Xybears: Stare Into Darkness

Xybears

Stare into Darkness

Brian Weir

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 Brian Weir

All Rights Reserved

Version 6.0

This book is a postproduction version and is copyrighted.

This postproduction e-book is subject to changes and corrections with or without notice by the author.

Please do not make unauthorized copies or changes to the content of this book.

NOT FOR RESALE!

For additional copies, please visit my website and purchase a legitimate, licensed copy.

If you received this book from any other source other than directly from the author or www.xybears.com, please notify the author immediately at editor@xybears.com.

As always, thank you for your kind and generous support!

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Table of Contents

Chapter One - The Prisoner

Chapter Two - Extradition

Chapter Three - Confrontation

Chapter Four - Coming Into Focus

Chapter Five - A New Beginning

Acknowledgments

About Brian Weir

Letter From The Author

Dear Reader,

First, thank you for your purchase of my very first online book. This book is as exciting for me as I hope it is for you. I am grateful to you for your encouragement and interest in my book. As suggested earlier, this is a whole new world for me, and I am trying my best to not let my inexperience show too much.

First, I want to get an uncomfortable subject out of the way, just so we have a clear understanding of the matter: copyrights. As suggested by the dates on the chapter covers, this first half of my story has taken me nearly five years to develop, as well as a significant amount of my patience, mental energy, and creative resources. I'd like to hope that anything that you (the reader) were to put five years of your life into; you would assign a similar amount of personal value to. That unpleasant topic out of the way, let's move on to the fun stuff.

I am heavily relying on contributions from my readers to help develop this book and hopefully make it a success. If you spot an error in this book (and I expect there will be), please send an email to editor@xybears.com for spelling errors, grammatical errors, typos, or simply errors in continuity. If it does not look right to you, please let me know, and I will examine the error. Please try to include the page number, which paragraph, and which word or phrase you are calling my attention to. If you encounter an unfamiliar word or term that you feel would be helpful to see included in the glossary, please send an email to editor@xybears.com.

If you have a creative or graphic arts talent, and you believe you can help deliver more polished illustrations to my book, I would be more than happy to reciprocate your generosity by publishing it in my book. Hopefully, I will be able to return the favor by exposing your work to a reader who may have connections to enable you to profit from your creativity as I am attempting to profit from my creative work also. Please see the Submissions page for more information on this, and having done so, art submissions can be sent to editor@xybears.com and will be placed in the next following update approximately two weeks from the date I receive them.

Without further adieu, I will get out of the way and let you enjoy the story. Please allow me again to extend a very grateful THANK YOU, and I do hope you will be strengthening the value of what you paid for this story by helping to contribute to its development and success.

Sincerely,

Brian Christian Weir, Author & creator of the Xybears

Chapter One - The Prisoner

Time: 1360 B.C., planet Earth, Sinai Peninsula, somewhere in the Egyptian desert.

Hebrew shepherds, who are migrating from Egypt to the Promised Land, while watching over their flocks, are suddenly greeted by the appearance of a large shooting star. The fiery, celestial arrival lands nearby in a fiery explosion that shakes the land and frightens their herds.

People scatter in panic, shouting in Aramaic, running about in terrified confusion. After their initial fright subsides, some of the men organize a search party to search for the source of the explosion and tremor.

What they find astonishes them.

An enormous, otherworldly spacecraft, still glowing bright white from post-descent heat through the Earth's atmosphere, has laid a vast fiery trail gouged into the desert landscape, still scattered with various fragmented debris lit with fire.

The enormous, bizarre looking spacecraft is about the size of their former master's Egyptian palace, still too hot to comfortably draw near. A few intrepid young men cautiously approach, but most are fearful and superstitious, calling for their leaders to search for and bring Moses to the disabled spacecraft.

The cool desert air soon diminishes the barrier of superheated air surrounding the spacecraft, allowing the curious, but fearful shepherds to draw closer and closer.

The curious crowd approaches the spacecraft as would blind men would pause to probe an elephant in their midst, gradually drawing nearer as the external metal reduces in temperature.

The crowd presses closer and closer around the spacecraft. One finds a hidden door on the front forward section of the exterior, generating a loud hiss that frightens the onlookers. The startling sound repels the crowd momentarily. The door remains open, beckoning within those brave enough to breach the open threshold.

Lots are drawn, and a presumably unfortunate young man is the curious winner of their impromptu lottery. His heart pounds with terror as he cautiously climbs inside the vast alien exterior of the enormous spacecraft.

Inside, all is dead and pitch black. The young shepherd repeatedly stumbles over curious obstacles he cannot see. He calls for a torch for lighting, and is quickly supplied with one by a fellow villager too frightened to follow him any further.

