Summary

The novel opens with a scientific and poetic description of the Big Bang. It describes the process of everything in the universe expanding exponentially from a single point. The opening contemplates the people who are exposed to these wonders in the universe--to astronomy and the real vastness of the galaxy--and questions how they go about their daily lives in the face of this fearsome world. Everett then goes on to describe the first meeting with a woman named Moira with whom he will go on to have an affair. She will meet him for lunch and then suddenly there is a description of all things flying away from each other for about fifteen billion years and then suddenly the emergence of the first entity with a will of its own from a “speck of organic corruption” (6). Everett receives an email from Pem with a jumble of...