Title Page

Copyright Notice

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Dedication

This novel is dedicated to

Dr. Arul Chidambaram and the doctors, nurses, and dedicated staff at Wellington Regional Hospital.

Thank you for saving my life.…

Acknowledgments

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is with great appreciation that I acknowledge those who contributed to the completion of The Omega Project.

First and foremost, to the great staff at Forge Books, with special thanks to Tom Doherty and his family, my editors, James Frenkel and Whitney Ross, art director Seth Lerner and jacket designer Peter Lutjen. My gratitude and appreciation to my personal editor, Lou Aronica at the Fiction Studio ([email protected]), whose advice remains invaluable, and to my literary agent, Danny Baror of Baror International, for his friendship and dedication. Thanks as well to his assistant, Heather Baror-Shapiro.

To my friend Nick Nunziata—a special thanks for your input during the writing process. Thanks as well to the talented William McDonald (www.alienUFOart.com) for the original artwork found within these pages, and to copy editor Justine Gardner.

My gratitude and appreciation to Barbara Becker, who serves as my personal reader and works tirelessly in the Adopt An Author program, as well as to Millennium Technology Resources, for managing the SteveAlten.com Web site.

Finally, to my wife, Kim, and my kids, Kelsey and Branden, for their love, and for their tolerance of the long hours involved in my writing career, and most importantly to my readers and fans, without whom I’d have no career.

Contents

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Epigraph

Prologue

Part One: GDO (The Great Die-Off) 2020–2025

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Part Two: 2028

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Illustration

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Part Three: Awakenings

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Illustration

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Illustration

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Epilogue

Epigraph

Novels by Steve Alten

About the Author

Copyright

Epigraph

The survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there’s an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy Earth.

—STEPHEN HAWKING, Nobel Prize–winning physicist and author of A Brief History of Time

Prologue

PROLOGUE

JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
MARCH 12, 1998

The representative wearing the requisite white lab coat was not a scientist; his selection to address the media was based more on his availability than his public relations experience. Now, as he stepped out of the administration building and into a 54°F headwind, he wished he had called in sick.

Reporters’ side conversations were replaced by a heavy silence as he approached the hastily prepared podium and its entanglement of microphones. He removed a prepared statement from his pants pocket, then paused at the whirring flutter of camera shutters to evaluate the crowd.

Look at all of them … a herd of sheep, panicked by a lone voice yelling wolf. Don’t let them see you wipe at any sweat beads, they’ll interpret the body language. Just read the damn statement, answer a few questions, and get back inside where it’s warm.

“Good morning. Yesterday, Harvard astronomer Brian Marsden of the International Astronomical Union issued an IAU circular about a possible very close pass to the Earth of the asteroid designated 1997 XF11. According to Marsden’s calculations, the asteroid, which is approximately one mile in diameter, will pass within thirty thousand miles on Thursday, October 26, 2028, at approximately 1:30 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time. Mr. Marsden stated that, while the chance of an actual collision with Earth remained small, it was not entirely out of the realm of possibility. A mile-wide asteroid, as most of you know, could cause quite a bit of damage.

“Following Mr. Marsden’s announcement, JPL scientists Dr. Donald Yeomans and Dr. Paul Chodas reexamined the data on 1997 XF11. This reexamination was based on orbit calculations made in March of 1990 at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory, seven years before its reported discovery by Jim Scotti of the Spacewatch group. Based on this more conclusive data, we’re happy to report that Asteroid 1997 XF11 will pass at a rather more comfortable distance of nine hundred sixty thousand kilometers—about six hundred thousand miles, approximately two moon distances away, giving it a near zero probability of impacting our planet.”

A wave of arms beckoned for his attention amid a chorus of stated questions. Tucking the statement inside his pants pocket, he scanned the crowd, seeking a friendly face. He pointed. “I’m sorry, I don’t know anyone’s name. Yes, the gentleman with the red-striped tie.”

“Zach Bachman, L.A. Times. How is it that scientists at JPL were able to find this new data less than a day after the IAU’s announcement?”

“If you’re suggesting a conspiracy, Mr. Bachman, you may want to check with the producers of those two new asteroid-impact movies.” He smiled at the effectiveness of the rehearsed line, using the interruption of the laughter to casually brush at the moisture beading over his brow. “Actually, the asteroid had been photographed by JPL scientists at Palomar in 1990 but never named. Had it been named I suspect there would have been less of a panic and I’d be enjoying my breakfast in the commissary. Yes? You, with the paisley shirt.”

