—The Dead Sea Scrolls CHAPTER 19 Naked Singularity …mount to paradise By the stairway of surprise. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON “Merlin,” Poems (1847) It is not impossible that to some infinitely superior being the whole universe may be as one plain, the distance between planet and planet being only as the pores in a grain of sand, and the spaces between system and system no greater than the intervals between one grain and the grain adjacent. —SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE Omniania THEY WERE falling. The pentagonal panels of the dodecahedron had become transparent. So had the roof and the floor. Above and below she could make out the organosilicate lacework and the implanted erbium dowels, which seemed to be stirring. All three benzels had disappeared. The dodecahedron plunged, racing down a long dark tunnel just broad enough to permit its passage. The acceleration seemed somewhere around one g. As a result, Ellie, facing forward, was pressed backward in her chair, while Devi, opposite her, was bending slightly at the waist.
