I followed suit, my leg muscles burning as I stretched. Attempting to increase the circulation in my knees, I performed a slow squat and recovery — shocked to find myself levitating away from the cockpit!
“Zach?”
“We’re in some kind of anti-gravity well. Try it.”
Jonas jumped — only way too hard — and shot straight toward the dark recess above our heads.
“J.T.?” Hovering in mid-air a foot above my seat, I stared up at the void. “Jonas, are you okay? Can you hear me? Jonas!”
Nothing.
Damn.
Placing my right foot on my headrest, I launched my weightless body into the air like Superman, the sensation of flying causing me to grin from ear to ear despite concern for my colleague. Within seconds I was high above the Manta, looking down at the triple-ringed generator, the interior rollers of which were either rotating very slowly or at a speed so fast their velocity rendered them an optical illusion.
Looking up, I realized a polished metal ceiling loomed less than twenty feet overhead and there was no way for me to slow down. Covering my head, I braced for an impact that was going to hurt — only to feel a bizarre, titillating sensation from my hands down through my skull, neck, upper torso, and legs as the atoms of my body passed through the surface.
Opening my eyes, I found myself on the opposite side of the permeable barrier, standing in a dimly lit circular chamber on a polished metal floor, my body once more weighed down by gravity. The circular walls and twelve-foot-high ceiling were made of the same metallic substance that seemed to radiate its own blue-white light.
Ten feet to my left was Jonas. He was on his hands and knees, a dark figure standing over him.
The surface of the circular floor beneath us brightened, revealing Colonel Vacendak—
— The barrel of his Beretta 9mm pistol pressed firmly against the back of Jonas’s skull.
“Nice to see you again, Dr. Wallace. You’re looking well for a dead man.” The Colonel nodded to two armed men, who stepped from out of the shadows to guard Jonas.
The Colonel approached me, one hand reaching out to grip my right arm above the elbow, the other poking the gun barrel against my temple. “You look surprised to see me. Did you think we lacked the knowledge to access this ship? MAJESTIC uses a neutrino light detector to track E.T. vessels as they enter our dimension. Then we bring ’em down and reverse-engineer them. Been doing it since your father started making young girls cry.
“You didn’t really think his ploy would fool us, did you? We practically invented disinformation and misdirection tactics.” He leaned in. “If I had a dollar for every time one of our guys kidnapped some dumb hick farmer and put him through an alien abduction… Of course, I’m sure a few of them actually enjoyed the anal probes.”
Without warning, he struck me on the top of my skull with the butt-end of the Beretta’s magazine.
I dropped to one knee, warm blood pooling around the wound.
Then I lost it.
With a primal yell, I drove my right shoulder into the Colonel’s gut as if he was a blitzing linebacker, slamming the older man flat on his back. The guards stayed with Jonas, allowing me a few seconds to pummel Vacendak’s face into a bloody pulp before one of them dragged me off him.
Furious, the Colonel regained his feet and aimed the gun’s barrel between my eyes, his body trembling. For a moment I was convinced my life was over — but I’ve been there before.
Spinning around to face Jonas, the Colonel fired.
The force of the gun blast startled me, the sound echoing in my ears. I saw a puff of smoke leave the barrel as it burped a slowly spinning lead projectile through gelid air, which appeared to ripple outward from the Beretta.
The bullet made it a third of the way to Jonas’s brain before it stopped. In fact, everything stopped except for yours truly and Joe Tkalec, who now stood beside me, observing the frozen scene.
“Joe, is he going to die?”
“Yes. But he served a greater good. He brought you here.”
“To the portal?”
“To a state of universal consciousness known as Da’at; a place of infinite light, energy, and perfection, where all ten dimensions are united as one. Physical beings who are giving, like your friend, are able to draw from its energy. Those who receive for themselves alone cannot access it. One who has awakened Da’at is able to perform the miraculous. Are you ready to perform the miraculous, Zachary?”
“What miracle, Alien Joe? What are you asking me to do?”
“I cannot say without jeopardizing your free will. However, if you choose to bring your consciousness into Da’at, then the multiverse you entered seven years ago and everything hence forward shall become the reality.”
“Whoa, hold on. You’re asking me to sacrifice William and Brandy, now Jonas and his son, plus all the people that these bastards killed in D.C.? For what? For some alien race on a distant planet that died long ago? Why are you placing that burden on me? I mean, come on, isn’t that God’s will?”
“God has given you the will to choose.”
“Okay, so what happens if I choose not to go to this Da’at place? What happens then?”
“Then you’ll return to seven years ago to the ice tunnel, and whatever reality has manifested as a result of your decision. Of course, this time, instead of entering this vessel, you’ll simply come to a dead end.”
“In my last lucid dream, I was much older. Brandy and I were still together; William was a man. And the Yellowstone Caldera erupted… Was that real?”
“It was one reality among a multiverse of possibilities.”
“You know what I’m asking! Will it really happen, or did it occur as a result of my decision to enter Da’at?”
“Entering Da’at resolves nothing. It simply returns your soul to a past life.”
“You mean Avi Socha?”
“He is known on his world as a soul searcher. Once you enter Da’at, your consciousness will awaken to his reality. You will retain no memory of ever having been Zachary Wallace.”
“Then how do I get back to this life?”
“There’s no guarantee you will. The soul is immortal, of course, but the only certainty once you enter Da’at is that you will live and die as Avi Socha, and the course of action you take, or refuse to take, may determine the future of your species.”
The blood drained from my face.
There are times when life shits on your head, when reality unravels with a diagnosis of cancer or paralysis or the loss of a loved one. That’s the moment you realize your contentment was all an illusion, that you never had any control, that the money and notoriety and long hours and better job titles and great sex and the whole rat race chasing after the pursuit of happiness was all bullshit. Because if and when you do find yourself alone in that foxhole or on that surgical table, in a sinking boat or a hospice bed or trapped on a dying planet, and it’s just you and your fear — that’s the moment you realize the only thing you have left, the only thing of substance that life can’t strip away from you, is your faith in a higher power.
For me, Dr. Zachary Wallace, lord of the skeptics, I had to believe because the alternative — going back seven years to the ice tunnel — was a death sentence.
Sometimes, better the devil you haven’t met…
“Okay, Alien Joe, I’m ready. Send me back.”
I felt myself sinking feet-first through the floor, my body atomizing as my consciousness was inhaled into the center of the whirling electrogravitic rings.
Part Three
Before the Beginning…