The Omega Point

by Whitley Strieber

  I think that this animal had moved through time, and I think I know why this happened. First, there was something about the place. There must also be something similar here, and this, I think, is crucial to whether or not we will be able to do it. This house was undoubtedly placed here because this spot is, like the ranch in Utah, conducive to such movements. Why, I cannot even begin to imagine.

  Second, I believe that, in its own time, this animal was experiencing incredible fear. Its world was collapsing around its ears. At the end of the Pleistocene, most of Utah was flooded along with the rest of the United States by rapid glacial melt. Like now, the solar system was passing through the energetic remains of the supernova, and this had brought about a planetary bombardment and the complete, sudden, and devastating ruin of the world.

  So given pressure extreme enough and the right conditions, actual, physical movement through time must be possible.

  How, I do not know. However, my thought is that the class, if it can be brought back to normal, will know. They will all turn out to have pieces of the greatest puzzle that has ever been: the secret of time, and how to walk it like a road.

  But, for now, I must leave this part of the document behind. If only the class can come into focus before it’s too late, maybe we can construct our bridge across time.

  I think on this. Come up only with one thought—I have to trust Caroline.

  So I go on to the second sentence: “The judgment begins.”

  What is happening now is, we already know, a repeat of a disaster that happened 12,600 years ago. In that time, the human population of Earth declined by over 90 percent.

  After that, there was a long period of silence on this planet. Nothing happened. But then, about seven thousand years ago, heroes appeared throughout the world. The story of the great Egyptian hero Osiris dates from that time, and the stories of India’s demigod Krishna and other brilliant heroes, and civilization starts. Throughout its early years, we see such leaders as Akhenaton and Moses, who was perhaps his son, who bring the idea of the single God into the world. In the Americas, the civilizing Viracocha appear and, of course, my avatar Quetzalcoatl. Then, to begin the recently ended Age of Pisces, Jesus, who learned his secrets in Egypt and who was born in a most mysterious way.

  I believe that these people were not mythological figures but very real human beings, time travelers from the lost civilization, coming forward to bring its wisdom to a new, still brutal era. The ideas of compassionate life, of the one God, of the promise of resurrection and the means to attain it—these are what they brought.

  Just as their pre-Egyptian civilization was being inundated worldwide, they used their knowledge of time travel to leap forward five thousand years and reinvent human decency and goodness. They left behind new civilizations in the Indus and Nile valleys, in the Fertile Crescent in Sumeria, on Crete and in Central and South America.

  Even as recently as the early Christian era, somebody knew of the existence of the great cycles and the periodic harvest of souls, I think, and was consciously directing the construction of civilization from a high perspective, with the objective of making more souls that were energetic enough, and light enough, to enter higher realms.

  The energy is the energy of love, and the lightness is a lack of attachment to the physical world.

  My reasoning that these cycles were known comes from observation of the Western long count calendar, the Zodiac, which measures the slow movement of the North Pole around a great circle that lasts just over twenty-five thousand years. It is divided into twelve roughly two-thousand-year segments, the houses of the Zodiac.

  Like the Mayan Long Count calendar, it marks ours as an age of enormous change, although without that extraordinary precision.

  The Old Testament was written during the Age of Aries, the ram, and in the Old Testament, the ram is mentioned seventy-two times, more than any other animal. It is the testament of the ram, written by people who knew very well what they were doing. Similarly the New Testament, which appeared just as Aries gave way to Pisces, the fish, speaks of Jesus as the Fisher of Men. The apostles are fishermen. The earliest symbol of Christ is the fish.

  They knew and they understood, and they left this hidden record for the future.

  Now we have reached the Age of Aquarius, the water carrier, and he is pouring out his water—that is to say, Earth is becoming unlivable.

  During the Age of Pisces, the little fish—mankind—was nurtured in the water—the womb of Earth. Now, however, we are too big for Earth to carry and we are experiencing the violence of birth. As Earth becomes unable to support the little fish, she is ejecting us onto dry land.

  Many will die now. Souls heavy with greed and cruelty will be unable to rise and will sink down into the core of the planet—the lake of fire described in Revelation.

  In the autobiography of Hitler’s architect, Albert Speer, he describes his experience after the ringleaders of this spectacularly evil movement were hanged at Spandau Prison in Berlin. They had been executed in a gymnasium, and he and other remaining prisoners were ordered to clean it up after the process was complete.

  Underneath the gallows, they found a scorch mark in the floor so deep that they could not remove it.

  Charles Light explained to us that this mark was left by evil souls as they fell out of their bodies and sank into the core of the earth, where they will remain until their evil has been consumed. They will return as the merest sparks of essence, ready to begin the eons-long climb from tiny life to intelligence, or, in some cases, to remain forever a part of the lesser world, never again to be granted the chance at change that being an intelligent creature offers.

  The evil descend, the good rise—and then there are the rest of us, the little band of perhaps a million who stay. And what happens to us?

  I know that we are intended to build a new world, but I also know that nothing is certain. It is clear to me that we are supposed to escape into the future—to go forward to a time when Earth has healed herself.

