Once shown these things, Amos is so overcome with joy and awe that he cycles between laughter and weeping, and to the eyes of the others in the room—a researcher named Janice, another named Vincent—he seems to be seized by an alarming hysteria. When Amos urges the girl to bring Janice into the same light that she has shown to him, she gives the gift again.
Janice, however, reacts differently from Amos. Humbled and frightened, she collapses in remorse. She claws at herself in regret for the way she has lived her life and in grief for those she has betrayed and harmed, and her anguish is frightening.
Tumult.
Rose is summoned. Janice and Amos are isolated for observation and evaluation. What has the girl done? What Amos tells them seems like the happy babbling of a harmlessly deranged man, but babbling nonetheless, and from one who was but a few minutes ago a scientist of serious—if not brooding—disposition.
Baffled and concerned by the strikingly different reactions of Amos and Janice, the girl withdraws and becomes uncommunicative. Rose works in private with 21-21 for more than two hours before she finally begins to pry the astounding explanation from her. The child cannot understand why the revelation that she’s brought to Amos and Janice would overwhelm them so completely or why Janice’s reaction is a mix of euphoria and self-flagellation.
Having been born with a full awareness of her place and purpose in the universe, with an understanding of the ladder of destinies that she will climb through infinity, with the certain knowledge of life everlasting carried in her genes, she cannot ever fully grasp the shattering power of this revelation when she brings it to those who have spent their lives in the mud of doubt and the dust of despair.
Expecting nothing more than that she is going to experience the psychic equivalent of a magic-lantern show, a tour of a child’s sweet fantasy of God, Rose asks to be shown. And is shown. And is forever changed. Because at the touch of the child’s hand, she is opened to the fullness of existence. What she experiences is beyond her powers to describe, and even as torrents of joy surge through her and wash away all the countless grieves and miseries of her life heretofore, she is flooded, as well, with terror, for she is aware not only of the promise of a bright eternity but of expectations that she must strive to fulfill in all the days of life ahead of her in this world and in the worlds to come, expectations that frighten her because she is unsure that she can ever meet them. Like Janice, she is acutely aware of every mean act and unkindness and lie and betrayal of which she has ever been guilty, and she recognizes that she still has the capacity for selfishness, pettiness, and cruelty; she yearns to transcend her past even as she quakes at the fortitude required to do so.
When the vision passes and she finds herself in the girl’s room as before, she harbours no doubt that what she saw was real, truth in its purest form, and not merely the child’s delusion transmitted through psychic power. For almost half an hour she cannot speak but sits shaking, her face buried in her hands.
Gradually, she begins to realize the implications of what has happened here. There are basically two. First, if this revelation can be brought to the world, even to as many as the girl can touch—all that is now will pass away. Once one has seen—not taken on faith but seen—that there is life beyond, even if the nature of it remains profoundly mysterious and even as fearsome as it is glorious, then all that was once important seems insignificant. Avenues of wondrous possibilities abound where once there was a single alley through the darkness. The world as we know it ends.
Second: There are those who will not welcome the end of the old order, who have taught themselves to thrive on power and on the pain and humiliation of others. Indeed, the world is full of them, and they will not want to receive the girl’s gift. They will fear the girl and everything that she promises. And they will either sedate and isolate her in a containment vessel—or they will kill her.