Pender gave as his home address a number on a nonexistent Boston street. His wallet and identification had been lost in his flight from the fire. His pack contained only an empty canteen, two cans of something labeled THON PALE EN MORCEAUX (tuna fish, it turned out), and an apocryphal testament of the Bible entitled The Secret Booke of James in the English Tongue, printed on rice paper and bound in imitation leather.

When Pender’s claims grew even more fantastic—including the accusation that both the Forest Service and the Michigan Department of Welfare were “Mohammedans or servants of Samael or worse”—he was remanded for psychiatric evaluation to a facility in Lansing.

Mr. Pender was deemed not to be a danger to himself or others and was released on June 23. He made his way to Detroit, where he spent the summer in a shelter for the homeless.

November was cold that year, and during an early snowfall Pender left his bed and spent his last money on a city bus, because the buses were heated. The bus carried him downriver to Southgate, where he got off in front of a bankrupt and abandoned retail lumber outlet. In the upper story of that building he tied his belt into a crude loop and hanged himself from a rafter.

Pinned to his shirt was a note:

Part One

The void that precedes the creation of the universe is an imponderable, unknowing emptiness—lacking matter, vacuum, time, motion, number, or logic. And yet the universe derives from it according to some law not yet understood—a law which, governing nothingness, yields everything!