The young man takes the torch and is awestruck with wonders of the strange interior of the spaceship that would seem alien even to eyes several millennia in the future removed from his. He wanders about carefully, as if fearing instant death from every touch, every sight, every footstep, every breath he takes.

After several minutes inside the strange world of the spacecraft's interior, he sees something he can relate to, even on a very basic level.

Within a hold in the midsection of the spacecraft, is a massive gold covered figure, gigantic in size and horrific in appearance. The figure rests on a flat circular platform, blinking with blue symbols that change in shape and appearance with every second. The gigantic figure is a giant humanoid only in the basic arrangement of its body physiology, the rest appearing terrifying and demonic. The figure does not move or speak, but its terrifying face seems frozen in a final horror, its ghastly appearance a hybrid of half alien, half robotic in appearance.

The figure is more than three meters in height, covered in gold metal, which the youth quickly recognizes, while seemingly anchored to the platform by giant bands that seem to rise from the platform and binding the figure to it. In the center of a giant belt, the figure wears is a dark display illuminated by rapidly changing alien figures, the likes of which the youth cannot decipher.

The youth's examination of the figure is abruptly interrupted by a commotion outside. The youth stumbles awkwardly back the way he came until he emerges from the spacecraft. He is greeted by a stern contingent of bearded, elderly men, glaring disapprovingly at the sight of the young man emerging from the spacecraft, as if they were witnessing the devil himself attempting to climb out of the bowels of hell.

The elders are the chief priests of the migrating nation of Israel, shouting disapproval at the young man making himself unclean by daring to venture into the mysterious spacecraft.

However even their sharp rebukes are soon paled compared to the arrival of another whose authority outstrips theirs by a wide margin.

The patriarch of the nation of Israel arrives. Moses levels his own rebuke, not just at the young man, but at the crowd of onlookers who apparently exceeded their own authority. He rebukes the young man for daring to venture into this strange object, without consulting him or those of the priests before beginning this undertaking.

Some begin to grumble among themselves, and a few even raise challenges to Moses, daring him to justify his accusations of idolatry from those seeking the potential treasures of the strange object that landed in their midst.

Moses listens patiently to their arguments before being interrupted by a vast, booming disembodied voice apparently displeased with the potential rebellion.

Moses warns them all to retreat from the vast spacecraft or risk incurring the wrath of the Lord. His potential rivals begin a challenge to the order before Moses raises his staff, and the sky suddenly darkens, filling with lightning and thunder. A mighty windstorm rises around them, and his challengers scatter.

A sandstorm surrounds the spacecraft, creating a wall of moving sand, barring any from entering, and the ground under the spacecraft suddenly becomes like quicksand. The spacecraft rapidly sinks and disappears under the sand, concealing all traces of it deep under the shifting desert floor.

Moses lowers his staff, and all becomes silent again, no trace of the spacecraft existing, except in the minds of the people who witnessed it.

Moses warns all not to speak or write of this night, should the almighty power of God fall upon them in swift retribution.

Cowed by Moses' display of power from the Lord, none dare to challenge him, and soon the normal activities of their day to day lives resume.

End of Interlude I

Balcor's eyes fluttered open to pitch darkness. In addition to not being able to see anything, he was cold, and the brutally frigid air cut through him like a knife. He could barely breathe. But the most astonishing fact about his environment right now was the complete and total silence around him.

Not just the absence of sound. Balcor was a cyborg, a fusion of biological material and cybernetic science. But instead of the familiar flood of data about his environment and surroundings, there was nothing but what his limited natural senses were telling him.

His senses told him he could not see, couldn't hear, and could barely breathe in an immeasurably cold environment, laying an equally cold, hard and dirty surface. He could barely feel his hands as he pressed them together.

He was freezing to death.

Suddenly, as abruptly as he regained consciousness in the strange environment he was in, everything changed.

It was now comfortably warm; his lungs were now hungrily taking in large amounts of fresh oxygen. The light seemed to come from everywhere around him, even if the source of the light itself was not obvious, as if the lights were coming from the walls and the ground themselves.

He saw that he was in a large cave, and there was ice and snow all around him. Strangely, he did not feel the cold anymore, and his breathing, heart rate, and other functions were returning to normal.

As he rose to his feet, he saw a shadow approaching. He looked at his hands. They were warm, but were covered in dry blood from injuries he could not recall sustaining. He squeezed and released his hands to try to get some indication of the nature of the blood, but felt no pain as he squeezed and released his fingers.

Still, his cybernetics were still strangely silent, and he could not feel their presence anywhere in his body.

A shadow began to creep over the wall, a shadow holding a torch and approaching his location.

Balcor's entire body tensed, as if anticipating possible danger at any moment, even if he could not recall why he felt this way, or why he seemed so anxious over no longer being alone in this cave. What was even more alarming was that he could not remember anything else for now either.