  Somebody else also knows these things, and they want to escape into the future instead of us, and they are here and they are fighting hard.

  I’m exhausted beyond words and I feel sick to see the way this whole affair seems to be going off the rails, but my body has betrayed me with exhaustion, and I’ve got to sleep.

  I fall back on the bed. I reach over to the table and take my gun in my hand, and clutch it, holding it over my heart. I close my eyes.

  7

  DEVILS

  A bright light—very bright—brought David’s eyes flying open. Before he could think, he had leaped out of bed, but it was gone now and he was blinded.

  He stood poised at his bedside, his heart thundering, desperate for his vision to return. When it did, he saw a shadowy form between himself and the window. Instinctively, he stepped back. It didn’t move, but he could see in the untidy glow of the auroras that it was something fantastic, feathered, massive, radiating a presence he could actually feel, a kind of immediate, spontaneous joy that made him think of the joy of a child, but also another, more fundamental sense of the rightness and balance even of this terrible time, and he seemed to see a deep secret, that the world rides a wire of balance that man cannot break.

  No matter how bad things seem, in some deep living heart, the heart of the universe itself, always, all is well.

  It was Quetzalcoatl in all his richness and joy.

  The emotions were confusing and powerful and the apparition was so real that he drew away from it—and felt, then, the brush of feathers as the thing came right up to him, its eyes infinite pools of kindness, its soft hands caressing him and, it seemed, dipping into his skin as if it was cream, sliding with a quivering, eerie tension, into him. He twisted, he pulled at it, but it drifted between his fingers like smoke, and kept on entering him until it was entirely inside him. Gradually, the whooshing of its feathers was absorbed in the trembling rumble of his heart.

  Gagging, his pulse soaring, sweat a
nd tears pouring off him, he retched, then fell against the edge of his bed, then staggered into the bathroom.

  He was heaving over the toilet when a cool hand came under his forehead. Shocked, he jumped back and turned—and there stood Katie in white silk pajamas, her hair loose around her face. He tried to say something but had to return to his vomiting, and she held a damp cloth against his forehead as he struggled.

  “Let it come,” she said, “let it be.”

  It was, frankly, immeasurably reassuring to feel her holding him and hear the calm in her voice.

  Finally, the feeling subsided. He straightened up. “I’m sorry. I—my God, that light! What was that light?”

  She gave him a quizzical look. Not for the first time he saw past her job to the woman, noticing the sensuality of her lips and the seductive directness of her eyes. They were not gentle eyes, but frank ones.

  She guided him back into the bedroom. “I think you had a nightmare, David.” And also, that was the first time she’d addressed him by anything except “Doctor.” She drew him down to his bedside.

  “That light—my God!”

  “I didn’t see a light. I heard you yelling.”

  “I hope I didn’t wake up the whole house.” The medical staff were all on this floor. He did not need to be embarrassed. He did not need to appear weak.

  “Just me and Marian.” She gave him a tentative smile. “I told her I’d handle you.”

  “I’ve made a fool of myself.”

  “You’ve revealed yourself to be a man under pressure.”

  “It was weak and unprofessional and I’m sorry you and Marian had to hear it.”

  She ruffled his hair. “Is there anything else?”

  There was, he realized. There could be. But then he had a change of heart. That sort of fraternization was just a bit less bad than diddling with patients, especially in an enclosed situation like the Acton Clinic was becoming. Or rather, had become.

  “Thanks for helping me, Katie.”

  She smiled, he thought, a little sadly. “Not a problem. You’re a lot easier than the patients.”

  “I should hope so.”

  “Incidentally, if you want to read the paper files, could you please ask me in the future, David? I’d really appreciate that.”

  “Of course. I was just curious, Katie.”

  “Oh, hey. You do know how to use given names. Everybody’s been wondering.”

  As if on impulse, she leaned forward, lifted onto her toes, and brushed his cheek with a kiss. He started to speak, but she held her finger to his lips, then waved it. Then she turned and was gone.

  The little intimacy had shot right through him, warm and immediate and comforting. The need he had been feeling for a woman surfaced so intensely that he sprang up in his pajamas.

  Sitting on the edge of his bed, he took deep breaths, waiting for the desire to subside. He could probably go across the hall right now and have her. That had been a clear invitation. But no, it was a mistake.

  And then he thought, That light was real. But the hallucination that had followed—dear God, the pressure was really getting to him, driving itself deep. That had been Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec god he was identified with in Herbert Acton’s note. Now he was, himself, integrating the imagery into his fantasy life.

  Well, here was some pretty obvious psychology: he wanted to identify himself with the compassionate and healing aspect of the dark religion that was obsessing the world, and had long since seduced this place.

  He worried about the light. Finally, he called the guard station.

  “Did you notice a flash?”

  “Yes, Doctor. But we don’t know its origin.”

  “The facility is quiet?”

  “All secure.”

  He padded across his bedroom and gazed out the window. Katie must not have seen it because it had originated on this side of the building.

