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“We didn’t renounce everything,” he told them. “When I joined the Marines, they gave me a lot of implants and stuff so I could operate all the equipmentand computers and so on, y’know? Some Purists refused to take any enhancement, but I did.” He spread arms of light. “I guess it’s a good thing I did, ’cause here I am.”

“You were connected with the Godstream when you . . . died?”

“Not sure I died, exactly. My body certainly did. But there’s more to people than bodies, right?”

“Dad, you know damned well that it’s technology that makes all of this possible!”

A second figure of light had appeared next to the first . . . an ethereal and graceful female form.

“Don . . . Julia . . . this stubborn atheist is my daughter, Susan.”

Gregory felt the woman’s smile. “Good to meet you. So . . . this is all . . . technology?”

“The Technological Singlarity,” Susan said. “Of course. What did you expect?”

“I’m not sure.” He looked around at their surroundings. “I don’t think I was expecting wilderness. You came here with yourdad?”

“In a manner of speaking. Dad, here, was in Port Ecuador when Cayambe blew. I was in a space elevator pod coming down thetether just a few kilometers above. Turns out we both were linked to the Godstream when it happened.”

“A lot of people died and woke up,” Wizewski said. “I think the sudden influx of minds through the Godstream is what kind of triggeredthings. Ha! Turns out you didn’t need to be in any particular religion after all. Or any religion, for that matter. I guessthe Universal Salvationists were right after all! There are some folks in my church back home who would just hate to hearthat.”

“So this is it?” Gregory said. He looked around again, taking in lake and wooded hills and grassy meadows. “For all eternity?”

“Don’t know about eternity, Don,” Wizewski said. “That’s an awfully long time. And it’s certainly not everything there is.The Singularity is bigger, by many, many orders of magnitude, than anything any one human mind could possibly conceive. Like Julianne says, just think of somethingand you’re there.”

So they explored.

Together, they walked the streets of Paris . . . and drifted outside the dome-enclosed city of Bahamia, ten meters beneath the Atlantic. He found they didn’t need sea suits or breathers for the undersea city and that they could enter the city proper like insubstantial ghosts. They visited the moon—the Tsiolkovsky Complex on the far side, and again, they didn’t need vac suits or life support while they drifted above the dusty crater floor. The stars, Gregory thought, had never appeared so sharp and bright.

They visited Skyport, where people—both corporeal and ascended—were working to save the shattered orbital complex. There wasan idea, he found, resident within the Godstream, for a few hundred thousand ascended minds to work together to reunite thebase.

They visited a newly created world that had the feel of an immense mag-tube station, with a domed ceiling so high there wasweather inside, and a kind of plaza with sunken seating areas and gathering places.

Beyond the dome was a galactic vista, the radiant glow of the Milky Way galaxy stretching across the sky. The scene was clearlyimaginal; humans had glimpsed the Milky Way from outside the N’gai Cluster once . . . but this was at a different angle, onelooking straight into the galaxy’s face. The effect was awe-inspiring, in the very real and considerably understated meaningof the word.

This was, Gregory realized, a kind of receiving area for the newly arrived.

Everywhere, there were people, teeming throngs with whom he could interact—or ignore—as he chose.

It took a while for Gregory to fully accept what had happened. Evidently, he was fully alive even though his body had beenwrecked. He was living, thinking, loving—Julia certainly had proven that—and enjoying an intensely real experience in what Wizewski had assured him was the Purist sect’s afterlife. Evidently Susanwas right; the Technological Singularity had indeed at last taken place, and people all over the planet were now ascending.He could sense the vast unfolding of the Godstream, a multidimensional tesseract of unimaginable complexity, depth, and scope.

He had a bewildering array of choices ahead of him—choices of new bodies or a repaired original or simply of staying right here . . . here, or in another virtual reality of his and Julia’s choosing.

“Damn,” Julia said.

“What is it?”

“An alert. I have to get back.”

He felt an icy chill. “What . . . back to the ship?”

“My squadron is going on ready-five. Don’t worry, love. I’ll be back.”

And then she was gone.

Gregory was left dreading what might happen next. He’d lost people he cared for, people he loved, before.

And he felt all alone once more.

Koenig

The Godstream

1703 hours, FST

Tomsk, a light short-hop freighter designated as Target 1159, was swinging around toward the far side of the moon, but was deceleratingtoo fast to enter Lunar Orbit. Konstantin had noted the discrepancy, alerted Koenig, then sounded the alert on board bothAmerica and Yorktown, requesting fighter support.

Koenig’s focus of presence currently was on the bridge of the America, where he was watching the Tomsk’s descent on the carrier’s long-range scan. He couldn’t tell simply by looking that the Tomsk was descending toward the surface of the lunar far side, but he took Konstantin’s word for it. As he watched, the ship changedcourse by several degrees, then vanished behind the curve of the lunar horizon. He checked the vector. The course change hadput the Tomsk on a direct heading for Tsiolkovsky, at a range of about 3,500 kilometers.

“Konstantin . . . are there any Russian assets beneath that new path? Any at all?”

“Negative, Mr. President. The new course appears to be bringing the Tomsk straight to our base at Tsiolkovsky.”

“To you, you mean.”

“A large part of my material infrastructure is located there, of course. If this is an attack, they could do me serious harm,though I should be able to survive independently within the fleet.”

“Like you operate on board the America?”

“Yes, or within the Godstream. However my mainframe infrastructure contributes heavily both to my awareness and my main memory.”

“Let’s save that, then. What’s on that ship?”

“The target is heavily shielded,”