Dreamtime - Part 1 - Entanglement - Chapter 3 - Truth

“Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” ― Carl Sagan

Journal Entry, June 15, 2012

When I met Carol, my deepest fears were dispelled. The thing I most longed for had happened. Now that I have met another like me, I wonder. How many more of us are out there? Why is this happening now and why is this happening at all? 

 Ethan James, Ph.D.

Ethan returned to his room and actuated his own dreams. He opened the windows and the sweet night-blooming smell filled the curtains and swirled around the walls. He closed his eyes and took a deep draft, held it, and slowly exhaled. 

A knock at the door brought him out of his meditation. A man, seeming entirely out of place, stood in his doorway. 

Ethan was instantly racked with pain, as if he was slammed in the gut with a two-by-four. When he looked down, he saw why. The man’s dreamtime body had a warped and swirling black hole in the center of his navel with black veins drawing energy into it. 

By reflex, Ethan slipped fully into dreamtime and recognized him. This was Henry, a friend Ethan had met in dreamtime several years ago. He had aided Ethan in Carol’s rescue last night, but Ethan had never met him before in spacetime. He had remembered his name because it was the only word the man had ever spoken to Ethan. 

After a quick scan of Henry’s dreamtime body, Ethan recognized Henry’s primary signal. It originated in infancy, after initial separation at birth. Bonding with the mother is the very first conflict an infant faces. Henry was never reunited with his mother, thus he never learned trust or sympathy. All he knew was the fear and pain he could inflict on weaker people. When this signal was triggered, he felt most powerful and in control. 

Still in dreamtime, Ethan spoke the true identity of the signal, «Lost Boy.» It broke Henry’s hypnosis and interrupted the signal long enough for Ethan to do what he did next. 

«Chase of the Shadow,» he spoke without speaking. He plunged his hand into Henry’s navel and closed it around the lock, an enormous mass of shadowy puss in the center of his abdomen. 

Having caught the signal, he pronounced the command in a voice with pure intention, «Bangarang!», the cry of the boys of Neverland who fly in their dreams. 

Ethan declared the blow, «Captain of the Hook», pulled hard against the congested, coagulated ooze, extracted it from Henry’s insides, and squeezed it into a steaming lump of foul smelling rot on the floor. It left a charred opening in the center of Henry’s belly. 

The energy release knocked both of them to the floor several feet away. Starved of energy, the signal lost control of Henry almost immediately and began to fade away. 

Ethan was the first to get up. He approached Henry and shook him by the arm, attempting to wake him. As soon as Ethan touched Henry’s skin, he smelled the blurry charred opening in Henry’s belly and tasted the bitter fumes of the burnt opening. The assault on his sinuses almost knocked him back to the floor, but he managed to stay conscious. Still fighting the nausea that remained, Ethan dragged Henry inside his room and hoisted him onto the bed. Henry did not wake, but slept peacefully, probably for the first time in his life, Ethan guessed.

For the second time in his own life, Ethan found that when he touched another person, he had acquired a new sensation. Never before was he able to taste and smell the mists that flowed through dreamtime. He decided it must have had something to do with physical touch in spacetime of someone with dreamtime awareness. He would learn to be more careful.

Ethan looked down to his slumbering guest, figuring Henry would struggle for months to resolve this signal; this was no ordinary lock, no ordinary dissonance. 

In the process, Henry would learn how he was so easily able to exploit the weaknesses of other sleepers; the fear, anger, pain, loneliness, shyness, and insecurity of the sleeper was carried through the mists of dreamtime.  Henry could taste and smell them. 

Someone with that signal and a talent like this could only have been up to no good. Ethan would have many questions for Henry when he woke.

"We did it." The lanky researcher sprang to his feet, donned his sport coat, and rushed out to find his colleague at the Institute for Social Research, Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. "We did it, Dr. Schuster. I know you don't believe me, but this is it."

"What is it, Steven?"  the portly Harold spat back and couldn't help but take pleasure in his friend's infectious enthusiasm, so he humored him once again. "What are you blathering about, you old coot?" 

