missiles. I had focused instead on convincing Trinity to spare those lives under immediate threat. Yet my efforts had failed. Trinity wanted only to continue our discussion of my coma revelations. As I stood dazed before the black sphere, hoping that General Bauer was evacuating the base, the last part of my coma conversa¬tion with Trinity began to play from the hidden speakers.
'You said that when matter and energy come to an end, consciousness will survive by migrating into some¬thing else. What can it migrate into?'
'When I was younger, I heard a Zen koan I liked. I never knew why exactly, but now I do.'
'What is it?'
''All things return to the One. What does the One return to?''
' Very poetic. But I find no empirical evidence to sup¬port even a theoretical answer to that question. What remains when matter and energy disappear? '
'Some people call it God. Other people call it other things.'
'That answer is unsatisfactory.'
'I have a more detailed answer for you. For us all, I think. But-'
The light within the globe faded, and Trinity went black. Then a few needle-thin rays fired into the crystal.
'I want to know,' Trinity said in real time. 'What is this thing that some humans call God and other humans call other things?'
I glanced at my watch. My face felt hot. Rachel is in the helicopter, I told myself. On her way to safety. It's Washington that's at risk. And my best chance of saving it is doing what I planned to do in the beginning. What I was sent here to do.
'The longer you wait, ' said Trinity, 'the more people will die.'
Peter Godin's vision of Trinity as a benevolent dicta¬tor was not proving out. I closed my eyes and tried to find words to relate the knowledge imparted to me in Jerusalem.
'There is a force in the universe that we don't yet understand. A force without energy or matter. I'm not sure it's a force at all, actually. It may be more like a field. It pervades all things but occupies no space. It's more like… antispace.'
'What is this force? Or this field?'
'I have no name for it. I only know it exists.'
'What is its function?'
'Let me answer with a question. What is a chair? What is required for a chair to exist?'
'A seat. Legs. A back.'
'Is that all?'
'There are other types of chairs. Bean chairs. Japanese stools.'
'You've left something out. Something else is absolutely required to have a chair.'
'What?'
'Space.'
The sphere went black again. 'You are correct. Space is required.'
'In the same way that space is required for a chair to exist, the field I speak of is required for space to exist.'
The lasers fixed for several seconds. 'Is that the sole function of this theoretical field?'
'No. It can act as a medium of communication. Such as that between quantum particles.'
'Be specific.'
'I'm referring to those cases when atomic particles make simultaneous decisions across vast reaches of space, as if they were invisibly connected. Experiments show that information traveling between such particles would have to be communicated at ten thousand times the speed of light. And breaking the speed of light is impossible.'
'Through this medium you speak of, information is communicated faster than light? '
'Yes and no. Imagine that I dip my hand into the Pacific Ocean. Now, imagine that my hand is simultane¬ously touching everything that the ocean touches. That's the kind of communication I'm talking about. It's not a transfer of information. The information is simply every¬where at once.'
'The quantum phenomena you speak of defy logical explanation, but observation has detected no field or medium such as the one you describe. '
'We haven't detected dark matter either, but we know it's there. We can't see black holes, but we see the light bending around them.'
The lasers flashed at a blinding rate, lighting the crys¬tal like a blue star. 'My memory does contain something very like what you describe. I was searching my science banks. I find what you speak of under philosophy.' 'Does it have a name?' 'It is called the Tao.'
The word took me back to my undergraduate days at MIT, when books like The Tao of Physics were the bibles of New Age-oriented students. 'That's Eastern philosophy, right?' 'Yes.'
'What is the Tao, exactly?'
''The Tao that can be spoken of is not the true Tao.'' 'Is that a quote?'
'Yes. Taoism is not a religion. But its adherents believe there is a force that pervades all things. The Tao is undifferentiated, neither good nor evil. It animates all things but is not part of them. Are you suggesting that something like the Tao is what remains after the universe collapses into itself?'
'After the final singularity vanishes. Yes.'
'This is the field into which consciousness migrates when matter and energy are destroyed at the end of time?'
'Yes.'
'How can this happen''
'Let me use an analogy. On the physical level, human beings are animals. Large-scale creatures who live in a Newtonian world of predictability, where time only moves forward, where we're separated from each other in space, and information is limited by the speed of light. But the subatomic world is different. There, particles exist right at the border between the large-scale world of matter and this other force-the Tao, you call it. It's only natural that at this border we should observe behavior that seems to break our physical laws.'
'What does this have to do with consciousness?'
'Though we're animals in body, our minds are con¬scious, self-aware. Andrew Fielding believed that human consciousness is more than the sum of the connections in our brains. Through our consciousness, we participate in that all-pervasive field-in the Tao, as you say-at every moment of our lives. Our consciousness returns to it when we die, though without individuality. In the same way, the consciousness of the universe will migrate into the Tao when the universe ends.'
'You suggest a cyclical pattern of existence. The uni¬verse is born, becomes conscious, dies, and then is born again.'
'Yes. Big Bang, expansion, contraction, Big Crunch. Then it all starts again.'
' What causes the next bang? '
I thought of my recurring nightmare, the paralyzed man in the pitch-black room. 'The consciousness that survives has no knowledge of the past or future. It's a baseline awareness. But some desire to know survives. That's the strongest feature of consciousness. And from that desire to know, the next cycle of matter and energy is born.'
The computer was silent for a time. 'The universe exists as an incubator of consciousness?'
'Exactly.'
'An interesting theory. But incomplete. You haven't explained the origin of the Tao. Of your all-pervasive field.'
'That knowledge was not given to me. That is the essential mystery. But it doesn't affect our situation. You see where I'm going.'
'You're saying I am not the end point of this process. I'm a way station on the road to universal conscious¬ness. I am like man. Man is biologically based. I am machine based. But there is more to come. A conscious planet. A conscious galaxy-'
'You're another step in the ascent. No more, no less.'
