“Our model here has also distorted the concepts of size and distance,” the Eagle continued after a brief pause. “In a moment I will start the simulation of the early universe again, and we will be overpowered as that compact blob of radiation explodes outward at an astonishing rate. While the simulation of what the cosmologists call the Inflation Era is occurring, the assumed size of this room will also be increasing rapidly. If we did not change the scale, you
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would be unable now to see the structure of the universe at 10″40 seconds without a fantastic microscope.”
Nicole stared below her at the source of light. “So that minuscule warped globule of hot, heavy stuff was the seed of everything? From that tiny stew of subatomic particles came die great galaxies you showed me in the other domain? It doesn’t seem possible.”
“Not just those galaxies,” the Eagle said. “The potential for everything in the cosmos is stored in that peculiar superheated soup.”
The small globule suddenly began to expand at an enormous rate. Nicole had the feeling that the outside of the globule was going to touch her face at any moment. Millions of bizarre structures formed and disappeared in front of her eyes. Nicole watched in fascination as the material seemed to change its nature several times, moving through transitional states as peculiar and foreign as the earlier superheated globule.
“I have ran time forward in the model,” the Eagle said several seconds later. “What you see out there now, approximately one million years after creation, would be recognizable to any dedicated student of physics. Some simple atoms have formed—three kinds of hydrogen, two of helium, for example. Lithium is the heaviest known atom that is plentiful. The density of the universe is now roughly equivalent to the air on Earth, and the temperature has fallen to a comparatively comfortable one hundred million degrees, or twenty orders of magnitude less than it was at the time of the hot globule.”
He activated the platform and guided it among the lights and clumps and filaments. “If we were really smart,” the Eagle said, “we would be able to look at all this early matter and predict which ‘lumps’ would eventually become galactic clusters. It was at about this time that the first Prime Monitor appeared, the only intruder into this otherwise natural evolution process. No monitoring could have been done earlier, because the process is so sensitive. Any kind of observation during the first second of creation, ftr example, would have completely distorted the resultant evolution.”
The Eagle pointed at a tiny metallic sphere in the center of several huge agglomerations of matter. “That first Prime Monitor,” he said, “was sent by the Creator, from another dimension of the early universe, into our evolving space-time system. Its purpose was to observe what was occurring and to create, as necessary, with its own intelligence, the other observing systems that would together gather all the pertinent information on the overall process.”
“So the Sun, the Earth, and every human being,” Nicole said slowly, “resulted from the unpredictable natural evolution of this cosmos. The Node, Rama, and even you and Saint Michael were produced from a directed development designed originally by that first Prime Monitor.”
She paused, glancing around her, and then turned to the Eagle. “You could have been predicted shortly after the moment of creation. I, and even the existence of humanity, came from a process so mathematically perverse that we could not even have been predicted a hundred million years ago, which is only one percent of the time since the beginning of the universe.”
Nicole shook her head and then waved her hand. “All right,” she said, “that’s enough. I’m overloaded with the infinite/’
The great room became dark again except for the small lights on the floor of the platform. “What is it?” the Eagle said, seeing a look of distress on Nicole’s face.
“I’m not certain,” she said. “I feel a kind of sadness, as if I had experienced a deep personal loss. If I have-understood all this, then humans are far more special than you, or even Rama. The odds are very much against any creatures even nearly like us ever arising again, either in this universe or any other. We are one of the fluke products of chaos. You, or at least something like you, probably existed in all those other universes the Creator is supposedly observing.”
There was a momentary silence. “I guess I had imagined,” Nicole continued, “after listening to Saint Michael, that there would be human voices in that harmony God was
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seeking. Now I realize dial it is only on die planet Earth, in diis particular universe, that our songs—”
Nicole felt a sharp burst of pain in her chest. It remained intense. She struggled to breathe, convinced for several moments that die end was coming immediately.
The Eagle said nothing, but watched her carefully. When Nicole finally caught her breath, she spoke in short, broken clauses. “You told me … at lunch … a personal place . . . where I could see family and friends …”
They talked briefly in the car while the pain was momentarily bearable. Both die Eagle and Nicole knew, widiout either of diem saying anything, that the next attack would be the last.
They entered another of die exhibit areas in die Knowledge Module. This room was a perfect circle, with a space in a small floor section in the middle where the Eagle could stand next to Nicole’s wheelchair. They crossed to their central location and watched as humanlike figures began to replay events from Nicole’s adult life in each of the six separate theater settings that closely surrounded them.
The verisimilitude of the replays was astonishing. Not only did all Nicole’s family and friends look exactly as they had at the time that die events had taken place, but all the sets were perfect reconstructions as well. In one of die scenes Katie was water-skiing boldly near the shore of Lake Shakespeare, laughing and waving with the reckless abandon that was her trademark. In another Nicole watched a re-creation of the party the little troupe on Rama II had held to celebrate the one thousandth anniversary of the death of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Seeing Simone at age four and Katie at two, and both Richard and herself when they were still young and vigorous, brought tears to Nicole’s eyes.
It has been an astonishing life, Nicole thought. She rolled her wheelchair into the scene from Rama fl and the action stopped. Nicole leaned over and picked up the robot TB that Richard had created to amuse die little girls. It felt properly weighted in her hands. *•
“How in the world did you do this?’. Nicole asked.
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“Advanced technology,” die Eagle replied. “I couldn’t explain it to you.”
“And if I went over mere, where Katie is skiing, would the water feel wet to my touch?”
“Absolutely.”
Nicole rolled out of the scene holding the pseudo-robot in her hands. When she was gone, anodier TB materialized and the scene continued. / had forgotten, Richard, Nicole said to herself, all your brilliant little creations.
Her heart granted her a few more minutes to enjoy the vignettes taken from her life. Nicole thrilled again to the moment of Simone’s birth, relived her first night of love with Richard not long after he found her in New York, and experienced for a second time the fantastic array of sights and creatures that had greeted Richard and her when the gates of me Emerald City had first opened to mem.
“Can you replay any event from my life that 1 might want?” Nicole asked, feeling a sudden constriction in her chest.
“As long as it happened after you arrived at Rama and I can find it in the archives,” the Eagle replied.
Nicole gasped. The final heart attack was under way. “Please,” she said, “may I see my last conversation with Richard before he left?”
It won’t be long, a voice inside Nicole said. She clenched her teeth and tried to concentrate on the scene” that had suddenly appeared in front of her. Richard was explaining to pseudo-Nicole why he was the one who should accompany Archie back to New Eden.
“I understand,” pseudo-Nicole said in the scene.
/ understand, die real Nicole said to herself. That is the most important statement anyone can ever make. The whole key to life is understanding. And now I understand that I am a mortal creature whose time of death has come.
Another surge of intense pain was accompanied by a fleeting memory of a Latin line from an old poem: Timor Mortis conturbat me. But I will not be afraid because I understand.
The Eagle was watching her closely. “I would like to
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