Vostok

39

I awoke on an alien world as another person.

Avi Socha — mated to three, father of ten.

Avi Socha — born into servitude, subcitizen of the Kohenim Tribe.

Avi Socha — discredited scientist and soul-seeker, now a prisoner of the state.

Avi Socha — a forgotten man on the verge of death.

Nearly one solar year had passed since I’d been arrested in a seaside cave by the Council’s secret police. My neighbor had turned me in, hoping to acquire “loyalty credits” for the lottery, a contest in which a thousand subcitizens would be chosen to board a transport vessel that was to safely orbit our doomed world, Charon, when the Miketz struck.

The lottery turned out to be another Council lie designed to stave off civil unrest.

Weak from hunger, I remained in my sleep sack until the midday sun beat down upon me. It shone through from octagonal openings in the two-story-high ceiling of my quarantine. Using my soiled tunic as a tent, I curled beneath the fabric to shield my light-sensitive eyes.

The prison cells were occupied by the dead and dying, but our jailers were gone. They had abandoned the facility three weeks earlier, when a massive earthquake had rocked the continent, spawning a planet-wide exodus thirty-nine days ahead of the anticipated doomsday event. Once the cartel and their military capos had gone, the republic’s infrastructure collapsed, chasing the vendors who had serviced the elite into the mountains — my jailers among them.

Hundreds of ships now orbited the planet, linking together to form clusters, their pods occupied by past and present Council members and their families. The rest of us were forced to remain behind, waiting for a volcanic eruption that would wipe out all traces of life.

Left alone to die, I was surviving on the rainwater that poured in from the ceiling and a solitary green leaf a day, taken from what little remained of my four-plant garden.

Being locked away in exile is a perception-altering experience. Initially there is pain. Pain comes in a variety of forms, from the physical agony brought about by incessant hunger, to the mental anguish of being confined to a small cell, to the emotional torture of being deprived of seeing your loved ones.

The first few weeks were by far the hardest, the darkness accompanied by nightmares, birthed by the screams coming from the other prisoners. I adapted by stuffing my earholes with torn fabric from my tunic. My stomach gradually adapted to starvation by shrinking, my mind to the tediousness of endless time by creating a routine.

Yet even that was not enough to slow the onset of madness.

Being held in solitary confinement brings waves of insanity, time melding into lucid dreams and waking delusions. The first episode happened one scorching day. As the heat baked me alive in my cell and the noonday sun reflected off my stone floor to blind me, I sank into a panting, heart-pounding delirium, muttering a long-forgotten mantra as I welcomed death.

It came with a blissful release of pain as my consciousness rose out of my body to the ceiling, my mind’s eye looking down upon a tortured being lying in a hammock. I had become so emaciated that at first I didn’t recognize myself.

My skin hung loose from my skeleton; my black eyes were sunken and red. Having left my body, my consciousness floated joyfully out an open vent to the prison courtyard.

At the time of my first passing, the facility was being abandoned by the guards. There was chaos and fear and uncertainty, the violet horizon laced with vertical rocket plumes from ships racing into orbit ahead of the mobs.

Moving over the prison walls into the city, I witnessed a crime spree evolve into a bloodbath, as decades of military rule gave way to the inevitable “whatever it takes to survive” mentality. Looting, murder, rape, intoxication — I could feel my species’ life force sink deeper into the mire as they turned on one another, trading morality for survival.

And then a force of energy summoned me, its white light intoxicating. I floated toward it and was enveloped in the love of my birth parents, both of whom had been put to death by the last regime eight solar years ago. Bathing in their aura, I wished only to join them; however, they told me it wasn’t my time. They said the upper worlds had tasked my soul with a mission — to lead my people off of our dying world.

Before I could inquire how I was expected to do this, I found my spirit moving over water, heading for a desolate coastal region known as the southern rift valley. Meteors had impacted the terrain eons ago, leaving the geology pockmarked with enormous craters. Some had formed lakes. Others remained dry beds. One of these had been outfitted with camouflaged netting, concealing a rebel camp.

