‘The elements are familiar enough,’ Luca said. ‘The old legend of Michael Poole has been conflated with the beliefs of the Friends of Wigner.’ During the Qax Occupation the rebel group called the Friends had concocted a belief, based on ancient quantum-philosophical principles, that no event was made real until it was observed by a conscious intelligence - and hence that the universe itself would not be made real until all of its history was observed by an Ultimate Observer at Timelike Infinity, the very end of time. If such a being existed, then perhaps it could be appealed to - which was what the Friends had intended to achieve during their ultimately futile rebellion against the Qax. ‘It’s just that in this instance Poole himself has become that Observer.’

Dolo nodded. ‘Oddly, Michael Poole was lost in time - in a sense - his last act, so it is said, was to fly his ship deliberately into an unending network of branching wormholes, in order to save mankind from an invasion from the future. Perhaps he is still out there somewhere, wherever there is. You can certainly see the resonance of his story for these rock jockeys. Poole sacrificed his life for the sake of his people - and yet, transcendent, he lives on. What a role model!’ He actually winked at Luca. ‘I sometimes think that even if we could achieve a state of total purity, of totally blank minds cocooned from the history of mankind, even then such beliefs would start sprouting spontaneously. But you have to admit that it’s a good story.’ He sounded surprisingly mellow.

Luca was shocked. ‘But - sir - surely we must act to stop this drift from Doctrinal adherence. This new faith is insidious. You aren’t supposed to pray for personal salvation; it is the species that counts. If this kind of thing is happening all over the Front, perhaps we should consider more drastic steps.’

Dolo’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’re talking about excision.’

In the seminaries there had been chatter for millennia about the origin of the religious impulses which endlessly plagued the swarming masses under the Commission’s care. Some argued that these impulses came from specific features of the human brain. Thus perhaps the characteristic sense of oneness with a greater entity came from a temporary disconnection within the parietal lobe, detaching the usual sense of one’s self - controlled by the left side of this region - from the sense of space and time, controlled by the right. And perhaps a sense of awe and significance came from a malfunction of the limbic system, a deep and ancient system keyed to the emotions. And so on. If a mystical experience was simply a symptom of a malfunctioning brain - like, say, an epileptic fit - then that malfunction could be fixed, the symptoms abolished. And with a little judicious tinkering with the genome, such flaws could be banished from all subsequent generations.