(go to: part 1, part 2, part 3)

The unforeseen development was ludicrous but unshakable. Every media outlet on the planet visited the Brothers’ garden to independently verify the news, hoping perhaps for an end to the display—after which there might be room for more reasonable scrutiny. But the tree kept dancing and the Brother kept beaming. Skeptics and rationalists were flown in, but the evidence before their eyes was irrefutable: there sat a man; there danced an oak tree. On sight, the scene was too dynamic to deny. A hoax was impossible.

The preposterousness of the turn sent many people off the edge. The more rigid minds melted to putty under the attack, their capacity for sophistication blown away. Dutifully they had to concede the facts but after that surrender they were lost, never again sure of their own two feet. The loosest minds slipped entirely. The streets filled with trumpeters of all the other ridiculous claims of the ages—aliens again, resurrection, super powers. Only a few people in a clear-sighted middle ground could see it for what it was: a simple expansion of action. And no one but Renault could see its full potential, its disastrous pinnacle.

Jean Paul saw the connection to his work immediately. The Principle of Being—the Equivalence of Orgasm—the Brother’s rapture: the active impulse missing from his thesis, the means of excitation, had been discovered by Brother Edgar. Only the final violence of the act was missing.

While the world reeled, Renault pondered carefully. Was his secret a danger, or a blessing? Should he bury his work forever, or reveal it immediately—and how could he do it? He felt the grimness of his final vision, a vacuum—that what had seemed to him the essence of life was now, very clearly, the destruction of it.

But the more he stared at Brother Edgar’s grinning face in the videos, the less he struggled. He became filled instead with a strange kind of glee which grew and grew. Finally, Jean Paul—he said to himself—you have done it! The glee built until he couldn’t control himself any longer and began laughing, tears streaming down his face. You‘ve done it—he said—finally—you have gone mad! His life-long quest was clearer to him now, revealed, a simple, delightful choice there for the taking: insanity. He had searched for it long and hard. And now here he had arrived—Jean Paul Renault—not just insane, not just any madman, but the luckiest madman who ever lived!

He was a madman in a world of dancing trees and psychic monks! The most educated madman in history—in a world of jugglers and discus throwers—the most interesting world, the last such world! He was a madman in the springtime. The whole delicate spectrum of achievement had unfolded and now rested colorfully, just waiting to be overwhelmed. He knew his task now, his Luciferian mission. The Great Jean Paul Renault! It was fate. Wild but lucid, he sent a post to the press and the academy explaining his behavior and the Principle, then set off to the monastery with a flamethrower.

Renault entered the garden confidently. He had figured out precisely what had to be done. He didn’t approach the oak or Brother Edgar but went instead to the edge of the garden and began slowly setting the enclosing shrubs on fire. The smoke rose and the tree seemed to dance harder, clearing its air. He paused, making sure not to outpace the Brother—it was imperative that Brother Edgar not give up. Renault set fire to the flower patches, one by one, then the bushes and the saplings. He let the smoke gather. He needn’t have been worried—Brother Edgar was intent, and the tree began to swirl violently, creating a vortex of motion to push away the smoke and heat. Renault watched for a moment, letting his smile grow as wide as the Brother’s. Laughing once more, he finally aimed his flame at the tree. A moment elapsed, and then the garden exploded. Ten square miles went with it. The fate of the universe was sealed.

(go to part 5)