The Omega Project (42 page)

TWELVE MINUTES UNTIL THE NEXT WAVE.

The cliff face was still warm, the sun a yellow-white glare in the western sky. Sweat poured off my face and down my arms to my hands, forcing me to wipe them dry on my pants before feeling for the next ledge.

SIX MINUTES UNTIL THE NEXT WAVE.

ABE, estimate the height of the next wave upon impact. How much higher do I need to climb to be safe?

EIGHTY-TWO FEET.

My heart pounded in my chest. Reaching inside my pocket, I squeezed the transhuman’s severed finger hard enough to drain pus. “Andie, I’m on the cliffs. Now would be a really good time to come and get me.”

Pressing my face to the rock, I reached higher. Three successive ledges raised me a pitiful fifteen feet. I contemplated using the Superman protocol, but excessive adrenaline and free climbing made for a deadly cocktail.

TWO MINUTES UNTIL THE NEXT WAVE. FORTY-ONE FEET TO SAFETY ZONE.

Can’t make it. Need to find a fissure … wedge your arms in and hold on tight.

Looking up, I scanned the slab above my head, spotting only a two-inch-wide jagged slice in the rock. With no other options, I wedged the toes of my left shoe onto a higher ledge and inched my way up, my muscles trembling.

ONE MINUTE UNTIL THE NEXT WAVE.

Balancing my feet on an uneven knob of rock, I shoved eight fingers two inches deep into the sharp fissure, feeling the faint rumble of the approaching tidal surge reverberate in the stone.

THIRTY SECONDS …

Unable to contain myself, I stole a glance over my left shoulder and nearly let go.

More tsunami than wave, the three-hundred-and-ninety-foot foam-spewing blast of ocean was approaching so fast and furiously that I knew it would flay me to the bone against the cliffs before I ever got the chance to drown.

Please God, quick and painless … Reunite me with my family.

Curled up against the slate, I hyperventilated my last breath against the echoing roar—as my fingers were torn from the fissure and my body violently pried from its perch.

Eyes closed, it took me seconds to realize the pain—a vise squeezing my armpits into my clavicle, was actually Oscar’s tentacles and that I was being hoisted up the wall at a miraculous speed.

Make that near miraculous.

Looking down, I caught sight of the wave a second before it exploded into the cliff, igniting a geyser of grit and foam that blasted me full in the face. Blinded, I surrendered to Oscar’s embrace—only to be swallowed by the eruption of ocean that ripped the two of us away from the rock and devoured us in its vortex.

I opened my eyes underwater in time to see the coffee-brown wall of rock accelerate into my forehead with a dull
thud …
clouded in blackness.

And then I heard my name and ABE summoned me back into consciousness.

I was racing backward along the surface of a raging river, my head and chest cradled by a thick bristle-haired tentacle, the cliffs retreating before me. I could feel Oscar’s remaining limbs fighting to keep our heads above water, the bully ocean sweeping us into its agitated bosom even as it readied its next assault upon the land.

TRANSHUMAN ANDRIA IS BECKONING YOU.

Looking up, I located the platform flying overhead on my left—its biological pilot attempting to match our fluctuating course and speed as she descended. I remember thinking that there was no way she could rescue us, and then a coil of hemp shot out from a portal and Oscar snagged it.

The rope held fast as the Hunter-Transport peeled us free of the receding sea.

Oscar swung us onboard. I collapsed onto the platform, then crawled to the mutated version of my fiancée and verified that she was missing her ring finger. “Andie, thank you.”

THE CREATURE IS HOLDING AN OBJECT. PLEASE IDENTIFY.

“It’s a means to free you from bondage; it’s why I needed your help. Before I explain what must be done, there’s another member of the
Oceanus
crew on the cliff face. Can you locate her?”

The transport banked into a tight easterly turn, accelerating toward the rise.

Dharma was two hundred feet from the top, clinging like an abandoned puppy to an outcrop. Reaching out, I pulled her onto the transport and into my arms.

Big mistake.

Part biological, part machine, the transhuman female still had Andria Saxon’s memories and her cognitive responses.

Wrenched from my arms, Dharma was violently splayed out on deck, her body pinned beneath three g’s of gravity.

