The Footprints of God (43 page)

"Man," Rachel finished.

"Yes. It took ten billion years just to get to biological evolution. Then hundreds of millions of years of mutation to get to man. And all that added up to
nothing
in the eyes of God."

Rachel knit her brows. "Why? Didn't God intend all those creatures to exist? To evolve?"

"No. It's not like that. God was surprised by all of this."

"Surprised?"

"Well ... I think the feeling was more like deja vu. He'd seen something like it before. Not exactly like it, but what he saw made him remember things."

She turned in her seat and stared at me. "And the creation of life meant nothing to him?"

"Not in the beginning. But then—out of that teeming mass of life—a spark as bright as the Big Bang flashed in his eye."

"What spark?"

"Consciousness. Human intelligence. Somewhere in Africa, a tool-making hominid with a relatively large brain perceived the fact of its own death. It perceived a future in which it would no longer exist. That hominid became not only self-conscious, but conscious of time. That moment was an epiphany for God."

"Why?"

"Because consciousness was the first thing in that terrifying explosion of matter and energy that God recognized as being like himself."

"That's what God is? Awareness?"

"I think so. Awareness without matter or energy. Pure information."

Rachel was silent for a while, and I couldn't read her eyes. "Where is all this going?" she asked finally.

"To a very provocative place. But let's stay with the dreams for now. Man evolved quickly. He tilled the ground, built cities, recorded his history. And God felt something like hope."

"Hope for what?"

"That he might finally learn the nature of his own being."

"Did God answer his questions by watching mankind?"

"No. Because after a certain point, evolution stopped. Not biological evolution, but
psychological
evolution. Almost as quickly as man created societies, he destroyed them. He sacked cities, salted fields, slaughtered his brothers, raped his sisters, abused his children. Man had unlimited potential, yet he was trapped in a cycle of self-destructive behavior, unable to evolve beyond an essentially brutal existence."

"And God had nothing to do with this?"

"No. God can't control what happens inside the bubble. He doesn't exist in the world of matter and energy. Not as God, anyway. He could only watch and try to understand. As the centuries passed, he became obsessed with man, as he'd once been obsessed with himself. Why couldn't man break the cycle of violence and futility? God focused all his being on the bubble, searching for a weak point, for a way into the matrix of matter and energy that was displacing him."

"And?"

"It happened. God found himself looking at the bubble from the inside. Through the eyes of a human being. Feeling human skin, smelling the Earth, looking up into a mother's face.
His
mother's face."

Rachel had gone still. "You're talking about Jesus now, aren't you? You're saying God went into Jesus of Nazareth."

I nodded.

"You're saying exactly what Christians believe. Only . . . you make it sound like an accident."

"It was, in a way. God exerted his focus upon the world, and Jesus was the door that opened to him. Why that particular child? Who knows?"

"Did
all
of God enter Jesus?"

"No. Imagine a burning candle. You hold a second candle up to that flame, light it, then take it away. The new candle has been lit, but the original flame remains. That's how it worked. Part of God went into Jesus. The rest remained outside our universe. Outside the bubble."

"But Jesus had God's power?"

"No. Inside the bubble, God is subject to the laws of our universe."

"And the miracles? Walking on water? Raising the dead?"

"Jesus was a healer, not a magician. Those stories were useful to those who built a religion around him."

She was shaking her head like someone with vertigo. "I don't know what to say."

"Think about it. Very little is known about Jesus' early life. We have the legend of his birth. Some childhood stories that are probably apocryphal. Then suddenly he springs to prominence fully formed at the age of thirty. I've often wondered why people don't ask more questions about Jesus' youth. Was he a perfect child? Did he love a woman? Father children? Did he sin like all men? Why this huge gap in his life?"

"I suppose you have an answer?"

"I think I do. God entered the world to try to understand why mankind could evolve no further. To do that, he lived as a man. And by the time he reached adulthood, he had his answer. The pain and futility of human life was made bearable by the ineffable joys that human beings could experience. Beauty, laughter, love . . . even the simple pleasures of eating fruit or looking at an infant. Through Jesus, God felt these wonderful things. Yet he also saw the doom of mankind as a species."

"Why?"

"Man had flourished in a violent world because he had the primitive instincts to match that world. Yet if he was to continue to evolve, man had to put those instincts behind him. Evolution would never remove them. Evolution wasn't designed to produce moral beings. It's a blind engine, a mechanism of competitive warfare geared only toward survival."

Rachel looked thoughtful. "I think I see where you're going."

"Tell me."

"'Through Jesus, God tried to persuade man to turn away from his primitive instincts, away from the animal side of himself."

"Exactly. What did Jesus say and do? Forget what his followers grafted onto his life. Just think of his words and deeds."

"'Love thy neighbor as thyself. If a man strikes you on the right cheek, offer him your left.' He denied his human instincts."

"'Give up all that you have and follow me,'" I quoted. "Jesus lived by example, and people were inspired to follow that example."

"But he was killed for that."

"Inevitably."

Rachel bit her bottom lip and looked out the blue square of the plane's window. "And his crucifixion? What happened on the cross?"

"He died. The flame that was in him returned to its source. It left the world of matter and energy behind."

"There was no resurrection?"

"Not of the body."

Rachel sighed heavily, then turned to me as though afraid to hear what I would say next. "What did God do then?"

"He despaired. He'd done his best as a man, and though he influenced many, his message was embellished, twisted, exploited. For two thousand years, man's chief endeavor seemed to be finding more efficient ways to destroy his own kind. Until ..."

"What?"

"A few months ago."

"You're talking about Project Trinity now?"

I nodded. "Within Trinity lay the seed of salvation, for man and God. If human consciousness could be liberated from the body, then the primitive instincts that had crippled man for so long could finally be left behind."

