Mancountry really doubles down on the Garden of Eden imagery, doesn't it? After chapter 2 came out, I saw a theory about how getting the Eggs from the tree was an allusion to Adam and Eve receiving the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. At the time, it seemed like a stretch, but "Mancountry" is apparently a lush green place that the whole world was once like, before multiple events (including a great flood) started changing everything. And unlike in the earlier chapters, the tree here is quite literally a tree of knowledge: You can learn a lot in it.

But if there is no sin in the Lightners' religion, then what caused the Fall? The Forgotten Man explains that the little island he's on is all that's left of Mancountry, and soon it will be gone too. The world has apparently been continuously decaying for thousands, if not millions, of years. Why?