  Standing, watching the grounds pale in the auroral light, he felt a great surge of compassion for this little community whose welfare had been put in his hands.

  But then he saw—could that be real? No, it was a trick of light, surely. But then he saw it again, a supple figure moving toward the copse of honey locust that stood between the parking area and the formal gardens behind the house. Was that somebody heading toward the gate?

  He watched the trees, their leaves fluttering in the wind. No, he was sure he had seen a woman going toward the gate—a woman in what looked like a hospital gown.

  Not a staffer, then. So, a patient. He went back to his phone. “Dr. Ford again. You guys need to light us up, we’ve got somebody on the grounds. A woman. Heading for the main gate.”

  “Got it. I’ll alert perimeter and send a team out.”

  As David hung up, the night security officer threw the switches that flood-illuminated the entire property.

  A moment later, three uniformed guards, guns on their hips, came up from the gatehouse, and two more from the nearest of the new watchtowers that had been installed along the perimeter.

  He grabbed the phone again. “I want a patient census. Every room, including the lockdowns.”

  “We’re moving.”

  Glen he trusted, and his security team was the best money could buy . . . but, these days, how good was that? He did not want to end up having to call a family that was paying fifty grand a month to keep their patient safe, to tell them that he or she had left care, especially not naked in the middle of the night.

  Should he go down and supervise? No, that would send the wrong message. He needed to show his people he had faith in their abilities—or, at the least, to conceal his suspicions. Only if a patient was apprehended would he go down. If it turned out to be a member of the staff, he’d leave the matter to others.

  Still, he might be needed, so he pulled jeans and a sweatshirt over his pajamas, then thrust his feet into a pair of sandals.

  His phone rang. He picked it up and Katie said, “Now I see light.”

  “A possible patient outside,” he said. “I thought I saw somebody over by the parking lot.”

  “Oh, okay. Do you need me again?”

  “No, I’m waiting on a census from security. If we’ve got somebody missing, I’ll call you.”

  He hung up. A moment later, the phone rang again. “We’re fully complimented,” the security officer said without preamble. “The patients are all in their beds and the staff’s all accounted for.”

  “Well, okay, then chalk it up to inexperience.”

  The security officer chuckled. “Doc Ullman lit us up twice a week at least. Comes with the territory.”

  “Boy, does it ever.” He hung up. The flash of light, the bizarre hallucination, the person outside—were they all somehow connected?

  Thinking back, he thought maybe he recognized the woman. That flowing hair—maybe it had been Caroline Light. But she’d been so extremely distraught—or acting the part so well—that he had moved her into a padded room, which meant constant surveillance, so surely she hadn’t managed to just stroll out.

  He sank down onto his bed. He was absolutely exhausted and dawn was not far off. But before he went to sleep, he had to face some facts. First, there had been that flash. It couldn’t have been an aurora, they weren’t that bright. Maybe an exploding satellite, but then surely Katie would have noticed it, too. No, he thought that the flash must have come from below his windows, either from inside the building or from the grounds in front. From Katie’s room on the back, it must not have been noticeable.

  Then had come the hallucination of Quetzalcoatl. It had been very vivid, but his overwrought and overtaxed mind was the explanation for it.

  He was less sure about the presence of Caroline Light outside. That had seemed real. He had been awake, standing at the window.

  He decided to look in on her, and not rely on the surveillance system, but do it personally.

  He went quietly into the corridor. All the doors were closed, including Katie’s. Even so, a glance up at the surve
illance camera at the far end of the ceiling made him wonder who might be watching him besides the guard station, or if anyone there might be part of the opposition.

  He came to the door that led to the patient wing, swiped his right forefinger across the reader, and waited for it to unlock. But as he waited, he heard sounds coming from the part of the recreation complex that was in the old house, which included the art room with its tall windows, and the music room. Somebody was playing the wonderful old Steinway that was there.

  Immediately, he changed direction and hurried down the service stairway that led from this back hall to the pantry below. At the foot of the stairs, he stopped and listened. No question now. That was Beethoven’s Appassionata, and the pianist was superb. The only problem was that it was nearly five in the morning, and the public rooms were closed.

  As he passed through the patients’ dining area and the sound grew more distinct, the superb musicianship made him think that it might be a recording.

  At the door to the music room, though, he saw a vague figure sitting at the instrument.

  It was a woman in a nightgown, her hair down her back.

  Caroline?

  No, the hair was straight, not shimmering and flowing like Caroline’s. The woman was wrapped in an enormous robe. As she played, her body moved gracefully. She was easily good enough to go on stage. A member of the class, then?

  He knew that he should not approach this person without support personnel equipped with restraints, and he hesitated—whereupon she stopped playing.

  “I’m not dangerous, Doctor,” she said without turning around.

  He knew the voice. It was Linda Fairbrother. No wonder she had been identified with the god of music. He wished he had her glyph with him. He could test the process. If it worked, he’d awaken the whole class. The time for waiting was past, he sensed that clearly, and he was going to trust his instincts now.

  “Linda,” he said, “I think there’s a time for this. Another time.”