situations of life in the hope of training and teaching the character. Then the tool eventually evolves because the character grows beyond the tool? Here is the ‘Why’ of it all?"

(I could see movement on my right, in the corner of my eye, as Gilbert reached for the media wand.)

Kent: "Then where is the God, over us, ahead of us, or beside us?"

Priest: "The guidepost at the end of the discovery, the eternity of being led on and on? Are these jokes?"

(I glanced over at Gilbert for just a moment to confirm that he was indeed playing with the stop button on the media wand. The look on his face was impatient.)

Kent: "You're asking me? I'm too curious to stop looking. For all the laughter and joy, the sorrow and frustration that learning brings I am content to see an open road ahead. Do you want to live forever?"

Only the priest laughs.

Montahue: "That was funny?"

Kent: "You know something has just occurred to me because of these men.” First indicating the priest, and then turning towards the dishwater blond (nerd) indicating him with a hand gesture, he continues. "He was talking about physical constructs of matter, but what about thought? It is a form of energy, and E=MC2.

(I noticed Gilbert stopped playing with the button for a moment, intently staring at the holo-display.)

"This man (indicating the priest with a slight hand gesture) mentioned the idea that the body is an instructor of character. But isn't character a tool also; especially if, as he suggested, it forces the evolution of a better tool?"

At this point Kent looks down at the table, or apparently, through the table. He appears to have ‘stepped into himself.’ He then speaks to himself saying: "What causes us to act upon the miracle of life is as important as the miracle itself."

A few more moments pass, he appears to be collecting his thoughts. Then he raises his head and readdresses the audience. "Is there a persistent aspect of thought? Is it a form? Like something less than negligible mass? Or is awareness the word I mean to use: If we are inside our bodies as character and character only manifests itself as a tool to accomplish external deeds of internal requirement, where is the part that I call myself?

"To further illustrate the matter, what happens when we die, do the thought processes remain intact? Or only that persistence of the less than negligible mass: that which is not thought but essence? What is that essence? Does it grow; if so, how? Is this the purpose of life, to make that immutable essence larger or more persistent? Is evolution merely just a side effect? Do we focus on the essence ignoring the physical, or the other way around? Or is it all the same thing?”

Kent raises his hands as if to say, don't-interrupt-me-yet there's-more-to-this. Then he continues: "Are we our philosophies, or are we something aside from the tool of thought?

"And let’s just step outside the experience of life for a moment so I can ask you this question: Which are the tools that we should choose to use to expedite the growth of that immutable self-essence? Could there possibly be better tools than the ones we

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