Caleb looked around in horror as more doors opened, as an old woman came staggering out of her kitchen, bloody knife in hand, her own throat gushing blood.
A flash of light in his brain: and millions of just such images race out from all corners of the Earth. He sees it all simultaneously, all of it happening everywhere… So much confusion, overwhelming voices and visions, the weight of the past and present and future colliding into a space never designed to handle it all.
Phoebe cringed and felt the pain in an equal rush of unbearable agony. What was it Tesla had said? The bliss of ignorance? She imagined for an instant that this world, what they had been experiencing for thousands of years of recorded history, would be recalled now as the golden age, a paradise of just such ignorance before someone broke the commandment, ate from the Forbidden Tree, and expelled everyone into the world of pain and unrelenting knowledge.
Caleb had the same analogy, suffering the same feeling except ten-thousand fold as his was the hand that picked the apple.
He fell to his knees beside Diana.
Why, why was this their plan? And…was this what Waxman, not even a psychic himself, had really foreseen all those years ago?
Either Caleb said it, or Montross.
God help us.
“Everyone is psychic now.”
Epilogue
The lead driver of the military convoy performed a perfect U-turn and began doubling back. He led the other support Humvee up the icy incline, and thought he had to hand it to these people.
Hiding out up in this remote wilderness, with only one snowbound road up the side of a dangerous cliff, was not a bad choice. He hadn’t been sure why initially, just as they were closing in, the mission had been called off and he was sent to turn around, but then the call came to resume operations and acquire the targets.
He ascended the hill, following the hairpin turns and grinding up with little problem despite the several inches of snow. And as far as missions went, this certainly was a piece of cake.
The targets. He laughed to his colleague, and was tempted to jump on the Com and talk to the others behind him, throwing some sarcasm in about sending in the elite forces to capture two infants from a doting old grandmother, but in this age, who was he to question?
A sudden, stabbing pain roared from the back of his head, simultaneously with a flood of images and feelings and vision upon vision. Friends, lovers, his mother — as a child, and his own kids, grown and sickened and dying, and…
He screamed and let go of the wheel. Some basic part of his training kicked in and he motioned for his mate to take the wheel, but there was no response, only screaming from the passenger seat — and from his Com, he realized eventually, in between the fits of his own howling and pleading.
He never saw the next turn or even realized he had stomped on the accelerator in an effort to drive out the flood of visions.
The Humvee went soaring over the edge, through the shattered guardrail. During the plunge, he was so caught up in the kaleidoscopic onslaught of psychic visions he didn’t have the luxury to enjoy the beauty of the electro-magnetically-enhanced aurora forming a shield-like pattern above.
A mile up the road, the ground leveled and a bisecting trail, covered with snow, led the way into a pine-shrouded valley where a single home rested, chimney puffing smoke into the frigid sky, below the pulsating colors in the winter sky.
A lone light burned within, but outside, beyond the open door and at the end of ragged footsteps, lay an old woman, gasping out her dying breaths into the snow.
The man who cast no footprints lingered near the woman and tenderly knelt beside her during her last moments before he stepped into the home.
And the babies, asleep in their respective cribs in front of the crackling fireplace, stirred, turned and opened their eyes, fixing them on the newcomer.
“Dada,” one of them said.
And the flickering figure that cast no shadow bent toward them in a gentle, longing motion.
Author’s Notes
As with the other Morpheus novels, a lot of research went into this one. Maybe even more, given the direction this story started taking me, towards quantum theory and inter-dimensional travel and the like. My fascination with ancient history, modern conspiracy theories and science that may or may not be so ‘far out’, is something I try to incorporate into these novels, having these characters psychically probe the truth of things we just can’t seem to discover with our current capabilities.
The Woodpecker Program — The Russian Woodpecker was the nickname given to the mysterious and powerful low frequency signal which seemed like the sound of a woodpecker pecking a tree. The signal, originating out of Russia, was so powerful and so penetrating that it even began interfering with phones and radios worldwide. The mysterious signal seemed to be aimed squarely at the United States of America. Immediately theories sprang up that it was emanating from a ‘Tesla Generator’ and was an attempt to influence the weather patterns across the world, or to cause hallucinations or even cancer, and ultimately could be used as a means of mind control on entire populations.
Comet Icarus and the Lesser Dryas Event — ‘Icarus’ is my own name for the threat in this novel, but it is based on comet Encke and Olijato in the Taurids (Encke itself leading the stream). There are theories that one or more of these larger bodies — or others heretofore undiscovered — will go through dormant periods, then literally rip apart after a time of building energy. One of these such exploding fragments may have been responsible for the massive devastation evidenced across the Earth approximately twelve thousand years ago. Perhaps we are again due for another such event, as many researchers believe.
The World Energy Grid — the subject of a great many studies, books and beliefs, there is a long-standing notion that invisible energy gridlines connect sacred spots on our planet, and whether we’re calling these ley lines (with a nod to the faerie connection), Aboriginal ‘song-lines’, or something else, it is certainly interesting the number of ancient megalithic sites (and modern day centers of great political power) than can be connected by drawing such lines, leading of course to speculation that the ancients were on to something, and potentially able to tap into the great energies at these locations.
Nikola Tesla — I encourage anyone with interest to dive into a good biography of Nikola Tesla. His life truly is one of those stranger than fiction tales, right up to his demise. His work and then conflict with Edison is legendary, as are the theories about his suppressed technology, inventions that may have been appropriated for military uses or just buried so as not to provide free energy. His love for pigeons is well documented, including the notion that a certain white and grey one was instrumental in inspiring his visions. The idea that he was a remote viewer comes directly from his description of how and where he got his ideas. And lastly, the circumstances around his death (as his body was quickly removed and never autopsied or given a chance to be identified by his nephew, as well as indications that he told someone ‘they’ were after certain of his inventions and were coming for him) gave rise to conspiracy theories — notably that the Nazis assassinated him after taking the information, or as I have here, that a double was put in his place and he was taken away to continue his work.