The Oversoul was happy to return to Earth through the new Heart Tree on the Sun. However, when it got there, it did not find the deliverance it was expecting – instead the Caretaker shoved it into the machine. It was shocked and surprised, and due to the Oversoul’s nature, the rest of the souls in the machine also fused with it. So now Max Cohen is hearing the entire machine crying out.
Matt, with his nanites’ picoweb and ability to absorb the souls of the dead, could make a substitute for Cain, should he be killed. But Matt would need to be infused with the essence of Emmanuel somehow, or otherwise strengthened. What if Cain himself died in Matt’s presence? Matt would ‘‘absorb Cain’s soul’‘…
The machine is now about a million souls in size. It could be considered a powerful psion in its own right, since the Oversoul is very strong now. As the machine grows in size and power, the Destroyer is more and more likely to return to Earth to consume it. So the Caretaker, by building the machine, is hastening its own destruction.
The Caretaker knows (via miller) that with Lilith, it can defend against the Destroyer until… something. The "something" is actually the appearance of Glaurung – who sensed the Destroyer stopped following it, and also sensed the Destroyer had made a break for the Sol system – the original world Glaurung had pledged to protect. Glaurung quickly returns to Sol to relure the Destroyer away from Earth, to find that a battle is taking place. And Glaurung knows that the three of them are powerful enough to turn it away.
The royals were working on parts of a machine – the same machine that will be Cain’s "soul suit"? Or a different machine? If they design some kind of gravitic lens, more powerful than anything ever before, that projects a false psionic entity at the edge of the solar system, that keeps the Destroyer hungry there, instead of eating Earth and neighboring planets. Glaurung settles in to where Mercury used to be? Or maybe near Earth? That’s cooler, as long as all three planets can adjust their tides accordingly.
Once the Destroyer is at bay, Glaurung gets a chance to study the Caretaker and Lilith in more detail, and is shocked to see how different they are from him.
The Divine Calculus is at heart an agent of the Destroyer. The Moon, containing the Oversoul, contains one shard of one third of both the Calculus and the Grammar, and is thus in conflict. She could be complicit in the disabling of the machine long enough to free the Destroyer.
Lin Huntington wants to take Cain’s place at the center of the Deus Ex Machina. How can he fool the Caretaker into believing that he is Cain? Maybe he steals the Hand of Cain somehow?
Once Cain finishes eating all the undead, he starts to eat mystics. Once he’s been sated, does he then begin creating new followers, new undead, from those mystics?
After Alfadir was turned into the Occultem Lapidem, who took his place? Xela had another Alfadir made – not too tough since the royals are all clones. And the ceremony and cold distance of a ruler has allowed the new Alfadir to go unnoticed. Only Xela and maybe Gerald know the truth.
Gerald is about to die of old age. That should happen when one of the parties is present to see it. If possible, arrange for them to witness his reincarnation as well – or at least to meet with him again, young, after his death.