The Null Prophecy Read online

  Copyright © 2017 by Michael Guillen

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, website, or broadcast.

  The Author is represented by Ambassador Literary Agency, Nashville, TN.

  Quote in chapter 34 from Carl Laemmle’s Frankenstein, Universal Pictures Corp., 1932.

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  Cataloging-in-Publication data on file with the Library of Congress

  First e-book edition 2107: ISBN 978-1-62157-681-5

  Originally published in hardcover, 2017

  Published in the United States by

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  ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

  Bridges to Infinity: The Human Side of Mathematics

  Five Equations That Changed the World: The Power and Poetry of Mathematics

  Can a Smart Person Believe in God?

  Amazing Truths: How Science and the Bible Agree

  For Dr. John and Mrs. Jane Livermore,

  Mr. John and Mrs. Norma Bowles,

  and Dr. Hussein and Mrs. Karen Yilmaz,

  who opened their hearts and homes to me

  at critical times in my life.

  With love and gratitude.

  DISCLAIMER

  This is a work of fiction, peopled by and involving foreign and domestic companies, institutions, organizations, and activities—private, public, and government—that are products of the author’s imagination. Where actual names appear, they are used fictitiously and do not necessarily depict their actual conduct or purpose. For further reading on the very real science upon which this novel is based, the reader is referred to the bibliography at the end.

  Contents

  Disclaimer

  Chapter 1: Chilly Reception

  Chapter 2: Thrill Ride

  Chapter 3: Familia

  Chapter 4: Stormy Thoughts

  Chapter 5: Cashing in the Chips

  Chapter 6: Destiny

  Chapter 7: Anonymous

  Chapter 8: Distress Call

  Chapter 9: Whale of a Problem

  Chapter 10: The Choice

  Chapter 11: True Love

  Chapter 12: High-Seas Cowboy

  Chapter 13: Guardian Angels

  Chapter 14: Going Deep

  Chapter 15: Sea of Questions

  Chapter 16: Heart of Cold

  Chapter 17: Signs and Wonders

  Chapter 18: Unmasked

  Chapter 19: Freedom Revisited

  Chapter 20: Rude Awakening

  Chapter 21: Sheer Madness

  Chapter 22: Magnetic Therapy

  Chapter 23: Unwelcome Visitors

  Chapter 24: Home Again

  Chapter 25: No Rest for the Weary

  Chapter 26: Ambush

  Chapter 27: Here Comes the Sun

  Chapter 28: Going it Alone

  Chapter 29: Urgent Business

  Chapter 30: Out of Control

  Chapter 31: Lunacy

  Chapter 32: Crossroads

  Chapter 33: Shifting Sand

  Chapter 34: On Board

  Chapter 35: Lost Souls

  Chapter 36: Stolen Vehicle

  Chapter 37: False Start

  Chapter 38: Playing with Fire

  Chapter 39: Hope or Despair

  Chapter 40: Trust

  Chapter 41: A New Day

  Chapter 42: Damage Control

  Chapter 43: On Stage

  Chapter 44: Showtime

  Chapter 45: Weighty Matters

  Chapter 46: Power of Faith

  Chapter 47: Seeing Red

  Chapter 48: The Ditch

  Chapter 49: All Clear

  Chapter 50: Final Reckoning

  Chapter 51: Second Coming

  Chapter 52: Second Chances

  Chapter 53: Hope

  Chapter 54: The Study of Lightning

  Recommended Reading

  CHAPTER 1

  CHILLY RECEPTION

  SATURDAY, APRIL 22 (7:00 A.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME)

  CANADIAN FORCES STATION ALERT; NUNAVUT, CANADA

  Dallan O’Malley leaned into the squall, his face turned away from the howling, freezing madness. Small, hard snowflakes pelted the hood of his down parka—the pattering sound redolent of rainy days in the attic of his childhood home, where he often hid from his alcoholic father.

  He squared himself and, squinting hard, searched the shrouded landscape. His escort, base commander Major John Brody, was no longer in sight. A shiver of fear halted him; a few heartbeats later he burst out laughing.

  Flinging out his arms, he shouted, “This is freedom, baby!”

  He lifted his head and sucked in the bracing air, snowflakes and all, then pushed ahead blindly. A dozen or so halting steps later he bumped into the big man, who spun around and shouted, “There you are! You okay?”

  “Top of the world!” Dallan cried out. “Top of the world!”

  Brody waved him on. “Stay close!”

  Dallan wondered what it would be like to live and work year-round up here, the northernmost human outpost on Earth. They called CFS Alert “Santa’s Workshop.” But in truth it collected military and environmental intelligence for the Canadian government, sharing whatever wasn’t classified with clients worldwide, including Dallan’s own U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center.

  No way, he decided. This place would wear thin really fast.

  Not enough women.

  He thought of Lorena and immediately felt ashamed. Truth was he still loved her.

  Eventually, a gaudy, mustard-colored shack with a fire-engine red entryway materialized out of the paleness—like a specter dressed for Mardi Gras.

