Erec Stebbins - Presents EPIC Speculative Fiction--A Cosmic Romance! A Galactic War!

When one being comes to know and love another, a new and beautiful thing is created,

namely the love. The cosmos is thus far and at that date enhanced...Olaf Stapledon

"Your brain activity after your concussion was highly unusual." Wouldn't it be? The Xix turned a host of eyestalks back to monitors and equipment, keeping several on me. "In predictable ways, yes. Your brain scans were not like anything we have ever seen." "I'm not a Reader, doctor, if you are wondering. Tested three times. Believe me, my parents hoped so much I'd turn out to be one like my cousins. Since the Calamity, the only thing better than a doctor for Indian parents is becoming a Reader." My smile faded, the humor apparently lost on the alien.

"We need to understand as much as we can about you, Lieutenant. Your heroics have made quite an impression. I have been informed that you are in consideration for a special transfer."

My heart nearly stopped. Could it be? After two years of failed applications? After devoting myself to the MECHcore training with a passion matched only by that of my dearest hope--had I succeeded? "Do you mean...?"

"Appointment to the Temple Guardians." The Xix seemed to know what was in my heart. A few moments passed in silence. "You will receive a visit from your superiors as soon as I clear you medically. As soon as we are satisfied that your vitals are acceptable..."

Troops were already marching on board. Most were infantry to be deployed at one of the six Cities surrounding the Temple in the middle of the Sahara. Six Cities to house the human and alien engineers operating the massive network of power plants and more esoteric equipment used by the Daughter to commune with the Orbs...

We entered an enormous room located directly below the gargantuan tower reaching toward space.

 The tower loomed above us constantly, impossible to grasp in its height and our path soon within the five-mile radius of 

the supporting base.

We passed the massive columns of a strange Xixian metal that plunged underneath  the desert sands. The base supports themselves were as wide as buildings. The webbed shadows of the structure fell across our path from the setting sun. We came to rest at the entrance of a beautiful building, some well-realized combination of human and Xixian tastes blended harmoniously.

The structure rose to a height of seven or eight stories like some strange plant or deep-sea creature. A large portion was at the top, a toroidal curvilinear solid that looked something like a sphere that had been pressed in deeply from the top. It seemed to float above the desert sands but in fact was supported at six points by tapering columns that became ellipsoids at their apex. The larger top portion was therefore resting on smaller round objects that appeared to almost flow into the desert floor. The material seemed to be the same indestructible concrete found in the buildings in the Six Cities, the tan color blending into the sands around us.

Most strikingly, the walls seemed almost porous in places, complex, flower=like geometrical patterns of different sizes arrayed across the surfaces of the bulbous toroid.  As our local star dipped below the horizon, the day faded quickly in the Sahara and a golden light radiated outward from those thinner regions of the walls. It was like looking at some enormous Japanese lantern, or perhaps some strange bioluminescent jellyfish from the depths.

~~~

His name is Nitin Ratava and he is a MECHcore Lieutenant. But he is more than that...He knows he was born to love a goddess...  

"False Dawns, Captain Ratava." We all exchanged

confused looks. "Biological clones of the Daughter

constructed from the eggs stolen from her when she

was a prisoner of the Dram two hundred years ago.

Eggs that have been used to create, to breed, to

engineer--we don't know exactly what has been done

a number of replicas that have been raised effectively

to recapitulate many of her powers.

                                      ~~~

After that first attack, Ambra Dawn knew

that she would have to investigate what was

happening. She chose to take Captain 

Ratava and his team. His team by the way

was an interesting group. Two  of them had

a religious connection to her, while the 

others had not much experience or thought

about the person they were to guard,

but they did notice the relationship between

the Captain and Ambra Dawn.

It has been 300 years since we learned about Ambra Dawn, a human who had become...more... She saved and created the New Earth and has become more and more powerful since then. She now lives far away from the people on Earth--on and above the Sahara Desert. We learn that through dreams, Nitin and Ambra have already met and professed their love for one another...But this was not necessarily a good time for starting a relationship! Indeed, Nitin had been seeking and finally had been awarded a position to help guard the Temple, but lately there has been much turmoil and it seems to be moving toward her Temple! 
            It had been the Dram that had been forced off of Earth and now they were back... with unbelievable help! Somehow, they had discovered a way to create False Dawns! And these biological clones were coming off production in the thousands... And then there were the shadows...ghosts... And not long after Captain Ratava and his team arrived in the desert, the Dram had arrived through a transport tunnel, with the False Dawns. Both, or all, of them were quickly defeated, but then the shadows came...which they soon learned was anti-matter which sought to destroy all matter! 

"Their attack has been long planned. Once they seized the
central Time Point, multiple attacks across the Time Tree occurred simultaneously. Nearly every system targeted has fallen."
"Oh, my God." whispered Kim behind me.
"Our forces find themselves unable to repel the attacks
and hardly able to communicate anything useful about
them.  We only have strange reports, contradictory
statements that even the XIX do not know how to
interpret..

