Reality: The Struggle for Sternessence

by Daniel A. Liut

  Reality

  © 2017 Daniel A. Liut. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopying, or recording, except for the inclusion in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A first version was published in 1995 in Argentina in Spanish, by author Daniel A. Liut, under the title Realidad, and name J. C. Ediciones. The 1995 version (ISBN 987-95472-0-9) is substantially different from this book’s English version.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Published in the United States by BQB Publishing

  (Boutique of Quality Books Publishing Company)

  www.bqbpublishing.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  978-1-939371-52-2 (p)

  978-1-939371-53-9 (e)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017939280

  Book design by Robin Krauss, www.bookformatters.com

  Cover art by Michael de Jong. Interior arts by Dan Brown, Ethan Thornsberry, Michael de Jong, and Jes Cole. Insignia logos and photo courtesy of the author.

  First editor: Alex Padalka

  Second editor: Jan Hall

  To all who would not let reality die.

  Acknowledgments

  I am grateful for the advice and support of my wife, Joan. I want to recognize, very specially, for her hidden yet valuable immense contribution during the editing process of the book.

  I also want to thank the BQB team for their commitment to excellence, especially to Terri Leidich, President of BQB, for making Reality possible and for her constant support; to Jan Hall, for her dedicated work and large contributions in her role as project manager; and to Alex Padalka, in his very valuable role as editor, which helped Reality take its final shape.

  Foreword

  The events related in this book took place in cultures and environments dissimilar to the cultures of Earth. Preserving the integrity of the accounts, while making the narrative accessible, has been a significant challenge. The language used by the characters, the descriptions of places, the customs, and the different technologies had to be adjusted to meet a common reference with the reader. A small but clear example is the type of units often used in the narrative: feet, Fahrenheit temperatures, twenty-four-hour days, etc. Many of the names that carry a meaning were translated into names that would suggest similar connotations—like Clara, for example, which means clear, bright. If the translation of a word would make it lose its intended musical beauty, the corresponding rendering was done with the aim of matching, or at least evoking, the original pronunciation.

  The author wants to apologize for the inescapable inaccuracies involved in this adaptation.

  Contents

  Foreword

  1 The Voyage

  2 First Mission

  3 Veridiawa

  4 A Far-Off Clue

  5 Practical Assignment No. 5

  6 A Dose of Common Sense

  7 The Encounter

  8 Tribulation and Trial

  9 Long Shadows

  10 Aquaelight

  11 A Good-Bye and a Hope

  12 Alishar

  13 When All Things Does Mean Everything

  14 One Last Day’s Run

  15 A Short Rest

  16 Sternessence

  About the Author

  CHAPTER 1

  The Voyage

  1.

  Trying to stay up late to study was definitely not working that night. Most of the afternoon, Duncan had been too busy with matters not in line with his studies: reading a blog of a girl he had dated a couple of weeks before. He had been spending a lot of time doing that, and the resulting weariness was now overtaking his weakened concentration. Lying down on the floor, he flipped his shoes off and propped his feet on the lintel of a window in front of him. Beyond the pane, the moon was rising gently over a lonely silo. Isolated as it was from the small university town, this old house had its advantages beyond the relatively low rent.

  Duncan’s thoughts went back to the girl from his hometown. She was mature for her age and definitively attractive, facts that had not passed unnoticed by his friends. Although he had not developed a strong attachment to her, the one-date experience had set a standard of the type of female beauty he would seek in the future. But how realistic would that be? Looking vaguely at the stars, Duncan let his mind fly to the more plausible dreams of space exploration. Plausible, he thought, because a special space program for graduate students had recently started in his college. That was new, promising, but uncertain; yet it had been one of the main reasons for his applying there, despite the well-known demands and pressures, which he was now starting to face.

  As Duncan pondered, he began to grow aware of some peculiar activity. For a while he dismissed it, thinking it was a byproduct of his late-night daydreaming. But now he began feeling, very clearly, strange vibrations on the floor. Whatever it was, it was happening within the house. He looked at the doorway and noticed that the lights from the small corridor that connected to the living room were shimmering irregularly. He was not certain, but some low-pitched noises seemed to be coming from the same general area.

  The objects were glowing with a surreal incandescence, mildly but sharply heaving, pitching, and rolling in a way that struck Duncan as menacing.

  Standing up with caution, Duncan stepped into the corridor and edged closer to the living-room door. For a minute or so, he remained motionless in the gloomy aisle.

  Hesitantly, Duncan stepped into the room. His first impression was that everything was normal, but immediately, the lights began flickering. Strange noises followed, apparently coming from literally everywhere inside the room. The whole situation was quickly reaching a disturbing paranormal status. Soon the noises began pounding with deafening strength, until they ceased brusquely, giving way to a high-pitched rasping beat.

