The Omega Project (21 page)

“What could have caused…?”

The surface of the dead world blossomed in its full splendor, revealing evidence of its recent pillage—a crater that looked the size of Australia, its telltale profile indicating the impact had occurred on the far side of the moon.

The asteroid. It must have missed Earth … and struck the moon!

A trail of debris appeared over the horizon as the moon passed overhead, stretching across the sky like a cosmic tail, the dust and rocks and spinning satellites of exhumed geology caught in its wounded parent’s gravitational tide.

Can’t see the full size of that impact crater, but the debris field must have been huge. All that mass, blasted into space, caught in Earth’s gravitational field …

I collapsed to my knees, my skin tingling, my hair surreally standing on end as I realized that this might not be a dream after all, that the planet may have experienced a cataclysm while we were being held in cryogenic stasis … that I may have been the only one to wake—my species’ lone survivor.

“Whoa!”

Suddenly reeling off balance, I lashed out for the rocky ground with both arms as my body levitated into the air! Twisting in a pocket of zero gravity, I flailed into an off-kilter somersault, nearly striking my head on the slate-covered summit, only to spin around again to face the moon—now hovering directly overhead, so close I imagined I could swim to it, its luminescent mass blotting out a third of the night sky.

Oh, but there were so many things happening at once, my senses on overload, for rising around me was a ballet of floating objects—gravel and palm fronds and even droplets of froth spewed skyward by the undulating sea. My ascent found its equilibrium at eighty-five feet, affording me a view of seascape so spellbinding it silenced the revelation of being weightless.

Carpeting the ocean was a twinkling neon-red migration of krill that covered the surface as far as my eyes could see. Rising beneath them to feed were the planet’s newest denizens of the deep—behemoth squid, each cephalopod three to four hundred feet long. In a choreographed ritual belying both intelligence and grace, the creatures were flashing rainbow-colored patterns of bioluminescence across their acreage of skin—hypnotic patterns of communication that projected across the ocean as they twisted along the surface to feed.

The moon moved beyond its perigee encounter, gravity tugging on me. Elation turned quickly to trepidation as I looked below, realizing that I was descending over the ocean!

I flailed helplessly as I dropped beyond the overlook, until a forty-knot wind blasted me backward at frightening speed, sending me crashing into the surrounding forest.

Unseen branches whipped at my flesh, my limbs catching an entanglement of vines that mercifully slowed my fall until nature embraced me in its hammock, suspended thirty feet off the ground.

Held fast in the warmth of my cocoon, I passed out.

18

Sometime in the next thirty years, very quietly one day we will cease to be the brightest things on Earth.

—J
AMES
M
C
A
LEAR

The pain woke me.

It was not the deep throb emanating from my shoulders, or the lead-tight ache radiating from every muscle, or even the blistering wounds burning in my feet and fingers. This pain gnawed inside my stomach, demanding water … insisting on food. It was the family dog scratching upon the bedroom door, insisting I get up when all I wanted to do was go back to sleep.

Disoriented, I opened feverish eyes to a predawn grayness. I smelled the forest before I saw it, its damp bark, the heavy scent of peat. For one glorious moment I was back in Virginia on a Cub Scout retreat, the pack still asleep, the campsite heavy in morning dew.

My eyes adjusted, separating the canopy of trees from the haze of clouds. A soft rumble violated the stillness of the forest as the heavens opened, delivering a soothing
pitter-patter
of raindrops on leaves.

After several minutes, the restrained cadence transcended into a downpour.

A cold steady trickle announced itself on my left shoulder. Craning my neck, I intercepted the stream of water so that it entered the crook of my mouth. I swallowed a dozen times before redirecting the flow over my face.

The fruit was dangling around me like fist-size potato-brown ornaments on a Christmas tree. I struggled to free my right arm from the vines enough to reach it without losing my perch and managed to pluck a cluster of sapodilla from the tree. Greedily, I pulled the gnat-infested skin from the overripe fruit before popping the pale yellow flesh into my mouth.

“Oh, God…” The taste was glorious, a cinnamon plum, exceptionally sweet. The rise in my blood sugar was immediate, a revival that fueled my desire to eat. Spitting out the seeds, I quickly downed the other four fruit in my lap, then drank again.

