“But you must need many specialists to keep it functioning.”
“Only six brothers who have had intense technical training. My systems are all but entirely solid-state.”
“On occasion, tech support comes in from Silicon Valley by helicopter.”
“Yes, Mr. Romanovich. I am pleased but surprised the NSA would be interested in the work of a spiritual seeker.”
“I am a man of faith myself, Brother John. I was intrigued when I heard that you have developed a computer model that you believe has shown you the deepest, most fundamental structure of reality, even far below the level of quantum foam.”
Brother John sat in silence, and finally said, “I must assume that some of my conversations with former colleagues, which I allowed myself a couple of years ago, were reported to you.”
“That is correct, Brother John.”
The monk frowned, then sighed. “Well, I should not hold them to blame. In the highly competitive secular world of science, there is no expectation of keeping a confidence of this nature.”
“So you believe you have developed a computer model that has shown you the deepest structure of reality?”
“I do not believe it, Mr. Romanovich. I know that what the model shows me is true.”
“Such certitude.”
“To avoid a bias toward my views, I didn’t create the model. We inputted the entirety of substantive quantum theory and the evidence supporting it, allowing the computer array to develop the model with no human bias.”
“Computers are creations of human beings,” said Romanovich, “so they have bias built in.”
To me, Brother John said, “The melancholy I’ve struggled with today does not excuse my bad manners. Would you like some cookies?”
That he offered cookies only to me seemed significant. “Thank you, sir, but I’m saving room for two slices of cake after dinner.”
“Back to your certitude,” Romanovich said. “How can you know what the model shows you is true?”
A beatific look overcame Brother John. When he spoke, his voice had a tremor that might have been inspired by awe. “I have applied the lesson of the model…and it works.”
“And what is the lesson of the model, Brother John?”
Leaning forward in his chair, seeming to refine the silence of the room to a hush by the force of his personality, he said softly, “Under the final level of apparent chaos, one finds strange order again, and the final level of order is thought.”
“Thought?”
“All matter, when seen at its root, arises out of a base web that has all the characteristics of thought waves.”
He clapped his hands once, and the previously dark, lustrous walls brightened. Across them, around us, floor to ceiling, intricate interlacing lines of numerous colors presented ever-changing patterns that suggested layers like thermal currents in an infinitely deep ocean. For all their complexity, the lines were clearly ordered, the patterns purposeful.
This display possessed such beauty and mystery that I was at the same time mesmerized by it and compelled to look away, struck both by wonder and fear, by awe but equally by a sense of inadequacy, which made me want to cover my face and confess all the baseness in myself.
Brother John said, “What you see before you is not the thought patterns of God that underlie all matter, which of course we have no way of actually seeing, but a computer representation of them, based on the model I mentioned.”
He clapped his hands twice. The astonishing patterns faded, and the walls went dark again, as though the display had been controlled by one of those devices that some elderly people use to turn the room lights on and off without having to get out of bed.
“This little exhibition so profoundly affects people,” Brother John said, “resonates with us on some level so deep, that witnessing more than a minute of it can result in extreme emotional distress.”
Rodion Romanovich looked as shaken as I suppose I did.
“So,” said the Russian, after regaining his composure, “the lesson of the model is that the universe—all its matter and forms of energy—arises out of thought.”
“God imagines the world, and the world becomes.”
Romanovich said, “Well, we know that matter can be transformed to energy, as burning oil produces heat and light—”
“As splitting the nucleus of an atom produces the nuclei of lighter atoms,” Brother John interrupted, “and also the release of great energy.”
Romanovich pressed him: “But are you saying that thought—at least Divine thought—is a form of energy that can shape itself into matter, the reverse of nuclear fission?”
“Not the reverse, no. This is not merely nuclear fusion. The usual scientific terms do not apply. It is…imagining matter into existence by the power of the will. And because we have been given thought, will, and imagination, albeit on a human scale, we too have this power to create.”
Romanovich and I locked eyes, and I said, “Sir, have you ever seen the movie Forbidden Planet?”
“No, Mr. Thomas, I have not.”
“When this is all over, I think we should watch it together.”
“I will make the popcorn.”
“With salt and just a pinch of chili powder?”
“So shall it be.”
Brother John said, “Are you sure you won’t have some cookies, Odd Thomas? I know you like my cookies.”
I expected him to make sorcerous gestures toward the table beside my chair, conjuring chocolate-chip treats from thin air.
Romanovich said, “Brother John, you said earlier that you have applied the lesson of your computer model, the lesson being that all matter as we know it has arisen out of thought. The universe, our world, the trees and the flowers and the animals…all imagined into existence.”
“Yes. You see, my science has led me back to faith.”
“How do you mean you applied what you believe you’ve learned?”
The monk leaned forward in his wingback chair, his hands fisted on his knees as if he were struggling to contain his excitement. His face appeared to have shed forty years, returning him to boyhood and the wonder thereof.
“I have,” he whispered, “created life.”
CHAPTER 51
THIS WAS THE CALIFORNIA SIERRA, NOT THE Carpathian Mountains. Outside, snow flew rather than rain, without thunderclaps or bolts of lightning. In this room I found a disappointing lack of bizarre machines with gold-plated gyroscopes, crackling arcs of electricity, and demented hunchbacks with lantern eyes. In the days of Karloff and Lugosi, they really understood the demands of melodrama better than our mad scientists do these days.
On the other hand, it is true that Brother John Heineman was less mad than misguided. You will see that this is true, though you will also see that between the mad and the misguided, the line is as thin as a split hair that has been split again.
“This chamber,” said Brother John with a curious mix of glee and solemnity, “isn’t merely a room but is also a revolutionary machine.”
To me, Rodion Romanovich said, “This is always trouble.”
“If I envision an object and consciously project that image,” Brother John continued, “the machine receives it, recognizes the projected nature of it separate from all other kinds of thought, amplifies my directed mental energy to several million times its initial power, and produces the object imagined.”
“Good Lord, sir, your electrical bill must be outrageous.”
“It’s not inconsiderable,” he acknowledged, “but it isn’t as bad as you might think. For one thing, it’s not volts that matter so much as amps.”
“And I suppose you receive a high-user discount.”
“Not only that, Odd Thomas, my laboratory has certain rate advantages because it is in fact a religious organization.”
Romanovich said, “When you say you can imagine an object and the room will produce it—you mean like the cookies you have mentioned.”
Brother John nodded. “
Certainly, Mr. Romanovich. Would you like some cookies?”
Glowering, the Russian said, “Cookies are not alive. You said you had created life.”