  Duncan ran to the door of the house, but it was stuck. Immediately, a dazzling blast flashed from behind him, followed by a battery of smaller flashes that flooded the room with a very intense light. Duncan squatted down, covering his eyes with his arms. Each flash was accompanied by a sonic boom, which was instantly reabsorbed by a buzzing-like pulsation. Elongated objects of different sizes, no more than a foot long, emerged from each burst of light, remaining in place, almost motionless.

  As suddenly as they had begun, the flashes abruptly stopped, the sonic booms ceased, and the eerie noises and all light anomalies vanished. Only a humming sound emanating from the hovering objects could now be heard. Duncan remained motionless, kneeling on the floor against a corner. His arms, face, and body were damp with a cold sweat; his breathing was very intense.

  One of the objects issued a series of glassy light beams toward the others, which began to move in response. The objects adopted a pyramidal formation and slowly drifted as one body toward a table in front of Duncan. Detaching from the center of the arrangement, the same object that had flashed the light beams began to descend slowly, eventually landing on the table. The others remained hovering, keeping their relative positions. They were glowing with a surreal incandescence, mildly but sharply heaving, pitching and rolling in a way that struck Duncan as menacing.

  2.

  After a few seconds of stillness, a thin flash came from a slit on the hull of the object lying on the table. The light fanned out and grew wider as the slit became an opening, exposing the shapes of two individuals. They seemed to be wearing suits with an energized texture. Very tense, and still squa
tting in a corner, Duncan thought he heard a voice.

  “Dahncion . . .”

  The name, pronounced by the larger of the two, somehow sounded like his name. Even stranger, he found the small visitors recognizable.

  “Dahncion . . .”

  Duncan nodded hesitantly.

  The speaker grasped the hand of his companion, who was clearly female. She stared at Duncan with an intense gaze. Although humanoid in appearance, the faces of the two visitors evoked panda traits. The female was significantly smaller than the male, who now drew closer to Duncan. His name was O’sihn, and somehow, Duncan knew it. It was this strange, though vague, familiarity with the characters that kept his instinctive panic feebly at bay.

  “Be not afraid,” O’sihn said, waving a hand towards the objects that remained hovering behind him. “This is not fantasy, or insanity, or anything that you should fear.”

  Duncan grimaced uncomfortably.

  “Our Universe is undergoing great strife,” O’sihn continued in a calm cadence. “War is consuming Reality. We yearn for help, for a singular help. It’s this hope that has brought us here.”

  “Help?”

  “Yours, Dahncion,” the female added.

  “How?”

  “We have developed a way to transrealize your body to our reality,” O’sihn explained. “You could come with us, in one of our vessels.”

  There was an interval of silence.

  “Time is running out,” O’sihn continued. “The transition conditions that made this voyage possible are not going to hold much longer. The decision to accept our plea is yours alone.”

  Glancing at the small objects (which he realized were vessels) hovering above the table, Duncan shook his head awkwardly, waiting to wake from a dream that was not.

  The visitors stared at Duncan, not certain of the meaning of his gesture. He was breathing fast, and his pupils were dilated. The mysterious subconscious familiarity he had with his unlikely guests, his natural curiosity, and his attraction to space exploration were pushing him to accept. At the same time, his apprehension of the bizarre situation poured an adrenaline cocktail of fear and numbing uncertainty into his bloodstream. Yet as if squeezed by the conflicting forces, Duncan was ejected abruptly out of his perplexity by a flash of insight into his own future. It contained the fulfillment—beyond any expectations—of all his dreams, including and surpassing those of space exploration. He was being offered the chance of becoming part of something larger than himself, and he could profoundly grasp his own destiny in it. It was a strong perception, with an unusual realism and a subtle sense of peace.

  “You can count on me,” he stammered.

  “We are honored, Dahncion.” The female spoke melodiously, with a brief bow. Her name was Laida. Duncan was also aware of that, although vaguely.

  Several individuals came down a ramp that extended out of a hatchway of the vessel stationed on the table. O’sihn joined them right away, as Duncan watched them unload equipment. All of them had traits similar to species that could be found on Earth. Some had a feline resemblance, others were more canine-like, others belonged to bird-like species of different types, and a few had bear-like traits—but each and every one bore clear human-like features, especially in their expressions. Yet there was something that made them look very different from any living creature familiar to Duncan. It was as if most of them had a metallic, yet very plastic and very flesh-like appearance. In addition to their small size—they were no taller than one inch—the characteristic sheen of their faces was replicated on their vessels, uniforms, and all their devices.

  Laida approached Duncan. “Are you okay?”

  As a side effect of the inter-realitic exchange, the temperature had dropped noticeably. Still, Duncan’s face was sweating.

  “Perhaps you feel somewhat strange, uncomfortable.”

  Duncan shook his head, almost imperceptibly, like a twitch.

  “There will be time to explain,” Laida said, reading Duncan’s eyes. A signal began blinking on her communicator. “It’s all set, Dahncion.”

  Duncan remained motionless, his mind drifting to personal concerns. What would happen to his rental? How long would it take for someone to notice his absence? What about his family? And how about his studies? It had been tough to get into that university . . .

