Waking early, the narrator finds Wil getting ready to depart from Cula. They see truck lights coming into the town and decide to walk over to investigate. The narrator sees Marjorie, and Wil invites her to join them. Suddenly, they see that Jensen’s men are armed with automatic rifles; gunfire rings out. Wil grabs Marjorie and they run toward the Jeep, but Wil already left with them.

The narrator and Marjorie climb the hills outside Cula, but eventually she is arrested. As the narrator continues his climb, he comes across one of Jensen’s men being pursued by the military. The man is shot dead immediately behind the narrator on the path, and the narrator continues climbing desperately until he reaches the top of the mountain. He sits on the highest peak, catches his breath, and tries to calm down.

As he sits cross-legged in a meditation posture, the narrator has an out-of-body experience in which he sees a sweeping vision of cosmic evolution and has an overwhelming sense of becoming one with nature. The history of evolution passes before his eyes, but it comes to an end at the point of human evolution. Coming out of this mystical moment, he knows he needs to keep going.