At The Metagalactic Centre III

(ii) If an inanimate object occupies the metagalactic centre at the moment of the cosmic collision:

" '...then the two universes will reform exactly as they did after the explosion of the monobloc, and their histories will repeat themselves very closely.' " (Blish, Cities In Flight, London, 1981, p. 578)

So they will be destroyed but will immediately reform? This is one of the possibilities if the centre is empty for the collision. (See (i) in previous post.) Everyone will die in the destruction but they will die in any of these eventualities in any case.

(iii) If the centre is occupied by a human being, then two possibilities are suggested. First:

" '...we can put our imprint on the future of both universes...' " (p. 578)

Secondly, however, when this possibility is spelled out further, it changes from influencing two universes to creating one universe! Each survivor:

" '...has available...any of the infinitely many different sets of dimensions of Hilbert space. Each one of us that makes that crossing may in a few micro-seconds start a universe of his own, with a fate wholly unpredictable from history.'

" 'But...he will die in the process. The stuffs and energies of him become the monobloc of his universe.'" (p.  578)

To become a new universe is not to influence the future of two already existing universes. So I do find this discussion rather confusing.

In the previous volumes, he were told what the Mayor, the city manager and a few of their colleagues did while flying New York around the galaxy but were told little or nothing about the population of the city. In this volume, we learn nothing about the entire population of the planet, He. What do they think about the coming catastrophe and how do they feel about their planet flying through the darkness of intergalactic space instead of remaining in orbit around a star?

The text tells us that the planet flew:

"...toward that place where the Will had given birth to the Idea, and there had been light." (p. 577)

- but the rest of the text is non-theistic so this passage must be understood as describing the monobloc in terms of a, highly abstract, myth.