Chapter 1.
She had been restless all day. Even now, as the daylight faded, she found that she still could not relax. Snuggling deeper into her nest in the tree, she forced her eyes closed. She was an adolescent female nearing adulthood. She was part of an extended family of simian ground dwellers that took nightly refuge in the trees.
She was nearing her first estrus. Instinctively she knew that she was changing. Parts of her body were beginning to enlarge, becoming more sensitive. Her new found mood swings seemed not to bother the other members of her family. Apparently they saw nothing out of the ordinary in her behavior. So why was it that an almost overpowering fear had held her it its grip much of last night and all of today.
She had spent most of her day fending off the advances of several young, adolescent males. She was able to reject their repeated advances without too much fuss. But they had been persistent and she had been kept off balance most of the day. Now, as darkness closed in around her, the anxiety she had felt while dealing with the males was replaced by another fear.
Soon the alpha male would take notice of her. When that happened, she would be unable to resist. Were she to do so, she would be beaten, killed or driven out of the family.
But why was it that she felt she had to resist? It was the natural order of things, right? How many times had she seen the Alpha copulating with other females in the family? Maybe for them it was frightening too. But they never acted out of the ordinary afterwards. Then why did she feel so afraid of an act that only took a few seconds?
Laying there in the growing darkness, she tried not to think about the events of the day. With a shiver she remembered another event. The one from the night before. The one she had suppressed all day.
It startled her into alert wakefulness, breath caught suddenly in her throat. Her muscles tensed, ready to fight or flee. Frozen in fear, she lay motionless, listening. Nothing! Nothing more than the usual sounds of the night: the wind in the trees; the slow, deep breathing of her sisters, aunts, and her mother (the males slept separately). She could hear an occasional stirring as someone shifted in her nest. But otherwise, no unusual sounds caught her attention.
Cautiously she opened her eyes, careful not to move her head. Close in, the dark interior of her nest impeded her view. Her heart pounding in her chest, she knew she had to move in order to see. Turning her head ever so slowly, she peered passed the edge of the nest into the gray darkness beyond. Shadows flicked among the branches as breezes whispered gently through the leaves. Shrouds of hanging moss fluttered gently, but made no sound. Otherwise, no movement, nothing, not even a smell, was out of place.
For what seemed to be a long time she lay there watching, listening. The pounding in her chest began to subside. Her muscles began to relax. Her fear and anxiety slowly dissipated. Her eyelids became heavy, lulled into restfulness by the familiar sounds of the night.
There! Just at the edge of her view! A shadow! Moving upward! Straight up! The thing making the shadow must be directly above her! She flipped onto her back, legs and arms flexed to fend off the imagined assault from above.
But above her there was nothing. Just the night sky filled with stars. Except, there was something else. There! Just above the tree line. Something was moving that she couldn’t make out. How could she detect movement when there was nothing there? Just a black hole in the sky. Nothing. Just darkness.
Then the black hole began to move. One by one stars winked out as something darker than the night covered them. Then they blinked on again as the darkness continued moving. Then, very quickly, whatever it was she was seeing moved away, disappearing beyond the faint tree line.
Cautiously she sat up in her nest, all senses alert for anything out of the ordinary. Nothing. Not a smell. Not a sound. The tension in her muscles seemed to concentrate in her neck as she turned her head slowly this way and that, searching for something she couldn’t see but knew was there. Still, she saw nothing.
After a time she began to relax. The tension was taking its toll. Her eyelids grew heavy. Her shoulders slumped and she fell into a fitful sleep. Still, the dull ache in her neck persisted, following her into slumber.
When morning came she awoke unrested. The events of the night still weighed on her. But now, under the cover of the day, they seemed less intense. Then once again the ordeal with the young males began and the anxiety of the night dissipated.
Now, lying in her nest the second night, memory of the night before flooded back. She tried to sort out everything that had happened. She remembered the shadow. She remembered how the darkness seemed to move. She remembered. . . .
SHE REMEMBERED!! The impact of the realization startled her. This was new, completely foreign, like nothing she had ever before experienced!
Not a racial memory. Not instinct. This was conscious thought! This was abstract reasoning! Not that she could understand such abstractions. All she knew was that she was aware and self-conscious on a level she had never experienced before.
From that moment forward she would never be the same.
She lay quietly alert in her nest. She found it impossible to sleep. Her mind churned as one question after another assaulted her. How could this be happening? Nothing in her short life had prepared her for such an event.
Did the others see what she had seen? Were they even aware of the intruder, the ‘darkness’ that had come into their midst and then vanished? Or did any of this really happen?
Should she try to communicate her experience to the others? But how could she do that? Had they experienced something similar? Were they aware too? Or was she the only one? For the first time in her life she experienced confusion, persistent anxiety, and self-doubt.
The night wore on ever so slowly. Though she felt she must remain alert, fear and confusion gradually gave way to fatigue. Her eyelids grew heavy. Her tense muscles slowly began to relax. The ache in her neck was now gone. Sleep beckoned her.
She was startled into wakefulness by a strange noise. A quiet whirring sound seemed to be coming from somewhere above. She couldn’t pinpoint its location. It sounded vaguely familiar, but foreign, constant, not wavering.
There! High up near the tops of the trees! A shadow, moving slowly downward. Downward toward the branches where the males were sleeping!
Her instinct prodded her to sound the alarm. The others must be warned! Yet she sat frozen, watching as the shadow came to rest directly above one of the nests, hanging motionless in mid air. She couldn’t see clearly, but she thought she saw movement at the base of the shadow. The individual in the nest shifted position slightly. The shadow did likewise. The whirring sound stopped.
After a short time the whirring started again. The shadow began slowly moving upward. As it broke the tree line, it stopped. She could make out a faint silhouette. The object was cylindrical, not like anything she had ever seen. From its bottom hung two arm-like appendages. Both of these retracted into the base as the object continued to rise.
There above the object was that back hole in the night sky. The cylinder continued to ascend until neither it nor the black hole could be distinguished one from the other. Then the hole seemed to grow smaller and smaller, until she could no longer make it out against the night sky.
Her attention shifted down to the nest where the object had been. The young male who had been sleeping there under the shadow of the dark object, suddenly sat bolt upright. Startled, she shrank down into her nest, fearing she had been seen.
The male apparently had not seen her movement. He seemed to take no notice. She was just able to make out slight movement as he slowly turned his head this way and that. After some time his shadow seemed to melt down into the nest. Apparently he was lying back down.
She did likewise. She lay there quietly, her mind racing. Her experience the night before had been almost exactly the same as the one she had just witnessed! She knew now it had not been a dream.
But what should she do? Raise the alarm? Scream in abject terror?
Her natural instinct would have taken over the moment she saw what she had seen. But she had deliberately suppressed that instinctive response! The fact that she recognized what she had done was part of her astonishment.
Not knowing what to do, she just lay there, motionless in her nest. She reasoned that neither of the events, the one she had experienced two nights ago, nor the one she had just witnessed, had harmed either of them. Aside from a small pain at the base of her skull, she had not experienced any ill effects of her encounter. That pain might just be the result of the tension and stress she had been under.
Then the implication of what she had experienced and witnessed sunk in. Was that male going through what she was going through? Was he ‘aware’ just like she was? What would she do if the two of them met? More importantly, what would he do? She had seen first hand how violent males could be when confronted. Should the two of them meet, the stress of the encounter might well provoke him to violence.
So much rolled through her mind as she lay there. The fundamental conflict between instinct and logic struggled for dominance within her, though she would not have perceived it that way. Much time would pass before she would be able to understand what had happened.