"Harold, this isn't just the holy grail. It's the arc of the covenant, the golden fleece, the fountain of youth, and el dorado rolled into one." He stood there grinning like a fool.

"Do shut up, Steven, and sit down." He huffed. "Tell me before I box you one."

Steve bobbed his head and paced around the lab. "Ok, I was analyzing the data from last night's simulations, and man, oh man. All of the models held up. All of them."

"What?"

"I know - I know."

"How is that possible? You designed the models to contradict each other, right? So how could they all hold?" He ran his fingers through his thick, black hair. "Not all of them," he grumbled in disbelief.

Steve looked at his hands and then back to Harold. "You know, I wouldn't have thought it would go this way either."

"Wait. Which simulations did you run?" Harold was getting curious now.

"You're going to laugh when I tell you, Harold." Steve looked away.

"Naw. You didn't." Harry shook his head as Steve grinned again. "You told me you'd given up on it, made me swear to never mention it again."

"I know, and here it is. Surprised the hell outta me. Looks like we need to go find ourselves a theoretical physicist we can trust, who knows a whole lot about string theory."

Harold waxed prophetic, covering his mouth for auditory effect. "Hello, Stephen Hawking. This is God. You were right."

Henry stirred. He didn't open his eyes yet, but Ethan noticed and stood at the bedside with the light of early morning behind him in the window.

"Good morning, Henry. Are you hungry?"

Henry shook his head, not yet ready to take the sunlight in his eyes. He felt under the blanket for his clothes, which were still on. 

"You must have come to me for a reason, so I took the liberty of putting you up in the room next to mine."

"Thank you, sir," Henry croaked in a hoarse grumble resembling speech, "but you don't know who I am." He sat up and started to dry heave. Nothing came up.

"Maybe you should pull your guts back together first, my friend." Ethan said, steadying him.

"One thing, mate," Henry managed to squeeze out.

"What's that?"

"Henry? Bullocks," he grunted and collapsed back into the pillow.

Ethan knocked on Carol's door for the second time that morning. Carol had worked for hours writing in her dream journal and actuating her dreams. 

She didn’t know the hour, but the sun was streaming through the white linen curtains. She was exhausted and starving, but she also couldn't deny the exhilaration she felt from doing dreamwork. 

What had felt like walking through knee-high mud now felt only like swampy water - the locked energy was actually starting to move. Still, it seemed almost too easy after facing the nightmare children in her dream, if that's what they were. Children. Nothing more?

A thought occurred to her. If these were children, they had reached out to her in dreamtime for a reason. Simply to torment her? That made no sense. 

It is not in the nature of a child signal to desire the pain of another. They simply have needs and they lack the awareness to recognize the needs of others. These children needed mothering and Carol was the nearest, strongest feminine nurturing energy source. Something was happening underneath the surface that was just barely making sense. Perhaps the true signal is exploiting the child signal’s ignorance and innocence, she thought, to exact some kind of exchange, but to what purpose?

Carol had felt a powerful pull to resolve these signals. She instinctively felt that it would be a grave violation of the laws of the universe to outwardly retaliate with aggression. Under no circumstances could this upsurge of locked energy be misdirected toward the original source of the signal. She reminded herself that this was purely an internal struggle, which could only be resolved in dreamtime. Nothing else would break the pattern of action and reaction.

Ethan interrupted her pondering. "Carol, I have some news to tell you." 

"I have some news of my own, but you first."

Ethan turned and walked down the hall to his room. Moments later he returned with Henry, who was wearing a gray blazer and a button down black shirt with a baboon lapel pin.

"Carol, do you recognize this man?"

"Should I?" She put her hands on her hips and puckered her lips. "Professor, what is this about?"

"Carol, focus your attention in dreamtime." 

Just as she began the shift, a realization washed over her, first in her gut, then in the rest of her senses. Every time she tried to actuate the unknown man from her dream on the fishing boat she was struck with inescapable fear and confusion. But not now. He was different. Still, there was the confusion, just less fear.

