The Omen

At the Cape Hattie observatory, a young astronomer sat stunned, reaching an instant too late to activate the camera that might have recorded it: the splintering of three constellations that produced the dark, glowing star. From Capricorn, Cancer, and Leo pieces had suddenly flown, finding each other with magnetic certainty, melding into a pulsating galactic ember. It grew brighter now and the constellations shuddered—or was it trembling hands on the eyepiece as the astronomer struggled to stifle his confused cry?

He feared he was alone with it, but in fact he was not. For from the very bowels of the earth there came a distant sound. It was the sound of voices; human, yet not, growing in devout cacophony with the heightening potency of the star. In caves, basements, and open fields they had gathered; midwives to the birth, some twenty thousand strong. With hands joined and heads bowed, their voices rose until the vibration could be heard and felt everywhere. It was the sound of the OHM, ringing upward to the heavens and inward to the pre-biblical core of the earth.

It was the sixth month, the sixth day, the sixth hour. The precise moment predicted by the Old Testament when earth history would change. The wars, the turmoil of recent centuries had been mere rehearsals, a testing of the climate to determine when mankind would be ready to be led. Under Caesar they had cheered while Christians were fed to the lions, and under Hitler while Jews were reduced to charred remains. Now democracy was fading, mind-impairing drugs had become a way of life, and in the few countries where freedom of worship was still allowed, it was widely proclaimed that God was dead. From Laos to Lebanon brother had turned against brother, fathers against children; school buses and marketplaces exploded daily in the growing din of preparatory lust.

Students of the Bible had seen it too, the falling into place of biblical symbols that heralded the event that was now at hand. In the form of the Common Market, the Holy Roman Empire had risen, and with the statehood of Israel the Jews had returned to the Promised Land. This, coupled with worldwide famine and the disintegration of international economic structure, demonstrated more than a mere coincidence of events. Clearly it was a conspiracy of events. The Book of Revelations had predicted it all.

As high in the sky, the black star grew brighter, the chant grew louder, and the basalt center of the planet reverberated with its power. Within the hollowed-out ruins of the ancient city of Megiddo, the old man Bugenhagen could feel it, and wept; his scrolls and tablets useless now. And above him on the desert floor outside of Israel, the night shift of archaeological students paused in their work, their dirt-sifters falling silent as the ground beneath them began to tremble.

In his first-class seat aboard the 747 bound from Washington to Rome, Jeremy Thorn felt it too and routinely fastened his seat belt, preoccupied with what awaited him below. Even if he had known the reason for the sudden turbulence, it would have been too late. For at that moment, in the basement of the Ospedale Generale in Rome, a stone crushed the head of the child that was meant to be his.