A Cipherlock Sci-Fi Thriller
What if time wasn’t running out – it was running in reverse….
When a Cold War signal is rediscovered in a SETI lab, reality itself begins to unravel.
A cryptic Morse code transmission from deep space awakens forgotten systems – both human and machine. As Liam Mills uncovers the recursive code buried in Cold War archives, he must team up with a physicist, a rabbi, and a haunted veteran to uncover the truth behind a signal that may be rewriting time itself.
Pursued by a global surveillance regime and stalked by a presence that defies understanding, the group races to decode the past before the future dissolves.
Blending real cryptography, hidden military history, quantum theory, and ancient codes, The Umbra Signal is a cerebral, high-octane thriller that challenges everything you think you know about time.
Decode the signal. Expose the truth. Before the clock starts counting in reverse – for good.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Williams
Author
David Williams is a writer and technologist whose work explores the intersection of hidden histories, emerging science, and the enduring mysteries of human consciousness. Before turning to fiction, he spent over two decades building advanced systems at the edge of environmental science, electronic signal processing, and cryptographic research, often in roles that required more clearance than credit.
As a technologist, Williams helped pioneer mobile sensor platforms used to track invisible threats in real time; experience that now informs the speculative precision of his storytelling. Though much of his past work remains protected by nondisclosure, echoes of those years can be found in the way his narratives blur the line between what is known and what is possible.
His debut novel, The Umbra Signal, is the product of years of classified pattern analysis, Cold War cryptography, and a deep fascination with the architecture of language, time, quantum physics, and their confluence. Beneath its genre surface lies a serious inquiry into how stories encode power, and how silence, too, can carry a signal.
Williams currently lives off-grid – digitally speaking – and divides his time between coffee-stained papers, digital archives, and staring a little too long at the sky. He believes fiction can still surprise us. And sometimes, that’s the most dangerous thing of all.