The Omega Project

by Steve Alten

  My body spasmed out of control, the pain horrific. Paralyzed from the chest down, I forced shallow gasps as I lay helpless, facedown in the soil, each breath vying to be my last.

  Seconds from blacking out, my frenzied mind registered two final thoughts of madness — that the ants seemed to be abandoning my frayed carcass … and that something very large was hovering over me.

  My vision narrowed. Darkness enveloped the periphery. A haunting face hovered before me — the Angel of Death, no doubt, my old friend staring at me with dozens of eyes born from a hundred past lives.

  “Each past life ended brutally. Why are you here, Robert? What is your journey?”

  “I seek … Nirvana.”

  “You cannot achieve enlightenment while holding on to your anger.”

  Blind, my heartbeat erratic, I felt something heavy press against my face, covering my eyes and mouth. A viselike grip compressed my rib cage—

  Zap!

  A warm sensation moved down my spine, prying loose the Angel of Death’s frigid grip while neutralizing the progression of the ant toxin, at least enough to allow me to breathe.

  And then a powerful limb snaked its way around my waist, adhering to my torn jumpsuit as it lifted me effortlessly off the ground. Suddenly I was moving quickly through the forest, the pain driving me into darkness.

  19

  I died as a mineral and became a plant, I died as a plant and rose to animal, I died as animal and I was man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?

  — JALAL AD-DIN RUMI, Sufi poet

  The steady breeze of an air conditioner chilled my exposed flesh. I was naked, my eyes covered by a damp cloth, my arms and lower torso weighed down by the moist embrace of the cryogenic pod’s tetrodotoxin gel.

  Stretching beneath the slime, I embraced the joy of no longer being in pain.

  I was back.

  I could hear someone in the room. “God, what a dream. Andria? Jason? Jason, if that’s you, I’m gonna kick your ass. You have any idea how many times I tried using your emergency wake-up? Hey, butt head, do you hear me?”

  I sat up against the weight of the gel and reached for my face to remove the cloth.

  A hand cloaked in what felt like a rubber mitten intercepted the attempt, gently guiding my arm back inside the draining vat of sleep gel.

  The echo of trickling water calmed me, my mind hitching a ride on the soothing sound. “Guess this is all part of the wake-up protocol. Beats the hell out of being jabbed in the heart by a six-inch needle. So, who’s there? Quit screwing around. Lara?”

  Another gloved hand pressed gently against the base of my skull, and I looked up to see Lara hovering over me, her onyx hair falling past her delicate neck, her expression serene—

  — only my eyes were still closed!

  In the madness that was either another Omega dream, a continuation of the same dream, or a simple trip down Insanity Lane, I found myself tearing the moist cloth from my face — only to discover that I was not in Oceanus, I was in a cave, standing in the shallows of an underground stream bathed in a surreal orange light … that the wet cloth covering my eyes was a palm-size slug, and that my companion was a cephalopod!

  Correction: Cephaloped. Having evolved to inhabit the land, the walking, air breathing terrestrial squid stood nine feet tall on three and sometimes four thick tentacles, its dorsal flesh covered in coarse brown fur. Those tentacles that weren’t supporting its weight were treading air in a perpetual motion that made it almost impossible for me to gain clarity on its appearance, or to strike it, I quickly realized. The creature had assumed a defensive posture aimed at protecting its head — an oblong alien face situated beneath a skull that resembled brown leather stretched over bone. As wide as a pumpkin but irregular like a boulder, the massive cranial cavity also possessed a siphon — a two-foot curled organ the creature used for breathing.

  It was the siphon that had been the source of the pan flute — like sounds I had heard back in the jungle.

  Below the skull was the cephaloped’s collapsible mantle, which contained the stomach, vital organs, and the animal’s three hearts — at least the anatomical equivalents of what its oceanic ancestors had, according to Lara.

  My attention diverted to its eyes — two stereo-optic protrusions below a bony bridge running below its forehead. These thin twin muscular stalks, resembling foot-long elephants’ trunks, protruded from the center of its face like the handlebars of a child’s tricycle.