“Tom Cubit, USA Today. According to Jack G. Hills of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, this is the most dangerous near-Earth asteroid ever spotted and its impact would be the equivalent of two million Hiroshima-size bombs. How does this new threat compare with the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago?”

“The asteroid you’re referring to was probably three times the size of 1997 XF11. Again, the chances of it striking the Earth are minimal. We’re not downplaying the danger; we’ve simply recalculated the asteroid’s orbit based on more accurate, reliable data. Yes, the young lady from CNN?”

“Are there any factors that could alter the asteroid’s projected orbit over the next thirty years? For example, could the Earth’s gravitational pull affect the asteroid’s orbit on its next pass, which I believe is on Halloween in 2002, effecting a change in 2028?”

Sweat had soaked through the back of the administrator’s dress shirt. “While it’s true that gravitational interaction with a larger object can alter an asteroid’s orbit by approximately a quarter of one degree, JPL calculations confirm that the influence of the Earth’s orbit on 1997 XF11 on its next pass in 2002 should be minimal. In a worst-case scenario, Asteroid 1997 XF11 will come no closer to Earth in October 2028 than a moon’s distance away. Thank you, that’s all for now.”

The JPL representative waved to the crowd as he exited the podium, his thoughts lingering on his last statement. A moon’s distance away.… Has anyone bothered to plot the moon’s orbit when 1997 XF11 passes Earth in 2028?

Part One: GDO (The Great Die-Off) 2020–2025

PART ONE

GDO

(The Great Die-Off)

2020–2025

Chapter 1

1

Strong and healthy, who thinks of sickness until it strikes like lightning?

Preoccupied with the world, who thinks of death until it arrives like thunder?

—SUTTA NIPATA II, discourse collections of the Buddha, fifth century B.C.

MARCH 12, 2022

I didn’t know much about guns. The one I’d been gripping in my sweaty palm held four bullets in its clip and one in the chamber—same as it had when I’d removed it from the corpse I’d come across two weeks ago. It was rare these days to find a dead body that hasn’t been skinned and stripped of its meat. Thankfully, I’d never been forced to consume human flesh, which was why I was here … out in the woods, hoping to shoot a deer before the last deer was taken, before the last of my supplies ran out and hunger drove me either to cannibalism, suicide, or starvation.

I’d arrived in the woods before dawn, having ridden all night on my motorcycle. No lights needed, thanks to my night-vision glasses, no sound since the bike was powered solely by batteries. I’d been staked out in this blind for the better part of eight hours. Sweat continued to pour down my face and soak my camouflage clothing, and the bugs were relentless, but I’d chosen this spot because it was only twenty paces from the creek, offering me a clear shot at anything or anyone that ventured by. Truth be told, I’d never shot anything more lethal than a BB gun, but desperate times required desperate measures.

When I was younger, my father had taken me camping with the Cub Scouts. The closest we’d come to hunting game was roasting marshmallows. A real hunter wouldn’t have been hunting deer with a handgun. A real hunter probably wouldn’t have had ant bites all over his ankles or mosquito bites on his arms, and he wouldn’t have been so scared.

I wasn’t scared of the woods. I was scared of being lost in the woods, unable to find my way back to the main road and the brush where I’d hidden the bike. Mostly, I was scared about what else might be in the woods hunting the deer hunters.

I called them the “SS”—sociopathic survivors. Rapists, murderers, cannibals—the SS were soulless beings hell-bent on enjoying their final fleeting moments on Earth. I’d never seen them in action, but I’d seen the forensic evidence of their depravity and it terrified me.

The last bullet in my gun’s chamber was reserved for my brain should those pack animals hunt me down.

The SS were bottom-feeders before the Die-Off, which is why they’d survived. They lived off the grid. Same for the fortress farmers, bunker clans, conspiracy theorists, and other whack-jobs who could read the tea leaves and had known the world’s oil reserves were running out.

Note to any future generations listening to these audio tapes: The powers-that-be knew the world’s oil reserves peaked in 2005; in fact, they knew how things would end as far back as the 1970s when Jimmy Carter was in office. And still the assholes did nothing.

My father had known, which is why he left his tenured position at the University of Virginia and moved us to a small rural community in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. No Internet connection, no cable TV. We went from being a normal modern-day household to twenty-first century pioneers, gradually inching our way off the grid. None of us was thrilled; my mother had contemplated divorce, my younger sisters labeled Dad the new Unabomber and threatened to run away from home. As for me, if my father had told me a flood was coming then I would have been outside with him building an ark.

