Whitley Strieber - The Omega Point

“Stop it! Mack, stop being a fool. Go upstairs where it’s safe.”

“What is that thing, anyway? It’s no damn painting.” He advanced toward her, one aggressive step, then another. David took out the little pistol, which felt mysterious and awful in his hand.

“It’s a way out,” Caroline said. “It’s a chance !”

“How does it work?”

“If it works.”

“So you’re not sure?”

“I’m sure I’m creating a portal. If nobody destroys it this time, maybe we can go through.”

“To where?”

“Away from here.”

“There’s got to be more to it than that.”

She shook her head—and Mack came yet closer to her. “Tell me how the goddamn thing works !”

David fired. Across the room, a painting of Amanda Acton, Herbert’s wife, dropped to the floor with a resounding crash.

“The next one,” he said to Mack, “belongs to you.”

Mack still seemed ready to throttle Caroline, and David began tightening his finger on the trigger.

Mack’s eyes were steady and unafraid. He was calculating odds, David could see that.

“All right,” he said, “I’ll go upstairs. Just don’t goddamn well lock me down.”

“Do it now.”

At last he left, moving with exaggerated casualness, as if unconcerned about a thing.

When they were alone, David kissed Caroline’s hair. There was such a strange combination of newness and old, assured love in the way he felt now about her, as if she was a settled lover who had mysteriously appeared in a fresh and sensual new body. It was all he could do not to embrace her, but she was working and he did not dare disturb a single line. He wanted to explore with her the wonder of adult love, in the innocence of childhood memory.

“How long will it take?” he asked.

“Too long.”

“Then what happens?”

“Don’t interrupt me!”

He stepped away from her. His stomach felt as if it would turn inside out. He laid an encouraging hand on his painter’s slim shoulder.

She worked on, the steady whisper of her brush the only sound in the great room.

The substance they injected changed me profoundly. They were right to force me and I’m glad they did. In a sense, I suppose, it was my scientific education that made me so resistant—but it is this same education that has also enabled me to understand what we are trying to do.

For me, our hope is lodged in that woman hunched over the easel, in her concentrated face and long hands, and the ocean of love that hides behind her harsh exterior.

She is creating a true hyperdimensional object—the first one, I think, that has been created in a long time. The icons of the Russians are a degenerated memory of such paintings, in the sense that it is believed that they contain the actual, living consciousness of the saints they depict.

This is more than an icon, though, far more powerful. It is a bridge between art and science, fashioned out of the artist’s love and creativity, and the scientist’s patient attention to the laws of nature.

It is true alchemy, the transformation of base metal into gold—that is to say, the transformation of paint and canvas into a hyperdimensional portal.

I am humble before the alchemists, and especially before that one with her paints and the hyperdimensional colors out of which they have been made. For those are not mere oil paints that she applies to that canvas.

I don’t know who mixed them or how, but I know this about those paints: they are a machine of the very highest order. The light reflected from the surface of paint she is applying not only penetrates this reality, it is visible in all realities.

I think one of those great physicists—was it Stephen Hawking, or possibly Roger Penrose?—said that a time machine would be the most visible thing in the world because it would necessarily exist in every moment. Well, that’s true, for this painting, as she paints it, at once takes on the appearance of an old master, an ancient encaustic, a cave painting, and in every respect of line, it is perfect.

It is not meant to save just an elite few. It is meant to save all who need saving. The elect are rising, the judged sinking into the dark center of the earth. But the rest of us, we have to escape and we have to do it in our physical bodies. Of course, many of us won’t make it. But many will, and I know this: when she is finished—when the moment is exactly right—this device will enter hyperspace and thus become visible to everybody with eyes to see it and the goodness of heart to use it.

It won’t save just a few hundred here at the clinic. No, it is part of a much larger plan. When it is finished, it will indeed be the most visible thing on earth.

This thing being shuffled onto that fragile canvas is nothing less than light in a very dark time, our great chance and great hope.

And now I know that I am here not only to use it and guide others through it but to protect it.

We are few around her, and the enemy is very many—in fact, so many that he is legion and will certainly destroy us if he can.

I can sense the edges of a great plan that surrounds us with love and hope, but also another plan, equally powerful, that seeks the ruin of the world.

In Hancock, Virginia, the convoy stopped to refuel, then reroute around the Hagerstown, Maryland, area. Recce ahead had identified an active uprising in Hagerstown, so they were going to need to bypass in order to reach Raleigh and the Acton Clinic fast, and speed was probably essential.

General Wylie had a small muster consisting of his command vehicle, a Stryker Mobile Gun System, three squad Humvees, and a fuel truck. He did not see the light defenses at the clinic as being able to stand up against twenty-one soldiers and the MGS, which could deliver a pretty fair punch, and he intended to take the place out and obtain whatever of value his agent was signaling him was located there.

He had received an urgent and promising communication from Mack Graham, which had convinced him that immediate action was essential. It had said, “Device located and understood.”

That could not be more clear. There was a device and he knew where it was and he understood it.

So, fine. General Wylie was going to get it and take it back to Blue Ridge.

Over the past few days, one after another of the redoubts had reported over the fiberoptic network that the local situation was becoming critical. A number of them had since gone silent. Colonia Dignidad, with its reputation in Chile as having been founded by war-refugee Germans, had been an immediate target of the locals. Its last report was that the Chilean air force was overhead using deep-penetrating bunker buster bombs. The center in England had simply gone silent. Destroyed? Overrun? No way to know.

There were no longer any satellites operational so it wasn’t possible to get lookdowns. Also, there was no chance of deploying any sort of air power. That was all down due to electronics failures. How the Chilean air force had gotten up was anybody’s guess. Old planes, probably, without sensitive electronics. But that had been three days ago. Because of the tremendous electromagnetic loading of all wiring, not even the simplest aircraft were going to be viable now. The only reason his own vehicles were operational was that they were diesel and they had been started inside the redoubt. They’d keep going as long as they weren’t turned off and once again required their electronics.

General George Wylie sat in his command vehicle staring at an empty computer screen. He was back to Civil War–level intelligence. No eyes, no ears, except what a guy in a dusty diesel Jetta could bring back from his travels ahead.