`Faith in God,' I answered.
She looked puzzled.
`But what happened to the dice?' she asked.
`Look. I'm going to read a passage to you from a sacred book. Listen carefully.'
I reached into my desk and brought out some notes I'd been making lately in connection with my evolving dice theory
and, after browsing a half-minute to find what I was looking for, I began reading. ` "Verily it is not a blasphemy when I teach: Over all things stand the heaven Accident, the heaven innocence, the heaven Prankishness, the heaven Chance. And Chance is the most ancient Divinity of the world, and behold, I come to deliver all things from their bondage under Purpose and to restore on the throne to reign over all things the heaven Chance. The mind is in bondage to Purpose and Will, but I shall free it to Divine Accident and Prankishness when I teach that in all, one thing is impossible: reason. A little wisdom is possible indeed, just enough to confuse things nicely, but this blessed certainty I have found in every atom, molecule, substance, plant, creature or star: they would
rather dance on the feet of Chance.
`Oh heaven over me pure and high! Now that I have learned that there is no purposeful eternal spider and no spider
web of reason, you have become for me a dance floor for divine accidents; you have become a divine table for divine
dice and dice players. But my listeners blush? Do I speak the unspeakable? Do I blaspheme, wishing to bless you?"
I ended my reading and after checking to see if there might be more related material I looked up.
`I didn't recognize it,' Terry said.
`It's Zarathustra. But did you understand it?'
`I don't know. I liked it. I liked something about it very much. But I don't - I don't see why I should have faith in the
dice. I guess that's the trouble.'
`Not a sparrow falls to the ground that God does not see.'
`I know.'
`Can a single die fall to the table unseen by God?'
`No, I guess not.'
`Do you remember the great ending to the Book of Job? God speaks from the whirlwind and asks Job how he can
presume to question the ways of God. For three long, beautiful chapters God indicts man's abysmal ignorance and
impotence. He says things like: "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? . . ."
Or "Who shut in the sea with doors, when it burst forth from the womb?"
And "have you commanded the morning since your days began?"
"Have the gates of death been revealed to you?"
On and on God rubs it in to poor Job, but stylishly - in the most beautiful poetry in the world - and Job realizes that he
has been wrong in complaining and questioning. His last words to the Lord are "I know that thou canst do all things,
and that no purpose of thine can be thwarted . . .
Therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes."
I paused, and Terry and I looked silently at each other for several moments.
`God can do all things,' I went on. `No purpose of His can ever be thwarted. Never.'
`Yes,' she replied. .
`We must despise ourselves and lose ourselves if we are to be saved.'
`Yes.'
`God sees the tiniest sparrow fall.'
`Yes.'
`The tiniest die tumble upon the table.'
`Yes.
'He will always know what options you have given to the Die.'
`Yes.'
`Terry, the reason you must have faith in the Die is simple.'
`Yes.'
`The Die is God.'
`The Die is God,' she said.
Chapter Thirty-two
I was sitting at a board meeting of Queensborough State Hospital one Wednesday evening that spring, when the idea of Centers for Experiments in Total Random Environments came to me. Fifteen old men, all doctors, Ph.D's and millionaires, were seated around a huge, rectangular table discussing plumbing expansion, salary scales, medication charts and rights-of-way, while the patients in the square mile around us settled ever more comfortably into their various defined stupors. In the middle of doing a doodle of a multi-armed, multi-legged, multi-headed Shivt, whammo! It hit me; a Dice Center, an institution to convert people into random men. I suddenly saw a short-term total environment of such overwhelming impact that the principles and practices of the dicelife would be infused after a few weeks to the same degree that they had in me after many, many months. I saw a society of dicepeople. I saw a new world.
"Old man Cobblestone, our tall, dignified chairman, was speaking with great deliberation about the intricacies of Queensborough law regarding rights of appropriation; six pipes, three cigars and five cigarettes were giving the green-walled room a milky, underwater effect; a young doctor (forty-six) beside me had been wiggling his foot in the same motion for forty minutes without pause. Pens lay dormant by paper except for mine: the sole doodler. Yawns were smothered into coughs or hidden behind pipes. Cobblestone gave way to Dr. Wink on the inefficiency of bureaucratic systems in dealing with plumbing problems and suddenly, leaping at me from the seven arms, six legs and three heads of Shiva, was the idea of the Dice Center.
I took my green die from my vest pocket and gave it a fifty fifty chance that I would create such an institute. It said `yes.'
I stifled a scream. Whatever sound emerged slowed but did not stop the wiggling foot beside me. Four heads turned minutely toward me then back respectfully to Dr. Wink. I was ablaze with my idea. I cast the die a second time on the doodle pad.