The sheaths are a race of alien beings made of pure energy. Possessing the rare power to awaken the dead and foresee the doom of worlds, they find themselves enslaved by another alien race known as the solids. The solids exploit the sheaths’ gifts, feeding on the souls they reawaken, all of whom lived violent lives and are deemed unworthy of an eternal afterlife. When the sheaths detect that a place called Earth is in peril, they discover a way to finally free themselves from the solids. They enlist the aid of three humans to not only secure the sheaths’ freedom but also save Earth from destruction. Meanwhile, the three chosen humans must engage in their own moral battle as they struggle to determine what they are willing to sacrifice for the greater good. As they strive to make the right decisions for themselves and humanity, the fate of the planet, the sheaths, and the entire universe hangs in the balance.

Several miles away, the great marble city of Naydalt is in celebration of its hero. The residents of the city feast and cheer for the entrance of Naydalt. Naydalt, one of the oldest humanoids on the planet, has emerged from the mines to partake in the celebration in his honor. Not only is Naydalt one of the oldest but he is also arguably the strongest humanoid. The citizens are also celebrating the finished construction of their great city. Each building is a monolith towering over the once-empty surface of the land. They have yet to be used and do not have a scratch on them; one can almost see their reflection in the fresh marble. At nearly all intersections, there is a fountain bursting with liquid methane, creating a sort of white noise throughout the city. It was, Naydalt thought, beautiful but certainly had more excess than the mines of Staycon, where the humanoids lived and where Naydalt is rising from to see the celebration in his honor.

One Palm Sunday, Echo Bodine prayed to be granted a better understanding of worlds beyond this one, and three days later she found herself on an amazing voyage. Leaving her body behind, she traveled through life, death, and then beyond in a breath-taking vision of what awaits us all after this life. Echoes of the Soul is heartwarming and enlightening. In simple prose, Echo Bodine gently leads readers through realms of existence we all have yet to experience. Her inspiring images leave us with a hopeful vision of life after death — or, as Echo calls it, graduation, when we go to our real home. This inspiring and positive vision of the afterlife leaves the reader filled with hope, and even awe.

The book is intended to serve as lecture material for courses on relativity at undergraduate level. Although there has been much written on special relativity the present book will emphasize the real applications of relativity. In addition, it will be physically designed with the use of box summaries so as to allow easy access of practical results. The book will be composed of eight chapters. Chapter 1 will give an introduction to special relativity that is the world without gravity. Implications will be presented with emphasis on time dilation and the Doppler shift as practical considerations. In Chapter 2, the four-vector representation of events will be introduced. The bulk of this chapter will deal with flat space dynamics. This will require the generalization of Newton's first and second laws. Some important astronomical applications will be discussed in Chapter 3 and in Chapter 4 some engineering applications of special relativity such as atomic clocks will be presented. Chapter 5 will be dedicated to the thorny question of gravity. The physical motivation of the theory must be examined and the geometrical interpretation presented. Chapter 6 will present astronomical applications of relativistic gravity. These include the usual solar system tests; light bending, time delay, gravitational red-shift, precession of Keplerian orbits. Chapter 7 will be dedicated to relativistic cosmology. Many of the standard cosmological concepts will be introduced, being mathematically simple but conceptually subtle. The concluding chapter will be largely dedicated to the global positioning system as an engineering problem that requires both inertial and gravitational relativity. The large interferometers designed as gravitational wave telescopes will be discussed here.