Two boys. An alien named Mark. A mountain that screams in the night — and a secret that bends the laws of time, family, and first contact.
Bobby Mars hears something from Western Peak that no living thing makes. What he and Jeffery find beneath that mountain will change everything.
24 million light-years away, Bobby and Jeffery step through the portal to a world the alien Mark calls Home. Two civilizations reach across the distance. Two worlds begin to become one family.
Back in Aspen Ridge. The stream runs orange. Three children end up in the ER. And Bobby's mother looks at her son across the kitchen table and asks: do you know something about this?
The last week of August. Mark calls the whole Colorado team together. Thirteen translation pins. Colorado School of Mines. And a decision that ends the time differential inside the installation forever.
A wedding in Cusco, Peru. Commander Rael appears with a quiet warning. Then Maria discovers something in the observatory data that changes the timeline for everything. Two worlds. One family.
Every character, every storyline in this series comes from an imagination developed in my youth. When I was young, I built entire movies in my head that took days or months to complete. Bobby and Jeffery are the friendships I never had. I knew better how to imagine than to live.
— Butch Alford · Just-a-Thought Publications, LLC
Bobby leads with his gut and never turns back. He wears his dad's military Boonie hat every single day — his father placed it on his head before shipping off to war and never came home. Stocky and solid, he scraped by with B's and C's at school but was braver than anyone twice his age.
Raised by his grandparents Fred and Mabel after his parents died in a car accident when he was five. Lean and wiry at 5'6", he devoured books on quantum mechanics and physics. His wire-rimmed glasses were always slipping down his nose, especially when he got excited about a new discovery.
One of three beings who greeted Bobby and Jeffery in the great hall beneath Western Peak. Tall and slender, with translucent skin suggesting biology unlike anything on Earth. He communicates not through words or sound but through thought — and has been waiting patiently for these two boys to find him.