As my spirit toured the facility, I recognized physicists and engineers whom I had known from my adolescent years at the academy. As members of the twelve tribes who suffered as a subservient class under the Council’s autocratic rule, these scientists and their skilled laborers had been working together in secrecy to design and construct a fleet of saucer-shaped starships. Unlike the conventional transports now in orbit over Charon, these vessels were powered by an electrogravitic propulsion system, a generator that produced an anti-gravity vortex that would theoretically make interdimensional travel possible. The technology had threatened the Council’s carbon-based hold on the economy and had therefore been banned, and now the planet’s twelve tribes — Charon’s lowest rung society — were on the brink of using it to flee our star system in search of a habitable world suitable for colonization.

It would have made for a delicious irony had the propulsion system actually worked.

With a sudden wave of pain, I found myself back in my cell, once more imprisoned in a dying body.

Pain is part of the physical condition; suffering is a choice we make. Having been given a task, I decided that I would no longer suffer my fate. I would use it as a means to save my people.

First, I needed to be free.

Even lacking guards, escape was out of the question. The cell door was bolted from the outside, the open ceiling slats too high to reach. Physically, I barely possessed the strength to stand. Even if I could replicate my out-of-body experience, it offered no means of communicating my dilemma to others. And while I still maintained the ability to communicate with my past lives, there was nothing they could do to release me unless …

I had been raised and educated on the scientific, philosophical, and spiritual belief that life is interconnected through a single consciousness that pervades all existence. This universal mind is present everywhere at the same time. One must simply know it, believe in it, and apply it through meditative practice, and miracles can happen.

The miracle I would seed was a visual message, a map that began in the rebel camp and led to my prison. At the culmination of this dream, the dreamer would witness a functioning electrogravitic propulsion system whirling away in my cell.

My targeted viewers would be the scientists working on a means to escape Charon, half a continent away.

Solitude and starvation made for intense meditation sessions that bordered on delirium.

For weeks, I teetered on the brink of death until one late afternoon when my cell door was wrenched open on its rusted hinges.

The rebel leader was tall and lanky, his youth and dark complexion revealing his lineage to be one of the eastern tribes. Three other males accompanied him, one of whom performed a quick physical examination on me before feeding me intravenously.

I felt the warmth spreading through my blood vessels, easing my pain. Through heavy eyes I gazed up at the octagonal holes in the ceiling, watching with amusement as they started to spin.

I must have slept for some time, because it was dark when I awoke. We were in the main cabin of an aerial transport, the leader immersed in reading my prophecies, which he had recovered from my cell, recorded in a series of word gusts on a transmitter scroll.

He acknowledged that I was awake. “You are Avi Socha ben Amram.”

“And you are Zaphenath Paneah. I remember you from our days in the science academy.”

“And I remember your theories on soul searching that got you expelled.” He motioned to the scroll. “May I?”

I nodded, finding the strength to sit up for the first time in a month.

He selected a recording I had made before weakness had replaced my anger.

In the end of times, when an uprising was needed, we ignored the call. The victim was its own executioner; the seed destroyed the soil; our hatred taught a child. The caldera was left to boil.

In an epithet to an extinct race, only ignorance shall reign forever.

For several silent moments he reflected upon my words. Then he walked over and sat on the floor before me, a gesture of humility. “The Miketz shall arrive in less than a month. Its eruption shall destroy all life remaining on this planet. A team of scientists from the twelve tribes have been laboring in secrecy for many years on a means to escape not just the Miketz but our star system altogether. For weeks now they have shared the harsh reality of their failure with a dream that appears to point to you as the one who holds the key to their success. You are responsible for this?”

“I am.”

“Translate the vision. Tell me what you think you know.”

“I know your scientists have created a propulsion system capable of travelling faster than light. I also know there is a flaw in the design that affects the electromagnetic field. As a result, the anti-gravity vortex isn’t strong enough to provide inertial shielding. Without it, your ships won’t be able to survive transdimensional flight. Like the Council’s fleet, you will be stuck in this star system until your supplies run out and you perish.”

“And you possess a solution to this challenge?”

“Not yet. But with your help I will seek an audience with one of my soul’s future incarnations, who lives in an advanced society powered by these devices. What he knows I shall know.”

“Avi, I think imprisonment has affected your mind. How can one communicate with an individual who hasn’t even been born yet?”

