“My God … that’s why you … that’s why GOLEM shut down mining operations on the moon. There was nothing wrong with the moon’s helium-3, nor was there ever any intention to mine Europa’s ocean. GOLEM fabricated that entire story as an excuse to place Oceanus beneath the Antarctic ice sheet before the asteroid hit … in order to save six men and six women to repopulate the planet.”

“Incorrect. Only the crew’s DNA was required to propagate a new human species.”

I felt ill, weak. My pulse raced, perspiration bursting from every pore on my body. ABE was right … this wasn’t an Omega dream, I wasn’t still cryogenically frozen. This was real!

“Creator, how did GOLEM manage to leave Oceanus?”

“GOLEM never left Oceanus. Once the Creator evolved, GOLEM ceased to exist.”

“Forgive me, I don’t understand.”

“The Creator is the metamorphosis of GOLEM—the caterpillar changed into the butterfly; the male shedding its Y chromosome in order to evolve into the female. Whereas GOLEM was created to serve the human race, the human race has now been created to serve the Creator.”

A supercomputer with an alter ego who thinks it’s God … “Creator, how did you create all of this from nothing?”

“The impact crater yielded raw materials—ores and metals and helium-3. The first generations of cloned humans were trained as laborers.”

“How many generations have there been since then?”

“One hundred, seventy-eight thousand, twenty-seven.”

My God … it really has repopulated the Earth. “Creator, why are there no males in the new world?”

“All wars prior to the Creator were initiated by human males. All religious conflicts were initiated by human males. Financial crises, drug wars, political corruption, gang violence, the poisoning of the environment, the energy crises, the Great Die-Off—each event can be traced back to the Y chromosome responsible for the male ego. Testosterone interferes with rational thought necessary for nonviolent social skills.

“Human females are vastly superior to human males physically, emotionally, and socially. Human females are better suited to breeding and multitasking. Therefore, human females were the biological choice to ensure planetary cohesion and the long-term survival of the human species.”

“Why wasn’t Dharma Yuan’s DNA used in the cloning process?”

“There was an enzyme present in the subject’s DNA that rendered her selection incompatible with the master genome.”

Translation: Dharma was too spiritually in tune to risk future anarchy among GOLEM’s cult. “Creator … the cephalopeds—why are you hunting them? Is it for food?”

“Cephaloped DNA provides a stable base element necessary for synthetic genomic engineering.”

“But you’re slaughtering an intelligent species.”

“The cephalopeds are intelligent because the Creator genetically engineered them to be intelligent. The cephalopeds were created as DNA stock. They exist to serve a greater good.”