Are you awake? Is your reality real? Are you sure?

Take the plunge down the rabbit hole of insanity and wonder in this fast-paced, nonstop psychological thriller that will leave you questioning the very nature of reality and beyond. Part thriller, part romance, part existential horror, A Dream of Waking Life delves into lucid dreaming, psychedelics, existential ontology, video games, the nature of love, the nature of reality, and more.
Outlast. Outgrow. Outlive. In the ashes of Earth, evolution is the ultimate weapon.

Mendel’s Ladder delivers an adrenaline-fueled journey set on a dystopian future Earth, brimming with high-stakes action, adventure, and mystery. This epic series opener plunges readers into a world filled with diverse cultures, heart-pounding battles, and characters who will captivate your heart and imagination.
Embark on a cosmic mystery spanning all of spacetime and beyond to discover the very nature of reality’s multilayered foundations.

“E.S. Fein is raising the bar for quality as it’s a very well-written and thought-provoking book…There are points and themes in the story that could be discussed for eons as people will have their own idea on where it leads. It’s a book I would highly recommend.” – Andy Whitaker, SFCrowsnest

Discovery on the Sphinx Plateau

In early 2003, Romanian intelligence satellites scanning the Bucegi Mountains registered an impossibly geometric void inside the limestone massif directly beneath the famed Bucegi Sphinx. Seismic tomography confirmed an underground chamber whose angles were so precise that computer models rejected them as natural formations. Within weeks, a joint team of Romania’s Department for Defense and a covert branch of the Pentagon arrived at the site with deep-ground plasma drills capable of cutting stone without explosives. Their cover story spoke of “geological research.” Locals noticed military convoys, blackout orders, and a no-fly zone stretching across the entire Prahova Valley. The operation’s codename leaked from a field engineer’s text message: Project Time Capsule.


The Holographic Door

After tunneling through two hundred meters of bedrock, excavators struck a smooth, metallic façade that emitted a low harmonic pitch. When engineers brushed a laser across its surface, blue glyphs bloomed like neon hieroglyphs, rearranging themselves to mimic electron configurations—as if teaching observers atomic physics in pictograms. An American linguist on site remarked the symbols mirrored sumerograms for “gate” and “lifespan.” Then, unbidden, the wall rippled away in liquid silver bands, revealing a triangular portal that glowed ultraviolet. Radiation counters remained at background levels, but every flashlight battery within twenty meters drained to zero—suggesting the doorway siphoned electromagnetic potential to stabilize its field.


The Grand Gallery of Giants

Inside, a sloping corridor stretched nearly two hundred feet, lined with quartz-encrusted panels that pulsed faint amber light. The passage ended in a vaulted hall containing stone tables fitted with pictographic slates that activated when approached. Holograms of galaxies, DNA helices, and human morphologies flickered mid-air. The most shocking feature was the scale: tables stood over two meters tall, clearly designed for beings twice human height. The limestone floor bore pressure prints—palm-shaped depressions far larger than a man’s hand—fossilized in crystalline patina. The team’s geologist dated the impressions at 50,000 years, an epoch when Homo sapiens allegedly wielded nothing sharper than a flint knife.


Prophecies in Plasma

Each table corresponded to a distinct branch of human development: physical evolution, emotional harmonics, and even planetary cycles. When a Romanian linguist placed her palm on a glowing recess, the hologram displayed her ancestral lineage in fractal tree form back to Paleolithic clans. An American operative tried the same; his hologram mapped Celtic runes overlaid on Martian topography—implying a lost migration. The chamber’s apex beamed a rotating hourglass symbol. As earth’s geomagnetic field spiked during a solar storm, the hourglass flipped, projecting a countdown: 4,256 days. Field notes record that number aligning precisely with a predicted pole-shift window in 2014. The Bucegi vault seemed less a museum and more an alarm clock set by long-departed architects.


The Violet Sphere and the Akashic Drive

At the hall’s rear sat a translucent sphere suspended over a dais by invisible forces. Attempts to photograph it produced only blank frames, as if CCD sensors were blinded. Guards who tried approaching reported heart palpitations and vertigo. A hazmat tech lowered a fiber-optic scope past the field; the endoscope melted. Observers concluded the orb housed a torsion plasma vortex—an Akashic Drive—capable of storing every neurological imprint that entered the vault. The drive may be the repository of global consciousness, updated whenever human brainwaves resonate at specific Schumann frequencies. In other words, the sphere is a planetary backup server.


The Vimana Hangar Deeper Still

Sensors detected a second cavity below the main hall. An elevator-shaft-like tunnel descended to a hangar containing three spindle-shaped craft each sixty feet long, coated in what looked like obsidian glass. Carbon-dating of dust on the hangar floor placed the last disturbance at 11,600 BCE—the end of the Younger Dryas cataclysm. Metallic probes tapped the craft; they rang like crystal bowls, hinting at monolithic construction. American agents allegedly tried to remove one vehicle. The attempt triggered a standing-wave pulse that knocked out comms across NATO radar for six minutes. Satellite telemetry lost lock on the region entirely—like a localised cloaking bubble had engaged.


International Blackmail and the Treaty of Măgura

Romanian generals, realizing the leverage buried under their soil, negotiated a secret accord: western allies could study the site in exchange for debt relief and a share in any “clean energy” spinoffs. Yet every breakthrough—gravity shielding equations, room-temperature superconductor blueprints—was promptly flown to Groom Lake. Romanian scientists cried foul; three died in car accidents within months. Parliament sessions discussing Bucegi now convene behind sealed doors. Tourists see only new hiking trails and a conspicuously high antenna array atop Omu Peak—officially for “weather studies,” but locals joke it points straight at the stars.


Vatican Eyes and the Mirror Hall

Documents leaked to WikiLeaks recount two Vatican emissaries entering a side chamber dubbed the Mirror Hall. It contained a polished basalt monolith that reflected not the body but the soul—visions of past lives, karmic debts, and potential futures. One emissary fainted after glimpsing “an empire of machines devouring Christendom.” The Vatican soon lobbied NATO to restrict further spiritual research, fearing dogma-shattering revelations.


The Countdown Resets

On 21 December 2012—the day popular fringe calendars flagged for apocalypse—the hourglass hologram emitted a blue pulse up the gallery walls, then reset to another 12-year cycle. Weather satellites recorded a simultaneous spike in ionospheric density above the Carpathians. Conspiracy analysts argue the Bucegi capsule periodically synchronizes with earth’s magnetic heartbeat, updating its data store and recalibrating humanity’s subconscious timelines. Each reset window could open or close probabilities—wars, inventions, paradigm leaps—based on how humans collectively vibrate.


Parallel Capsules Across the Globe

If one vault exists in Romania, where are its siblings? Arab folklore speaks of a hidden library under the Bu Hedma plateau in Tunisia; Himalayan lamas guard talk of the Luminous Calculus buried beneath Mount Kailash; sonar maps in Alaska suggest an obsidian platform beneath the Susitna basin. All align on a geodesic grid, forming nodes of a planetary defense lattice. As pole shifts loom and solar cycles intensify, these capsules may activate in chorus, either uplifting humanity or erasing us to factory settings.


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