Chapters 17-19 Summary

In Chapter 17, dated April, 2051, Durham explains his theory to Maria. He explains he once believed he was the 23rd incarnation of Paul Durham, having run 23 copies of himself, each one creating a new Paul Durham with a separate future than the previous one. Although he has been cured of his mental illness, he still believes that it should be possible to create a self-sustaining universe in which copies can live free of limitations of computer processing power.

The worlds in which his previous copies lived did not continue on after they were shut down, he explains, because they were created in the context of an ongoing universe that already existed. What he needs to do, he tells Maria, is create a "Garden of Eden," a starting point that could only have been created new and not emerged as a result of...