Steve Alten - Vostok

And then something strangely familiar happened. The ten luminous objects bled the colors of the spectrum, from red to orange to yellow, darkening to green and blue, and indigo to violet before consuming me within their warm radiant light, which simultaneously blinded me and absorbed me into—

— energy.

I can’t say for sure wether I opened my eyes because I don’t remember having shut them. All I remember is that one moment I was freezing, trembling, exhausted, and cleaving to the side of a snow-capped summit — the next, my consciousness was consumed by ten glowing orbs, which condensed into one warm, white, soothing light.

There was no pain or fear, no growling predators or ice sheets, nor was there my physical being. I just seemed to be floating merrily along. I think I was even giggling.

Am I dead?

A red dot appeared. Lacking the perception of either below or above, the singularity simply grew larger until it became a doughnut-shaped object. As it continued to magnify, its details became clear and I could see three circular ring plates divided by blue magnetic fields. As the object expanded beyond my field of vision, its gaping hole swallowed me, changing my view from outside to inside, so that I was now in the center of the ring.

My entire 360-degree field of vision was occupied by rollers, tall canister-shaped, magnetized columns of metal that were rotating around the innermost ring like ponies on a merry-go-round. Though the rollers were revolving at an incredible speed, their velocity was such that they remained uniformly visible, like the rotating blades of a helicopter. This effect allowed me to count twelve of them, aligned side by side within the innermost ring. Held in place by the lower and upper plates, the twelve rollers were not actually touching the plates; instead they were floating upon a magnetic field like a high-speed monorail.

Most bizarre. As my consciousness hovered in the ring’s hole, I could feel a rush of negatively charged electrons racing through the positively charged core. How did I know these particles were negatively charged? I have no idea. But in my present state of existence I found that I could sense it, just as I sensed the electrons forming pairs within the gap, then compressing as they rushed outward into the rotating rollers. There was a powerful magnetic field in play, created by the alternating alignment of the poles in both the rollers and the plates. And I realized it was the outward flow of these paired bosons that was causing the twelve cylinders to rotate within the inner ring plate.

Hitching a ride along the electron current, my consciousness was inhaled through a magnetic layer that carried the particle stream through a second ring plate that was even larger than the first. There were more rollers here, and they revolved even faster.

Exiting out of the second ring, the stream of electrons passed through a layer that tasted of copper before accelerating into a third and final ring plate, this one composed of even more rollers whirling at an even faster velocity.

I realized then that I was touring an electrical generator, a never-ending circuit of electricity powered solely by the internal tensions of the atoms themselves — atoms whose negatively charged electrons were being perpetually drawn into the device’s positively charged neodymium core like bees to honey. There was no build up of heat, no fuel expended, nor toxins released. Powered by the infinite ocean of atoms that surrounded us, the alien device was, quite simply, a source of endless, clean, free energy.

As these thoughts came to me, I felt my consciousness drawn out of the centrifuge and away from the shrinking power generator, so that I was again gazing upon its ring plates. The object progressively grew smaller until it shrank once more to a red singularity and disappeared.

And as it disappeared I felt my own atoms reappear, gaining mass as I re-entered the physical dimension, materializing inside the private home library of my mentor, Joe Tkalec.

The moment I saw the alien entity, I remembered everything — every missing minute of existence, every experienced death, culminating into the now.

“Welcome, Zachary. But not ‘welcome back.’ Tell me why.”

“ Welcome back refers to a past moment lived. Had I actually experienced any of those moments other than this last one, I would not be here.”

“Correct. And yet you experienced all of them, each choice creating its own branch of reality, each decision generating its own parallel universe. In some of these universes, you never made it back to your submersible. In others you returned injured, only to find Ming dead and Ben piloting the sub. Countless parallel universes created by a multitude of choices, and yet in only one distinct set of circumstances did the life of Zachary Wallace culminate in his returning to the mountaintop. And because time and existence are dependent solely upon the consciousness of the observer, all of the other multiverses have now disappeared.

“Or have they? Do you remember our discussions about the two theories of time?”

“I remember discussing McTaggert’s theories with Joe…”

“How can you be so sure I’m not Joe?”

“Stop it.”

“What if I told you I am your old mentor and friend, that I was summoned to this moment by the same forces responsible for your being here? Only your belief system is preventing you from accepting me as the real deal, despite the fact that your five senses tell you I am Joe Tkalec.”

“Common sense tells me you’re not.”

“Funny. Common sense tells me that I am the real Joe and you are Alien Zachary.”

“It’s your show, pal. You want to waste time playing mind games, go for it.”

“But the physical dimension is riddled with mind games. Take our sense of sight, for instance. Tell me, Alien Zachary, how does the human eye see?”

“It doesn’t. Images are constructed in our brains based on electrical signals sent from our eyes.”

“So then, if we see a Miocene sperm whale, in reality the whale is the electrical signal interpreted by our brain.”

“Your point being?”

“What if everything that surrounds us, everything we perceive as matter, is also simply an electrical signal? How would you know the difference? The human brain, after all, is designed to interpret electrical signals sent from our five senses. How do we know an external world even exists? What if our perceptions are originating from another source, the same source responsible for our dreams? According to quantum physics, matter doesn’t even exist; the material world is simply an illusion, an electrical signal perceived by the brain to convince the soul that the universe is real.”

“Guess that’s why I became a marine biologist and not a quantum physicist.”

Joe smiled. “We’ll table the subject of reality for the moment and talk about time.”

“What’s the point? You told me time doesn’t exist in the upper dimensions.”

“True, but before you access the portal, you need to understand that time is not an absolute.”

My heart raced. “I’m to use the portal?”

“Or perhaps you already have?”

“Maybe you are Joe. He used to drive me crazy with his riddles, too.”

“And perhaps you really are the skinny runt I took under my wing as an eleven-year-old import from Drumnadrochit. Ah, but what if I hadn’t? Would you have still been a scientist? Would you have gone on to Princeton? Married your childhood sweetheart? If my roommate Troy hadn’t trained you as an athlete, perhaps you would have drowned in the Sargasso Sea. The person you are today is based on a million variables, all manipulated by your conscious thought.”