“Right. It’s from space.”
“But how was the xenobium made?”
Jess frowned in confusion at what he was suggesting. “Made? It’s just a rock, isn’t it?”
“Is it? I don’t know. We humans couldn’t produce it artificially, and Kessler didn’t have a theory for how the xenobium could be created naturally. So tell Fay it’s possible that she had an encounter with proof of extraterrestrial life.”
“You don’t believe that, do you?”
“Until proved otherwise, who can say?”
Jess smiled. “Thank you for that. She’ll love it.”
They embraced, just happy to be holding each other one final time before Jess drew away. After a last look, she brushed his arm and turned to go back into Fay’s room.
Tyler lingered for a moment, then ambled down the hall with a melancholy grin. Although he was sorry to leave Jess, at least he’d given her grandmother some peace in the end. It felt good not only to fulfill Fay’s last wish to find closure but also to leave her with something to dream about.
AFTERWORD
In a thriller like this one that explores the boundaries of technological possibilities and posits alternative explanations for ancient mysteries, it’s often difficult to know where the real world ends and the fiction begins. It might surprise you to find out how little I had to make up in this story.
The strange 1908 blast in Tunguska, Siberia, continues to be an enduring enigma. According to
I’ve had the thrill of taking a ride on the Shotover River jet boats in Queenstown. The river isn’t far from the Southern Proving Grounds, which does winter testing of cars during the Northern Hemisphere’s summer.
The ultra-secret Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap is located just outside Alice Springs, Australia. I wouldn’t suggest driving down their private road, but you can get a good view of the facility on Google Maps.
Though Project Caelus is a fantasy, the Air Force did study the feasibility of building nuclear-powered aircraft, even going so far as to install a nuclear reactor on a B-36 bomber. To my knowledge, it was never attempted on the wing-shaped B-49, a jet-powered Air Force prototype built in 1947.
Four-trailer road trains are the longest street-legal trucks in the world and range across the vast Australian outback.
The Sydney Harbour BridgeClimb is another adventure I’ve been privileged to experience. The bridge is designed as I’ve described, including the maintenance cranes and catwalks.
The US military has poured millions of dollars into developing tracking dust, also called smart dust or ID dust, to be used for identifying and following enemies coated with the material.
Drug-smuggling tunnels burrowed under the border between Tijuana and San Diego continue to be discovered on a regular basis. The tunnel I feature in this book is cruder than some of the more sophisticated operations that have been constructed with concrete linings and elevators.
Privately built spaceplanes are already a reality with the launch of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo and will soon carry paying passengers into space seventy miles above the Earth. Airbus is exploring the feasibility of developing a plane with a bird-bone frame like I used in the Skyward. The multitude of windows would provide a great view, but you better have a strong stomach if you tend toward motion sickness.
Joseph Kittinger’s real exploits on the Project Excelsior high-altitude skydiving program are even more incredible when you consider that he undertook his mission over fifty years ago and no one has duplicated the feat since.
I had a great time at the AirVenture show in Oshkosh last year, and the vast rows of airplanes lined up as far as the eye can see are truly overwhelming. If you love aircraft, for one week in July Oshkosh is your mecca.
The theories for how to move Easter Island Moai are even more varied than the few I list in the novel. However, rocking the statues back and forth to walk them forward does work. Lava tube caves and the colorful paintings on their walls abound on the island.
Although xenobium is fictional, hafnium-3 is an actual isomer of the element hafnium. Its explosive potential is vast, as is its cost to manufacture. Isomer bombs and induced gamma emission weapons are theoretically possible and could produce effects scarily similar to the ones produced by the Killswitch.
Electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear explosion is a very real threat. In fact war-game planners always assumed a Soviet first strike would consist of a massive hydrogen bomb detonated over the central US to disable its electronic infrastructure and hinder the military’s ability to retaliate. Now the same threat comes from terrorists and rogue nations. The target in this book was the United States, but the weapon would work equally well at setting the technological clock of any industrialized nation back by a hundred years.
The Nazca lines and symbols, the Mandala geometric pattern, and the ancient city of Cahuachi in Peru have all become popular tourist destinations, yet no one has deciphered their true meaning as of this writing.
The Roswell incident continues to fascinate me as it does the rest of the world. What really crashed there? Why did the Air Force’s explanation of the event change? What happened to the wreckage that was found? An explanation as prosaic as a stray weather balloon would be a disappointing answer to say the least. But do I think it was an alien spacecraft? I’m a skeptic, though it sure would be cool to think so. However, I’d like to think an alien race that had traveled light-years to get here using technology we can barely imagine could make a better landing. If you’d like to give me a tour of Area 51 and prove me wrong, I will take you up on it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Boyd Morrison is an author, actor, engineer, and Jeopardy! champion. He started his career working on NASA's space station project at Johnson Space Center, where he got the opportunity to fly on the Vomit Comet, the same plane used to train astronauts for zero gravity. After earning a PhD in engineering from Virginia Tech, he used his training to develop thirteen US patents at Thomson/RCA. Boyd then managed a video game testing group in Microsoft's Xbox division before becoming a full-time writer. For non-fiction thrills, he enjoys white water rafting, skiing, scuba diving, and bungee jumping. Boyd is also a professional actor, appearing in films, commercials, and stage plays. In 2003 he fulfilled a lifelong dream and became a Jeopardy! champion. He currently lives in Seattle with his wife.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing a novel like this without the help of others would be impossible, so I’d like to take this opportunity to thank those who contributed so generously to making this book a reality.
My agent Irene Goodman has been a rock-steady presence throughout this process, and I couldn’t think of anyone better to guide me on this roller-coaster ride. Her wisdom and support are invaluable.
It’s a privilege to work with my foreign rights agents, Danny Baror and Heather Baror-Shapiro, who are not only the best at what they do, but are also really nice people.
Thanks to my editors Jade Chandler and David Shelley for believing in my storytelling and for helping me