My bladder was the next organ demanding attention. Unzipping my jumpsuit fly, I leaned sideways in my vine hammock and added my pee to the rain-soaked foliage, pleased to see that blood no longer darkened the urine.

I rolled again onto my back and held my breath as the tangle of vines dropped me two feet before the slack was retrieved. I waited, my muscles tense, until I was confident the hammock had resettled, then I drank again.

My immediate needs met, I reexamined my situation.

Where am I? Am I Omega dreaming in a cryogenic pod in an underwater habitat a mile below the Ross Ice Shelf, or am I actually suspended beneath a forest canopy in a future time period, on an Earth that has evolved from a major cataclysm? Assuming the former, there’s nothing I can do but try to survive the dream without registering any more pain. Assuming the latter … Jesus, how many thousands … how many millions of years was I frozen? What happened to Andie and the rest of the crew? Are they still frozen? Did GOLEM thaw them? Would they really have left me in stasis?

No way. Even that asshole of a captain wouldn’t have the balls. I woke up because the pod malfunctioned when the stairwell collapsed. GOLEM controlled the other twelve pods, which means the computer malfunctioned.

I looked around.

If this really is Antarctica, then the bombardment of lunar debris must have been horrific, wiping out humanity … leading to an Ice Age. But if some humans survived … perhaps a colony, then I need to find them.

If a million years has passed, will I even recognize them?

The rain subsided, returning its gentle cadence.

Go back to sleep, Omega Man. Resolve your existence later.

I closed my eyes, my consciousness fading in the predawn light.

*   *   *

“Huh? Whoa … shit!”

I was falling, dropping in measured plunges, my face lacerated by branches, my right arm useless, my left grabbing at anything within reach. And then the vines twisted tightly, painfully around my ankles and I stopped.

Trees spun, inverted in my vision as I blinked myself into cognizance. The ground was swaying … no, it was me—I was hanging upside-down, suspended eight feet above the crawling forest floor.

Crawling?

Drawn by my urine, the ants—each as black as night and as long as my thumb—swarmed the ground in chaotic waves ten thousand strong, the assembly feeding a column of workers that were even now climbing the surrounding trees, tracking the food source … me!

“Ahh … ahh!” Someone shot me in my right foot with a .45 caliber bullet—at least that’s what the ant bite felt like, the pain excruciating, driving me to madness. Pulling myself into a sit-up, I hooked my left arm behind my knees, holding myself in place in order to slap at the crawling insects attacking the soles of my feet. When I looked down I realized that the vines supporting my weight were covered by the frightening creatures.

“Ahh! Little bastards!” An ant latched on to my right ankle, another slammed its clawlike pincers around my little toe and bit! I screamed in agony, pinching the tiny predators until my blood squeezed out of their crushed abdomens, their severed heads remaining anchored to my swollen, discolored flesh. The creatures seemed impervious to my defense, each bite delivering an ounce of neurotoxic venom that was quickly finding its way into my central nervous system, causing a frightening numbing sensation.

A vine fell past my face.

I dropped another three feet as two more supports were chewed apart.

Were the little fuckers that clever?

My fate all but sealed, I released my grip around my legs and dropped, attempting to use the momentum to swing myself clear of the awaiting colony. Swaying like a pendulum, tortured by worker ants progressing down my lower extremities, I felt a paralyzing sensation creeping up my body.

In my delirium, I heard something that sounded like an approaching pan flute.

And then the last of the vines snapped and I fell five feet onto the pile of killer ants.

Adrenaline sprang me to my feet. My back and neck were covered in a black vest of crawling insects, my jumpsuit dangling a thousand dark ornaments. I hobbled away from the colony, my flesh blasted by hundreds of bullets with teeth, my screams muted by the forest. All feeling below my calf muscles was gone and I stumbled, dropping through the brush like a tranquilized chimpanzee.

My body spasmed out of control, the pain horrific. Paralyzed from the chest down, I forced shallow gasps as I lay helpless, facedown in the soil, each breath vying to be my last.

