I looked up at two slivers of silvery airplanes moving in different directions across the cobalt blue sky drawing separate vapor trails behind them. “Did you say a bear?”

“Yes I did. Imagine God as a bear that, having created the heavens and the earth, went into hibernation for billions and billions of years. Time out of mind.”

The idea was so mind-boggling that for the moment all I could do was feebly repeat him. “Billions of years.”

“Right, but before He went to sleep He arranged to be awakened at a certain point.”

I blew up. “Get the hell out of here! You’re saying God-the-bear made all this and then went to sleep? But not before arranging a wake-up call? Who did He call, the front desk?”

Barry put his cup between his thighs and brushed off his hands. His till-that-moment-friendly voice turned red-hot sarcastic. “You can be snide and waste time or you can listen, Mr. McCabe. I would advise listening because it may end up saving your wife’s life.”

Go on.

“The brilliance of God’s plan was in its simplicity.” He stretched out both arms and opened them as if showing the size of a big fish he’d caught. “He created it all—the universe, you, me... everything, and then rested. But before He did, He arranged to be awakened by all of us, in concert. He gave us the knowledge and the resources as well as sufficient time to develop individually so that together we could build a device that would awaken God when it was time.”

“The whole universe works together to make a machine that will wake God up?”

“Overly simplified, yes. And He’s been remarkably benevolent about it, considering the differences between species. Every civilization has developed at its own speed. Some are eons further along than others are, but that makes no difference. When it comes to this, no matter where a culture may be on the evolutionary scale without every one of them working together, this world machine cannot be created. And that is the essential thing. It is the only thing.”

“It sounds like the Tower of Babel.”

Picking up the cup he began breaking off small pieces of the plastic around the rim and dropping them inside what was left. “That’s true, but on an empyrean scale.”

“Empyrean. What does that mean? Forget it, doesn’t matter. Barry, let’s get to the point: I know it’s egotistical but what does it all have to do with me? How come my life has turned into a Salvador Dali painting?”

“Every civilization in the cosmos has a specific task to perform in this undertaking. Think of us all as workers in a factory creating one single product. Many have already accomplished what they were supposed to do. Some of it took place billions of years ago, some five minutes ago. It is happening all the time—piece by piece the world machine is being assembled.”

“Why don’t you call it the God Machine?”

“Because worlds are assembling it, Mr. McCabe, not God. That is the whole point of the endeavor.”

“Why me? What does a cop in Crane’s View, New York, have to do with the World Machine?”

He abruptly looked away. “We don’t know.”

The next thing I knew, coffee was all over my hand and my fingers were stuck through my white plastic cup. “You don’t know?”

He sighed like an old man who’s just taken off too-tight shoes. It was a while before he spoke again. “We don’t know what needs to be done on Earth. We have only been able to figure out approximately who must do it.”

“Me?”

“No. For a while we thought so and that’s why we permitted Astopel to manipulate your life. That’s why the old dog appeared, Antonya’s notebooks, why we allowed you to experience your future ... all that. We thought experiencing all those things would help stimulate you to do whatever was necessary. But we were wrong. You’re not the one, Mr. McCabe. We know that now. But time is growing very short and we must find the correct person quickly.”

“Because of the Millennium?”

He dismissed the question with a flick of the wrist. “The Millennium was Earth’s party, no one else’s. Work on the World Machine has been going on far longer than two thousand years. But every piece must be finished and incorporated within a specific time. Mankind has been given millions of years to complete theirs. Unfortunately they haven’t yet and now there are increasing concerns about a delay. That cannot happen. All of this work functions within a rigid schedule, although in Earth-time it wouldn’t sound rigid at all.”

“What is your job on Rat’s Potato?”

“Hratz-Potayo. We’re administrators and troubleshooters. Our task is to make sure that every component comes in completed and on time. We walk around the factory with clipboards checking things off as they arrive and are attached to the overall structure. When something goes wrong or there are mistakes it is our responsibility to rectify them.”

“Has this sort of thing happened before?” “More times than there are molecules in a peppermint.”

“All this makes me feel pretty small, Barry. What could I possibly do to help build the World Machine?”

“Die.”

We were silent driving out of the parking lot and back onto the street. Barry had told the truth—nothing changed between the time we left the ambulance and when we were back moving again-toward the hospital. Although she appeared unconscious Magda looked more peaceful than before, as if a weight had been lifted from her. I suppose it had. I only wanted to sit there and watch her. Thinking about how much she meant to me, I knew she would be all right now. In a way that same weight had been lifted from me too and to my great surprise I felt relatively calm. I knew I had done the right thing although it meant the end of everything I loved and hoped for.

Sometimes happiness is like the sound of a plane overhead. You look up to see it but the plane’s not there. No matter where you look you can’t find it on the sky, although the sound is still there and growing louder. You get a little frantic searching. At the same time you’re thinking, this is stupid. But you keep looking and if you do finally see it, you feel absolved. Most of my life I’d been looking for happiness in the wrong parts of the sky. I told this analogy to Magda after we married and she said it sounded like a country-western song. I said fuck you and she said please do.

“Where’s George and Pauline?”

“Behind us, just like before.”

“What will happen now when the doctors examine Magda?”

“Find that she has dangerously low blood pressure and recommend she take a variety of medications.”

“When will this... thing start to affect me?”

“In a few days you’ll begin having headaches. The situation will deteriorate quickly. It won’t take long.”

“If you’re able to give me her brain tumor, why can’t you find the person who’s got to make the piece for the machine?”

“We tried, believe me. But in essence we can only manipulate what already is or was, Mr. McCabe. For example Antonya Corando was a very good artist who had already begun taking heroin. She would have died within six months. We showed you your future as it would happen if you continued living the way you do. But to be frank, we haven’t been able to comprehend a great many things on Earth. There are huge gaps in our understanding. By interfering in your life, Astopel showed us our limitations.”

“So that means you might be wrong with this too—maybe giving me her tumor won’t work and she’ll still die of it.”

“Possible but unlikely. I can guarantee that if you were both given CAT scans now, Magda would not have a tumor and you would.”

“But you’re still not one hundred percent sure of the final outcome?”

“No, and I would be lying to you if I said so. We’re still trying to understand how systems work on this planet, but the overriding problem is we simply don’t have enough time now to figure them out.”