The Last Year

In the moment American President Joseph Whitmore announces that Nostradamus, an 8-mile-wide metallic asteroid is on a collision course with Earth, the world is forever changed. Scientists predict that up to 95% of all life will perish in fire, flood and the resulting cosmic winter. Humans will cease to exist. As the world reacts to Whitmore’s ominous revelation, chaos ensues—moral depravity, starvation, terrorism, governmental collapse—and yet hope endures. Robert E. Lee, the leader of America’s consolidated militias, rejects the notion of a pending asteroidal impact. He accuses the federal government of duplicity, suggesting some covert, diabolical motive for the announcement. He and followers in Wyoming proclaim secession from the United States. Initially dismissed as paranoia, Lee’s seeds of distrust sprout in America as many begin to suspect that President Whitmore, Jett Turner, his Machiavellian National Security Advisor, and the Trilateral Commission, a powerful secret society, have a hidden agenda. In an underground fortress in Colorado’s Sangre di Cristo Mountains, scientist Don Smock heads the government’s secret Lazarus Project. Smock hopes to launch an ark containing 44 humans in cold stasis into outer space. At the end of cosmic winter, the ark will return humans to Earth. Geneticist Isabel Benoit will ensure the future human population will be superior to the one that perished. Animals, plants and other life forms are to be cryogenically preserved in the underground refuge, awaiting reintroduction by humans into Earth’s biosphere. Spiritual persons sense a higher design. Religious interpretation is varied. Adventists see the asteroid’s approach as the second coming of Christ. Some see it as Judgment Day, wherein the good will be raptured instantly to heaven and the wicked will be burned on Earth. Minister Jonah Williams believes that if we exercise faith, God may yet save us at the last possible moment. Others accept the event as the completion of an ageless cosmic cycle. Finally, there are a few who pursue truth. Davis Franklin is the computer expert charged with developing the software for the government’s Lazarus Project computers. In a world growing more chaotic as the days count down, Davis and friends desperately seek the truth that will either save the world or forever damn it.