  At the end of each of the flexible organs was an eye. The corneas were bright yellow, like a jungle cat’s, the pupils black. Housed within the trunk socket, they possessed wrinkled lids poised both above and below. The effect created an expressive state and reminded me of the sullen eyes of Albert Einstein in his later, more contemplative years.

  Two more appendages protruded below the handlebar sight organs, only these offshoots were arms — shorter, four-foot-long raptor arms, each ending in a clawed thumb and forefinger. Poised below the cluster of arm sockets was either the creature’s thick neck — or maybe it was its abdomen, I don’t know. All I could see was the hint of a beaked mouth, and a cluster of sockets for those hypnotically powerful eight tentacles.

  We stood and stared at one another, it clearly more fearful of me than I of it, despite the fact that any one of its tentacles could squeeze me to death like an anaconda.

  I only broke eye contact when I felt something wiggling on one of my calf muscles. Looking down at my naked body, I was shocked to find it was covered, not in tetrodotoxin gel, but with foot-long leeches! These slimy black creatures were bloated from sucking my blood — the revelation of which instantly made me woozy, and I toppled forward — only to be caught by my cephaloped guardian, who gently returned me to the cool embrace of the underground stream. Lacking the strength to move, I laid my head back against a rock and watched as the creature delicately plucked a ripe leech from my right calf muscle, revealing an ant bite the size of a quarter, the raised flesh badly bruised.

  The ceph’s using the leeches to suck out the ant toxin …

  Before I could even weigh the implications of that thought, I caught a glimpse of the underside of its tentacle — hairless pink flesh adorned with two rows of suckers.

  I held up my right arm — the telltale welts matched.

  My mind raced in its delirium. The cephaloped had rescued me from drowning, it had somehow restored the use of my appendage … and it had saved me from the ants!

  “Thank you.”

  The startled land squid moved so fast I could not track it, the massive creature somehow disappearing from view. Sitting up, my eyes scanned every square inch of cave before and around me.

  It was gone.

  What the fuck, Eisenbraun?

  Vertigo sent me sprawling back into the water, the disturbance igniting the stream in shimmering waves of fluorescent orange light. Triboluminescence is a geological feature of both sphalerite and tremolite; friction applied to these two minerals actually causes the rock to glow. The entire bed of the stream must have been composed of one or both of these minerals, the rapid movement of the rushing water across its surface bathing the entire underground passage in its ethereal orange light.

  Lying back, I stared at the cave ceiling thirty feet above my head. Stalactites hung like twisted canine teeth, the smooth crystal rock twinkling as it reflected the glowing stream.

  Giddy, I recited a rhyme that traced back to my Cub Scout days: “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”

  The words echoed throughout the passage, dispersed into God knows how many connecting tunnels. Lying gently in the stream, I was stuck in my Omega dream, far from merry.

  Was it a dream? How could it not be? Nearly every episode, every near-death experience since my “awakening” could be traced back to something I encountered before I had been forcibly frozen, from the giant bats on Dharma’s sexy emerald moonscape surcoat to my imagined rescue
r — an evolved land octopus — no doubt conjured from my brief yet satisfying first encounter with Lara and her two intelligent pets.

  The memory served me well. I realized the cephaloped had not simply evaporated into the cold, dank cave air — it had expertly camouflaged itself.

  Sitting up slowly, I scanned my surroundings once more. The stream wove its way through and around three-to-five-foot-high stalagmites, a cluster of which was covered in moss.

  Hmm. My shy cephaloped guardian did have hair to disguise …

  Removing an engorged leech from my left ankle, I tossed the grotesque segmented worm at the rock cluster — which miraculously bloomed into a head and tentacles, one of which caught the dark projectile.

  “Bravo, Oscar.”

  The spooked cephaloped scurried back another five feet, but remained visible.

  I held up my hands, hoping to disarm its fear … no pun intended.