“The soul is immortal. It belongs in the Upper Worlds, where time does not exist. In order to earn its way into the higher realms of existence, it must live out many lives in the physical world. Each incarnation of the flesh is judged, each judgment influencing the next incarnation. Inflict pain upon another in this life, and in the next you might suffer a disease. Treat others with love, and in the next life you may have bliss. Commit atrocities like the members of Council, and you might live out your next life as a slug. Each incarnation bears its own consciousness even though they share the same soul. By tapping into the soul’s energy stream, I am able to locate these incarnations and communicate with them using the universal consciousness. Because time has no bearing in the Upper Realms every inevitability has already happened, including the lives of every incarnate that will ever accompany each soul. As long as the future caretaker of my soul will one day exist, I can find the means to communicate with him.”

The leader shook his head, unsure. “Avi, I sent a transport to collect your family. Your senior wife, Lehanna, claims you soul searched for a future incarnate before you were arrested. She says you failed and that there are no future Charonian incarnates out there to connect with. This suggests our mission will also fail.”

“Things happen for a reason, Zaphenath. Even the Miketz serves a purpose, one we cannot see. Prison gave me time to reflect. Among the thousands of probabilities that will end in the death of our people, I believe I have found the means to set one alternate reality into motion, one that could alter our species’ fate. And the implications of our actions are incredible.”

40

At my request, our transport was diverted to Charon’s City of the Sciences, the place where I had been assigned to live and train two years after my birth.

Every child born on Charon since the time of the Great Uprising was required to be submitted for G.A.T. — Genetic Aptitude Testing — within two solar years of conception. DNA and brain chemicals determined where each offspring would be raised and educated. Only the children of the Council were exempted, a ruling which virtually assured our militaristic rulers to be among the least educated populace inhabiting the planet.

We landed in the Biological District, where the regent’s top exobiologist, Dr. Kabir Parker, had been summoned to his lab for our meeting. I had studied under Kabir until I’d had a near-death experience during my pre-pubescent years. Upon recovering from the drowning incident, my psyche had changed, my logical mind evolving into one that was more intuitive. When my studies faltered, my G.A.T. was retested, the results sending my education into a free fall.

There is no place in an autocratic society for a free thinker, especially one who claims he can communicate with the dead.

Zaphenath Paneah and I listened while Kabir lectured us on how life first evolved on Charon. “It began over 400 million solar orbits ago with chemiosmosis, a process in which the chemical adenosine triphosphate was broken down and re-formed to release energy. Biological evidence indicates the first living organisms on Charon were not self-replicating molecules, but a byproduct of a chemical combination that contained the instructions for processing energy and replicating. Incredibly, the enzymes required for this specific metabolism were not found on our planet; they were delivered by meteorites. Ribose, adenine, and cytosine were the key ingredients lined inside these space rocks, which most likely metabolized into bacteria after coalescing in hot, acidic pools of liquid that contained phosphorus chemicals.”

“Kabir, in order to save our people, we need to seed the ingredients of Charon’s life matrix on another world. Just for argument’s sake, let’s say you could package this biological soup aboard a conventional rocket and crashland it. Which planet or moon in our solar system represents the best candidate for life to take hold and develop as it has on Charon?”

“At present? The answer is none.”

“I realize that. But what about in the future or distant future?”

Communicating with his control console via thought wave, the exobiologist powered on a holographic map of our star system revealing our sun, orbited by four inner worlds and four outer, the divide separated by an asteroid belt.

“The two innermost planets, Nekudim and Akudim, are far too close to the sun for life to ever evolve. The outlying gas giants beyond Charon aren’t suitable either. That leaves Berudim.”

The hologram zoomed in on the third planet from the sun. Charon’s neighbor was a hostile world, its surface obscured behind a dense layer of gray atmospheric clouds. “If we’re speaking strictly in terms of a planetary lifetime, then Berudim would be my choice. Although its atmosphere is presently toxic to life as we know it, our probes indicate that the cloud cover obscuring the planet’s surface contains massive layers of moisture and that it is in fact raining on Berudim. Water, as you know, is a necessary ingredient for life on Charon. Berudim’s atmosphere is in flux, and probability models suggest a breathable air in approximately ten to fifteen million years. What I also like about Berudim is that it’s twice the size of Charon, with a much larger magnetosphere to protect it from the solar wind.”

Zaphenath Paneah turned to me. “The magnetosphere is an issue the Council has hidden from the masses since the revolution. It has been steadily eroding for centuries. Another fifty to seventy years and we’ll have no atmosphere. No atmosphere means no air and no greenhouse effect to maintain temperature stability. With or without the Miketz, Charon is destined to become a cold, desolate world.”

