Forever Curious

Na-Yeli Maya is humanity’s champion as she enters the humongous Enigmatic Object at the edge of the galaxy. Not unlike a supersized onion, the Enigmatic Object has six layers and a Core, where each layer is a world on its own, singular with its own weirdness, idiosyncracies and challenges that Na-Yeli must traverse before she can enter the Core to find the secrets of the Universe. While the Enigmatic Object only lets one living entrant in per two-hundred-and-thrity-three days, Na-Yeli’s not truly alone as her exosuit contains a triple-redundant quantum computer complete with a digital assistant that doubles as a universal translator. On top of that she has a voluntary triple-schizoid condition, meaning her deepest survival instinct—the warrior KillBitch—and her intensely creative right brain persona—the genius LateralSys—can come the rescue in times of dire need. Along the way, she encounters aliens and alien life forms: many are hostile, some are aloof while a rare few are friendly. At the third layer, she partners up with a stranded Moiety Alien—a hint that co-operatiom might be a Universal trait—and in the fifth layer she adopts a group of hypersounders—a truly unique life form. In order to cross each layer, Na-Yeli must find out what makes it tick, a challenge she relishes, while each crossing is a thrilling adventure of its own. She traverses the following six layers: —Spiral Dogfights: a cold, dark, helium-filled hellscape where opportunistic aliens—flying, floating or gliding—attack at will; —Fractal Maze: filled with crystal structures that are self-similar to the molecular level and razor-sharp. Everything looks the same, making this one massive labyrinth;Sea of Hyperwaves: a hyperstorm in the center that sweeps up waves—from the ocean below—of several kilometers high in the equatorial region; —Berserker Forest: where—under the lights of a mini-Sun—the combination of fertile ground, low gravity and the atmosphere’s high oxygen content, megafauna reigns supreme. But these are not the dinosaurs you think you know; Doom Bells: with an Earth-like atmosphere where three brass balls of a thousand tonnes bounce against the impenetrable barriers creating the hardest sound possible—pressure waves that mash everything to a pulp; —Too Strange to Let: the thinnest one where monstrous globes of strange matter bounce against each other with speeds over one thousand kilometers per hour; Before she enters the very Core of the Enigmatic Object. There, she finds a naked, supercharged singularity that’s a gateway to another Universe. The message she receives through it—from intra-Universal alines—provides the key to the secrets of both Universes, which she has to deliver to humanity at all cost. However, Na-Yeli finds that something very strange has happened to the penultimate layer, meaning that getting out will be even crazier than getting in. . . (to be concluded in part 2: Forever Thrilled.)