“Professor, I don’t understand. How could he be here?”

Henry, who had remained quiet and still, spoke in a voice soft and low. “I understand your shock, Miss, but I’ve come a very long way to meet you ….”

“To meet me?”

"And to warn you."

"Warn me?"

"Both of you."

“Before you do that”, Ethan interrupted, “maybe we should get some breakfast first. Bad news is always better on a full stomach. Let’s not keep the good Mrs. West waiting.”

Steven Kuschner waited for flight LH4279 to arrive at gate 5C in Heathrow Airport. He had come to collect renowned Japanese American theoretical physicist, Dr. Michio Kaku, and prominent American string theorist, Dr. Brian Greene. 

After attending the World Science Festival in New York, they had hopped the pond on the promise that their work in science had been instrumental in finalizing a Theory of Everything. It could not be discussed over phones or the Internet and secrecy was a must. Their respect for Steven Kushner's work and the urgency of his request brought them to this meeting. 

They stepped out of the terminal, Michio stopping several times to give autographs or accept compliments from admiring fans.

"Dr. Kuschner," Michio spoke first. "I thank you for, in your words, the opportunity to make a significant difference in scientific studies, but please explain why we had to come all this way."

"Your T.O.E. proposition was intriguing," Brian interrupted, "but I too would like to know what precipitated this unusual request."

"Gentlemen," Steve nervously glanced about. "I would like to answer all of your questions, but let's take this discussion to our laboratories at Leicester, not five minutes from here." He could hardly bear their disapproving stares.

"Well," said Brian. "At least we had a fruitful discussion on the flight over." Michio's camera ready smile confirmed his agreement.

At the lab, Steve walked his esteemed visitors through a series of rudimentary, precursory studies in machine learning and perceptual cognition that inspired only mild interest. He meant only to put them into a more receptive mood for the news he was about to drop on them.

"Dr Kaku. Dr. Greene. We've done it. Beyond a doubt, this is it." He took a deep breath to steady himself and charged ahead. "You will recognize this set of models that each of you developed separately." They both nodded. "That was the groundwork. It gets interesting when we apply this model my team and I developed as a bridge between them." 

They leaned in and began taking notice.

"See that even if you change them here to make their intersection impossible, you reach the same resolution. The data from the simulations and the formulas we've applied are conclusive. Your hypotheses in theoretical neuroscience, Michio, and your mirror symmetry work in Calabi-Yau manifolds, Brian, establish a perfect link between the transmission of thought and vibrational string patterns, but only if this model joining them is also true.

"In these precise moments of dreaming, it is possible for all human beings to become receptors for the residual vibrational patterns throughout time all the way back to the Big Bang and maybe even beyond." 

Michio and Brian sat with gaping mouths as they pondered the statements they just heard and how it related to their own theories.

“The simulations also prove that not only is it possible for a human being to develop sensitivities to detect these vibrational patterns, but that it is very likely already happening and most likely there are individuals already in possession of these qualities.”

Brian raised his hand, like he was in the third grade again. “Dr. Kuschner. Hold on. What you're telling us is that the stars talk to us in our sleep. Am I right?”

Steve froze. “I--I. Well, I’m not quite-- well, … yes, essentially.”

“That’s brilliant!” cheered Michio. “Why didn’t we ever consider this before?”

Brian’s charming smile was stapled ear to ear. “I just don’t know how we ever missed this. It’s so incredibly simple and obvious now. Every element in our bodies, every proton, every Planck-length string contains the information recorded from the center of a star, a supernova, and the Big Bang itself. It makes perfect sense that our bodies at rest, our complex of nerves, receptors and magnetic fields, would become sensitive to the energetics transmuted from one string to another, even whole supersymmetric complexes.”

"Now that won't fit in a fortune cookie," Michio interrupted. “I mean, it makes you want to go read your horoscope a little more closely next time, huh?” Michio could hardly contain his enthusiasm.

