Settled in Almirante’s saddle, Sniper paused to flash its pursuer a salute, its own signature mock-pistol hand gesture, half courtesy, half taunt. “Go home, Dominic. We’re both done. It’s up to the Censor, the Senate, and the world now.” It sighed, its doll’s face sweet, even here. “It had to be done. Like Tully said, we were at the edge of war already. Even a well-meaning tyrant would have pushed us over. You knew that, but you didn’t care.”

“Aldrin!” Dominic screamed.

The Utopian needed no more instruction. She dispatched her unicorn, the slender black U-beast flowing dart-swift up the center of the Forum like the shadow of a crashing plane. Dominic mounted roughly, seeming too heavy for the doe-thin skeleton to bear, but whatever clever engineer had given the unicorn its processing power also made its frame stronger than Nature could. Sniper smiled at the sound of hoofs behind it, and led the chase, leaping rails and food carts and giving the young capital its first taste of the thunder of cavalry. The cameras and the crowd’s eye joined the chase, or half the crowd’s at least, for by now not a few of you had noticed something happening upon the Rostra.

“Domine?” Martin was the first to dare call to the reconstructed corpse.

It was hard to spot vitality returning to a body so lifeless even in life, but even Jehovah’s Will could not keep His eyes from twitching to blink the blood away. “Permanebam.” That was the word His lips formed first, even before breath had quite moistened them again. ‘I continued,’ there’s a rough translation, ‘I remained, endured, persisted—though this flesh died, I and My universe lived on, as you and I had so long hoped.’ If English had a word for such an idea, Jehovah would have used that.

“Jehovah!”

For a few moments, the joy of His return drowned the shock of the miracle. Family crowded around Him, Censor and Kosala weeping freely as relief channeled their terror into happy tears. Caesar was quiet. He had understood what this miracle child was when he appeared, and, while joy for his Son’s restoration crusted his eyes with salt, his mind turned already to what the world must do now that the Truth was known.

The world was not slow to start. “Did you see that?”

“J.E.D.D. Mason’s okay!”

“Their brain, it was blown out! I saw!”

“It grew back.”

“What did they do?”

“Was it the Utopians?”

The universal skepticism of our time would not let the word ‘miracle’ crop up so soon. Over the next weeks a credulous minority would begin to admit that they believe, and who knows how many others believe in secret now, afraid of seeming irrational before their peers. But still the majority prefers its other explanations, a hoax, an optical illusion, or some hidden healing technology Utopia will not yet share. You may believe or not as you will, reader. Had This Universe’s God wished you to know Him without doubt, He would have worked His miracle before your eyes. Still, think, reader—whose side is Reason on? Her indispensable disciple John Locke, who freed a drowning Europe from the grip of Hobbes’s dark sea, argued that no one would knowingly lie and claim they saw a miracle if saying so gained nothing while maintaining the lie cost dear; Reason and self-interest are against it. Were Locke with us today, he would no doubt turn Ockham’s razor upon your disbelief too, and make you answer which is more plausible, that, as all of us who saw firsthand insist, God worked a miracle? Or that all Earth’s leaders are willing to be called insane because they can find no less embarrassing lie to conceal the fact that the Utopians are hiding some amazing technological healing serum which, despite their vendetta against Death, they refuse to share with anyone besides J.E.D.D. Mason?