Kabir never liked being interrupted while he was in mid-gust. “Listen to me, Avi Socha. We can engage in hypotheticals between now and doomsday, but there’s a difference between seeding the ingredients of life on Berudim and expecting it to one day become an intelligent race of beings. Evolution has its own catalysts — asteroid strikes, ice ages, runaway genetic mutations. Duplicating an abiotic process to produce RNA or RNA precursors that result in a species suitable to communicate with is a one in a million shot.”

“One in a million is better than no chance at all,” Zaphenath Paneah said. “Kabir, how many probes are available to launch to Berudim?”

Kabir used his thought waves to review the institute’s inventory of space drones. “Seventy-two vessels still remain under the institute’s control. As fate would have it, the journey can be completed in six days, because the two planets are rapidly approaching their maximum perihelic opposition, the closest they’ve been since life first took hold on Charon. Before you go congratulating yourself, Avi Socha, you should know that this isn’t just a coincidence. Berudim is actually the cause of the Miketz. The third planet’s gravitational pull on Charon is what is increasing the pressure in the calderas. Sometime before the maximum perihelic orbit is achieved, Charon’s magma pockets will erupt, unless we take the necessary course of action.”

Kabir’s tone caused the back of my skull to tingle. “What does that mean? Zaphenath, what is he referring to?”

The rebel leader was not happy with his scientist’s lack of discretion. “It’s a course of action that has been proposed. When the Council discovered that Berudim’s gravitational pull was causing the calderic pressure increases, they instructed the Science Institute to develop a means of destroying it. Our scientists succeeded where theirs failed.”

Zaphenath Paneah focused his thought waves on the hologram of Berudim until three drones were positioned around the planet. “The device is called a scalar weapon. Unlike conventional electromagnetic waves that propagate outward in ripples through our physical dimension, scalar waves travel through space longitudinally in the higher dimensions. When fired simultaneously from drones orbiting Berudim, the scalar waves shall cause every molecule on the planet to broil at a temperature hotter than the sun, vaporizing everything into plasma. Berudim’s atmosphere will expand until it explodes, the entire event lasting less than a second.”

He nodded, causing three electric-blue beams to ignite on the holographic simulation, yielding a massive white explosion that expelled rings of plasma across the vastness of space.

By the time my eyes adjusted, the third planet from the sun was gone.

41

Whether to destroy an uninhabited planet in order to save your own might seem like an easy decision for the rebel leaders representing the twelve tribes, but there were complex variables in play. If Berudim was destroyed and Charon spared, the Council would return to enslave the people. As for using the scalar weapon on the Council’s orbiting ships, if fired from Charon the anti-gravity burst could potentially set off the calderas.

Then there was Charon’s decaying magnetosphere. Destroying Berudim only represented a temporary solution, for at some point during the next decade the atmosphere would collapse. At least my plan offered us a chance to begin over in a new world, without being dominated by an oppressive regime.

But some didn’t want to crawl out from the shadow of oppression. They had been servants for so long that the thought of being free actually frightened them. Even if transdimensional travel could be achieved in the coming weeks, there were too many unknown variables for tribal leaders to even consider a mass exodus.

How long would our people have to venture across the cosmic desert before a suitable planet could be found?

What if this new world was ruled by a hostile force far worse than the Council?

Under the Council’s rule the tribes had been housed and fed, trained and employed. Yes, there were inequities derived from power and pain inflicted upon our people, but sometimes the safer option is the devil you know.

While voting arrangements were being organized among the eastern tribes’ outlying communities, Kabir and his biologists were hard at work preparing containers of “primordial soup.” At the same time, rebel forces raided the Space Institute, with teams of engineers assigned to prepare as many drone rockets as possible for launch. Slightly larger than the interior dimensions of my cell, these two-stage capsules were programmed to pierce Berudim’s atmosphere at an angle and velocity that would ensure they would survive the journey until impact, bursting their chemical payloads on Berudim… Or so we hoped.

As Kabir explained it, the success of the mission came down to sheer luck, which relied heavily on a numbers game. Unlike Charon, Berudim’s surface was mostly water. Because the atmosphere obscured our view of any landmasses, we needed to launch as many rockets as possible, spreading them out. Each probe carried a twenty-six-percent probability of impacting land. An ocean burst would dilute the biological soup, rendering it useless.

