Sole Survivor

roots by the withering dryness of the California summer, torn from their homes in the earth by the shrieking Santa Ana wind, now bounded out of the steep canyons and across the narrow highway, silver-gray in the headlights, a curiously melancholy sight, families of thistled skeletons like starved and harried refugees fleeing worse torment.

Joe said, “Start with those people back there. What kind of cult are they?”

She spelled it for him: Infiniface.

“It’s a made word,” she said, “shorthand for ‘Interface with the Infinite.’ And they’re not a cult, not in any sense you mean it.”

“Then what are they?”

Instead of answering immediately, she shifted in her seat, trying to get more comfortable.

Checking her wristwatch, she said, “Can you drive faster?”

“Not on this road. In fact, better put on your safety belt.”

“Not with my left side feeling like it does.” Having adjusted her position, she said, “Do you know the name Loren Pollack?”

“The software genius. The poor man’s Bill Gates.”

“That’s what the press sometimes calls him, yes. But I don’t think the word poor should be associated with someone who started from scratch and made seven billion dollars by the age of forty- two.”

“Maybe not.”

She closed her eyes and slumped against the door, supporting her weight on her right side. Sweat beaded her brow, but her voice was strong. “Two years ago, Loren Pollack used a billion dollars of his money to form a charitable trust. Named it Infiniface. He believes many of the sciences, through research facilitated by new generations of superfast computers, are approaching discoveries that will bring us face-to-face with the reality of a Creator.”

“Sounds like a cult to me.”

“Oh, plenty of people think Pollack is a flake. But he’s got a singular ability to grasp complex research from a wide variety of sciences — and he has vision. You know, there’s a whole movement of modern physics that sees evidence of a created universe.”

Frowning, Joe said, “What about chaos theory? I thought that was the big thing.”

“Chaos theory doesn’t say the universe is random and chaotic. It’s an extremely broad theory that among many other things notes strangely complex relationships in apparently chaotic systems — like the weather. Look deeply enough in any chaos, and you find hidden regularities.”

“Actually,” he admitted, “I don’t know a damn thing about it — just the way they use the term in the movies.”

“Most movies are stupidity machines — like politicians. So…if Pollack was here, he’d tell you that just eighty years ago, science mocked religion’s assertion that the universe was created ex nihilo, out of nothing. Everyone knew something couldn’t be created from nothing — a violation of all the laws of physics. Now we understand more about molecular structure — and particle physicists create matter ex nihilo all the time.” Inhaling with a hiss through clenched teeth, she leaned forward, popped open the glove box, and rummaged through its contents. “I was hoping for aspirin or Excedrin. I’d chew them dry.”

“We could stop somewhere—”

“No. Drive. Just drive. Big Bear’s so far…” She closed the glove box but remained sitting forward, as though that position gave her relief. “Anyway, physics and biology are the disciplines that most fascinate Pollack — especially molecular biology.”

“Why molecular biology?”

“Because the more we understand living things on a molecular level, the clearer it becomes that everything is intelligently designed. You, me, mammals, fish, insects, plants, everything.”

“Wait a second. Are you tossing away evolution here?”

“Not entirely. Wherever molecular biology takes us, there might still be a place for Darwin’s theory of evolution — in some form.”

“You’re not one of those strict fundamentalists who believe we were created exactly five thousand years ago in the Garden of Eden.”

“Hardly. But Darwin’s theory was put forth in 1859, before we had any knowledge of atomic structure. He thought the smallest unit of a living creature was the cell — which he saw as just a lump of adaptable albumen.”

“Albumen? You’re losing me.”

“The origin of this basic living matter, he thought, was most likely an accident of chemistry — and the origin of all species was explained through evolution. But we now know cells are enormously complex structures of such clockwork design that it’s impossible to believe they are accidental in nature.”

“We do? I guess I’ve been out of school a long time.”

“Even in the matter of the species…Well, the two axioms of Darwinian theory — the continuity of nature and adaptable design — have never been validated by a single empirical discovery in nearly a hundred and fifty years.”

“Now you have lost me.”

“Let me put it another way.” She still leaned forward, staring out at the dark hills and the steadily rising glow of the sprawling suburbs beyond. “Do you know who Francis Crick is?”

“No.”

“He’s a molecular biologist. In 1962, he shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine with Maurice Wilkins and James Watson for discovering the three-dimensional molecular structure of DNA — the double helix. Every advancement in genetics since then — and the countless revolutionary cures for diseases we’re going to see over the next twenty years — spring directly from the work of Francis Crick and his colleagues. Crick is a scientist’s scientist, Joe, to no degree a spiritualist or mystic. But do you know what he suggested a few years ago? That life on earth may well have been designed by an extraterrestrial intelligence.”

“Even highbrows read the National Enquirer, huh?”

“The point is — Crick was unable to square what we now know of molecular biology’s complexity with the theory of natural selection, but he was unwilling to suggest a Creator in any spiritual sense.”

“So…enter the ever-popular god-like aliens.”

“But it totally begs the issue, you see? Even if every form of life on this planet was designed by extraterrestrials…who designed them?”

“It’s the chicken or the egg all over again.”

She laughed softly, but the laughter mutated into a cough that she couldn’t easily suppress. She eased back, leaning against the door once more — and glared at him when he tried to suggest that she needed medical attention.

When she regained her breath, she said, “Loren Pollack believes the purpose of human intellectual striving — the purpose of science — is to increase our understanding of the universe, not just to give us better physical control of our environment or to satisfy curiosity, but to solve the puzzle of existence God has put before us.”

“And by solving it to become like gods ourselves.”

She smiled through her pain. “Now you’re tuned to the Pollack frequency. Pollack thinks we’re living in the time when some key scientific breakthrough will prove there is a Creator. Something that is…an interface with the infinite. This will bring the soul back to science — lifting humanity out of its fear and doubt, healing our divisions and hatreds, finally uniting our species on one quest that’s both of the spirit and of the mind.”

“Like Star Trek.”

“Don’t make me laugh again, Joe. It hurts too much.”

Joe thought of Gem Fittich, the used-car dealer. Both Pollack and Fittich sensed an approaching end to the world as they knew it, but the oncoming tidal wave that Fittich perceived was dark and cold and obliterating, while Pollack foresaw a wave of purest light.

“So Pollack,” she said, “founded Infiniface to facilitate this quest, to track research worldwide with an eye toward projects with…well, with metaphysical aspects that the scientists themselves might not recognize. To