“It would still be an entirely subjective experience,” Brian continued, “but it does lend much more truth to this kind of information than was ever afforded it before.”

Michio agreed, sobering up just a little. “Yes, because we still have no technology available to measure energy at that level.”

“So it begs the question, right?” Steve knew he had them on his side now. “How do we find these people and learn from them what they can know?”

Steve took them a step further. “Especially when you consider that since the information these individuals collect includes every moment after the first hydrogen atom was formed until now. I even have a theory on an individual’s ability to see into the future.”

“I’m fascinated to know this as well,” Brian continued, “but how on Earth are we going to do that?” 

"Isn't it obvious?" Steve raised his eyebrows. "We sleep on it."

"We shall see what the stars have to say to us tonight," Michio tittered, practically floated above the floor. 

At breakfast, they ate their eggs benedict and croissants quietly until Ethan broke the silence.

“Henry--”

“Heng Wei, Professor James.”

“--is here risking great peril to share with us answers to the questions you and I have been struggling with for months, certainly for many years since before we met.”

“All the way from London?” The accent made it an easy guess for her. Carol put down her fork and stared at Henry. He had one of the most interesting auras she had ever seen, beautiful really. It was orange, mostly around the shoulders, with yellow fringes reaching up to his neck, supporting an indigo crown that flickered violet over the top of his head. As she watched him, a smile spread across his face, suggesting he knew what she was seeing. This was unnerving for her.

“Thailand, actually,” He corrected, letting some of his ancestry seep through the words. “I was raised and schooled in London, but my family was exiled Burmese.”

“Ruling elite, no less.”

“Orphaned political refugee. No more.”

“I’m sorry, Henry,” she apologized and looked to her half finished croissant. “But you seem to have made it out safely.”

“Thanks to your friend, the Professor.” He nodded to Ethan. “This brings me to my reason for finding you.”

“How did he find us, by the way?” Carol turned to Ethan.

“If we let him finish his story, I think we'll find he has much more to teach us.”

"Sorry. Continue," Carol yielded, slightly embarrassed.

Henry looked at both of them and Ethan nodded.

"The world is more than what eyes can see. The two of you know this by what you’ve seen and heard your whole lives; that is far beyond what all but a few hundred people have ever seen. What I’m about to tell you will not be easy for you to hear, given your Western upbringing.”

Ethan and Carol exchanged concerned glances.

“I’m not sure what I’m seeing here because this is new to me, but you both just looked to me like you are under dark water.”

“It means we’re less certain,” Ethan volunteered, “more doubtful of our situation. But please, continue.”

“We are witnesses to the resolution of one age and the inception of a new one. The dying age is being reborn into the next. How karmic events play out in the previous age affects the substantive quality of the next, not unlike how your past lives brought you this one. There is a universal karmic debt to be paid.”

He saw them shifting into patterns of dark purple and black.

“Okay. Take some time to think about this. I don’t know what purple means, but your expressions tell me you’re not getting it.”

Carol this time. “Go ahead, Henry. We’re not rejecting what you’ve said, only waiting for an explanation.”

“If you say so. I only hope I haven’t chosen the wrong path.” He stretched his neck and sniffed. “Understand, I’ve marked myself a traitor. There is little time for quibbling. Take what I’m telling you and decide for yourselves, but do it quickly.”

They both nodded and shifted to brighter shades of blue, first Carol then Ethan.

“That’s better, I think. I have information that can be used to devastating effect if you are willing to act. We don’t know exactly when this age began, probably before humans stood upright, but it’s coming to a close as we speak. For millennia, this age has locked the universe in a struggle between ascension and descension. The two of you are part of the ascension. Until most recently, I was locked in a destiny to effectively cause the descent of planet Earth."

Henry stared directly into Carol's eyes, and said, "Believe me when I tell these things. You of all people should know what it means to believe."

