“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.”

“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.