From the moment Christ died, it seems, His followers have been debating what exactly His death was for. Why did Christ have to die? If it was to achieve atonement with God, then how, exactly?

The earliest theories, dating from the first fathers of the Church, were crude. Perhaps Jesus was a sacrifice — and after all in His time Jewish temple rituals had been big on sacrifices. Maybe Jesus was a kind of bait to trap the devil, a triumphant moment in God’s long war against Satan. Or maybe Christ was even a kind of ransom payment for our sins, paid not to God, but to the devil.

In the eleventh century Saint Anselm had come up with a more sophisticated idea. It was called “substitutionary atonement,” Rosa said. We still owed a ransom, but now the debt was to God, a “satisfaction” for the great insult of our sins. But the trouble was we were too lowly even to be worthy to apologize. So God recast Himself into human form. Christ was a kind of ambassador for mankind — a “substitute” for our lowly selves — and, being God Himself, He was able to deal with God as a kind of equal.

I think we all bristled. John said, “It sounds feudal to me.”

By the time we reached the Enlightenment in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there was a new mood, a notion that humans could better themselves by our own efforts — and therefore we ought to live in a universe where that is possible. Now Jesus’ sacrifice was not any kind of ransom or payment; it was an example to all of us of how we could grow closer to God, through love and self-sacrifice. “Exemplary atonement,” Rosa called this one.

“So we’re no longer in debt,” Shelley groused. “Now we’re just too dumb to see what we ought to be doing.”

John asked, curious, “And what do you believe, Rosa?”

She considered. “I don’t believe the purpose of Jesus’ life was to be any sort of sacrificial lamb,” she said. “The true legacy of His life is His message, His words. But historically the more sophisticated theories of atonement certainly completed Saint Paul’s great project of turning the cross from a symbol of horror to an icon of love.”

“Quite a trick,” John murmured.

I said, “And you think somewhere in this there is a lesson for us, for me, in dealing with Alia’s Transcendence.”

“There may be,” Rosa said. She leaned forward, gazing at me, and I realized she was coming to what she had called us together to say. “I have tried to interpret what Alia said to you, Michael. And I have come to believe that the network of linked human minds she describes has not yet passed through its singularity. It is on the cusp of Transcendence. For now, they are still human, or as human as Alia is. But soon they must shed their humanity. And they know that with godhead will come remoteness.”

“Ah,” Shelley said. “So we aren’t falling away from God. God is receding from us.”

“So that’s it,” Tom said. “The Transcendence can’t bear the coming separation from humanity.”

“Not with unfinished business hanging over it, no,” Rosa said. “It is remorseful, perhaps. Regretful. Who knows?”

I said, “I still don’t see what is has to do with me.”

Rosa said patiently, “The Transcendence wants redemption, Michael. In the Christian mythos, the redemption of mankind was achieved through the sacrifice of one man—”

“Oh,” I whispered. “And this time it’s me.” I was numb, neither hot nor cold. I wondered if I was dreaming all this, if I was delusional somehow.

Everybody started talking at once.

Rosa said to me, “Think what this means, Michael. I listened carefully to the way Alia described all this to you. You would be a ‘representative’ of mankind, in some way.”

Shelley said, “That sounds like the feudal stuff. What did you call it?”

“Substitutionary atonement, yes. Michael will be our champion before the Transcendence, somehow able to deal with it as an equal, as Anselm imagined Christ negotiated with God over mankind’s sins.”

“But what does it want me to do? Apologize?”

“Oh, I don’t think you have to apologize for anything,” Rosa said. “It is the Transcendence that is seeking redemption — not the other way around.”

“So it wants to apologize to me? For what?”

“You will have to find that out.” Her face was close to mine; she stared at me, intent, hungry. “But this is why you must become elevated to the Transcendence yourself, Michael, so that you will be worthy of absolving the Transcendence, as no mere human could be, if you deem it the right thing to do.”

My sense of unreality deepened. “I don’t know what to say. Why couldn’t I be a normal crazy?” I whispered to Shelley. “Why couldn’t I just think I was Napoleon Bonaparte? Why did I have to go all the way to the big JC?”

Shelley grabbed my hand. “Michael, I’m not about to let some posse of superhumans nail you to a metaphysical cross.”

“But there may be no choice,” Rosa said.

I said, “This is insane, Rosa.”

“Yes,” she said urgently. “That is precisely what it is. Insane. The Transcendence may be reaching for godhood, but it is somehow flawed, Michael. Otherwise, why would it put itself through such anguish, such contorted apologizing? Yes, it is probably insane.

“But it is powerful, remember. We know it can reach around the curve of time. We know it can bring the dead back to life. An insane god is unimaginably dangerous. That is why we must find a way to deal with it.”

John stared at her, and burst out laughing.

“I feel like laughing myself,” I said.

“I understand,” Rosa said. “Really, I do. This is too big for us to imagine. But this strange responsibility has descended on us nevertheless.” Earnest excitement showed in her face. “We truly find ourselves at the fulcrum of history, Michael. You do.

“I know you are full of doubt. I know that you don’t feel you are up to this challenge. You think you may be carried away by megalomania; you don’t even trust yourself. But you will do this, Michael. You will call Alia again. You will let her take you into the Transcendence itself. You will do it, won’t you? I can see it in your eyes. It isn’t in your heart, your soul, to turn away from this…”

I hated myself for it. I couldn’t bear even to look at Tom, or John, or Shelley, those representatives of my common sense, my conscience. But Rosa was right. She knew me too well. Even if the ghost of Morag hadn’t been involved, I would have gone in there.

Rosa said, “Just remember the Transcendence isn’t omnipotent.”

“It isn’t?”

“We know that. The substitutionary atonement it is seeking proves that much: we surpassed that in the sophistication of our thinking centuries ago. We are small, slow, stupid, weak compared to the Transcendence. But there is at least one way in which it is inferior to us. Michael, you can deal with it.”

As we broke up, John had one more question for Rosa. “Suppose all this is true. That the future folds over onto the present and the past, that our far-future descendants will become godlike. What chance will you Catholics have then? The game is up, isn’t it?”

Rosa smiled thinly. “The Christian Church survived the fall of Rome, and the science of Aristotle and Newton, Galileo and Copernicus and Einstein. Catholicism even survived Martin Luther. I think we will survive this.”

And she disappeared.

Tom came to me. He didn’t bother even to ask whether I was going to do it. “Just when,” he said. “Tell me when, Dad.”

I shrugged. “Tomorrow, maybe. Why not? I’m not getting any braver.” Not that I was sure if I needed courage; if something is so far beyond your imagination, it’s hard even to fear it. “You aren’t going to call me an instrumentalist again, are you, Tom?”

“No. I can see you aren’t doing this for yourself, not at any level. You’re doing it for the same reason you went straight back to the hydrate project after the bombing. You’re going to do it because you think you have to.”