~~~

One of the first things she offered was the ability to merge thoughts! Only one refused, but later capitulated. 

The ship created might have been something like this, so that the crew could stand up, see outside but still be invisible unless they wanted to be seen. The exterior could be changed so that they could, for instance, encompass a False Ambra Dawn right off an enemy ship which is exactly what they did...

When Ambra Dawn had seen all of her clones, she was naturally affected--were they all bad or

could they be salvaged? Unfortunately her entering the false Dawn's mind quickly told her that they  were not able to be saved...Now, there was nothing to do but kill all of the thousands that had been created!

For those who read Stebbins' first book, Reader, it might have seemed that his creative imagination had been surely spent on that first book! NOT SO! This book is far superior in content and Stebbin's imagination seems to be unstoppable. One amazing thing for me is that because of the scope of the book, Erec has still spent considerable time on detailed descriptions of the various creative equipment he presents for readers' enjoyment.

The ending and climax is truly out-of-this-world! Can you image 10,000 readers merging into one mind, using the power of their brilliance to bring about what needed to be done!? Me, I'm already wondering how Erec Stebbins can surpass this second book. Will he? Or will it be used to close out what is to happen to Earth sometime in the far future. And will Ambra still exist? And, oh, by the way, a small giveaway...Ambra and Nitin got married! Will they remain as a married couple, that just happens to be a part of...one mind...

Weird, fascinating, Beyond Belief...and yet a page-turner that even with over 400 pages leaves you wanting to know what's coming! Don't Miss  this incredible SciFi Fantasy Thriller!

GABixlerReviews

Related articles

• Excerpt from Writer by Erec Stebbins - Coming Soon...
• Reader: Eric Stebbins
• Talking with Erec Stebbins About His Writing...His Books...and World Issues In His Fantastic Novels!
• An Email From Ambra... Star of Erec Stebbins' Reader!
• Extraordinary Retribution by Erec Stebbins
• #AmReading - Extraordinary Retribution by Erec Stebbins
• Blog Tour: Extraordinary Retribution by Erec Stebbins
• The Quandary of Quoting Lovecraft - Erec Stebbins Shares...
• Brilliant Story From Future - Reader by Ambra [Through Erec Stebbins...] Ambra Dawn Visits!

Excerpt from Writer by Erec Stebbins - Coming Soon...

Prologue

I have seen a face whose sheen I could look through to the ugliness beneath, and a face whose sheen I had to lift to see how beautiful it was.

                                                                                                               —The Madman of Gibran

H

ow do you make love to a goddess?

Not to a divinity; this is not a myth. Well, maybe it is a myth. Or rather, the beginning of a myth, where facts and hopes and dreams and the madness of humanity and its desperations maniacally shape the story of the past and future like some child’s clay. Maybe it's the beginning of a legend. The birth of a new Divine. After all that has happened, all that I have seen, I understand why it may seem so.

I come from a land where religion soaks into the very soil, where one thousand ragas encompass every mood and expression of our species, where a million theologies were born, copulated and recombined like genomes to produce monotheists, polytheists, thirty-three and ten million divines and the number zero. Where the stories of the gods and goddesses never ended and a child had no need of a superhero - with charming Krishna, dancing Shiva and beautiful Parvati, there were stories uncounted. Perhaps then, it is no wonder that we so easily worshiped Her. The real wonder is that nearly all do, every nation across this blue and white marble pulled from the ashes.

