Synopsis

This collection of novelettes takes the reader from the not-too-distant future to a time when travel between worlds is a common occurrence. Each stop along mankind’s journey outward to the stars is accompanied by a deeper look inward—from examining how extraterrestrial beings might use our own biology against us, to whether a human consciousness can survive in a virtual environment, to how wishes are really granted. Original and thought provoking, these stories—which include an interstellar religious thriller involving a second coming of Christ—will stimulate the intellect and engage the imagination.

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Guest Post

“Spiritual Dynamics”

After I lost my father to cancer in 2005, I started to rethink how I viewed the soul and the afterlife, trying to make some sense of my father’s passing, and then started thinking about our “before life.”  How do souls come and go from our physical bodies and where exactly do souls originate?

“Most people just accept the mysteries of how souls enter the body at birth and depart the body when one dies as something unknowable.  After all, no one has ever detected a soul.  No piece of equipment is capable of doing that.  In fact, there is no proof, no evidence at all, souls even exist.”

Being a distant relative of William Thomson—better known as Lord Kelvin, a major contributor to the Third Law of Thermodynamics and having been a scientist myself—I have always been interested in the Three Laws of Thermodynamics.  I thought developing the Three Laws of Spiritual Dynamics would be an interesting analog and might be used in some of my stories.  The above paragraph is from a story I wrote titled “The Natural Order of Things,” a story which explores these laws and how they came about in greater depth and will be included in By The Light Of The Sun (a future collection of stories).

I wanted “The Goldfire Project” to plant a seed for this future story and this topic.  Readers might recall The Laws of Spiritual Dynamics were first mentioned in “An Intricate Balance” (from Seven Sides of Self, She Writes Press, 2019).

Here are the Laws of Spiritual Dynamics (also referred to as the Laws of Spiritual Mechanics):

The Zeroeth Law—

GOD creates each and every soul with love and light.

The First Law—

Each soul created appears spontaneously with a corresponding soul of equal and opposite presence at the exact same instant.

The Second Law—

Each soul and its corresponding soul of equal and opposite presence become incarnate at the exact same instant.

The Third Law—

Each soul and its corresponding soul of equal and opposite presence leave their corporeal bodies at the exact same instant.

The Fourth Law—

Each soul assigned to a new corporeal host will not retain any memories from its previous incarnations. However, souls that return to the heavenly realm will retain memories from their most recent incarnation and will recover all memories from all previous incarnations.

People might find this series of laws as going against the grain of mainstream Christian beliefs.  But the underlying concept isn’t all that different from certain theories purported by astrophysicists … that being that for each and every subatomic particle created at the beginning of the Universe, there was an equal and opposite anti-particle created.  In other words, matter was created in pairs … a positively charged proton and a negatively charged anti-proton.  A negatively charged electron and a positively charged anti-electron or positron.  Matter and anti-matter in equal amounts.

It also occurred to me everything in the Universe is energy.  Even matter, which is simply energy that has lost something of its heat or intensity and condensed into the matter we detect with our senses.  Souls are energy, as well.  The difference is souls are information-containing energy.  That is to say, souls are highly-ordered energy.

“And if souls are highly-ordered energy, it should be possible to detect them, but only if the detectors are capable of discerning the highly-ordered energy from all other forms of energy not highly ordered.  Essentially, this means creating a filter of sorts, a filter allowing one type of energy through, but not the other.  I know.  It sounds simple in theory, but the trick is identifying the means by which one filters different forms of energy.”

Another paragraph from “The Natural Order of Things.”  Perhaps there will come a day when such a thing is possible.  Then we will have our answer.

About the Author

Nancy Joie Wilkie worked for over thirty years in both the biotechnology industry and as part of the federal government’s biodefense effort. She served as a project manager, providing oversight for the development of many  new products. Now retired, she composes original music, plays a variety of instruments, and has recorded many of her original compositions. She also created a series of greeting cards that display her artwork and photographs. “Faraway and Forever—More Stories” is her second collection of stories. “Seven Sides of Self” was published by She Writes Press in November 2019. She will be releasing a third collection of short stories, “The River Keeper and Other Tales,” in early 2024. She is also working on a science fiction novel and a children’s story. She resides in Brookeville, MD.

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