The good news was that the results of the mission would be known to me immediately. If life evolved on Berudim in the distant future because of our efforts then, theoretically, I should have a new incarnate to communicate with right after the drones’ impact. If we failed, then a void would remain in the universal consciousness.

Seventy-two drone rockets were readied for the mission, with three larger drones and two back-ups armed with scalar weapons.

Now it was up to the people. Would they be ruled by faith or fear, hope or uncertainty? I realized that two worlds’ fates hung in the balance, Charon’s and every species that might potentially existed on Berudim.

Eleven days before the Miketz calderas were predicted to erupt, the twelve tribal leaders cast votes that represented the will of their people. By a count of seven to five, a decision was rendered in favor of destroying Berudim. Though I argued with anyone who would listen, the five drones containing the scalar weapons were launched, beginning a six-day journey to vaporize our approaching neighbor.

A day later the plagues struck, and suddenly no one wanted to stay on Charon.

Scientists theorized that the unpredicted events were caused by a bad combination of seismic activity and the effects of Berudim’s gravitational forces on Charon’s iron and sulfur core, causing it to slow its rotation.

The tribes didn’t care what was causing the upheaval — only that it was happening. First the lakes and streams that provided our drinking water became tainted with red clay. This sent the amphibious wildlife — frogs and other creatures — evacuating the water to invade our homes. Our livestock drank the water and quickly fell sick. Fleas and lice, seeking new hosts, targeted our people, inflicting their skin with boils and rashes.

On the second day a small caldera erupted in the eastern province. Darkness covered our planet as the ash cloud spread across the atmosphere, the poor air quality causing severe breathing problems among our youngest children as well as the elderly.

By the morning of the third day a new vote was taken among the tribes. It was decided that my option would take precedence over the scalar weapons, granting me one day after the drones’ impact to make contact with a being from our future. If I failed to receive instructions regarding a zero-point energy system, then Berudim would be destroyed.

Midday arrived with a worsening darkness, and seventy-two rockets launched from antiquated launch silos. Each drone carried a sphere-shaped titanium probe filled with containers of chemicals that represented the primordial building blocks of Charonian life.

Two rockets exploded in the clogged atmosphere. A third struck a Council ship orbiting Charon and was destroyed.

Two more vessels veered off course.

Six days later the remaining sixty-seven rockets jettisoned their payloads into the Berudim atmosphere and abruptly disappeared off our sensory screens.

Zaphenath Paneah escorted me across the paved crater floor to a vessel so immense that it rivaled the Council Assembly Hall. Saucer-shaped with a triangular mast, this particular ship had been assigned to my tribe, assuming I could turn the useless disk of polished metal into an anti-gravitational device able to travel the cosmos beyond the speed of light.

The rebel leader prompted an entrance that led into the bowels of the ship. “The central chamber is located directly over the propulsion system. It has been prepared as you requested. We’ve cleared the crater of all personnel; it’s just your thoughts and whoever or whatever is listening. Good luck, Avi Socha.”

I nodded and entered the transport.

The chamber was circular, located just above the ship’s gravitational well and massive electrogravitic generator rings. Surrounded by darkness, I situated myself before the glow of a crimson candle. Closing my eyes, I began reciting the forty-two-word mantra that dated back to the time of creation, its energy helping me to access the universal consciousness.

“ANA BEKOACH… GEDULAT YEMINECHA… TATIR ZERURA … ”

In my mind’s eye my consciousness was moving through the void, passing over a dark sea.

“KABEL RINAT… AMECHA SAGVENU… TAHARENU NORA … ”

The sea moved inland, becoming a twisting river that separated a rift valley.

“NA GIBOR… DORSHEY YICHUDCHA… KEBAVAT SHOMREM … ”

Snow-covered mountains rose along either bank as the river emptied into a vast lake, its waters dark and forboding.

“BARCHEM TEHAREM… RACHAMEY ZIDEKATCHA… TAMID GOMLEM … ”

Looking down, I saw immense water creatures moving just below the surface, their backs sprouting streams of vaporized air.

“HASIN KADOSH… BEROV TUVECHA… NAHEL ADOTECHA … ”

Sensing intelligence, my consciousness followed these immense creatures inland to a bay. Lying in the water was a transport ship identical to the saucer in which my physicality remained back on Charon.

