The Omega Theory
ALSO BY MARK ALPERT
Final Theory
 | Touchstone |
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by Mark Alpert
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Touchstone hardcover edition February 2011
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Designed by Akasha Archer
Map by Bryan Christie Design
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Alpert, Mark, 1961–
The omega theory : a novel / Mark Alpert.
p. cm.
“A Touchstone book.”
1. Physics teachers—Fiction. 2. Nuclear terrorism—Fiction. 3. Women physicists—Fiction. 4. Historians of science—Fiction. 5. Women intelligence officers—Fiction. 6. Einstein, Albert, 1879–1955—Influence—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3601.L67O64 2011
813'.6—dc22
2010043737
ISBN 978-1-4165-9534-2
ISBN 978-1-4391-0008-0 (ebook)
For my parents and my brother, who taught me how to dream
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
—A
LBERT
E
INSTEIN
1
IT HAPPENED ON A TUESDAY, JUNE 7TH, AT 4:46
P.M.
WHILE MICHAEL GUPTA
was in his behavioral therapy session. There was a knock on the door and Dr. Parsons went to answer it. Just before he got there, the door opened wide and Michael heard a quick, muffled burst. Dr. Parsons tumbled backward and his head hit the floor. He lay motionless on his back, a jagged black hole in the center of his polo shirt. In less than a second, the hole filled with blood.
They were in the computer room of the Upper Manhattan Autism Center, which Michael visited every weekday afternoon. He was nineteen years old and his teachers had said he’d made great progress over the past two years, but he still needed to improve his social skills so that he wouldn’t get nervous on a crowded sidewalk or start moaning if someone bumped into him. So Dr. Parsons had found a computer program called Virtual Contact that presented simulations of people and places, animated figures walking down realistic-looking streets. The point of the program was to teach Michael that ordinary social encounters weren’t dangerous. The doctor was just about to show him how to launch the simulation when they heard the knock at the door.
About one and a half seconds after Dr. Parsons collapsed, a man and a woman stepped through the doorway, both dressed in baggy, dark blue jumpsuits. The man was tall and his hair was a black crew cut and he had a long, curved scar on the side of his neck. Michael didn’t look at the man’s face. He usually avoided looking at faces because he didn’t like to make eye contact, and most of the time he couldn’t figure out the meaning of facial expressions anyway. The woman was also tall and her hair was almost as short as the man’s, but Michael could tell it was a woman because her bosoms puffed out the front of her jumpsuit. Her left hand had bandages on three of the fingers, and in her right hand she held a gun.
Michael knew about guns. He’d seen them before, and not just in video games. The woman’s gun had a silencer, a fat gray cylinder attached to the muzzle. That was why the gunshot had sounded muffled. The woman had shot Dr. Parsons and now she was going to shoot him, too.
She took a step toward him. Michael let out a moan. He slid off his chair and curled up into a ball on the linoleum floor. He closed his eyes and started calculating the Fibonacci sequence, which was something he did whenever he was frightened. Michael had inherited excellent mathematical abilities; in fact, he was a great-great-grandson of Albert Einstein, although he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about that. And the Fibonacci sequence was easy to calculate: each number in the sequence is equal to the sum of the two previous numbers. The digits flashed on the black screen of his eyelids, swiftly streaming from right to left like the words at the bottom of a television screen: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89 . . .
The woman took two more steps and stood over him. Michael opened his eyes. Although his forehead was pressed against the linoleum, he could see her shadow.
“It’s all right, Michael,” she said. Her voice was quiet and slow. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
He moaned louder, trying to drown her out.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “We’re going on a trip. A big adventure.”
He heard a jangling noise. Out of the corner of his eye he saw two pairs of wheels. The man with the black crew cut had rolled an ambulance gurney into the room. He pulled a lever that lowered the gurney to the floor. At the same moment, the woman grabbed Michael by the wrist. He tried to scream but she clapped her hand over his mouth. Then she turned to the man. “Get the fentanyl!”
Michael started thrashing. He kicked and squirmed and flailed so violently that all he could remember afterward was a sickening whirl. They strapped him into the gurney, tying down his arms and legs. Then they put a plastic mask over his face, an oxygen mask. Michael couldn’t scream, couldn’t breathe. All he could do was bang the back of his head against the gurney’s mattress, pounding so hard that the guardrails on either side of him vibrated. The woman turned the valve of a steel canister that was connected by plastic tubing to Michael’s oxygen mask. He felt air pumping into the mask, air that smelled sweet and bitter at the same time. In a few seconds all the strength drained out of his limbs and he couldn’t move at all.
It was like being halfway between awake and asleep. He could still see and hear but everything seemed very distant. The man and woman in blue jumpsuits pushed the gurney down the corridor toward the emergency exit. Then they slammed through the door and headed for an ambulance that was parked at the corner of Broadway and Ninety-eighth Street. Michael saw a crowd of people on the sidewalk, all of them stopping to stare at the gurney. He was so groggy he could barely lift his head, but he forced himself to look at the faces in the crowd. He was looking for David Swift. The last time Michael had been in trouble, two years ago, David had saved him. Ever since then Michael had lived in David’s apartment, sharing a bedroom with David’s son, Jonah. They were Michael’s family now, David and his wife, Monique, and Jonah and Baby Lisa. He was certain that David would come running down the street any second.
But David wasn’t there. All the people on the sidewalk were strangers. The man with the black crew cut opened the rear doors of the ambulance and then he and the woman hoisted the gurney into the vehicle. The woman got inside, too, and shut the doors while the man walked to the front of the ambulance and got into the driver’s seat. The woman sat down in a jump seat beside the gurney. Her knees were just a few inches to the left of Michael’s head. Then the ambulance started moving.
Michael stared straight up at a control panel on the ceiling and began to count the number of switches there, but the woman leaned over him, blocking his view. She removed his oxygen mask. “There, that’s more comfortable,” she said. “You’re not hurt anywhere, are you?”
He took a deep breath. With the mask off, his head began to clear. He tried to turn away from the woman, but she grasped his chin with her bandaged fingers and pulled it back. Her grip was very strong. “I’m sorry we had to rush you,” she said, “but we don’t have much time.”
She leaned over some more, bringing her face so close that Michael couldn’t help but look at it. She had gray eyes and a slender nose. Her eyebrows looked like black commas. Her lips curved into a smile, which was confusing. Why was she smiling at him?
“My name is Tamara,” she said. “You’re a handsome boy, you know that?”
She let go of his chin and stroked his hair. He wanted to scream again but his throat was so tight he couldn’t make a sound. Her bandaged fingers moved slowly across his scalp.
“I’m taking you to Brother Cyrus,” she said. “He’s looking forward to meeting you.”
Michael closed his eyes. He tried again to calculate the Fibonacci sequence, but instead of numbers he saw words in his head now, scrolling rapidly from right to left. They were German words:
Die allgemeine Relativitatstheorie war bisher in erster Linie
. . .
“You’ll like Brother Cyrus. He’s a good man. And right now he needs your help. It’s very important.”
He kept his eyes closed. Maybe if he ignored her long enough, she would stop talking and go away. But after a few seconds he felt the woman’s hand on his cheek.
“Are you listening, Michael? Do you understand what I’m saying?”
He nodded. The German words kept streaming through his head. Then the equations scrolled past, a long string of Greek letters and mathematical operations, with symbols shaped like snakes and pitchforks and crosses. They were his secret, his treasure. He’d promised David Swift that he’d never reveal the theory to anyone.
He opened his eyes. “I won’t help you,” he said. “You killed Dr. Parsons.”
“I’m sorry, that was unavoidable. We have to follow orders.”