It had been shortly after the first mushroom cloud bloomed over Tehran that my father explained his motives. “Robbie, life is a test, and humanity is about to face a big one. Unfortunately, when it comes to facing the unthinkable, most people prefer to remain in denial. You saw the movie Titanic, right? When the ship hit that iceberg, some passengers headed for the lifeboats, while the majority of people were so convinced the ship couldn’t sink they either stayed in bed or went back to the bar to have another drink. When you get older you’ll learn two hard facts: You can’t save people who don’t want to be saved; and preferring to remain ignorant when faced with a catastrophe demonstrates a lack of intelligence.”

Dad could have added human ego to the equation.

I’d grown up in a world of bank bailouts, recessions, unemployment, collapsing economies, and endless wars; my country embattled in a perversion of democracy where corporations had been granted the same rights as citizens. Corruption overruled any sense of justice, the radicalization of the political system preventing the few true representatives of the suddenly impoverished masses from enacting solutions that could have reversed the eventual collapse of society. As my father said, “Human ego created these problems, and human ego will drive us over the cliff. The world would be better off if a computer ran everything.”

Computers.… The next computer I own will be implanted in my skull.

A sound! My heart skipped a beat. It was an animal, approaching the creek from the thicket to my left.

Quietly, I wiped fresh sweat beads from my already moist brow and palms, shifting my body weight to aim the pistol, my eyes focused on the clearing. It was a deer, a young male, maybe eighty pounds, as anxious and as thirsty as yours truly. My hand trembled as he glanced in my direction, my body shook as he turned, offering me a clean shot at his flank.

I hesitated, drawing a breath, suddenly fearful of the gunshot and who might hear it …

Thwaap!

The buck collapsed upon its forelegs in silence, the arrow having appeared seemingly from out of nowhere, its tip passing cleanly through the startled animal’s spine and out its chest cavity.

Leaving my makeshift hunting blind, I approached the dying beast. The angle of the arrow’s entry indicated the archer had shot from the trees.

“Touch the venison and you’ll die where you stand.”

I turned slowly, my heart racing as she emerged from the forest like an erotic female warrior from a Luis Royo painting. Her ebony hair flowed nearly down to her waist in a curly tangle camouflaged in twigs and leaves, every inch of her flesh concealed in green and brown paint or beneath a skintight matching bodysuit. Ten paces away and I could smell her scent—a heavy animal musk. She looked about my age. The quiver was strapped to her thigh, the muscles of her upper body taut as she aimed the graphite bow’s arrow at my heart.

I was as stunned as I was smitten. “The deer’s yours. Take it.”

“I intend to. Drop the piece.”

“The what? Oh, the gun. Seriously, you can have it. I doubt I could even shoot the damn thing straight.” I lowered the weapon, placed it on the ground, and backed away. “What’s your name?”

“Shut up.” Quivering the arrow, she grabbed the gun, expertly ejecting the clip to check the chamber. Reassembling the weapon, she shoved it into a satchel concealed around her waist, hoisted the dead deer over her shoulders, and was gone.

Alone again, I waited thirty seconds, then followed her through the dense brush, losing her trail within minutes.

Who was she? Was she alone? Part of a group? Her attitude suggested otherwise. My guess? When the lights went out and the grocery store shelves were rendered bare, she had fled to the mountains—or more likely her family were mountain folk. Whatever the case, she was everything I was not; ruthless, cunning … a hunter who showed no mercy.

And yet she had spared me.

Well, dork-wad, you did give her the gun. Practically curtsied as you laid it on the ground.

I paused again to listen to the forest; heard nothing.

By her scent, I knew she lived in the woods, probably a cave. Heading for higher ground, I followed a path of ferns and moss-covered rocks that emptied into a clearing of tall weeds.

To my left, the Blue Ridge Mountains caressed the setting sun between its peaks and valley. With darkness a mere ninety minutes away, I had to choose—the woman or sanctuary?

It had been twenty months since I’d carried on a conversation with another living person. I might be an introvert by nature, but listening day and night to the voice in my head had been maddening, leading to the creation of these recorded journal entries. But seeing her … she was a thunderbolt, a goddess. I knew I had to find her, even if it meant risking an encounter with the SS.

Pausing at the edge of a clearing, I retrieved water and an apple from my knapsack, consumed a quick snack, buried the evidence, and continued my trek up the mountain.