  After several minutes, the giant terrestrial squid moved closer.

  Removing another leech, I reached out passively with it.

  The cephaloped hesitated. After a moment it extended one of its muscular tentacles an impressive twelve feet and accepted my offering, releasing the leech back into the stream.

  Encouraged, we repeated this exercise until I stood naked before it, leech-free.

  Holding out my right arm, I pointed to the bruised-yellow traces of suction marks, then at the being’s closest tentacle. I nodded slowly.

  The ceph nodded back. We were communicating … Now what?

  Weak from hunger, I motioned to my mouth.

  Somehow the intelligent creature seemed to understand. It looked around, only there appeared to be nothing edible in the cave. It’s debating whether to bring the food to me or bring me to the food.

  Rendering its decision, the cephaloped moved to the nearest cave wall. Stretching a tentacle above its head in one fluid motion, it scaled the rock face like a spider, using its sucker pads to grip the surface. Reaching up to the ceiling, it suspended itself effortlessly from two stalactites using two of its legs which, anatomically speaking, were now functioning as arms.

  For a long moment its simply hung there, watching me with those telescopic yellow eyes — then, with the grace of a gibbon, the ceph reached two of its remaining six tentacles to the ceiling behind it, gripping two more stalactites while simultaneously releasing the first, moving away from me like a trapeze artist swinging from one acrobat partner to the next, its eyes shifting as its body seemed to turn itself inside out with each revolution.

  Its haunting yellow gaze left me only after it disappeared into the darkness.

  I was alone.

  Should I follow it, stay put, or explore the rest of my imaginary surroundings?

  Deciding on the latter, I climbed onto the rocky shoreline and headed downstream in the opposite direction of my rescuer. I was naked, both physically and metaphorically speaking — a twenty-first-century Homo sapiens deposited into the primordial future, lacking weapons and access to my own biological crutch of intelligence. And perhaps that was intentional — my mind sending me a message in my cryogenic dream: There will be no cheating in this Great Die-Off, Eisenbraun …

  “There you are.” Bending over, I picked up my jumpsuit, pleased to find the binoculars hidden beneath the tattered garment, now stained in frightening clusters of my own blood. After carefully checking the clothing for any insect stragglers, I dressed and began to feel a little less vulnerable.

  The location of the jumpsuit indicated the cephaloped had brought me into the cave this way; had it purposely left in the opposite direction? Assuming it intended to feed me, why had it not brought me to the food? Was it afraid that I might again be exposed to the dangers of the forest? Dream or no dream, the ants had nearly made me their breakfast and I had experienced the agony of every bite; that the forest held other unexpected threats, I had no doubts. Still, why had it rescued me? Was I a curiosity, a diversion, or had I become its pet?

  I followed the passage another half mile until it twisted up ahead. Rounding the left bend, my ears were assaulted by a rush of rapids as the cavern dropped several hundred feet in a steep three-level grade. Feeling the rocks taking a toll on my bare feet I debated whether to continue on. My eyes followed the course of the stream, which appeared to slow, disappearing into a section of tunnel that seemed different.

  Using the binoculars, I confirmed my suspicions … the new passage below was bleeding daylight.

  It took me twenty minutes to negotiate the descent, another five before I found myself standing before the entrance to a grand chamber, the arched ceiling towering six stories above a shallow pool of water that glistened emerald green. The cavern ran on perhaps another five hundred feet before narrowing to an exit cloaked in curtains of mist, backlit by a brilliant haze of sunlight.

  I sloshed knee-deep through the waterway, each stride releasing cascading ripples of sound and light up the walls of the chamber, my jaunt accompanied by a bizarre echo of raindrops. Pausing to listen to these random splattering sounds, I looked up, expecting to find a rooftop of dripping stalactites … discovering instead a colony of giant bats! Thousands of the creatures hung inverted in a cloud of twitching bodies, the raindrops — bat droppings.

