The Omega Theory by Mark Alpert Read Free Book Online

him relentlessly, chasing him halfway across the country. He’d never noticed her age because he was too busy running away from her. But this time was different, he thought. Agent Parker was trying to help them now. And they needed her help.
    David decided to trust her. He’d already told Monique about his conversation with Jacob Steele. Now it was time to tell Lucille. “I have a lead for you,” he said. “I can’t say for sure if it has anything to do with the kidnapping. But it might.”
    Lucille raised her eyes. They narrowed, instantly alert. “What?”
    “Just before you came to get me, I talked to Jacob Steele at the conference. He’s the director of the Advanced Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland. We were talking about the Iranian nuclear test and Jacob said he’d detected a spacetime disruption at the exact moment of the explosion.”
    “Spacetime is the coordinate grid of our universe,” Monique added. “It’s the three dimensions of space—length, width, and height—plus the dimension of time. Einstein showed that space and time are joined together in a continuum that changes its shape near massive objects, bending around stars and planets and—”
    “I know what spacetime is.” Lucille pulled a notebook and pencil out of the inside pocket of her jacket. “I’ve had to learn a lot of this physics crap because of you two.” She jotted something in her notebook, then turned to David. “Tell me more about this disruption. What did Steele say exactly?”
    “Well, we didn’t get a chance to talk for long. He said the disturbance spread from the nuclear test site, mangling the dimensions of space and time as it moved outward. And he detected it with an instrument he called the Caduceus Array, which is a strange name for a physics experiment. A caduceus is the twisting-snakes symbol that you usually see at hospitals and doctors’ offices.”
    Monique shook her head. “I never heard of this instrument. Jacob’s never written about it in any of his papers. It must be something new.”
    “Anything else?” Lucille asked.
    David searched his memory for the exact words Jacob had used. “He said the disruption was like a rip in the fabric of reality, a break in the continuity of the universe. And it showed that someone was deliberately tampering with spacetime.”
    Lucille jotted a few more words in her notebook. “You said it occurred at the same time as the Iranian nuclear test, right? So was it like a shock wave from the explosion?”
    Monique stepped forward. She was better than David at explaining the physics. “It wasn’t just an explosion. The universe has big explosions all the time, novas and supernovas and gamma-ray bursts that are trillions of times more powerful than atomic bombs. The energy they release can change the shape of spacetime, but none of these events can tear the fabric apart.” She shook her head again. “No, you’d have to know the unified theory to do that. The theory is like the blueprints for the universe—it shows the whole structure of spacetime. And if you have the blueprints, you can see how to change the structure.” As she spoke she gestured at the walls of the interrogation room. David had seen her do the same thing during her lectures in Pupin Hall. “That’s what happened two years ago with Amil Gupta. He used the theory to build a weapon that could focus vast amounts of energy on any point in spacetime. And this event in Iran looks awfully similar.”
    “So you’re saying the Iranians have the theory now? And they’re using it to build a weapon?”
    “Who knows?” Monique threw her hands in the air. “We thought Michael was the only one who knew the equations. But maybe someone else has figured them out.”
    Lucille thought about it for a moment. She pursed her lips and tapped the eraser end of her pencil against her chin. “Okay, but what does all this have to do with the kidnapping? If the Iranians already know the unified