“Andria, let her go.”

YOU HAVE SLEPT WITH THIS WOMAN?

“Of course not,” I lied, quickly instructing ABE to adjust my biological responses to back my claim. “Dharma and the cephaloped are friends, they’re here to help me free you and the others … to make you whole again.”

She turned to me, looking at me through scarlet eyes that spewed a jealous rage. Reaching out, she gripped my wrist in her right palm, reading my pulse—ABE quickly slowing my racing heartbeat.

After a moment, her expression changed.
YOU SPEAK THE TRUTH.

“I’d never lie to you. Search your memories aboard
Oceanus
. Access Commander Kevin Read. It was you who cheated on me … but I forgave you.”

For several seconds her head twitched as she attempted to reconcile the contradictions between a life she believed she had lived and the dichotomy of existence she had been condemned to serve.

To my surprise, her lower lip quivered and she displayed emotions I would never have thought possible for a biological machine.

IKE, CAN YOU MAKE ME HUMAN AGAIN?

I could have lied, I could have simply told her what she needed to hear in order to get her to deliver the bomb, but suddenly she was no longer a genetic mutation to me, nor was she a random seed on an assembly line … she was a living being who aspired to be better than the warped depravity of her Creator.

“Andie, I can make your life better, only you have to trust me.”

I TRUST YOU.

“Then release Dharma and take us to the Holy City. Most important, do not reveal our presence to the Creator.”

37

An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.

—C
HARLES
D
ARWIN

I had been born into a world of intolerance, a world where man’s negative nature—fueled by the human ego—had determined that greed was good, that hatred could drive a political campaign as well as an entertainment medium, and that fear could be used to coerce a nation into war. I had grown up in a maelstrom of cynicism—democracy had been poisoned by the power brokers of extremism who were given unrestricted backdoor government access to perpetuate their own agendas, overseen by politicians who wore their religion like a convenient garment.

My father had been my moral compass. Though not religious, he was a spiritual man who lived by the creed. “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” In 2003, he had spoken out against the invasion of Iraq and was labeled a traitor; in 2005 he had established a blog that foretold the future legacy of Peak Oil.

One of my lasting memories with my father was the two of us watching the 2016 presidential debates, the topic: How to deal with a nuclear Iran. “Listen closely, Robbie. You’re about to hear two supposedly devout Christians invoke God’s name to justify a future nuclear attack that will accelerate the end of civilization as we know it. And yet, it’s not them I blame, it’s the rest of us—the morally blind majority willing to consider the annihilation of millions of innocent people just because they happen to be Muslim, never realizing their indifference will destroy all of us.”

Indifference. It was so easy when we weren’t the ones being bombed or tortured. When it wasn’t our job lost, our home foreclosed upon, our family living in a shelter.

When had caring about others become a debatable political issue? When had peace and love been labeled a weakness?

Where had we lost our way?

*   *   *

Soaring over the redwood forest, I realized that I had fallen into the same trap as the Washington bureaucrats who had authorized the nuclear “defense protocol” during the Great Die-Off, justifying the eradication of the transhuman population as soulless creatures hell-bent on wiping out the cephaloped species.

That GOLEM had to be shut down, I harbored no doubt. But nuking the Holy City and all its inhabitants suddenly seemed wrong. Remove the dictator from the scene and an oppressed people could flourish.

Transhuman Andria and her kind deserved that opportunity.

And so I instructed the transport pilot to land in an isolated field, seeking another battle plan. We had the Alpha Colonists’ bomb, perhaps we could salvage some of its nonnuclear components?

Transhuman Andria, armed with telescopic claspers used during the cephaloped hunting expeditions, quickly dismantled the nuke. The device was a rudimentary design that used a battery to deliver a power surge to a blasting cap of C-4 explosive in order to blow one piece of plutonium through another, starting a chain reaction that would end in a nuclear explosion. Every part had been removed from
Oceanus
—including the plastic explosive that had been intended as a backup to destroy the ice sheet in the event the ship’s rockets had failed to ignite when it was time to resurface.

ABE guided me in reassembling the explosive using only the C-4. Once Transhuman Andria verified GOLEM was in its lab, we’d drop the bomb into the facility, directing the transport’s powerful gravitational field over the blast radius to confine the detonation and convert the fallout into a Terra-strength electromagnetic pulse.