“YAHID GE’EA… LEAMECHA PENNE… ZOCHREY KDUSHATECHA … ”

I was inside the vessel, entering a dark chamber illuminated by the light coming from a violet candle.

“SHAVATENU KABEL… USHEMA ZAKATENU… YODE TA’ALUMOT … ”

As I completed the last verse of the mantra, I saw a figure seated on the floor on the opposite side of the candle. The alien was a biped, clothed in a strange body garment. Its skull was narrow, adorned with brown fur that stopped at its jawline. On each side of its head were two fleshy protusions that appeared to accentuate the being’s hearing holes.

I wondered if the creature could see, for its eyes were small and partially concealed behind skin flaps. Its flesh was thick, especially around the nose and mouth. Most bizarre — each paw possessed five thick digits.

Was the being intelligent?

Endeavoring to find out, I communicated my thoughts. “I am called Avi Socha.”

I opened my eyes, disoriented from having passed through the center of the whirling electrogravitic rings. For some reason I was back inside the chamber above the generator, the darkness pierced by the light coming from a violet candle.

Seated on the floor opposite the flickering light was an extraterrestrial, one of the Grays described to me by Colonel Vacendak. Its head was elongated and hairless and perched precariously atop a spindly neck. Its eyes were big and black and had no exterior lids. Nor did it have ears, just holes. Its hands were thin and double-jointed, possessing three long fingers and an opposable fourth digit. The E.T.’s torso was clothed in a white tunic. I had no idea whether it was male or female… or both.

I jumped as its inner voice communicated to me. “I am called Avi Socha.”

“I am Zachary Wallace,” I said aloud.

My spoken words appeared to startle it. “You cannot communicate telepathically?”

“No. But I can hear your thoughts.”

I felt the being’s emotions darken, as if my response had disappointed it.

“Is there a more intelligent species on Berudim that I might communicate with? Perhaps one more like me?”

“I don’t know. Where is Berudim?”

The E.T. mentally projected an image of an alien planet above the candle, its atmosphere consumed in dense gray clouds.

“Where is Berudim in relation to Charon? Is it in our galaxy?”

The E.T. grew excited. “You know of Charon?”

“I’ve been having lucid dreams, out-of-body experiences. I think my consciousness was somehow sharing yours.”

“Our consciousnesses remain independent while our physical forms harbor the same soul. This is how we can communicate, through the universal mind. Show me your world, Zachary Wallace.”

I imagined Earth as seen from space.

“So much water… Show me more.”

I zoomed in on the United Kingdom, hovering over London. Gave him a quick tour of the city, then Cambridge University where I had taught long ago.

The image brought back memories of Brandy and William.

“So much sadness. Were we wrong to seed life on Berudim?”

“Wait, are you telling me Earth is Berudim? But that image—”

“—is how Berudim appears to us in my time.”

“Avi Socha, show me Berudim in relation to Charon!”

The hologram returned to the gray world, pulling back to reveal a smaller blue world, the fourth planet from the sun.

Multiple thoughts raced through my consciousness as I processed the information. If Berudim was Earth, then Charon had to be Mars — ancient Mars. If Avi Socha’s species had seeded ancient Earth with life, then I was communicating with a being that had lived 3.8 billion years ago.

The suddenness of the history lesson was overwhelming to both of us as I realized the E.T. was tuned in to my thoughts.

“Charon is called Mars; Berudim is called Earth. You are a human. Life has evolved differently on Earth, but your RNA was harvested from our genetic matrix. Despite our appearances we are one.”

“Avi Socha, what happened to your planet? In our time Mars is a dead world lacking oceans and an atmosphere.”

“Charon’s ruling clans engaged in technologies that weakened our atmosphere, while they ignored the threat of our calderas. The magma pockets became unstable as our two planets’ orbits coincided in a doomsday event prophesied as the Miketz. We seeded Berudim in the hope that intelligent life would evolve, allowing my consciousness to communicate with an incarnate who could provide us with the secret to generating a quantum vacuum flux field. We need it to leave the solar system, to relocate our people to another suitable world.”

And suddenly everything made sense.

I had been chosen to be the gatekeeper of zero-point energy not because I was intuitive or smart, but because my soul had inhabited this being’s body billions of years ago. The information imparted to me by the alien Joe Tkalec would save Avi Socha’s species, the forebearer species that had seeded life on Earth.