The person emerged to meet him in the corridor, and it was a face he recognized. It was his father, Xalcus. How or why he remembered the man as his father when he couldn't remember anything else was an even bigger mystery to him.

Dad? What are you doing here? Where are we? Balcor asked as he walked to meet the older man he acknowledged as his parent.

Xalcus smiled, and then his face momentarily became as bright as the sun, before dimming down to a normal complexion.

I am not Xalcus, but am merely a mental reflection of your memory of him, the man responded.

Balcor momentarily shielded his eyes. Somehow he knew he was accustomed to his cybernetics protecting him from the glare or any other threat or harm, but this time, the billions of cybernetic, microscopic defenders within his body were no longer present to protect him.

Um, OK. I do remember my father's not capable of that little trick with the light-up face of yours, but you sure look a lot like him, Balcor replied.

My apologies, my son. Old habits do die hard, I suppose, the old man spoke in a calming and reassuring voice.

Balcor understood none of this and cut straight to his biggest concern.

If you're not my father, who are you, and why do you look like him? Balcor asked.

The man immediately changed shape, momentarily taking on the appearance of another person he was very familiar, and somehow, he remembered, was very close to.

The man became a woman, taking on the shape of his wife, Shira.

Balcor's normal instinct would be to rush and embrace his beautiful spouse, but knowing immediately this was not her, recoiled partly from alarm, partly from disgust before the person in front of him resumed his previous appearance as his father's double.

I thought I would assume a shape you would not find threatening. I mean you no harm, the old man offered

OK, that was just weird. Please don't do that again, Balcor pleaded.

The older man nodded.

Let's get down to business, shall we? the older man offered.

Wait a minute, who are you? Balcor asked.

I am a friend. You can call me Joe, 'Joe' responded.

OK, Joe. Where are we and what am I doing here? Why was it cold, pitch dark, and... Balcor's mouth flooded with questions faster than his mind could form them. But that was not the frightening part.

The scary part was that Balcor reached to touch Joe and passed right through Joe's immaterial form.

What in the... Balcor muttered with alarm. Joe was apparently a spirit, a ghost, a projection of some kind.

Until Joe reached out and touched Balcor on the shoulder. This time a material, solid, flesh and blood hand.

OK, this is getting strange, Balcor thought to himself.

Come, my friend. There are much more pressing concerns than who I am or whether or not I am a living person, Joe replied, as if answering questions that existed solely in Balcor's mind.

Wait, how did you.. Balcor did not get to finish his question before having to run for a short distance to catch up with this mysterious stranger.

Balcor emerged from a cave in the side of a cliff and saw an astonishing, alarming, and very familiar sight.

It was a city on his homeworld of Tararia. However, this was not the city he knew, or the city he was born and spent half his life.

The city Balcor remembered was a city of approximately 6.5 million beings like himself; a bustling, busy metropolis.

But the city that greeted him was a barely recognizable shell of its former self. This was a city surrounded by perpetual night, cold snow and ice. Everyone and everything in it almost instantly flash frozen in ice. Nothing left alive anywhere. Balcor saw the shocked and frightened facial expressions of the populace. He had hoped that they did not suffer very long before meeting their frozen fate.

Balcor was terrified, and he ran through the city, frantically searching everywhere for some survivor, some sign of life in this frozen, very dead, urban center.

No sign of life anywhere, nor energy for anything. No life. Everything shut down and encased in a thick layer of ice as snowy wind blew all around him.

After several minutes of frantically running in every direction, Balcor stopped and surveyed the horror in front of him.

What....happened here? Balcor asked in alarm.

Joe was walking behind him, in a much slower but much more casual fashion. In fact, Joe did not seem affected at all by the horrifying environment at all while he calmly walked up to Balcor.

Balcor grasped the old man's shoulders, gripping him not painfully, but as a child would, desperately seeking reassurance, or answers.

Joe's eyes greeted Balcor's, and coldly answered Balcor's question.

This all happened because of you, Balcor, Joe answered in a calm, matter-of-fact tone.

Balcor's eyes grew wide in horror.

Me? Are you telling me I killed all these people? In this whole city? Is the whole planet like this? Balcor asked, his mind struggling to grasp the scope of the catastrophe, or even how he could have caused it.

Over a thousand worlds met the same fate as Tararia. This is not the Tararia of the present, but approximately ten years from now, Joe answered.

An almost embarrassingly loud sigh of relief came from Balcor's mouth, not from the huge burden suddenly lifted from his shoulders, but the thought that immediately occurred to him that if this was not the present, it was a possible future, one that could be averted. If this mysterious old man would tell him how.

The old man's gaze remained unchanged. Balcor became more solemn