When Worlds Collide

by Richard Stephenson

An orbital research station created a wormhole which pulls the station through into a parallel universe. They find themselves orbiting an alternative Earth with 99.9 % parity to their original Earth. After spending several months studying their new home safely from their orbital station, the research team had enough sensor data of the planet, solar system, and the surrounding cosmos to determine that there were minor cosmic changes with the planets of the solar system.

Earth was still wrapped in the throes of the last Ice Age. This planet's continental ice sheets were retreating 30 times more slowly than on their home Earth during its last ice age. Megafauna such as woolly mammoths, sabertooth tigers, giant moose, giant elk, and other large Ice Age animals still existed on this alternate Earth. There was still a land bridge across the English Channel, from Scotland to Ireland, and the Bering Land Bridge. There was a large inland sea, the Mediterranean, which could be found in both universes. Sea levels were hundreds of feet lower on this new Earth. Humans appeared to have advanced only to the Middle Ages in technological development. Agriculture was still in its infancy. The Americas appeared to be uninhabited by humans. There were indications of possible early industrial revolutionary attempts at the Island of Santorini, in the Nile valley, the Fertile Crescent, and the Yellow River regions.

The stranded researchers became colonist, who landed in a region of what would have been Germany on their original Earth. This was just a couple hundred miles south of the Great European Ice Sheet and located on a basalt ramp formed by a lava tube which had flowed out from a now extinct volcano. This extinct volcano resembled Mount St Helens at a time before it had exploded. The story goes into detail on the colonist struggle for survival to establish a viable settlement with the additional problem of their electronic components being incompatable with the native electricity of the new universe making electronics unusable.

After a perior of time, they discover that certain laws of physics were different in this alternative universe and that they are able to interact with their environment directly with psychokinesis, telepathically, or in other ways depending on each person's innate personality characteristics. Some colonist seem to have the ability to affect gravity, electricity, or life force energy. As time went by, they discover more powers or gifts which manifested themselves in this new universe.

620 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 7, 2024

About the author

Richard Stephenson was born in 1975 in Denison, TX and spent his childhood in North Texas. In 1992, he graduated high school after only three years. He then pursued his degree at Oklahoma Christian University, once again accomplishing the task in three years. Richard then married his best friend before going off to basic training to be a military policeman with the US Army. With his new wife joining the adventure, they spent the next four years at Fort Polk, LA and had two children.

Richard currently lives in Southeast Texas with his family where he is working something very top secret.

Why haven't I published anything in four years?

Well, stay tuned!