Whitley Strieber - The Omega Point

I would like to thank my editor, Robert Gleason, whose support and skill were essential to the writing of this book.

I am also grateful to authors Robert Bauval, Michael Cremo, Laurence Gardner, Graham Hancock, William Henry, Rand Flem-Ath, Andrew Collins, and many others for their research into lost human history, and to Robert Allen Bartlett, Joseph T. Farrell, David Hudson, Robert Cox, and others for their explorations of the mysteries and path of alchemy, and to so many more whose work has led me to the new vision of the human past and future reflected in these pages.

The pioneering work of Richard Firestone, Allen West, and Simon Warwick-Smith on the catastrophe that struck our planet twelve thousand years ago also informed my story, for which I am grateful.

I would also like to thank Anne Strieber and Paul Canterna, whose expert insights and thoughtful support made this book possible.

Any mistakes or inaccuracies are my own.

Marty Breslin sat at the desk watching the cameras watch him, waiting for his nightly few minutes of local fame. “How’s the remote?” he asked Ginger Harper. They had dropped a number of feeds lately, although not on him, because weathermen normally don’t do feeds. But he was horrified at the idea of being left under the lights with nothing to say. Even when he had something to say, he had nothing to say, so a dead teleprompter was a terrifying thought. “Ginger, come back, please. We do have that feed ready to go?”

“We’re good down the line.”

“Anything unusual actually happening? Anywhere?” There were New Agers out in force around the world, on hilltops, crowding places like Sedona, and swarming by the thousands in Yucatan and Guatemala. Fourteen of them had been iced during a blizzard yesterday on Mount Everest. Even the stock market had gotten quiet today, waiting to see if anything might happen over the weekend. “Hello? Ginger?”

“I was just looking. CNN, quiet. BBC, they’re still on the Himalayas story, nothing fresh on the AP. Joke stories.”

Across on the news desk, Callie and Fred tossed real stories back and forth. They hit the Himalayas, but the big one tonight was a gang riding the highways disguised as state police officers, soliciting bribes in lieu of tickets. “Sounds like a good business,” he said into his mike.

“That it does,” Ginger replied.

He’d tried her a couple of times. No-go. Apparently her marriage was real. Well, it was her loss.

His lights came up. “Thirty seconds,” she said.

“What’re they doing out on the feed?”

“Chanting.”

Fred Gathers said, “And now for the latest on the end of the world, let’s go to Marty. What’s a weatherman doing reporting on a subject like this, Marty?”

And he was on. Magic time. Famous in Buffalo, folks all said hi along the Chippewa Strip. It wasn’t Manhattan, but they had the lake. The teleprompter began to roll. “Our thought was, if the New Agers were right and the world ended, it would be a weather story. As in, none. Obviously, weather post the apocalypse is gonna be kind of quiet.”

“Okay, so it’s after midnight on December 21, 2012. Why are we still here, Marty?”

“Good question, Fred. Tim Burris is on the scene at the Love and Light New Age Spiritual Center in Grover’s Mills, New Jersey. Tim, has anybody been beamed up yet?”

“Over to you, Tim,” Ginger said.

On the monitor, Burris appeared standing in a pool of light surrounded by figures in flowing white robes. Many of them were female, young, and, from what Marty could see, well worth the time. “Man, I wonder if he’s gettin’ any of that?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ginger said.

“This is Tim Burris in Grover’s Mills, here at the Love and Light New Age Spiritual Center, where I have the Reverend Carlton Gaylord to explain why we’re all still here.”

He thrust the mike into the face of a tall, cadaverous man whose white robe had a gold choke collar. “We are celebrating the moment that the earth crosses the center of the galactic plane for the first time in twenty-six thousand years,” he said. “Nobody said anything about the end of the world.”

But that wasn’t true! He’d said it, and on camera. That was the whole point of sending Tim all the way to Joisey. “Hey! We got that clip!”

Tim waited. Nothing happened. He blinked, then continued. “But isn’t this the end of everything?”

Marty said into his mike, “Run the clip, Ginger!”

“It’s not in the system.”

“Aw, fer crap’s sake, find it!”

Burris tried to pull the clip out of the guy. “But you said, uh—we have a clip—” Oh, so lame. There was a reason he worked in this joke station.

“Ginger!”

“It’s gone!”

“Tell him, he’s dyin’ out there!”

When she imparted the wonderful news, Mary saw his face fall, then set with determination. He tried again. “You’ve been quoted as saying that the world would end tonight at twelve oh one.”

“I said that the Mayan prophecy would come true.”

Crap! Crap! Crap!

“But the world didn’t end! We’re all still here.”

“The end of the world was media hype. You people. All the Mayan prophecy said was that we’d cross the centerline of the galaxy, and we did.” He pulled up his sleeve and glanced at his Rolex. “Exactly four minutes and twenty seconds ago.”

“This is so poor, Ginger, he is eating us for frigging lunch!”

Ginger, her voice tight, said, “Go to the scientist clip, then we’re back in with the forecast.”

They ran the talking head from the university, who explained that astronomers had no idea whether we were crossing the centerline of the galaxy or not, because it was hidden behind dust clouds.

“And we’re out,” Ginger said. “Two minutes on the break, Marty.”

His lights went down. His camera turned off. He tried to control the red-hot rage that was building in him. “That was shitty as hell,” he said, forcing himself not to scream. “I mean, we had that guy nailed down, that’s why we bought el Timothy a ticket all the way to New Joisey, Ginger, hey!”

Ginger was silent.

He knew that there was no point in commenting further, but he could not shut up. “I mean, have you got your professional screwup certificate, Gin, or are you still an advanced amateur?”

“I found the clip!”

He wanted to tell her to stuff it up her ass, but that would be harassment of some damn kind. “How nice,” he said. “Wrap it up for me and I can smoke it after the show.”