  A large animal, white and furry, dashed across his path. Startled, he looked to Brody.

  “Arctic wolf!” the major shouted. “People here have never hurt ’em so they come right up to you. They’re all over the station.”

  Once inside the building, Brody quickly led him to the magnetograph. The instrument didn’t look like much—metal boxes connected by electrical cables to a computer monitor—but it was the reason he schlepped all the way up here on short notice from Boulder.

  That, and to escape the mess with Lorena.

  On Brody’s orders, a technician cleared off a nearby table and then laid out a long sheet of graph paper.

  “This is the pole strength for the past twenty-four hours,” the base commander said, smoothing the paper with his hand. “Here’s where it started wavering yesterday morning.” He tapped his forefinger on the spot. “And we don’t know why.”

  Dallan’s mouth hung open. “Good god, it’s like a jumpy stock market!”

  “Yes.”

  He bent down for a closer look. “You sure this is for real?”

&n
bsp; “Oh, yeah. We’ve checked and rechecked the system for glitches a gazillion times. It’s as real as you and me.”

  It was instantly clear to Dallan why he’d been called. An instability this bad anywhere in the earth’s magnetic field would be alarming. But up here at the pole, naturally a weak spot to begin with, it was extremely dangerous.

  “What about the radiation levels?”

  “So far, so good—no increases.”

  The magnetosphere was the main barrier protecting Earth from the sun’s lethal radiation; it acted like sunscreen. Without it, the radiation would rain down on our heads like napalm, setting the atmosphere on fire and cooking everyone to death—literally.

  He shot Major Brody an anxious look. “And the polynya?”

  “I’ll show you as soon as the weather clears.”

  SATURDAY, APRIL 22 (12:23 P.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME)

  It took hours for the storm to play itself out, its legacy a thick layer of fresh snow and a heavy, pewter-colored sky.

  The sun was a pale amber smudge just above the horizon. From now until fall it would circle round and round, low in the sky, bobbing up and down ever so slightly—the only clue for distinguishing morning, noon, and night.

  A hulking, rattling, yellow Snowcat ferried Dallan, Brody, and a small military entourage out to the station’s frozen runway, where they boarded a CC-130J Hercules cargo plane. Dallan knew from experience Hercs were the workhorses thereabout, shuttling heavy equipment, food, fuel, supplies, solid waste, and personnel between Alert and Thule, Greenland.

  When they arrived in Thule, he looked up and gawked at the curtains of scarlet light fluttering overhead. “Northern Lights in broad daylight. My god!”

  The Northern Lights were commonly seen in the night skies all over the Arctic. Like all aurorae, they were caused by charged particles from the sun blasting the upper atmosphere and making it glow. Because the spectacle happened tens of miles up, it was usually dim and could only be seen at night. Northern Lights bright enough to be seen during the day meant the bombardment was either unusually strong or infiltrating unusually low—or both.

  “Wait till you see what’s coming next,” the major said. He tugged gently on Dallan’s parka. “C’mon, let’s go.”

  They hurried to a waiting skiplane, which flew them a short distance due west over Baffin Bay and set down on the snow. Before deplaning, Brody reminded the scouting party they’d be walking not on solid ground but on ice, springtime ice that was beginning to fracture.

  “So everyone, please be careful, eh?”

  Once under way, Dallan tried not to think too much about the pitch-black ocean lurking beneath his feet. His heavy, white rubber boots crushed the snow underfoot, making it cry out like rusty hinges.

  The virgin-white terrain was mostly flat, but here and there were towering pile-ups of bluish-colored ice that looked to him like gigantic modern sculptures. Less than ten minutes into their hike, he came around one such icy heap and was arrested by the sight of a vast lagoon teeming with walruses, seals, polar bears, and scores of exotic-looking birds. Everyone stopped to stare at the unusual sight.

  “Behold, the North Water Polynya!” Brody called out, sweeping a gloved hand in the direction of what he explained was the biggest warm-water oasis in the Arctic.

  Dallan knew polynyas existed wherever there was frozen sea ice. But this polynya was huge, and it was the first time he’d actually seen one.

  “Unreal!” he exclaimed.

  “It’s kept open by warm water welling up from below,” the major said. “It attracts all kinds of whales: narwhals, belugas, bowheads, you name it. C’mon, keep walking, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  On the polynya’s southern shore they arrived at a campsite and met up with a small woman encased in black snow pants and a pink, furry-hooded parka. Brody introduced her as Dr. Rebecca Anawak, a marine biologist from the Isabela Oceanographic Institute.

  Dallan took her all in—the aspects he could see, anyway.

  Cute.

  “Isabela,” he said, fist-bumping her gloved hand. “That’s in the Galapagos, isn’t it? You’re a long way from home.”

  “Yes and no. I grew up in these parts. I’m Inuit.”

  For the next few minutes Anawak filled him in on the bizarre animal behavior she and her assistants were observing since the previous morning. She finished by saying, “Come see for yourself—it’s awful.”