Joe was right. In a sense, I really was saving my species.

“Avi Socha, I have been given the knowledge you seek. Do you have the ability to extract it from my memory?”

“I already have, my brother. Take care of our soul.”

And he was gone.

42

My consciousness passed through the center of the whirling electrogravitic rings. When I opened my eyes, I found myself back inside the chamber, which had again been created to resemble Joe Tkalec’s home library. I was seated in my familiar padded rocking chair adjacent to a wall of books. Alien Joe was in my mentor’s easy chair, a leatherbound copy of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland open on his lap.

Adjusting the book’s page to the light from his flickering red candle, the E.T. read aloud:

“‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,

‘to talk of many things:

Of shoes — and ships — and sealing wax—

Of cabbages — and kings—

And why the sea is boiling hot—

And whether pigs have wings.’

“You have questions. Ask.”

“Was it all real?”

“It was simply one potential multiverse. Your participation has made it real.”

“And if I hadn’t participated?”

“That would be another multiverse.”

“You know what I mean. Did life on Earth begin from a primordial soup delivered by an extraterrestrial species?”

“If it did, wouldn’t that make the E.T.s a homogenous species? Or, at the very least, a parent species? And like all good parents, they seek only what’s best for their children.”

“Who are you?”

“What does your gut tell you?”

“At the very least, my guardian angel. Guardian, because you’ve kept me alive through some harrowing times. Angel, because the person who I suspect you to be died long ago.”

“And who was that?” he asked.

“You’re Avi Socha. At least you’re his consciousness. That’s how we’re able to communicate, through the shared energy of our soul.”

My mentor smiled. As I watched, his appearance changed, morphing into the Gray I had conversed with earlier.

“No, Zachary. The being you conversed with during the zero-point energy transfer was the consciousness of Avi Socha as it existed 3.75411 billion years ago. I speak with you now as an Avatar, a servant of the Light, the effect of the cause.”

“What happened to you after you returned to Charon?”

“The information you transferred to me gave our ships the ability to escape the caldera eruption. From there we left the solar system but were denied interdimensional travel for another four generations until every last child of the Miketz had passed on, including myself. Only then were the tribes of Charon of a high enough morality to be allowed to access the Upper Worlds. This was our punishment for allowing our enemies to die.”

“Wow. That seems pretty harsh. How can a people who were tortured to death be expected to save their abusers?”

“Zachary, stop thinking like a physical being and think like our Creator. If you desire mercy, you need to show mercy. There is neither hatred nor judgment in the Upper Worlds, no greed or violence — just love. And this is why humanity should never fear their E.T. brethren, because we could never have been permitted access to traverse the universe through the higher dimensions without exemplifying this morality, a morality that refuses to consider vengeance upon a hostile military regime that downs our vessels and kills our kind.

“There is a plan in effect, Zachary Wallace, and all multiverses lead to it. The question is how much pain and suffering we must endure from incarnation to reincarnation before we realize the simple truth of existence — that we are all children of the Light, the sparks from one unified soul, communicating through one universal consciousness.”

“I get it, Avi. But looking back at my last seven years, how am I — my tribes, my people — expected to collapse the paradigm of the rich and powerful, a shadow nation that shows no mercy, a group that controls the media and the message and hides the truth about E.T.s and zero-point energy and other technologies that can save our planet? What happens when our caldera erupts?”

“There are things we cannot see, Zachary, because our perspective is so small. The Miketz appeared to us as a curse, a time of chaos that would lead to our extinction. Instead, it turned out to be the cause that led to the birth of your world and the salvation and evolution of ours. Both our oppressors prospered by understanding that without a threat there is no need for a cure, or a cause. Those who choose an existence in darkness will suffer their choices before they are permitted to access the Upper Worlds. Each of us has a role to play, including the villain. In some cases the bad guy is a magma pocket that forces a species to evolve… or die.

“But make no mistake, our choices lead to our destiny, and the soul chooses its next life before a new life is born. Our soul chose us because it knew that we would not sell out our people for a few pieces of gold. Use the last seven years to guide you. If you decide to introduce zero-point energy to your world, then a new multiverse of possibilities will unfold for humanity. The enemies of true freedom are everywhere. Your first vanguard shall always be the masses. The public needs to be part of the solution if the technology — and its caretaker — are to survive the launch.”