Steve Alten - Vostok

“How is that possible?”

“It begins with desire and setting goals, and all the hard work and perseverance you demonstrated in both academics and athletics, but it goes way beyond that. All matter possesses a frequency. The atoms that make up matter are fluctuations of energy within a huge void. What appears solid to your senses is a construct of how your brain interprets the frequency of those electrical signals. Change the frequency and you change both matter and energy. The soul achieves this through conscious thought.

“Young Zachary Wallace desired to be a scientist. The intensity of that desire affected Joe Tkalec, and the protégé magically has his mentor. Young Zachary was bullied in seventh grade by a ninth grader, and the exposed weakness created a desire to lift weights. Enter Troy and his conditioning regimen. New parallel universes divert from the old as you learn the game of football. Would you have become a marine biologist without my involvement? A running back without Troy’s coaching? Perhaps. But of all the possible outcomes you could have experienced, the ones you did experience resulted from the ability of your consciousness to alter the frequency of matter — the so-called aligning of the stars. The phenomenon is real, and those who discover how to control it can remove the chaos associated with existing in a dimension so far from the energy source. Then again, others can abuse their conscious thoughts for themselves alone, creating chaos.

“Now let us add the variable of time to the equation. Recite the two theories of time authored by the philosopher John McTaggert.”

I sat back in my cushioned chair and rocked. “McTaggert’s A-Theory stated that the only real time is the present. The past is gone and the future exists only as a probability distribution, a potentiality of the possible things that can happen. Since the future isn’t set, it’s not real.”

“And his B-Theory?”

“That the past, present, and future all co-exist simultaneously. Since the past determines the future, everything that has happened since the Big Bang was predetermined. Quantum physics is based on B-Theory, that everything that could possibly happen has already happened, or, as you say, time is dependent upon the observer.”

“And what do you say, Zachary? Is it possible to alter the present by changing the past?”

“I don’t know. If you were to go back in time forty years and murder my father, then you would have changed my birth parents. Still, who’s to say I would have turned out any different? My new father might have been a womanizing alcoholic just like Angus. If everything is predetermined, then you might board a different train but all tracks lead to similar outcomes. In the scheme of things, consciousness may not have the big effect you’re alluding to.”

“Let’s hope you’re wrong.” The entity appearing to me as Joe Tkalec closed his eyes and rocked quietly.

Joe or Alien Joe, I knew better than to interrupt.

He opened his eyes. “Zachary, in a previous communication we discussed the frequencies of the ten dimensions and how their wavelengths — let’s call them vibrations — corresponded to different colors of the electromagnetic spectrum. There exists an eleventh dimension exiled from the ten, a dimension associated with darkness, which is defined by the absence of light. The darkness feeds off the slow, dense vibrations generated by negative energies: fear, ego, lust, greed, hatred, and violence.

“A very radical alternate reality is threatening to bring chaos to the physical world. It is being driven by a fear-based dichotomy, dictated by a minority that is controlling the masses through their desire for the accumulation of matter.”

“You mean money. Why would a species capable of interdimensional travel give two shits about a bunch of greedy rich people?”

“The negative elite responsible for creating these fiefdoms are destabilizing the natural order of things. By unknowingly feeding the darkness, they are generating random shifts that have self-organized into higher complexities, creating chaos. We will show you the particular chaos that concerns us, so that you can decide whether you are the one who can help alter the collective consciousness.”

“More riddles. And don’t think I forgot what you said about Moses on Mount Sinai. If that was a portal, then he should have foreseen his people losing faith while he was getting the Ten Commandments.”

“That was an encoded story. The Ten Commandments were the ten dimensions; the gift was immortality. Moses denied the Israelites the gift when he realized they were not ready.”

“So what’s the gift I’m supposed to — oh no.” I stopped rocking. I stopped breathing.

The generator…

“Free, abundant, clean energy for everyone on the planet. Yeah, Joe, that’s a game-changer. And the negative elite, the fiefdoms, they’re going to be a lot worse than the guys building the Golden Calf. The idol worshippers of my time start wars to keep the status quo. Don’t get me wrong, what you want to do is fantastic; I just don’t think I’m the right guy. Maybe the president? Or Bill Gates?”

“The methodology and the means remain yours to decide.”

“You’re not listening. Bringing a product like this to market takes money, and I’m nothing but a piss-poor scientist. Until recently, the only thing I could afford to feed my family was mutton. Ever eat mutton, Alien Joe? It tastes like it sounds.”

“Zachary, you used the analogy of multiple trains following converging tracks. Not all multiverses run together or even parallel. Some deviate radically from the norm. Humanity has shifted its collective consciousness to on the same track our ancestors found themselves on long ago. Unless diverted, the train will derail and take your species with it.”

“Show me.”

The room dimmed, and I felt myself growing lighter, as if gravity were leaving with Joe Tkalec and his library… and the density that was my atomic structure. And as my being again danced and flitted and floated about in the higher dimension, the dot reappeared. Only this time it was blue. The singularity grew larger until it became a ring that encompassed my entire field of vision, until its gaping hole drew me into the center, looking out at the spinning rollers.

As my consciousness hovered in the centrifuge’s positively charged core, an image appeared on the wall of spinning rollers like a 360-degree movie screen. The projection showed a man who looked to be in his mid-forties, his hair silver-gray and long, pulled back into a tight ponytail. He was dressed in an expensive, charcoal-black Italian suit with a matching shirt and tie. He was seated in the back of a limousine next to an attractive brown-eyed blonde in her mid-thirties. The two of them were holding hands.

As I watched, the silver-haired man’s eyes rolled up and he slumped over. The woman grabbed him and shook him and called out his name, but her words were distorted, rippling with echoes. Before I could comprehend what she was shouting, a tsunami of negatively charged electrons swept through my being and carried my consciousness outward through the portal’s spinning inner ring. That’s when I realized the man in the limousine was me.

“Zachary! Zach, honey, wake up. Driver, pull over!”

I opened my eyes, my brain buzzing with electricity, my body weighed down by a sudden sensation of gravity.

“Zach, are you all right?”

I turned and stared at my research assistant and lover, and the buzzing stopped.