Even these monstrosities, these aliens now positioned across our world with their own god-like technologies  and cities - they hold Her in awe. In the erased fragments of time, a shattered Earth She made whole. The tyranny of the Dram trembles across the galaxy as Her power sweeps outward like a tide washing clean a tainted shore. She communes with the Orbs, summons their power, opens their portals. She is a Cosmic Messiah, writing anew the story of our universe.

But not to me. To me this is only a beginning.

Standing here as the soft morning sunlight of New Earth streams through our bedroom window, I look down on Her sleeping. The white sheets are nearly blinding, wrapped tightly around Her seductive curves. Her naked shoulder has slipped out of the fabric. It is nearly as white as the sheets - such a contrast to my dark copper. The entire blank canvas is dramatically altered by waterfalls of red curls streaming down to Her waist.

She is beautiful enough to be a goddess.

But not a mere goddess to me. She may be all these things, but to me She is a woman. My lover. She is my dearest, Ambra Dawn.

I was born to love Ambra. I know this from my heartbeat to the deep ache in my bones. It was my destiny made possible only by the miracle of Her powers, born when She had turned the first Dram fleets to dust. Had She been a normal woman, we would have never met. Never loved. Never walked hand in hand on the beaches of New Earth to feel the waves lap our ankles in the reddening sunset. Never made love on a distant world overlooking the colossus of our own galaxy as it painted the night sky like a frozen explosion.

But Ambra is no normal woman, and I, no normal man. I am abnormal in the ways I knew from childhood. Now, in this terrible darkness at the end, I see that my abnormality is deeper than could ever have been suspected. But it cannot be helped. It is not my doing. Can we who are made from the dust and the clay reshape our Maker?

As I look at the swollen, some would say grotesque, form of Her skull resting on the soft pillow, I feel a deep attraction, a pull to touch, to caress. Her Writer powers churn there in the benign tumor that has changed the fate of the universe and given her insight into the inner workings of space and time. Insight into the minds of any She chooses to probe.

This every schoolchild knows and so also I was taught, but this does not explain my childhood obsession with that deformed, beautiful head. Nor how I melt to see those sensual red locks, stopped two-thirds of the way up her scalp, where Her skin shines white and scarred, the hair removed by countless surgeries from a time long ago when She lived in bondage and pain.

I pause even now to dwell on the artificial bone around the enormous, grapefruit-sized bulge, sculpted, implanted by twisted scientists of Earth in thralldom to the Dram. The brain tissue inside altered to feed the tumor in Her adolescence until it grew beyond anything anyone could had predicted. It gave Her a sixth sense and stole from Her the ability to see as we do, leaving Her totally blind with perfectly healthy eyes.

My Ambra's bright green eyes see nothing. And yet, they see everything. They haunt the corridors of Time.

Other schoolmates learned the story of New Earth’s Mother by rote. I plunged my mind into the codified years like a warm sea. I took those lessons - words of Her parents’ death at the hands of monsters, Her abuse, deformation, torture, escape with the help of the angelic Xix, Her turning back of the powerful Dram, and even of Time itself - I took them deep into the core of my consciousness.

There, She impaled my heart. I memorized every event, each line on Her unchanging face from countless holographs, every lilt and tone and nuance of Her voice from audio recordings.  Before I had the hormones to be in love, I loved Ambra Dawn like no man, no human, no saintly Xixian has ever loved another. In the truest sense, I had no choice. At this terrible end, I see the inevitability of it.

And so now, as I walk to the nightstand and open the drawer, it is only in a state of unreal detachment that I remove the weapon. The composite metal should feel cold in my hand, but it does not. I feel nothing. The muscles tighten around the handle of the pistol, but I give no commands, feel no responses, and notice no contractions or tightness in my skin. I can only see as if from a distance, from a vantage point I cannot define in space or in time.

And this automaton, my body, or now rather some alien form that is no longer mine, pulls that weapon out, unlocks the safety, and turns toward the bed, raising the barrel to the elongated head of my beloved, nearly touching the scarred edges near Her hairline.

And before anxiety or understanding can even rise within me, She opens those blind, green eyes with adoration, turning to stare directly into my own, tears trickling down Her white cheeks. I hear Her voice in my mind.

Don’t be afraid, Nitin. I love you.

I pull the trigger.