Seconds from blacking out, my frenzied mind registered two final thoughts of madness—that the ants seemed to be abandoning my frayed carcass … and that something very large was hovering over me.

My vision narrowed. Darkness enveloped the periphery. A haunting face hovered before me—the Angel of Death, no doubt, my old friend staring at me with dozens of eyes born from a hundred past lives.

“Each past life ended brutally. Why are you here, Robert? What is your journey?”

“I seek … Nirvana.”

“You cannot achieve enlightenment while holding on to your anger.”

Blind, my heartbeat erratic, I felt something heavy press against my face, covering my eyes and mouth. A viselike grip compressed my rib cage—

Zap!

A warm sensation moved down my spine, prying loose the Angel of Death’s frigid grip while neutralizing the progression of the ant toxin, at least enough to allow me to breathe.

And then a powerful limb snaked its way around my waist, adhering to my torn jumpsuit as it lifted me effortlessly off the ground. Suddenly I was moving quickly through the forest, the pain driving me into darkness.

19

I died as a mineral and became a plant, I died as a plant and rose to animal, I died as animal and I was man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?

—J
ALAL AD-
D
IN
R
UMI
, Sufi poet

The steady breeze of an air conditioner chilled my exposed flesh. I was naked, my eyes covered by a damp cloth, my arms and lower torso weighed down by the moist embrace of the cryogenic pod’s tetrodotoxin gel.

Stretching beneath the slime, I embraced the joy of no longer being in pain.

I was back.

I could hear someone in the room. “God, what a dream. Andria? Jason? Jason, if that’s you, I’m gonna kick your ass. You have any idea how many times I tried using your emergency wake-up? Hey, butt head, do you hear me?”

I sat up against the weight of the gel and reached for my face to remove the cloth.

A hand cloaked in what felt like a rubber mitten intercepted the attempt, gently guiding my arm back inside the draining vat of sleep gel.

The echo of trickling water calmed me, my mind hitching a ride on the soothing sound. “Guess this is all part of the wake-up protocol. Beats the hell out of being jabbed in the heart by a six-inch needle. So, who’s there? Quit screwing around. Lara?”

Another gloved hand pressed gently against the base of my skull, and I looked up to see Lara hovering over me, her onyx hair falling past her delicate neck, her expression serene—

—only my eyes were still closed!

In the madness that was either another Omega dream, a continuation of the same dream, or a simple trip down Insanity Lane, I found myself tearing the moist cloth from my face—only to discover that I was not in
Oceanus,
I was in a cave, standing in the shallows of an underground stream bathed in a surreal orange light … that the wet cloth covering my eyes was a palm-size slug, and that my companion was a cephalopod!

Correction:
Cephaloped.
Having evolved to inhabit the land, the walking, air breathing terrestrial squid stood nine feet tall on three and sometimes four thick tentacles, its dorsal flesh covered in coarse brown fur. Those tentacles that weren’t supporting its weight were treading air in a perpetual motion that made it almost impossible for me to gain clarity on its appearance, or to strike it, I quickly realized. The creature had assumed a defensive posture aimed at protecting its head—an oblong alien face situated beneath a skull that resembled brown leather stretched over bone. As wide as a pumpkin but irregular like a boulder, the massive cranial cavity also possessed a siphon—a two-foot curled organ the creature used for breathing.

It was the siphon that had been the source of the pan flute–like sounds I had heard back in the jungle.

Below the skull was the cephaloped’s collapsible mantle, which contained the stomach, vital organs, and the animal’s three hearts—at least the anatomical equivalents of what its oceanic ancestors had, according to Lara.

My attention diverted to its eyes—two stereo-optic protrusions below a bony bridge running below its forehead. These thin twin muscular stalks, resembling foot-long elephants’ trunks, protruded from the center of its face like the handlebars of a child’s tricycle.

At the end of each of the flexible organs was an eye. The corneas were bright yellow, like a jungle cat’s, the pupils black. Housed within the trunk socket, they possessed wrinkled lids poised both above and below. The effect created an expressive state and reminded me of the sullen eyes of Albert Einstein in his later, more contemplative years.