  Laida interrupted his thoughts. “We must increase the focal range of the RIBA1 device. Please stand against the wall behind you.”

  Clumsily, Duncan stepped backwards, as Laida instructed him to relax.

  3.

  A translucent glowing curtain, which defined a boundary between two realities, was surrounding all the ships. It engulfed all hovering vessels as well as the one stationed on the table, including the visitors and their equipment. It was like a seamless energy film with a feeble glimmering.

  After some minor adjustments, O’sihn ordered the procedure started. A tenuous glassy beam flowed smoothly from the small artifact in front of Duncan. The beam made contact with the realitic boundary without piercing it: the boundary simply elongated, enveloping the beam, which quickly—but at a sufficiently slow speed for the naked eye to perceive its motion—touched Duncan’s chest.

  The energy surge widened into a cone, which immediately rearranged its shape to fit the human outline. Duncan lost consciousness right away. The initial gleaming radiation began to grow in intensity, and as it did, its yellow shade gradually shifted to a deep blue light. Soon, the only figure that could be discerned was the rather featureless contour of a human being. The beam’s shade began to fluctuate between an emerald radiance and a strong blue glow; as it did, the realitic curtain expanded to engulf the beam and its human target. A battery of sharp streams flashed inside the glowing cone.

  Duncan started shrinking in size, his body’s center of gravity remaining stationary at all times. When his size had reached a proportion similar to the visitors’, one ship detached from the formation and stabilized underneath his feet. At that point, the energy fan, now very narrow, began switching colors, gradually settling into a soft yellow luminescence that slowly faded out.

  Still unconscious, Duncan fell on top of the vessel that had swiftly stationed itself underneath him. The ship started moving and landed quietly on the table alongside the RIBA device. Two vessels approached and stopped near it, hovering alongside.

  O’sihn, Laida, and the working team immediately gathered around the ship on top of which Duncan lay.

  As he regained consciousness, Duncan touched his arms. He felt different, yet perceived that nothing had changed within his innermost self. The peculiar metallic-plastic texture of the suit that now covered most of his body was similarly replicated in his face and hands, which were visible through a tenuous luminescence that somehow isolated his body from the environment. Still lying on the deck, Duncan looked around. The same room he had been in before was still there, only now, it looked like a huge cathedral, with a surreal appearance caused by his looking at it through the transrealitic boundary that enveloped all the vessels as a whole. He was soon being immersed into a state of amazement and anticipation. His fears had dwindled, mainly due to the different perception he had of his own feelings, with his newly reconfigured body. It was as if he had to learn how to feel all over again.

  A ramp came forth off the starboard side of the ship, on which he was now standing, down to the table where it had just landed. As he stepped down, the captain of the expedition stepped forward to meet him. “We are honored to have the Duhn-zaeon among us,” he said. The Rilik2 expression, from which the name Dahncion stemmed, held the actual meaning of the name—the Child Quickener.

  Duncan tried to respond, but found it difficult to communicate. He felt very strange, trying to adapt to the changes his body had undergone.

  O’sihn nodded. “We have five minutes until transrealitic reentry.”

  Following Laida, Duncan headed towards the flagship. There was a luminescence, around their heads and hands, that looked like translucent
helmets and gloves. It was produced by sealing energy fields generated by each suit, which allowed for independent gaseous mixes. The luminescence automatically ceased as each individual walked inside the ship through gates that emitted a similar glow.

  As he walked through the corridors, Duncan had the odd impression of recognizing one of the crewmembers he passed. Laida and Duncan soon reached the bridge. O’sihn was already there, sitting at his command post. As he looked around, Duncan again experienced déjà vu; some even smiled at him as if in recognition.

  The reentry sequence started immediately, and all the ships began moving. Soon the fleet adopted a sharp conical arrangement, with the flagship in front. Onboard every vessel, all transrealitic systems were engaging sequentially, as transient meta-loci topological data were exchanged between navigational computers. The living-room lights started fluctuating again. For a fraction of a second, the room was saturated with a dazzling radiance.

  On the navigational display, Duncan watched the actuality of the room dissipate, to be replaced immediately by a new Reality.

  _______________

  1 Rilitian Integral Bio-Assimilator (R.I.B.A.)

  2 Rilik was the ancestral tongue from which the language spoken by the visitors had developed.

  CHAPTER 2

  First Mission

  4.

  High above the planet’s surface, a city floated gently on the winds. Its base—resembling a gigantic uncut diamond—emitted a ruby luminescence,3 which sparkled on the timid cloudiness that lay dormant underneath.

  Except for thick cocoons of white and gray looming over the horizon, nothing else could be seen of the surface below. As the sun set between the clouds, the towers of Royal City glittered in the dusk. Gradually, the sky was acquiring a sapphire hue, which waned into reddish embers. Before long, a dense blackness dominated the scene, with a diaphanous curtain of stars of different colors, though predominantly white.