The doctor stepped forward and took Ann's wrist in his fingers. A startled expression appeared on his face. "Her pulse is getting stronger," he said.
"She is receiving energy, her whole body is being bathed in it," Tom said. "Seen from one viewpoint, energy is all that exists." His voice suddenly had the dry tones of a professor addressing a class in atomic physics. "Energy in motion at one rate of speed we call light. Energy whose motion has been slowed to a crawl, we call matter. The two are interchangeable. Even the human body, with all of its marvelous glands, its nervous system, and its wonderful brain, falls into the last category. If we could see our bodies as they actually exist, we would be aware of an infinite number of dancing points of light, the infinitesimally minute particles of energy that compose it." He paused. The doctor stood absolutely motionless. "So there is energy—and something else." Tom continued. His voice seemed to come from miles away.
"What is this something else?" the doctor asked.
"I call it mind," Tom answered. "It works with energy, directs it, and moulds it into a thousand different shapes and forms." His voice was soft with awe and reverence.
The doctor reached forward to check Ann's pulse. An exclamation of surprise came from his lips. He lifted her arm, then snapped on a light. His surprise grew greater. Snatching a pair of scissors, he cut swiftly through the bandages that swathed her arm.
"New flesh!" the doctor gasped. "Where there was only burned meat, now there is new flesh. And n—new skin!" A stutter appeared in the doctor's voice. A glaze came into his eyes. His chest heaved. "Medicine knows nothing like this." His voice was heavy with wonder.
"It knows something like this now," Tom said. "Remove the rest of the bandages."
The doctor's fingers shook as he applied the scissors. Her body was revealed. The burns had vanished. Instead there was the warm pink flesh of a child, built there by the energy flowing from the cone.
She stirred sleepily on the bed. "I have been having the most wonderful dream—that I have a new body."
Under heavy sedation, she knew nothing that had been going on. She thought she was having a dream. The three of us in that room knew how wonderful that dream really was.