Michio awoke with a start, as if a thunder clap had sounded in the dark of his room. He rubbed his aching head and began to drift back to sleep when he heard a banging at the door. At first thinking it was his head, he rolled over. The banging persisted. Michio climbed out of bed, wrapped himself in his robe, and groggily shuffled to the door of his suite. He cracked it open and peered into the blinding light of the hallway.

“Dr. Kaku,” Brian whispered. 

“Dr. Greene?” Michio responded, also in a whisper.

“I must speak to you.” His urgency was great and a distraught look emblazoned his face.

“Come in, Dr.,” Michio croaked. “Why are we whispering?”

“I don’t know. I’m just not sure how to put this.”

“You too?” Michio wondered aloud. “This doesn’t make sense, but I feel like I’ve been rolled flat, like an egg roll wrapper.”

“It appears our guess was right,” Brian sighed.

“But that is impossible,” Michio blurted excitedly. “Scientists don’t just come up with wild theories and then receive instant confirmation without any real science to support it.”

“Maybe we’re no longer doing science.”

“I’ve never not done science,” Michio declared. “And why are you standing in the hallway?”

“You haven’t invited me in.” At that moment Brian looked so comically pathetic, Michio could not contain his laughter.

“Oh. My. Come in then,” Michio waved him in. “I wasn’t exactly sleeping anyway.”

“I must get some air,” Brian muttered, as he walked past Michio and over to the sliding door which led to the balcony. Standing at the rail and looking up at the sky, Brian felt only slightly less anxious. “Dr. Kaku. I think we need to get out of the city, some place where we can see stars again.”

“I could not agree more, my friend,” Michio replied gratefully.

“You will not believe me”, Henry continued, “but the two of you have the greatest potential ever discovered since Jesus of Nazareth, forgive the comparison. He was the first of this age to ascend from Earth. Elijah was not, for he was only an early incarnation of the Hebrew messiah. Gautama Buddha was not, for he so loved to teach that he waited forty-two generations after his Enlightenment to ascend, but that was by choice, presumably to remain and instruct the lightworkers of this age. 

"Jesus was a first generation ascendant, and not just in dreamtime; his was a whole body ascension. His ascended being has remained close to the third dimension ever since.” 

“Wait a minute, Mr. Wei,” Carol interrupted, emphasizing his last name. “You’re telling me not only that every religious story we have ever heard is wrong, but that we are part of some multi-millennial scheme to ascend the planet Earth? Whatever that means.” Carol sat back in her chair with a resigned plop. “How many belief systems do you intend to blow up in one day?”

“I never said they were wrong. And there is no scheme. We don’t know how this started - probably by natural processes. We just know that we’re on a path that cannot be stopped, and the two of you are the advent of something unique in the world. I know because I’m the best fourth dimensional tracker this world has. The mists led me to you.”

“That’s how you found us? By smell?” Ethan was beginning to come around.

“In a way, yes.” Henry patiently explained. “Your energy was carried by the mists of what you call dreamtime and I sensed them, so I guess smelling is the closest approximate metaphor.”

“I get it,” Carol chimed in. “We can only interpret dreamtime using the internal representations and faculties we possess in spacetime. We do it in our dreaming too.”

“It’s all we can do,” Ethan decided to weigh in. “Consciousness consumes the infinitesimally small and incalculable information from dreamtime and reduces it down to rich, succinct symbols. The rest, which we cannot comprehend, remains as mist and darkness.”

“That is true, but not the whole truth,” Henry said. His tone had turned sorrowful and his color waxed. “We are the stars. We came from them and they are our final destination. Their energy flows through us at the most basic level of our being. Whatever you want to call it, I don’t care. We ascend to higher realms of order, creation, heaven - higher vibrational patterns.” He started to appear visibly agitated by the tedious explanations. “Or we descend into lower realms of chaos, entropy, destruction, hell, or nothingness - lower vibrational patterns.”

“What you’re saying is---” Ethan began again.

