My circle had begun seven years ago when an alien entity had redirected my life, sending me down a multiverse not of my choosing. Now I had returned, hoping for a do-over at the point where my consciousness had jumped the tracks into a radically different reality, which had somehow become my destiny.

Multiverses.

Ten dimensions of existence.

The theory that started it all originated in 1997 when a physicist by the name of Juan Maldacena introduced a model of the universe in which gravity arose from thin microscopic vibrating strings residing in nine dimensions of space, plus one of time. Quantum theory became a mathematical Rosetta Stone, filling in key gaps within Einstein’s theory of gravity. More unnerving were Maldacena’s implications—that the nine upper dimensions were the true reality, while our physical lower dimension of time was the equivalent of a hologram.

In 2013, two physicists from Japan’s Ibaraki University made huge strides in proving Maldacena’s theory when they discovered that the internal energy and properties of a black hole precisely matched the internal energy of our physical universe—that is, if there were no gravity.

Was our physical universe simply one big holographic projection?

Was time an illusion and gravity its shepherd?

Seeking to rise above “the hologram” and rediscover my life, I had returned to Lake Vostok, arriving nine hours after Colonel Vacendak and his MJ-12 maniacs.

Having entered the northern basin, I instructed Jonas to take us deep and go active on sonar, warning him that the lake’s bull sperm whale population was extremely aggressive when it came to safeguarding their pods. My concerns seemed unfounded, as we made it all the way to the plateau without a single sonar contact.

It took Jonas twenty minutes to locate the river we needed to follow inland. Reducing our speed to five knots, we entered the Livyatan melvillei nursery.

“My God… how could he do this?”

The Tethys had shown no mercy. The tributary flowed red with blood, the shallows clogged with the butchered remains of the Miocene whales. Beached cetaceans lined the snow-covered banks, bleeding out from laser burns that had effortlessly sheered blubber from bone. The dead were too numerous to count; those few still dying slapped the surface with their flukes as a warning, and the survivors clicked the waterway in search of their missing calves.

The scene sickened us. Once more, man’s ego had blinded him to recognizing that there was a universal consciousness in play; every negative action causing a ripple that would one day come home to roost.

The E.T.s were here as mentors, reaching out to those who demonstrated purity of heart. As such, I knew the Colonel and his fear-mongers would not be granted access into the alien vessel. And that would lead them to desperate measures.

“Jonas, we have to hurry before there’s no vessel left to access.”