The Omega Point

DAVID FORD’S JOURNAL: SIX

Caroline says that I have to face our love, but what can love possibly mean in a situation like this? How many people die in, say, sixty seconds right now? Millions, no doubt, in a world that is disintegrating this fast.

Apparently, she wants me to remember her in a way that I do not remember her. I want her physically. Of course I do, who wouldn’t? But this love of which she speaks seems to be some sort of a bridge, and I don’t understand why that would be true.

It’s quite clear how the gold is supposed to work, but I am not finding any change after ingesting it. Perhaps she’s right and I’m not taking enough, but there is no way I’m going to eat a heavy metal. Supposedly their preparation no longer contains any elemental gold in metal form, but how can that be? It’s an element, it’s going to be there.

I’ve remembered a lot and understood a lot, but the situation that’s unfolding now really eclipses more or less everything. It is true that Herbert Acton anticipated this, but his vision did not penetrate into the actual event or surely he would have left us more clear instructions. My best guess is that this is because things are now so chaotic that looking into this era would have been like looking into dirty water or dense fog.

So we’re on our own, and I think that it is very clear what we’re going to have to face. That document of Mrs. Denman’s was right, I think. The solar system is going through a very dirty and dangerous area of space, and the sun and all her planets are taking a terrible pounding.

I think that it will be too much for mankind. Certainly, civilization is finished. If this lasts much longer the way it is, our population is going to plummet massively. If it should intensify, then I think we are going to go the way of the dinosaurs—unless, of course, Caroline’s wonderful painting can somehow save a few of us. But it will be a very few, won’t it, just a tiny elite? In itself, that troubles me. Why should it be us and not, say, the great scientists of the world or the great saints, or simply the children?

So where does love come into this? Why does it matter anymore? I want to spend time with Katie and Caroline. I want to take every bit of pleasure from life that I can, while I can.

I have made a decision. If we cannot take the world with us, then I am not going myself. It isn’t right for just the carefully chosen to live while the rest, equally deserving, do not.

And yet, I am talking about my own death, here, and, in the end, if I have a choice, I know that I will try to save myself. It isn’t a moral choice, but an instinctive one. I am not a hero, and I don’t fully understand this business of calling me a leader.

When I was a boy, Charles Light tried to drill my specialness into me, my brilliance, my natural ability to take control of situations—all qualities that he saw but that I did not.

And yet, and yet… it’s true that I understand a great deal of this. I understand why the gold works, but not, perhaps, why it doesn’t for me.

I think that the best thing for me to do is to keep striving to save my patients, and give Caroline the space she needs to accomplish her work.

So far, there has been no further sign of the presence of our enemies. Does that mean that they’ve been swept away in the chaos? Perhaps, but somehow I doubt it. It has crossed my mind that Mack, the former CIA agent, might be one of them. He takes an inordinate interest in Caroline and her work.

He’s among the patients who display genuine symptoms. Paranoia, among other things. I can see the violence in the man, and I know that he has the skills necessary to enable him to enter and leave this place, and to infuriate Sam by neutralizing him the way he did, a professional handler like him.

In any case, he bears watching, I suppose, but the reality is this: events are going to overtake our enemies just as they are going to overtake us and, very shortly now, the whole world.