“Stop,” Henry demanded, slamming his palms on the table. “You must accept these truths. You must find your ...,” Henry paused, searching for the word. “Wormhole. If you cannot act with pure and full intention right now, we will be overwhelmed and annihilated by those I left behind."

“You came to us because you wanted to be free,” Carol concluded.

“Exactly.” Henry’s eyes lit up.

“How did you know I could resolve the signal?”

“Hoped. I hoped that the flickers of raw light energy I followed through the mists would stop the pain.” Henry gingerly rubbed his sore belly for a moment. “When you touched me, you must have righted me somehow, synchronized your energies with mine. Whatever happened, I can see and hear things in the mist I have never seen or heard before.”

“We have found some answers in our own search," Ethan modestly recounted, "but your answers have confirmed our suspicions - and added to our fears."

"You haven't heard the big surprise yet."

“What do you see, Dr. Greene?” Michio huffed, as he mounted the stairs to the instrumentation panel for the T170-M space telescope at Leicester University.

“Well, right now we’re receiving images compiled from spectrometer readings taken during last night’s collection of the Pillars of Creation.”

“Oh, the Eagle Nebula. My favorite,” Michio practically flew up the last flight of stairs with glee. “So this is your idea of getting out of the city?”

“You know me. Not happy unless I’m solving life’s great mysteries.”

“Speaking of which, do you really think the radiation and the images we’re seeing contain messages from the stars? Are you really convinced?”

“I don’t know, Dr. Kaku,” he smirked incredulously. “It sure would be ironic that after millennia of staring up at the sky, we discover that all we had to do was find a good pillow.” His laughter was contagious now. “I mean, really. If life is out there in the cosmos, why would it make us wait until now to make itself known? The irony is killing me. It can’t all be reduced to personal interpretations of imperfect memories from REM sleep information reception.”

“I agree, Drs.,” Steve said. “We have the technology now to receive and interpret the signals directly, scientifically. Why should the theosophists have all the fun? We can discover the answers from the original sources of knowledge since the dawn of the universe.”

“Dr. Kuschner,” Brian stood up from the console. “How did you know we’d be here?”

“I didn’t,” Steve said. “I just arrived for my scheduled time on the T170-M. I’m glad to see you both. I was going to check in on you later, but this is just as well.”

“We’ve been discussing your proposition, Dr. Kuschner,” Michio clasped his hands in front of himself. “And if I have this right, you’re saying you have found a way to decode the information?”

“No, not yet. It’s just a theory, but it does make sense, no?”

“If all that we’ve discussed since our arrival is true,” Brian interjected. “Yes, perfect sense. I’m just not sure we’re getting the whole picture.”

“Elaborate.”

In response, Brian pointed to various points in the map of the night sky, which was hanging on the wall. “Here, here, here, and here. All of this.” He was pointing to the spaces between the stars. “The visible universe makes up only 4.9% of all energy, right?” Everyone nodded. “But the rest is 26.8% dark matter and 68.3% dark energy. What of that?”

“Yes, Dr. Greene? What of it?” Steve lifted his arms. “What is this mysterious force accelerating the expansion of the universe, stretching the fabric of the cosmos?”

“If the stars exert their force of gravity on us and pass information through time, does it not also follow that dark matter exerts some kind of force on us too? And what information might it pass?”

“What information indeed?” chimed in Michio.

"Mr. Wei, I'm not sure we can handle any more surprises," Carol honestly pleaded. 

"Wait." Ethan watched Henry very closely. "You're talking about the descension, aren't you?" 

"If ever you were afraid of anything,” Henry mused, “If you thought you were ready for what's coming, what's already here, think again and ask yourself one question: how dark could the human soul possibly get?"

Ethan thought for a moment and winced. "Serial killers. Suicide bombers. Pedophile priests," he offered a few candidates.

"The Crusades. The conquest of the new world." Carol countered.

"The slave trade."

"The Holocaust."

"The Bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima," Henry reluctantly added. "The genocidal slaughter of innocents in Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, Iraq, and Syria. And this is a world where balance and restraint are the norm." 