  My heart pounded heavy in my chest as I continued moving toward the light at a snail’s pace, praying the demonic mammals would remain asleep. The force of the stream increased as I neared the mist-enshrouded exit, my eyes gradually adjusting to the daylight.

  My God …

  The thirty-foot-high arch ended in a dizzying precipice, the stream bleeding over its ledge to become a waterfall that plunged a thousand feet onto the rock-strewn beach below. That I knew the beach was doubly unnerving: I had crossed the seemingly endless plain spread out before me days ago. The cave where I now stood was situated within the cliff face I had scaled my first night in la-la land.

  It felt early. The sky was bathed in predawn gray, a light mist playing across the valley of sand. A salty breeze howled softly through the archway, but the ocean, thankfully, was nowhere to be seen. Just to be sure, I reached for the binoculars dangling from my neck and scanned the western horizon.

  It was out there somewhere, concealed behind distance and fog. Having witnessed the full moon’s effect on the tide, I thought it possible the beach might remain a barren desert for another three to four weeks, depending on the radical pattern of the altered lunar orbit.

  Three to four weeks … I wondered if I’d be awake by then.

  But wait … the desert was not barren after all! As the sun rose behind the cliffs, its golden rays reflected a brilliant spark upon an immense object that had washed ashore against its will. I trained my glasses on the spot, the glistening monstrosity anchored in the sand perhaps a mile or so away.

  Oceanus …

  20

  I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.

  — BUDDHA

  It became almost impossible to think clearly or organize my thoughts.

  Real or not, the process of withdrawing the ant toxin had cost me a pint or three of blood — at least that’s what it felt like. Woozy, I backed away from the precipice, retracing my path as quickly as I dared through the cavern of bats, sensing, from the increased activity overhead, that the furry fanged creatures were awakening with the dawn.

  I cannot say how long it took me to return to the section of cave where I had last seen the cephaloped; perhaps it was an hour, perhaps half a day … or maybe I had never left? Maybe I had dreamt the whole bat-infested chamber and the vision of Oceanus beached like a giant globe while I lay — delirious; the entire episode a hallucination caused by the real or imagined loss of blood. All I know is that one moment I thought I was slogging my way up stream, the next — I was lying in it.

  The prolonged immersion in cold water helped remove the inflammation from my body and eventually revived me. And yet I felt so drain
ed that I could have remained there indefinitely, floating in waves of ethereal orange light had my hunger pangs not intervened.

  Rolling over onto my knees, I dragged myself onto my feet and leaned against a stalagmite, the dripping rags clinging to my limbs assuring me that I had at least ventured through part of the cave. And so I set off again, this time moving upstream, following the path of the eight-legged being that had saved my life, even though I could find no evidence that our shared moment in time had ever taken place.

  The stream ran on for miles, forcing me to hike uphill along a rocky shoreline that twisted and turned and occasionally intersected other “dry” passages. I ignored these auxiliary routes as they were dark and offered little promise of food. Somewhere up ahead was an exit to the forest, and I had little choice but to find it.

  Daylight became a speck in the distance, then a narrowing funnel, then finally a hole in the ceiling where the water rushed in. Working my way up to the exit by way of stalagmites and boulders, I crawled through a four-foot slit in the rock — emerging beneath the root system of a massive tree that fed from a swollen river, the overflowing banks of which were surrounded by wild ferns amid a backdrop of lush greenery.

  The sun was high in the sky, filtering through a swaying canopy of treetops located several hundred feet above the fertile forest floor. Shrill chirps rented a woodland air still damp from a morning rain. Somewhere up ahead the thicket reverberated with sound and I moved toward it, readying myself to rush back to the stream at the first sign of anything resembling a hungry ant.

  It was not ants that I heard thrashing in the bushes but a snake, its coiled seven-foot oily black body entwined by the crimson red legs of a three-foot-long centipede. The spotted yellow and violet caterpillar-like insect was adhered to the serpent’s midsection, the smaller attacker’s fangs having already delivered their venom.