Quantum Prophet
It is 2019 and global warming has suddenly become more than a political football. The ozone layer is evaporating at an unprecedented rate the polar icecaps are melting and earthquakes are rocking the planet. Scientists are at a loss to explain this sudden and dramatic acceleration of the phenomenon. A British meteorologist at an ozone monitoring station in Antarctica suggests “We can always pray.” Meanwhile oil magnate Joseph Christianson has asked the young journalist Argos Pressman to look for his brilliant daughter Lila who disappeared five years ago after an explosion in a lab at MIT. Lila had been working on an efficient solar battery that would have been instrumental in breaking the global dependence on fossil fuels the burning of which had been largely responsible for global warming—until this recent rebellion of Mother Earth that is.
Such is the setting for C.K. Brewster’s intelligent and grandiose novel Quantum Prophet. While readers get a healthy dose of science and technology this story is more about spirituality and the imbalance of the human spirit estranged from nature. Lila the scientist who has spent her five-year exile studying and meditating in Pueblo Indian lands discovers that she has been designated by a higher power to restore that balance. This is the story of her return and of her gradual realization of what she must do to save the planet.
Her father sees Lila’s solar battery as an instrument for furthering his own corporate power. And leaders of the world’s governments see Lila as a fanatic—a threat not a prophet. Too late they develop their own very risky plan to end the pestilence. Accompanied by her old friend and would-be lover Argos and Ky an ex-employee in her father’s oil company Lila “the Child of the Lightning” visits earthquake sites in Guatemala where she learns about the sun-worshipping ancient Mayans and Saudi Arabia where she is the first woman and the first non-Muslim to visit the Sanctuary of the Kaaba or sacred stone of the Muslims. Everywhere she goes there is music in the winds and a message in the rocks and only Lila can decipher them. And everywhere the discussion about sacred symbols—trees stones sacrificial rituals—continues. At the Vatican Lila gets a private audience with the Pope and further confirmation that she is a “weaver of miracles.” In India she eats supper with the wise old Brahmin and is led even closer to her truth and her destiny. And just as her mission becomes clear she must race against time and against all those who are trying to stop her to fulfill it.
In his first novel Brewster gives readers a short course in myth and world religions. He honors all faiths as he unites them and proscribes a mythology that will ensure a future for the planet. His story reaches for the heavens and it makes a convincing case for the very balance that Lila must restore.
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