Geli was sitting beside her father, looking down in disbelief. The general's neck was covered in bright red blood, and his eyes were glazed open. He'd been stand¬ing between the gun and the MRI scanner when Rachel hit the initiator. The huge pulsed-field magnet had snatched the pistol to itself with irresistible force, and whatever was in the way went with it. In this case, it appeared to be part of the general's throat.
'John Skow is still trying to shut down the com¬puter,' Geli said in monotone. 'I don't think he can do it with both of you alive.'
'I am safe,' said Trinity. 'And I am sorry for you, Geli.'
Rachel and I walked slowly around the magnetic shield. The black sphere waited, its blue lasers pulsing like a heartbeat within the web of carbon. On the screen beneath it, I saw an image of myself and Rachel looking into Trinity's camera.
'Do you know us?' I asked.
'Yes,' said the childlike voice. 'Better than you know yourselves.'
EPILOGUE
Today, within Trinity's carbon-fiber circuitry and crystal memory, Rachel and I remain one entity. But we were only a jumping-off point, parents of a child who has already far outstripped its origins.
Peter Godin dreamed of liberating the mind from the body. He believed that liberation was possible because he believed the mind is merely the sum of the neural con¬nections in our brains. Andrew Fielding believed some¬thing different: that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I'm still not sure who is right.
That Trinity could be built at all seems to vindicate Godin. But sometimes at night, lying on the ledge of sleep, I feel another presence in my mind. An echo of that divinely unbounded perspective of which I caught only the barest glimpse during my coma. I suspect that this echo is Trinity. That, as Fielding predicted, the Trinity-computer and I are forever entangled at that unstable border between the world we see around us and the sub¬atomic world that gives substance to the visible. Rachel doesn't like to talk about this, but she has felt it, too.
As Peter Godin predicted, the 'new' Trinity computer has not allowed itself to be disconnected from the Internet It maintains its links with strategic defense computers around the world, thus ensuring its own survival. But neither has it threatened anyone. Trinity recently disclosed to world leaders that it is attempting to determine the most effective symbiosis between biologically based and machine-based intelligence.
The Trinity computer is not God and does not claim to be. Human beings, however, are not so quick to dismiss this possibility. To date, 4,183 websites devoted to Trinity have sprung up around the world. Some are run by New Age dis¬ciples who tout the divinity of the machine, others by fundamentalists who list 'proofs' that Trinity is the Antichrist predicted in the Book of Revelation. Still other sites are purely technical: they track Trinity's movements through the computer networks of the world, mapping the activities of the first metahuman intelligence on the planet. Trinity itself has visited most of these sites, but has left no word of its opinions on them.
One of Trinity's chief worries is the inevitable day when another MRI-based computer goes on-line some¬where in the world. To prevent this from happening, Trin¬ity monitors all worldwide signal traffic. But as with nuclear weapons proliferation, compliance cannot be guaranteed by purely technical means. Human nature being what it is, someone will build another Trinity. The Germans-who apparently had access to Jutta Klein's Super-MRI technology early on-are said to have a proto¬type up and running at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart, a machine kept carefully isolated from the Inter¬net. It's also rumored that the Japanese are pursuing a crash project on the island of Kyushu. Why any nation would do this in the face of the horrific sanctions Trinity could impose seems beyond comprehension. The fact that they have goes a long way toward proving Peter Godin's argument that man cannot responsibly govern himself.
The prospect of multiple Trinity computers in con¬flict is terrifying. It is not known whether the computers rumored to be in development are based on male, female, or merged neuromodels. Could single human minds given such power evolve sufficiently past their vestigial instincts to coexist in the limited sphere of the world? I'm not optimistic. But perhaps they will not perceive the world as limited. The resource of knowl¬edge is theoretically infinite. Perhaps Trinity can, in fact, make an end to war.
I leave such concerns to others now.
When people ask if my dreams-or hallucinations- were real, I answer this way: I'm not certain, but I find clues in different places. One of the best I received from the most unexpected source imaginable.
During the past three months-while I wrote this nar¬rative of my Trinity experiences-the Trinity computer directed construction of a second Trinity prototype for research purposes. It now stands next to its predecessor in the Containment building at White Sands, isolated from the outside world but functioning perfectly as an independent entity.
When I learned of the development of this machine, I wrote an e-mail to the Trinity computer. In that letter, I made a strong case that no one deserved to experience the Trinity state more than Andrew Fielding, the man who had made it possible.
Trinity was way ahead of me.
Last week, I walked through a ring of armed men and into the Containment building, where I found two car¬bon spheres standing side by side. I'd both dreaded and looked forward to this day. Dreaded it because the Andrew Fielding I was going to meet had no memory more recent than the day he was first scanned by the Super-MRI-nine months before-which meant that I would face the uniquely disturbing experience of inform¬ing a man that he had been murdered. Yet my memories of Fielding told me he would handle this shock better than most people.
I was right. Fielding reminded me that he would have periodic digital life within the Trinity computer, and he even speculated that someday-probably a century-down the road-the reverse process of Trinity might be perfected: a stored digital neuromodel might be down¬loaded into a biological brain, or wetware.
But what truly salvaged Fielding's sanity was learning that he had brought the love of his life out of China and married her. His neuromodel remembered only pining in vain for Lu Li, whom it still believed was trapped in Beijing. I told the story of Lu Li's escape from Geli Bauer's surveillance teams, which, while not so dramatic as mine, was more successful. A few hours after I'd left her house that night, Lu Li had slipped outside with her bichon frise and made her way across Chapel Hill on foot. There she joined a Chinese family that owned a restaurant where she and Fielding had frequently dined. That family hid her in their home until the events sur¬rounding Trinity were resolved.
When I told Fielding that I'd brought Lu Li with me from North Carolina, and that she was waiting outside, he asked that he be given a few minutes to collect him¬self before she was brought before the camera. His ques¬tion stunned me, but I realized then how 'human' a computer could be. Talking to Peter Godin's neuromodel had been like talking to a machine; but then talking to Godin the man had been much the same. Andrew Fielding, on the other hand, had been an eccentric char¬acter renowned for his wit and passion. Even in the synthesized voice of his neuromodel, I heard the spark of the man who had saved a poster from the Newcastle club where he'd seen Jimi Hendrix play in 1967.
While Fielding collected himself, we caught up on the fates of the people we'd worked with at Trinity. Zach Levin had been stabbed by Geli at the door of the Containment building, but he'd recovered. He has now resumed his position as chief of R amp;D for Godin Supercomputing. John Skow was fired by the NSA, but he is rumored to be writing a novel based on his experiences at the ultrasecret intelligence agency. Like Skow, Geli Bauer knew too much about national security matters to face a public trial for Fielding's murder. After extensive debriefing by the NSA and the Secret Service, she quietly disappeared. I'd like to think that justice caught up with Geli somewhere, but I suspect she's working in the secu¬rity division of some multinational corporation, scaring the hell out of superiors and subordinates alike.
When Fielding finally told me he was ready to see Lu Li, I said a fond farewell, then turned and started toward the door.
'David? ' said the synthesized voice behind me.
I stopped and looked back at the sphere. 'Yes?'
'Are you still troubled by your visions?'
'I don't have them anymore.'
