The Portal to a Parallel Universe

By Roland V. Boike

Gerald Westfield is shipwrecked near Papeete in French Polynesia while on vacation. After floating in the ocean on a makeshift raft, he ends up on a small tropical island.

Several months of survival on the island pass before Gerald discovers the entrance to another dimension in the back of the cave that he had been occupying.

Gerald passes through the portal and meets a family in this new world. While learning their language and customs, he falls in love with the daughter of his newfound friends.

The country in this new dimension is at war, and as the battle draws closer, Gerald decides to return home to see his family and avoid the conflict. Unfortunately, before he can leave, Gerald is arrested and put in prison for not serving in the military.

After being released from prison, Gerald decides to build a raft, head out to sea, and endure the hardships and possible death in his attempt to return to his homeland and family.

As the war intensifies, the family that Gerald met in the other dimension are forced to enter the portal to seek shelter. After building a raft and setting off at sea, they are finally rescued.

Using the passports that Gerald had salvaged from the bodies of deceased passengers aboard the fatal ship, Geralds friends make their way to Hawaii and start their search to reunite with their friend.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543416367

Roland V. Boike

Roland Vincent Boike was born October 28, 1930 at his family home in Madeira, Ohio. He is the son of Dr. Stephen Boike and Ludvica Rensi Boike and is one of seven children. During the Korean War, Roland served in 134th and the 147th Field Artillery as Chief of Section of a 105 Howitzers Battalion. Roland attended Western Kentucky State University, Ohio State Department of Agriculture, and the University Of Cincinnati Department Of Applied Arts. He was awarded a full scholarship to attend Lincoln College of Chiropractic where he graduated in 1962 with a Degree in Chiropractic. Roland practiced Chiropractic in Loveland, Ohio for thirty- five years and was a Staff Physician at Jewish Hospital in Kenwood, Ohio. He served as Team Physician for Loveland High School, Western Brown High School and Wilmington College Girls Soccer Team. Roland served as Mayor and Vice Mayor in Loveland, Ohio, a community of over 10,500 residents. Roland was a founder and Director of The Community National Bank, Loveland, Ohio and Chairman of the Loveland 1976 Centennial Celebration, which produced a live outdoor spectacular, “The History of Loveland”. Roland was a founder, past president and member of the Board of Trustees of The Loveland Chamber of Commerce. He designed the Valentine postage meter stamp and the Logo “There Is Nothing In The World So Sweet As Love”. He was recognized with an award from The National Safety Council for saving the lives of three children in a submerged automobile at Lake Isabella in May, 1964. Roland was honored by the City of Loveland, Ohio for dedicated service to the community with a commemorative marker In the Veteran’s Memorial Park. Roland is a Kentucky Colonel and has received numerous awards for civic achievements.

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Copyright © 2017 by Roland V. Boike.

Library of Congress Control Number:            2017905852

ISBN:            Hardcover                        978-1-5434-1635-0

Softcover                        978-1-5434-1634-3

eBook                        978-1-5434-1636-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 04/18/2017

