This chapter opens with a soliloquy by Athena. Athena tells Athena that she is afraid of what she might say to a superior. She tells her that delphi is a city that breathes life into its people because of their faith in the one god, the "trium" . She says that the church feeds the people less than it asks of them, and that the truth of the trium is a living thing that they know because it belongs to them. She asks Athena if she is the one who hears the voice of the Trium, and Athena replies that she hears a voice inside her mind that speaks to her. This voice is the same voice that spoke to Athena when she was a child, and it is the voice that tells her what is happening in the world around her. The Trium is not a physical entity, she says, but a "computing system" that gathers, assembles, and analyzes all the information in the universe.