“Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself.”

The opening line of the novel establishes the narrator's perspective. The capacity to find the meaning of life within oneself is "now" (8) quite clear but, at the time when the events of the novel take place, this is not the case. Instead, the characters latch onto institutions like religion and phenomena like Rumfoord's entry into the space anomaly to explain their purpose on Earth. This key question of human existence is solved according to the narrator and the characters' attempts to work toward this solution will motivate much of the plot.

“Impulsively, Constant chose neither one fork nor the other, but climbed the fountain itself.”

Constant walks through Rumfoord's estate and finds a foundation with a path to either side. He is presented with a simple, binary choice of going to the right or to the left but instead rejects the choice and climbs over the fountain itself. His action is a symbolic demonstration of his relationship to fate and free will. He wants to reject the obvious choices which lie ahead of him but, in doing so, he cannot help but continue through his life as part of Rumfoord's plan. Constant revels in the illusion of free will and insistently tries to show that he is in control of his life.