The author has written a story that illustrates the horrible consequences that can arise when human beings abdicate their humanity in favor of their creations. The story takes place after many years of total global war controlled by powerful computers. It offers visions of what can happen when human beings give more and more control to the machines they create; when they, in effect, give machines the power traditionally reserved for God and try to become like gods in their creation of "life." The use of biblical language and images emphasizes this theme.

The story describes a world in which a huge computer has total control over the five human survivors of the war. The author creates an anti-Eden. Well-known Christian images are altered to create a dystopia in which these images mean negative rather than positive things for humans.

The computer that controls them...