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Friends

Chapter 2 Midnight Disaster

Chapter 3 Alone

Chapter 4 At Sea

Chapter 5 The Island

Chapter 6 The Caldera

Chapter 7 The Diary

Chapter 8 The Portal

Chapter 9 The Lawters

Chapter 10 A Close Shave

Chapter 11 Homesick

Chapter 12 A Surprise Visitor

Chapter 13 Taken Prisoner

Chapter 14 The Interpreter

Chapter 15 A Farwell

Chapter 16 Final Preparation

Chapter 17 Homeward Bound

Chapter 18 My Awakening

Chapter 19 Cruise Line Settlement

Chapter 20 Monica

Chapter 21 Yes I Will

Chapter 22 Employment

Chapter 23 Reunion

Chapter 24 Rasha

Chapter 25 Galena

Chapter 26 Reuniting The Family

Chapter 27 Deportation

Chapter 28 Maradona Checks In

Chapter 29 New Wardrobe

Chapter 30 Learning The Dress Code

Chapter 31 Fernando’s Estate

Chapter 32 The Estate

Chapter 33 A Staff Meeting

Chapter 34 A New Car

Chapter 35 Assembling A Staff

Chapter 36 Lost Parents, Lost Friend

Chapter 37 Edification

Chapter 38 Staff Meeting

Chapter 39 Immigration Papers

Chapter 40 Learning The System

Chapter 41 Friends Farwell

Chapter 42 A Bribe

Chapter 43 Taken

Chapter 44 The Reunion

Chapter 45 A Family Emergency

Chapter 46 The Hospital

Chapter 47 The Towing Lot

Chapter 48 A New Car

Chapter 49 Heading Home

Chapter 50 Blind Date

About The Author

Synopsis

CHAPTER 1

FRIENDS

The only way you could be reading this story is if my lifelong best friend and constant companion, Ryan Thompson, has survived me in life and I cease to be.

At the urging of my friend Ryan, I agreed to commit my unusual story to paper. Ryan agreed that it would only be released to the public if I preceded him in death.

It is true that my tale may be unbelievable and thought to be the dreams and fantasies of a person without all of his faculties. What you will read in the next few pages are an accounting of facts as they occurred in my life and others whom I touch on this strange adventure.

To the best of my ability, I will try to relate to you these events exactly as they occurred. I am re-counting to you the absolute truth, as I know it to be. If you disbelieve my story and think it is but fantasy, I cannot fault you. I can assure you that I was not on drugs, using controlled substances, or intoxicated when these events occurred.

Unfortunately, I think that perhaps you and many others will place my story along with legends of Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Loc Ness, Alien Being, ships from Outer Space, Hanger 69 and other Folklore. I only know, that out there somewhere, the things that I described in this story happened to me. They are true. The places I visited do exist and the events actually occurred.

At first, it almost sounded like one of the porters had dropped a tray of dishes and silverware in the hallway. It was not until I heard this ship emergency siren go off that I realized we probably had hit something, or something had hit our cruise ship, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Our ship, the Pacific Queen, was registered in the Netherlands. The ship could hold about 1,400 passengers and had a crew of 462. The ship was 780 feet long and 106 feet at the beam.

Our ocean view stateroom was located towards the bow of the ship on the Promenade Deck. Ryan and I were on a ten-day South Pacific Cruise going to seven different islands. We left Honolulu on Saturday, June 24, 2007 and today was our second full day at sea. We were headed for Papeete in French Polynesia.

We had spent the biggest part of the day lounging around the ship’s pool, drinking Pina Coladas. Ryan and I played Euchre most of the day and settled in the ship’s Star Light Lounge after dinner.

We met an older couple who were vacationing in the Pacific with their daughter and her husband from Peru. The daughter and her husband were celebrating their recent marriage. Fernando Teves was from Peru. His wife Maradona and in-laws Zelmet Harounda and Zeydata Harounda were from Bilma, Niger, Africa. They were an interesting group of people and we spent the entire evening getting acquainted and listening to a Hungarian quartet playing some classical Hungarian music.

I imagined that Fernando was very well to do and treated us to all of our drinks, tipped the orchestra handsomely and invited us to join them in the morning for an all day guided horseback ride around the island, as his guest. Maradona Teves spoke a dialect of Bilma French, and was just learning to speak Spanish. Fernando spoke, Spanish, Quechua, Aymara, English and French.

We had a great time. Fernando made up a game to help his wife learn Spanish and English. He selected objects present in the room and all the players then named the object in their native tongue. He would then tell his wife what the object was in Spanish.

As the evening progressed, we all got laughing and someone would stand up, identify an object and everyone in the room would call out the name of the object. It was not long before the whole room participated in the game, including the Hungarian Orchestra.

It was almost midnight and Ryan and I had gotten into our nightclothes. We lay in bed discussing what our plans for tomorrow would be.

Ryan, in my opinion, had the most forceful personality of the two of us. We agreed on almost everything that we involved ourselves in, so I somewhat just kind of followed in his footsteps.

