The Paradise Within

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The mansion was perfect! It was a paradise within an ugly conspiracy. The Jupitian Prince jumped down from his pod with kid-like excitement onto the front garden. He surveyed the area and commanded his pod above him, "Initiate compacting."

Through the Jupitian Prince's advanced eyes, he saw the pod in stealth mode shrinking. The vacant room in the spacious pod had been compressed and the pod was now big enough to enter the house and move about.

With the pod-synthesized human oil evenly spread over his body, the Jupitian Prince ran about excitedly like a small boy around the house eagerly opening doors, looking in cupboards and cabinets. The pod followed closely behind in stealth mode. Even in the house, it was dangerous. Mechanical bugs were always surveying. Bugged insects also flew around occasionally. The pod began to hack into the government computers to input data that the Jupitian Prince's parents were working abroad and they visited him once a month to sign his school documents.

That would be the reason for why the Jupitian Prince was always alone and talked to his "imaginary-friend." The pod transmitted the plan to the Prince before him. From that moment onwards, the Prince would use his voice to communicate and the pod would send ultra-low frequency sound waves below detection, to communicate and win awards for the imaginary-friend act. True enough, as the day progressed, the plot proceeded without causing much suspicion. The secret government and IDS did not suspect a thing, even though they found the boy weird, they dismissed it as psychological imbalance and childishness. With just a few days till Sunday, new furniture and household appliances came in, ordered and paid for by the hacking of the pod. By Sunday morning, the house had everything a normal ultra-affluent family should have and more. There was a huge projector that served as a screen, an entire cold room for storage, a built-in sound system that had literally surround sound with all the walls being speakers themselves. A library now filled half the entire attic with all sorts of books on shelves resembling an old library, just for decoration and to provide the dusty book smell for a quiet room. And, of course, there were electric candles that gave the library its old feeling, not to mention a fireplace and a couch before it. The ceiling of the library was a large screen from where one could lie down and read electronic books.

The house does look like a mansion now, interiorly and exteriorly.

After waking up from a long sleep on Sunday, Ken pretended to head to the showers. The water had no effect on his human oil, but he had to carry on a normal kid life to avoid suspicion. He scrubbed himself quickly with soap, and dried himself with the towel, careful to avoid the bugged hair dryer. Facing the mirror, he messed up his hair. By this time, his appearance had been re-adapted to an earthling.

In a bright green bathrobe, he exited the bathroom back to his attached third floor bedroom, which was filled with a king-sized bed. While putting on his watch, he looked in one of the closets, and picked out a few clothes, feeling their texture.

"The texture of these cloths is really rough compared to where we... err you came from." The Ken carefully corrected himself speaking to his "imaginary-friend."

Cleverly, Ken glanced at his watch pretending that he was afraid he would be late for church. He picked out a shiny silver shirt and black trousers, rapidly put them on and headed up the attic where the kitchen was. Walking into the brightly lit kitchen which is on the other side of the library, he walked past the dinner table to the cold room opening. The kitchen was beautifully fitted with in-built cabinets. Below the sink was the dish washer and oven. But the most fascinating was that one of the wall cupboards was the door to the cold room. Evidently, there was no fridge and no need for one, and within the cold room, there was a huge freezer lying at the corner.

Ken sure knew the joy of eating while reading in the library. Grabbing a bottle of fresh milk off one of the shelves in the cold room, he poured it down his throat carefully. Pretending to check his watch, he hastily placed the milk back and left the cold room. Walking back out past the kitchen, he sat on the rail of the spiral staircase and went all the way down to the main hall where the projector screen was. The main hall walls were all filled with digital screens showing renaissance oil paintings, while only one wall, the projector used as a screen, was empty. There were no sofas or seats in the hall but huge memory foam bean bags that all kids love to sit in, while watching television.

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