  The biologist led them to an artificial blind at the water’s edge. She handed Dallan a pair of binoculars, directing his gaze to a female walrus hauling herself out of the water with her tusks.

  “Wow, I’ve never seen that before—the way they do that with their tusks.”

  “Keep watching,” Anawak said. “She’s being courted by the polynya’s alpha male. He’s over there.” She pointed to a massive, pear-shaped walrus lolling in the water nearby.

  Abruptly, he clacked his teeth and pealed like a bell—a guy thing, the biologist explained, caused by sacs in the neck filled with air. He then charged out of the water. But instead of displaying affection, as Dallan expected, the bull began goring the female with his saber-like tusks.

  “Good god!” he cried out. “What the hell is he doing?”

  “It’s what we’ve been seeing,” the biologist said. “It’s insane.”

  The besieged cow howled in agony, causing the polynya’s water fowl to leap into the air, their screeching and squawking a deafening cacophony. Dallan, still staring through binoculars, followed their frenzied flight.

  What he saw next made him drop the glasses.

  No! It’s actually happening!

  The tops of the scarlet clouds appeared to be hemorrhaging, their undersides a sickly shade of green.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” he bellowed. “The sky is catching fire!”

  “Good god!” Brody’s voice bristled with alarm. “We have to go, everybody!”

  Dallan remained transfixed.

  “Now!” Brody ordered. “NOW!”

  CHAPTER 2

  THRILL RIDE

  SATURDAY, APRIL 22 (7:45 A.M. PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME)

  DOWNTOWN SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

  The news van bearing Allie Armendariz and her crew zipped along Harbor Drive making good time. But she, seated alone in the rear, was too distracted by her phone conversation to notice.

  Several blocks farther on, she clicked off her phone and shook her head. “Ay-yai-yai.”

  “What?” said Eva, not looking up from her laptop.

  Eva Freiberg, her main producer and best friend, was only thirty-three, but already her unruly black hair was peppered with white, and the corners of her mouth and dark blue eyes were heavily creased.

  “That was my brother Carlos. My sister’s been taken to the hospital.”

  “Which one?”

  “The Parker Center in—” She turned to Eva. “What does it matter?”

  Eva looked up. “I meant, which sister?”

  Allie shot her a look that said, You need to ask? “Lorena. Apparently she’s had some kind of breakdown; the doctors are saying she’s got delusional disorder, whatever that is. They’re still doing tests.”

  Among her three brothers and two sisters, Lolo was the baby of the family—and the most rebellious. She had been born a preemie and always had a fragile, volatile personality.

  Allie gazed out the window and began twisting a strand of her shoulder-length hair. “It doesn’t sound good. And Dallan is MIA. Traipsing around the Arctic somewhere.”

  The previous week her brother-in-law had served Lolo with divorce papers and taken an apartment in Boulder, close to his work. Allie was praying they’d reconcile—but right now, as she stared blankly out the window, her cynicism concerning matters of love was winning out.

  Believe, Miss so-called Christian, believe!

  “It’s a mess, an unholy mess.”

  “Which is why, my dear friend,” Eva said—Allie could see a weak reflection in the glass of Eva b
randishing a boney forefinger—“I intend to stay single.”

  Allie turned to her. “Yeah, right, like you’re not already hitched.”

  Eva arched an eyebrow.

  “To your work, chica, to your work.”

  Eva waved her off. “Yeah, yeah. Talk about the kettle calling the pot black.”

  She couldn’t help grinning. “It’s the pot call—”

  The van braked suddenly.

  “What?!” she crabbed.

  “Traffic jam,” Pitsy called out from the driver’s seat.

  Pitsy, her longtime chief cameraman, was a tall, thin, prematurely balding African-American man.

  “You’re kidding,” she wailed. “On a Saturday morning?!”

  Ten minutes later they came upon the reason for the jam: a long, rowdy parade of protestors in the bicycle lane, yelling and pumping large cardboard signs scrawled with various slogans: RED IS THE NEW GREEN . . . GREEN ENERGY IS A LIE . . . GREEN IS THE COLOR OF MONEY. At the head of the procession was a large banner announcing the group’s identity: OCCUPY THE WORLD.

  “And so it starts,” she murmured, staring at the raucous spectacle. She was certain this had to do with the coming weekend’s G-20 Summit in San Diego.

  “You wanna pull over and get this on tape?” Eva said, peering out the window.

  Occupy the World was a grassroots movement Allie was featuring in her upcoming primetime special. It was set to air in a month, smack in the middle of May sweeps, a special window of time when networks put on their flashiest programming in order to impress advertisers.

  The thesis of her hour-long special dated back some six years. She’d been teaching physics at Harvard for a couple of years when she recognized a spectacular irony: science, widely expected to improve the human condition, was actually helping to bring about our destruction. She called the admittedly provocative hypothesis the “null prophecy”—after null result, a phrase scientists commonly used to describe an experiment that failed to produce a widely expected outcome.

  “Well?” Eva pressed.

  “I’m thinking.”