Ryan Thompson and I have been best friends since the fifth grade at St. Aloysius Grade School. We have been constant companions ever since that first day when we played baseball together at lunch.

He was the new boy at school and this was his first day. I remember it very well because Tommy Nichols and I were choosing our teams to play baseball. I was one man short and I had to choose Ryan in order to play. I knew nothing about this new kid, so I really put my reputation on the line.

I knew that at three o’clock, I would walk home and the first thing my mother would ask me would be How was your day today, Honey?

I would need to lie and say it was okay, when actually my day was miserable. Then she would get to the meat of subject matter and ask me, Did you play ball today at lunch?

Yeah, I would reply, as I sat at the kitchen table eating my PBJ and drinking milk.

Then Mom, unwittingly, would pound an oak peg through my ego; she would ask the all-important question Did you win, Honey?

If this new kid could not play baseball, I was doomed. In those days, the guy that chose the players decided their batting order, so naturally I put Ryan at the end of the batting order. Maybe lunch would be over before it was his turn to bat.

We really did not play innings, we played until the bell rang and lunch was over. Whoever had the most runs, won.

We had about five more minutes to play. We were at bat with the bases loaded. The score was five to two. If Ryan hit a home run, we would win the game and he would be a hero for days to come.

Ryan stepped to the plate. The first pitch was high and outside and Ryan swung at it. Ryan tapped his bat on the plate, shifted his weight from foot to foot, spit on the ground and raised the bat in preparation for the next pitch. The second pitch was right down the middle. Ryan took a big swing and missed.

The pressure was on. I was sweating blood and the rest of my team was yelling at the top of their lungs encouraging remarks at Ryan. In fact, as I look back on the incident now, some of the remarks may not have been encouraging at all. There were not many nasty things a young man could yell at the top of his lungs at a Parochial School with a nun standing just behind the catcher at home plate.

Ryan shifted his position again, changed his grip on the bat, dug his shoes into the dust at home plate, spit on the ground and raised the bat in preparation for the final pitch.

I could hear the swish of the bat and the ball as it passed home plate, but there was no thump of the ball connecting with the bat. The sound of that thump that every red-blooded American ball player knows never reached my ears. That miserable new kid struck out; the bell rang and it was all over.

As we walked back to our classrooms, I put my arm around Ryan and said, I know you were under a lot of pressure kid, you’ll do better next time.

Thanks, Gerald. I feel real bad about striking out and letting you and our team down, but could you and I still be friends?

I don’t know any reason why we can’t be friends, Ryan, but I want you to know I have a hard and fast rule that prevents me from choosing my friends to be on my baseball team.

I can live with that, Ryan said, laughing.

We put our arms around each other, walked through the double doors and went to class.

CHAPTER 2

MIDNIGHT DISASTER

When I got home that day, my mother did ask me all those questions about my day. When I told her, we lost the game she said, That’s too bad Honey, better luck next time.

No, Mother, I said. I had a great day and great luck today. We lost the game, but I made a new friend.

From that day on, Ryan and I walked to school together, played together, earned our Boy Scout merit badges together, double dated in high school and, occasionally, fell in love with the same girl.

One summer when I was a freshman in high school my mother and father, Margaret and Wilson Westfeld, vacationed in Hawaii. The trip was a perk that my father got for his idea for precisely cutting patterns for the clothing industry with a computerized laser. His idea was not only used in the clothing industry, but my father sold the patented technology rights to a large leather product manufacturer and later to a metal pre-fabrication company. This idea made my father an independently wealthy man, however, it did not change our lifestyle much. We stayed in our four-bedroom ranch home in Loveland, Ohio and our lives were pretty much the same as they were before we became wealthy.

When it came right down to moving, it seems that my father could not part with his workshop at the rear of the house. He was a tinkerer and an inventor. To my knowledge, he never had a job working for anybody. He went to his shop every day and put in a full eight hours, faithfully, five days a week. He held some twenty-three patents and worked as a self-employed, efficiency expert on occasion.

