Steve Alten - Vostok

“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.

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.”