One way or another, GOLEM would be destroyed.

*   *   *

It was 8:13 at night by the time we made our approach to the crater. The atmosphere was charged with static electricity, the elements playing havoc with the transport’s guidance system. Whatever the lunar event to come was, it would be happening soon.

Dharma gripped my arm, pointing behind us to the western horizon.

The heavens had become a cocoon of shimmering emerald light, beckoning the Rebirth Moon. The rising orb seemed as big as a planet, it luminescent green color an effect created by the aurora australis—the first appearance of the Southern Lights since my awakening.

The green moon … where had I seen the symbol before?

Back on
Oceanus
—on Dharma’s surcoat!

Is this a dream?

Before I could analyze this new epiphany, we entered the crater.

Moving to the transhuman pilot, I squeezed her shoulder from behind. “Andie, is the Creator present?”

THE CREATOR IS ALWAYS PRESENT. THE CREATOR IS OMNIPOTENT.

Uh-oh.
“Andria, is the Creator in its lab … its palace in the Holy City?”

THE CREATOR SEES EVERYTHING AND KNOWS EVERYTHING. THE CREATOR KNOWS ABOUT ROBERT EISENBRAUN’S BLASPHEMY.

My heart pounded in my chest. “Andie … how?”

She turned to face me, her scarlet eyes blazing.
I TOLD HER … CHEATER!

I leapt for the bomb, only my muscles were lead and my body crumpled to the deck. Pinned beneath what ABE calculated to be four g’s, I attempted to crawl to the explosive, pressed to the deck three feet away.

Unable to push through the induced paralysis, I called out to Oscar.
We’ve been betrayed. Detonate the device before GOLEM captures us.

But without physical contact the cephaloped could not hear my thoughts. It remained anchored to the hexagonal platform, along with Dharma, none of us able to move.

The transport banked, circling over GOLEM’s lab, preparing to drop into a vertical landing through the open roof.

Lying on my back, utterly helpless, I stared at the emerald-hued heavens as a numbing anxiety battled my internal rage for control of my mind. I cursed my stupidity, my gullibility, my bravado. I cursed the ego that had given rise to GOLEM; I cursed God for allowing evil to flourish.

Closing my eyes against the sudden descent in altitude, I found myself back on the train bound for Auschwitz—a young Polish Jew crushed beneath the stifling embrace of his fellow villagers.

How did I get here? How did this nightmare enter my life?

Are You testing me, God?

The cattle car settled to a stop with a bone-jarring
thud
. I opened my eyes and was Eisenbraun again. The transport had landed inside GOLEM’s lab, the cessation of its antigravitational field shunting the g-forces pinning me down, and in one motion I sat up, reaching for the explosive—but the device was already in the hands of a Monique DeFriend clone, one whose bizarre flesh bore the red, yellow, and black–striped scales of a coral snake. As she moved to the center of the room, a clear four-foot cube rose from the floor before her.

The three of us bolted from the platform, only to be pummeled backward by a nerve-rattling, eyeball-pounding surge of electricity. Flat on my back, I looked up to see GOLEM floating down through the ceiling, the sphere’s internal DNA strands twisting into serpentlike coils, as if the AI had consumed the mythical head of Medusa.

The Monique clone placed the lead canister upon the cube, which appeared to be a sensory device activated by its creator.

In the blink of an eye the bomb detonated, the C-4’s powerful blast radius contained within an invisible oval-shaped force field, the interior of the barrier outlined in sizzling violet discharges of light.

“A composite of cyclotrimethylene trinitramine, a diethylhexy plasticizer, and the odorizing marker 3-dinitrobutane. Eisenbraun’s attempt to destroy the Creator has failed. The Creator is not of this world. The Creator is omnipotent.”

“If the Creator is omnipotent,” I ranted, “then how did I escape the last time? There is a flaw in the creation matrix–—trace memories from your DNA donors that can be used to nourish the seeds of something innate in every human—free will. Release us now and those trace memories remain dormant. Harm us and those memories will spread like a cancer throughout every cloned being in the Holy City.”