The Dream Vortex

Years Before

In the days, months and years before Ernest had prepared himself in the 70s and 80s, he had prepared himself to be the person he would become.  Without his college studies, background and experience, he would not have become the one person who would answer one of life's greatest mysteries.

Ernest was a complete addict of science, science fiction, documentaries and reading every possible magazine and book on UFOs, big foot and the occult.  A lot of kids growing up in the 70s had these passions. Ernest spent his vacations working on archeological digs and saw himself as a bit of an Indiana Jones.  Every waking moment outside work he read.  He read magazines, books and rented VHS tapes on every subject imaginable.   He was completely knowledgeable about history, cultures and knew a little bit of at least 15 languages.  And he had these ideas about a lot of things.  Some of the ideas were how to solve major problems, from how he thought the earth was created, why he felt that people could move things with their minds and that the brain contained a portion that was untapped and endless in capacity.

Meanwhile the kids and his wife thought he was just quirky.  They thought that all his crazy ideas were just in his wild imagination.  His day job as a programmer working for an insurance company really did not give him the gratification he found in his hobbies.  So when it came time for a family vacation, the family would head over to Zion National Park or deep into the desert looking for gold and gems and dinosaur bones.  When they were not on a family vacation camping preparing to look for fossils, they were often at the libraries on Sunday afternoons reading through books about everything from ancient roman architecture to science fiction and space travel.

His wife Linsey loved the outdoors and all the wonderful things Ernest pursued.  So the family went along with whatever adventure Ernest had planned.  It was Linsey who introduced Ernest to the very idea that would change his life.  She was obsessed with ghosts.  Ernest had never thought of ghosts as much of an interesting subject.  He just did not believe. And why should he believe.  He was a scientist at heart and without the scientific method involved, strange phenomena was just that, strange phenomena and unknown sciences.

While Ernest worked as a programmer, his real passion had been archeology.  But after college at Cal State Santa Cruz, he could not get a gig as a archeologist.  It is quite competitive.  He was shy and demure and found that it was just best for him to settle in to a 9 to 5 job.  And then he got married and had kids.  The only thing that kept his world together was his passions. The day job was just to make sure the family was fed and had a roof over their heads.  Ernest believed his family came first. So his personal ambitions would be put on hold indefinitely. It would have stayed that way if not for the event that would ever change Ernest and his family. 

Ernests' sons Paul and Trevor were two of the brightest kids in their middle school.  They had already learned to be champion chess players by the time they were 10 and 11 years old.  The older one Paul was 13 and Trevor was 12.  They were already into video games, microscopes and figuring out their own mysteries, like playing Beatles songs backwards to find hidden meanings.

The family was quite your average American family living in Los Angeles.  This would all change radically once Ernest had his first adventure into unexplored territory.  He had studied the ancient explorers.  He had read about Marco Pollo, Magellen and Columbus.   He had studied the Apollo missions who traveled to the moon.  He had read about men who had conquered K2 and the Himalayan Mountains.  He had read about Madam Curie and Einstein.  Ernest did not believe that he would ever be spoken about among the greats.  But he was about to take a trip within the human mind that he would refer to as the Dream Vortex and after starting that trip he could never look back.