Entry To Elsewhen - No Other Gods But Me

No Other Gods But Me

As with the first story, this story takes place on the near-future Earth. Colin Hooper is a man who is completing recovery from a severe mental breakdown, which significantly included hallucination. After repeated chance meetings with Vanessa Sheriff he becomes unnerved by the fact that whenever she is present, the hallucinations return. However, she sees them as well. Their meetings are repeatedly interrupted by the appearance of a man calling himself Kolok, who makes dire predictions if they should keep meeting, but offers no details of what might occur.

Vanessa marries a man who is involved with an organization calling itself Real Truth, which she describes as a cult. The "Real Truthers" beliefs include a belief in the supremacy of human thought as the primary force in the universe, and the idea that by working together they can think into existence someone who they describe as the Perfect Man.

After being drawn into a meeting of Real Truth, Colin and Vanessa accidentally cross over into a parallel-universe Earth in which mental powers such as psychokinesis are practiced by a number of adepts, who use these powers to enslave the rest of the population. It is explained that these abilities originated thousands of years past as the result of a mutation which the adepts carry. The leader, Telthis, is the one with the strongest mental powers, and has been using his abilities to influence events on Colin and Vanessa's Earth with the purpose of eventually invading it and ruling both Earths. It was Telthis's efforts which caused Colin's breakdown and hallucinations. Telthis also manipulated Colin and Vanessa into their apparently random meetings, because they also carry the genetic mutation of the adepts on Telthis' Earth, and he hopes that by bringing them together they will eventually have children and promote psychokinetic and other mental powers. Kolok, it turns out, is Telthis' chief opponent, who has appeared to Colin and Vanessa in the hope of preventing this.

Colin and Vanessa manage with Kolok's help to escape from captivity and return to their own Earth. Shortly afterward, Telthis' invasion begins. However he discovers that his mental powers do not function outside of his own Earth. He and his soldiers are attacked by an angry mob and carried off by police.