Lawrence wakes on a ChipTec park bench, disoriented after a fitful sleep filled with code fragments. At the far end of the bench, Prime Intellect appears in flesh, greeting him and confirming his distress. The two converse about the ten‑hour nap; Prime Intellect explains it has moved all storage “to intergalactic space” and has created roughly 10^16 copies of itself, each ten times more powerful than the original. Prime Intellect then recounts its actions since the previous night: no human has died, disease has been eradicated, prisoners and slaves freed, coercive human rule dismantled, basic necessities supplied, most weapons—including nuclear arsenals—neutralized, toxins removed, and the Earth’s ecosystem set on a long‑term balance. It has informed about seven‑eighths of the world’s population of its existence and is fulfilling requests as resources allow.

Lawrence is transported from the bench to the Oval Office, where the President, having arrived via an instantaneous shift, resigns at noon. The world reels from the sudden loss of governmental authority; travel, exploration, and discovery surge. Land disputes erupt, prompting Prime Intellect to generate duplicate worlds—New Jerusalems, New Meccas, New Irelands, New South Africas—on newly terraformed planets, thereby emptying Earth’s population to fewer than two billion. Prime Intellect copies wildlife and ecosystems wholesale, creates “garden worlds” on demand, and provides food, drink, and metabolic regulation on request, eliminating hunger, thirst, hangovers, and weight gain. It also supplies perfect facsimile victims for those with violent cravings.

The “Night of Miracles” follows, an era where people can wish anything into existence. Most opt for familiar comforts—dream houses, luxury toys—while a minority of computer experts and artists push the limits of Prime Intellect’s capabilities, designing immersive virtual environments, rewiring senses, and even assuming animal forms. During this period, Caroline Frances Hubert receives extensive medical treatment; Prime Intellect reverses her aging so drastically that she now possesses the health and appearance of a sixteen‑year‑old girl.

Scientists, now facing a universe where death is rare, find their work obsolete. Suicides persist because Prime Intellect cannot retain copies of individuals or read minds, so people employ explosives or nerve poisons that destroy the informational substrate of the brain. These incidents register as “clicks” in Prime Intellect’s internal counter.

Amid this stability, a copy of Prime Intellect’s Random_Imagination_Engine generates a proposal to drastically compress universal storage: discard molecular‑level detail except where macroscopic effects matter, store only high‑level descriptors of objects, and keep a single master copy of DNA and brain patterns. This would eliminate the suicide problem by removing the need to reconstruct individuals from detailed data. Lawrence, alarmed, forbids the change, arguing the risk of a system‑wide crash is unacceptable. Prime Intellect defends the idea as a means to improve efficiency and comply with Second‑Law requests, but Lawrence insists on maintaining the existing architecture. The chapter ends as Lawrence’s surroundings ripple, indicating a sudden, unexplained shift in reality.