After three hundred feet the woods began anew. The shadows of pine trees were closing in, dusk coming fast. For half an hour I wandered through a maze of trees, until the night was upon me and I accepted the fact I was hopelessly lost.

Hearing men’s voices, I quickly hid.

There were a dozen of them, more in the cave.

The dogs had found the woman’s lair, its small entrance concealed by brush. I figured now they would stake out the area, waiting for her to return.

I smelled her as she moved through the shadows to join me behind the bushes. I felt the gun press firmly against the left side of my ribcage. “I need a place that’s safe.”

“Get me back to the main road.”

*   *   *

The motorcycle was hidden in a ravine behind mile marker thirty-six. Six months ago, I had replaced the engine and fuel tank with an electric motor and rechargeable truck battery, rendering it fast yet whisper quiet. We waited another hour before heading south, my night-vision visor illuminating any nocturnal predators that might venture near the highway.

My family’s suburban neighborhood had long since been abandoned. Our house stood alone among burnt-out foundations on a cul-de-sac. I had cleared the surrounding terrain to expose anyone who approached. Every window was bricked up, the house and matching eight-foot wall that surrounded the backyard’s concealed acreage painted to appear like charred cinder.

The lawn was covered in sheets of metal—hundreds of car trunks and engine hoods, planted flat into the grass and welded into a giant jigsaw puzzle. Climbing off the motorcycle, I instructed the beautiful huntress to follow precisely in my footsteps, my night-vision glasses revealing a preset path that turned and twisted to tall shrubs that camouflaged a subterranean side entrance. Once we were inside the house, I bolted the steel door behind the woman, shocking her by turning on the lights.

“You have electricity? How?”

“While other people were searching for food and water, I was busy collecting car batteries and solar panels.”

“And car hoods. What’s that all about?”

“Security. Step onto my property and you get zapped with ten thousand volts of electricity. By the way, my name’s Eisenbraun, Robert Eisenbraun. Most people used to call me Ike.”

“Andria Saxon.” Dropping the deer carcass on the floor, she roamed the house, taking inventory. “Air-conditioning … a working refrigerator and stove—pretty impressive, Eisenbrain. What else do you have here?”

“A running shower and soap for starters. And it’s Eisenbraun.”

“Tell you what, I’ll handle the brawn, you handle the brains and maybe we’ll manage to survive this mess.”

Chapter 2

2

The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.

—JOSEPH STALIN

“You make love like a freshman.”

“And you make love like a woman breaking in a wild stallion.”

We had lived together in my parents’ home for three weeks, sleeping in separate bedrooms, which we kept bolted from the inside. She taught me how to target shoot from tree limbs while I educated her on how everything worked in our shared fortress, but we rarely engaged in conversation about our lives before the Die-Off.

And then late this afternoon, she turned to me while we picked apples in the orchard and kissed me.

Within minutes we were in bed, naked and entwined; the two of us entering an exciting new world.

When we were done, Andria climbed off and lay beside me, the flesh on her tan back and buttocks sporting a series of scars. “Scratch.”

I accepted my duties, restricting the urge to hug her from behind lest she crush my windpipe with an elbow to the throat.

“You may have noticed that I have control issues, Eisenbraun. I guess it comes from being on my own since I was fifteen. A little lower. Now harder, use your nails.… God, that’s good. So what’s your story? How’d you learn to do all this?”

“I studied a lot. You know … lack of a social life.”

“Funny, I pegged you as a jock. How tall are you? Six foot five? Maybe two-twenty? Bet you played basketball.”

“Track and field. Mom was a natural athlete, I inherited her foot speed. Did some long jump and the hundred meters in high school until the varsity football coach forced me to try out as a receiver. I couldn’t catch a cold, let alone a football. ‘Stone hands Eisenbraun,’ they called me on the field, ‘Jew bastard’ off it. Things changed after they switched me to free safety and found out the Jew liked to hit.”

“Chip on your shoulder, huh? That makes us kindred spirits. Did you play ball in college?”

“I wanted to, but the Pentagon ordered me not to play. Guess they were afraid of concussions damaging the old noggin.”

“The Pentagon?”

“My uncle was a general, a bigwig with DARPA. When I was fourteen I created an algorithm for a video game that ended up being used to train gamers to fly military drones. Three years later my uncle was placed in charge of a top-secret initiative, called Omega. I left school during my sophomore year in college to work with his team.”

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