That trip to Hawaii was the first vacation my parents had taken since they were married. They took one week off for that occasion so they could honeymoon in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

The stories that my parents told us about the Hawaiian Islands intrigued Ryan and me and after much consideration, we decided we wanted to go to Hawaii to get our college education at the University of Hawaii. Our much consideration was based entirely on the bare breast Hula Girls in their native costume, on the front of the brochures my parents brought back from Hawaii.

As you can plainly see, we did not do things halfcocked, that is to say without adequate planning and sound investigation. We put a lot of time and effort into exploring every facet of what we were going to do after graduation. After all, we were what were known in those days as Know it all High School Freshmen.

There really was not much that adults could add to our minds about who we were and where we were going in life. We had four years to explore, plan and convince our parents of the necessity of this ambitious, thoroughly thought out idea.

By the time we graduated from high school, the brochures were tattered and the bare chested Hula Girls were almost faded out of sight from our frequent fingering. Our resolve did not fade with the print, however, and three months after graduation, Ryan and I were registered for our first semester of study at the University of Hawaii at Manoah.

The sound of the ship’s alarm was eerie and is hard to describe. The emergency siren throbbed and pounded through the walls of our room. It reminded me of a foghorn, but it was higher pitched, rapidly pulsating and continued without stopping. The sound was scary. It was, so loud and so piercing, I could see that it caused the ashtray on the dresser to vibrate.

Ryan sprang from his bed, put his feet on the floor, looked at me and said, What’s happening?

To tell you the truth Ryan, I don’t think this is another practice run. I think we’ve hit something, or something has hit us.

Before ships leave the port in Hawaii, Maritime Law requires that all passengers participate in a mandatory emergency lifeboat exercise. In the past, I always disliked this drill intensely and I thought, what a great waste of time. During the drill, most of the people seemed to be laughing and chattering amongst themselves. They were disorganized, paid little attention to the instructor, were taking photographs or were otherwise preoccupied in other activities. I have always thought they are poorly run and it appeared to me that the ship’s safety officer was not properly trained and had no knowledge of mob control.

Oh yes, my name is Gerald Westfeld.

My best friend, Ryan, and I were on a cruise ship in the South Pacific. We had plans to stop at each of the seven islands on our itinerary and spend the summer cataloguing some of the flora and fauna of those islands. We were gathering data for our thesis for our doctorate degree at the University of Hawaii.

We both made the decision to do a study of tropical islands plants in the South Pacific. Ryan and I thought this would be a great vacation and we could accomplish a lot of our research at the same time. We might discover a new species of plants and go down in history. I was thinking of something like Geralditica Westfeldegis, since I could name the new plant after myself, Gerald Westfeld. At any rate I would surely want to name the new species something nobody could possibly pronounce, or remember.

Put on your lifejacket, grab your wallet, passport and anything important that you can carry and let’s get to our emergency station, Ryan said.

I threw open the seat cover of a built in couch that housed our life jackets. We quickly put on our pants, shirt and shoes. We grabbed our wallets, passports, a few personal items and shoved them in our pockets. We put on our life jackets, fastened the straps and stepped into the hallway to head to our emergency station.

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We put on our life jackets

The hall was packed with people scurrying to get up to their assigned emergency station. There was nothing but mass confusion. People holding the hands of their children, or their loved ones while trying to climb the stairs to reach their lifeboat location.

I feared that if I fell, I truly would be trampled to death. I stayed close behind Ryan as we made our way to our lifeboat.

The siren was still blaring at a deafening pitch when we joined the group of passengers who were assigned to P36 lifeboat station. Just as we reached our destination, the ship started to roll to the port side.

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The ship started to roll to the port side.

As the floor beneath us rose, everyone fell towards the wall of the Promenade Deck. We fell on the people who stood closest to the outer wall of the Promenade Deck. The ship continued to roll over and when it reached about a 45° angle, our lifeboat came crashing towards us and finally came to rest between two iron posts that supported the Lido Deck, that until now, had been the ceiling above us.

CHAPTER 3

ALONE

It was obvious to Ryan and me that it would be impossible to free the lifeboat from its present position unless we could climb up and unhook the boat from its mooring cables.

As