"So, what did God do?"

"He focused on the world again. But in a much smaller way. On our little group of six. Godin, Fielding, Nara, Skow, Klein . . . me."

"David . . . are you saying what I think you are?"

"God wanted back inside the bubble."

"Why?"

"Because he saw that the man most likely to reach the next state of evolution—what we call the Trinity state— was as likely to destroy mankind as he was to save it."

"Peter Godin?"

"Yes."

She looked down at her lap. "Are you telling me God chose you to stop Peter Godin from entering the Trinity computer?"

"Yes."

She nodded as though silently confirming a diagnosis, then looked up at me. I'd nodded that way countless times myself. "David, you told me back in Tennessee that you felt you'd been chosen by God. Do you feel that God is inside you now?"

"Yes."

"Just as he was in Jesus?"

"Part of that original flame is in me now. That's why I had all those dreams of Jerusalem, and why they felt like memories. They
were
memories."

"Oh, David . . . oh, no." She tilted her head back and tried to blink away tears.

"You don't have to believe me. Soon you'll see with your own eyes."

"See what? What are you going to do?"

"Stop Godin."

She turned squarely to me, her eyes resolute. "I'm going to tell you what I think. I have to, because we're going to land soon, and you've asked General Kinski to drop us into a very dangerous situation. One you're not remotely ready to go into."

"Rachel—"

"May I please tell you what I think?"

"Yes, but you didn't let me finish. I told you that to understand the beginning, you had to understand the end."

She closed her eyes, and I saw that her patience had been exhausted. I sighed in defeat. "Go ahead."

She looked hard at me. "That man sitting paralyzed in that dark room isn't God. It's
you.
You've never recovered from what happened to Karen and Zooey."

I couldn't believe it. She'd gone full circle, back to her original diagnosis. "And everything I've told you today?"

"Reduced to its simplest terms, what have you told me? You're on a mission from God. A mission from God to save mankind. Do you agree?"

"I guess so, yes."

"Don't you see? By believing this fantastic story, your mind escapes the terrible pain of your family's loss."

"How?"

"Inside this complex delusion, the deaths of Karen and Zooey
make sense.
It was their deaths that made you write your book. It was your book that got you appointed to Project Trinity. If you believe God put you inside Trinity to stop Armageddon, then the deaths of your family have meaning, rather than being a senseless tragedy."

I squeezed the armrests to try to bleed off my frustration.

"David, you have a degree in theoretical physics from MIT. Your brain could construct this fantasy while you were balancing your checkbook."

"Karen and Zooey died five years ago," I said. "Wait. Forget that argument. Do you remember what my father said about religion?"

"What?"

"Mankind is the universe becoming conscious of itself."

"I remember."

"He was more right than he knew. And something in the way he raised me is what made me open to being penetrated by God."

"But you've never believed in God!"

"Not in the traditional way. But I believe this. I
know
this. And if you'll give me one more minute, you'll understand why I have to go to White Sands."

"One minute? That's more than I should listen to."

"After Niels Bohr was smuggled out of Nazi-controlled territory, he went to Los Alamos. He found some very disturbed physicists there. My father was one. These naive young academics had suddenly found themselves working with technology powerful enough to end not only the war, but the world. Bohr calmed them down by explaining a profound principle called complementarity. He said, 'Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution.' The bomb that could destroy the world also had the power to end large-scale warfare. And it has." I tapped the armrest with my knuckles. "The Trinity computer is the same. It can end our world or save it."

Rachel leaned back in her seat and rubbed her eyes. "Don't you think you're overstating the case?"

"No."

"I can't think about this anymore."

Rather than argue, I reached over and began massaging her neck. Her tension was slow to ease, but after a while she settled deeper into the seat and began to breathe with a regular rhythm. I was feeling drowsy myself when General Kinski appeared in the aisle, his leathery face looking down at me with urgency.

"What is it?" I asked.

"A heavily populated river valley in Germany was just flooded. Half a town washed away. A dam opened of its own accord."

"What does that have to do with us?" Rachel asked sleepily.

"The dam was computer-controlled. Its human operators tried to override the automated system, but the computer's action had damaged the spillway doors. Dozens of people drowned."

"Trinity?" I said.

"We believe so."

"This is just the beginning."

Kinski nodded. "I fear you're right."

"But Germany," Rachel said. "What could Germany have to do with Trinity?"

"I expect we'll know before long," said the Mossad chief. "In any case, I believe we are now at war with a machine. Could you please return to the front of the plane, Dr. Tennant? We have some more questions for you."

I got up and followed the Israeli forward.

CHAPTER 
39

White Sands Situation Room

Ravi Nara took a sip of steaming tea and looked at the other men sitting at the table in the Situation Room. All were staring at a screen to the right of the main display. The text of the computer's initial message to the president glowed there in blue, the words as chilling now as when they first bloomed on the primary monitor:

Mr. President,

Today you woke up in a new world. Trinity has
made the old paradigms of government obsolete. The
concept of the nation-state will soon be dead. You
should not fear this change. Counsel the citizens of
the world not to be afraid. Leaders of the other major
powers have been sent messages much like this one,
and they will look to you for guidance. You and I will
speak a great deal in the days to come, but for now
certain realities must be understood.

First, you must attempt no action against me. I
have the power to cause massive loss of life and capital both in the United States and around the world. This power does not reside within my circuitry.
Immediately after I went on-line, I exported certain
programs to several hundred computers on the periphery of my network, which encompasses the
entire Internet. If I drop off-line for any length of
time, irrevocable disaster will instantly be set in
motion. If you attempt to destroy me or even to disrupt my electrical supply, America as you know it will
cease to exist. For a small demonstration of my capabilities, watch Japan.