He looked away. When he stared back at them, tears had welled up in his eyes. "What do you think the world will look like in an entirely new age of descension?"

"It won't be pretty," Carol concluded.

All fell silent.

"You know what, Henry?"

"What, Ethan?"

"You have a bright future as a commencement speaker, especially with that London accent." 

"You’re right," Henry chuckled and allowed a bemused smile to spread across his lips. "We certainly could have chosen an easier path, one where we remained blissfully ignorant of the truth, just like the others." Returning to seriousness, he said, "Unfortunately, our karma and our fourth dimensional DNA have led us to this cycle, in which the comforts of the third dimension no longer satisfy.

“In this age, my friends, the strong feast on the suffering of the weak. They bamboozle billions behind the facade of democracy, socialism, communism, and capitalism, when really it is plutocracy, this global economy ruled by the elite landowning and banking classes, that undermines them all as the most successful political system.

"At this very moment, the agents of descension approach to enslave us and exploit our gifts to hasten our descent, not into chaos or destruction this time, but into blind subjugation under the modern illusions of privacy protection, freedom of choice, and consumer confidence. We live in a world withered in mind and corrupted in spirit. Our leaders are compromised long before they ever reach prominence and, one way or another, all the winners are chosen, bribed, and extorted before ever attaining office." 

“How can we know what this information means,” began Brian, “and how would it affect the human mind?”

“Remember,” Steve continued, “that we already have a working theory on how vibrational patterns transferred through messenger strings can affect the cells of the human brain, which has evolved to receive them. What we don’t have is the experimental data to know the effects.”

“Care to venture a guess?” Brian asked.

“If I were to hypothesize, I would propose that dark energy with a negative scalar field interacts with those same synapses. I would further guess that the effect would be suppressive in nature, inhibiting certain kinds of electrical impulses.”

“But with the extremely low intensity of dark energy,” Michio argued. “how could it have such an effect?”

“We’re talking about planck-length strings, which would easily receive the energy transfers however small they might be. How that could affect human brain cells 1028 times larger, we don’t know, can’t know, not until we find the right subjects to study. Ideal candidates would genuinely exhibit extraordinary sensitivity to low intensity scalar fields. They would need awareness of these effects at a conscious level.”

“Are you proposing a scientific explanation for extrasensory perception?” Michio practically boiled over with enthusiasm.

“You might call it ESP,” Steve agreed. 

“I think we’re talking about human potential,” Brian intervened. “The untapped resources of the human brain.”

“The potential I see is years of wasted research from unreliable sources,” Steve quipped, sobering up.

A deflated Michio nodded.

“Maybe we don’t have to start from scratch,” Brian said, tapping his upper lip. “With the advancements we’ve seen in nanotechnology, there might be a chance we can detect dark energy fluctuations at 1020 planck-length or even as small as 1012. That might get us close enough to observe the aggregate fluctuations in connection with a gifted individual’s perceptions.”

Michio looked up and said, “Add one more ‘ology’ to our smorgasbord.”

"Again", Ethan applauded. "Thanks for the pep talk, Henry, but what do you suggest we do about all this? Start a revolution?"

"Yes, actually." Henry didn't even blink. 

"Carol?” Ethan asked, “Do you see any other way? You're the life coach, the PR consultant."

She shook her head, "No." She stared at the floor and wiped the sweat from her forehead. "A deadly virus. A global collapse in the financial system. A nuclear holocaust. What Henry described is correct; nothing short of massive social upheaval on a global scale can resolve the primary signals of this age.

"This is what I was going to explain to you earlier when you first came to my room. Some signals are so powerful and pervasive that they enslave the sleeper - the host becomes the parasite. 

"They are like energy leeches because they drain the host, but they also induce a kind of hypnosis, numbing the host by the continuous suggestion of limiting beliefs. The sleeper becomes locked in the age of the signal, not a child any more, but a selfish, uncaring monster. 

