The Footprints of God

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The Footprints of God is a thriller novel written by American author Greg Iles. It was published in hardcover in 2003 by Scribner, then in March 2004 by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. It made the New York Times bestseller list.

[edit] Plot summary

The story revolves around a supercomputer being built in a secret government lab working on a project called Trinity. When one of the project's scientists dies, David Tennant, the ethical caretaker, discovers that he had been killed: probably for his refusal to accept the ultimate project's aim, a merger of the human mind and the machine, in order to produce an unrivalled super computing machine. Tennant subsequently tries to piece together the truth behind the project while he and his companion Rachel Weiss are pursued around the globe.

Tennant suffers from a series of regression episodes, which are considered to be seizures by his doctor, who says they are caused by overexposure to a super-MRI scan. During these episodes, he has strangely vivid dreams- he witnesses the beginning of the universe (the Big Bang) and the history of mankind. Subsequent dreams seem to be memories-of none other than Jesus of Nazareth, something Tennant, an atheist finds strange and bewildering. They take a bizarre turn when he sees himself as an NSA assassin sent to kill him, and also as his dead friend, Andrew Fielding, in his last moments.

In the end, it seems that someone was in fact showing him these dreams- to tell him something.

The book is called "Dark Matter" in Australia.