34
 Chapter 35
 Chapter 36
 Chapter 37
 Chapter 38
 Chapter 39
 Chapter 40
 Chapter 41
 Chapter 42
 Chapter 43
 Chapter 44
 Chapter 45
 Chapter 46
 
 
 The Sixth Day: Beasts
 
 Chapter 47
 Chapter 48
 Chapter 49
 Chapter 50
 Chapter 51
 Chapter 52
 Chapter 53
 Chapter 54
 Chapter 55
 
 
 The Seventh Day: Blessings and Rest
 
 Chapter 56
 
 
 Acknowledgments
 Also by Adam Sternbergh
 About the Author
 Newsletter Sign-up
 Copyright
 
 
 
 Guide
 
 Cover
 Start of Content
 Title Page
 Dedication
 Prologue
 The First Day
 1
 Acknowledgments
 Contents
 Copyright
 
 
 
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 Table of Contents
 About the Author
 Copyright Page
 
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 For Julia, of course.
 
 
 I think that Eve loved Adam, first of all,
 Not in the garden where all things were fair,
 Not in the sad time when he failed her there,
 But when they were at last outside the wall
 And it was night.
 —BERTHA TEN EYCK JAMES, “EVE AND ADAM”
 A couple is a conspiracy in search of a crime.
 —ADAM PHILLIPS, MONOGAMY
 
 
 PROLOGUE
 
 The Sixth Day
 
 The private ambulance pulls into the gravel driveway with a rattle and parks at an angle to the cabin. In the darkening evening, the throbbing light bar splashes the walls and windows of the cabin red. There are three cars already parked outside: one that belongs to the cabin’s owners and one that belongs to the groundskeeper, both of whom have just arrived, and there’s a third car that the EMTs don’t recognize.
 The two technicians disembark from the ambulance’s cab, both laden with lifesaving equipment. They don’t move with any urgency, though. There’s no one to save tonight.
 They’re just here to pick up a body.
 In the pulse of the swirling lights, the driver walks around to the rear of the vehicle, past the company’s name, EDENIC FOUNDATION, stenciled on the ambulance’s side. He tugs the back doors open and reaches in for the collapsible gurney, wrestling it free from its restraints.
 It’s funny, the driver thinks as he goes about his job. They’ve come all the way out here to the middle of the woods so they can transport a body for an hour in the back of an ambulance to the closest hospital two towns away, where it will sit in a refrigerated morgue, waiting to be examined, before being bundled up again and shipped off to a funeral home, then embalmed, then sealed up in a wooden box and buried somewhere in a hole under a granite stone.
 Or they could just leave it in