"Normal human sympathetic instincts are to refrain from violence on one another, but these leeches are altogether evil and cannot be bargained with. They can never be encouraged or humored. The only cure for a leech is extermination, and judgment must be quick, else it begins to inflict its distorted belief systems on others. In a way, this new description sums up my life's work.

"Now, this is what I learned this morning from my dream. When a multitude of sleepers share the same signal, they engage in a sort of mass hypnosis. Parents pass many of their signals genetically or through societal indoctrination. 

"The symptoms of a society in descension, borrowing a word from our friend here, are always the same. Extreme moral restrictions. Oppressive taboos.  Suppression of information. Violent mob entertainment. Aggressive lawmaking. These are the hallmarks of a pandemic infestation of leeches draining sleepers of willpower and personal responsibility. 

"By reaffirming each other's signals they form a collective nest of leeches, cannibalizing each other. Only apocalyptic events can exterminate them, tragedies like war, starvation, disease, and death."

Ethan and Henry sat, staring at each other with stunned looks on their faces.

After many minutes of silence, Henry spoke. "The seeds of freedom grow wildest in the compost of human suffering. There is another way." Henry held out his hands. "I believe that if we can remove the numbing effects of this mass hypnosis, sleepers will become aware of their living nightmares and be forced to choose."

It was Ethan's turn to offer his insight. "You both speak the truth. We’re truthspeakers, not warmongers. There must be another way." 

"I agree," Henry nodded. “Seclusion? Meditation? Discipline?” 

"You’re right. We cannot fight fire with fire," Carol relented.

Ethan continued. "No mere coincidence could bring together individuals with such talents and the awareness of an unseen, alternate reality. I could see and hear the distortions of unresolved signals. Carol could see and feel limiting belief systems. Henry could taste and smell the emotions that signals produce. 

"Now, each of us can do the same as the others. To the rest of the world this is science fiction, but to us it is our destiny. There is no such thing as coincidence."

An emboldened Henry continued, "Yes, this is our karma and we decide now. Our hope is that once the fierce flames of truth are ignited, dreamtime will be engulfed in a conflagration of mass ascension. Ultimately, our only hope is in evolving the human species and the ascension of Gaia."

"Fighting fire with fire, Henry?" she wagged her finger at him.

"In a way," he smirked. “And it’s Heng Wei.”

The self-named Truthspeakers formulated the three dharmas regarding the nature of dreamtime and the three rules for truthspeaking. 

Dharma 1. Dreamtime is the fourth dimension, overlapping and coexisting with spacetime, which is the third dimension or the physical world that holds sentient beings. It is traveled by emotions, intentional projections, ascended beings, and the light energy of the stars. 

Dharma 2. In dreamtime all things happen at once and throughout eternity. How someone experiences and interacts with dreamtime depends on their extra-dimensional DNA and the karma from past lives. 

Dharma 3. Beings aware of dreamtime perceive it as a mist-filled place of brightness, colors, sensations, and shadows. Truthspeakers can switch their perception at will between spacetime and dreamtime. 

Rule 1. Truthspeakers must actuate their dreams before taking any other action in dreamtime. The waking "reality" of sleepers is boring and uninteresting; only dreamtime matters. The daily discipline of the Truthspeaker is in dreamtime, where only the Truthspeaker can interpret and actuate the dream; there is no handbook or translation guide. 

Rule 2. Truthspeaking kills energy leeches and all leeches must be killed without mercy. In Truthspeaking, the speaker names and commands a leech by finding the lock and blowing the limiting belief. Just as the leech can only live in the hypnosis of its host, it can only die in dreamtime. 

Rule 3. When a signal is triggered into action, a Truthspeaker must take the fight into internal reality, under no condition attacking another sleeper. Truthspeaking can only be used against the leech, never on a sleeper; the effects are devastating and permanent.

Author's Note

Please be brutal and blunt, but provide constructive criticism. I'm not one to care for niceness concerning my work. The world won't be nice, even if this is my first attempt at writing.