The Perfect Moment in Peril Read online

  The Perfect Moment in Peril

  Book 2 of the Perfect Moment Trilogy

  Kenneth Preston

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2017 Kenneth Preston

  All rights reserved.

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material are artwork herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

  Published by Kindle Direct Publishing

  First Printing: August 2017

  First Edition: August 2017

  Cover design by OctagonLab

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Sneak Preview of The Perfect Moment Beyond (The Perfect Moment Trilogy, Book 3)

  Also by Kenneth Preston

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Surrounded by darkness. A soft glow in the distance. It was an all too familiar sight for the six-person crew of Encounter, but it was a sight to behold nonetheless. That soft glow in the distance was a reminder of the beginning of...everything! The cosmic microwave background radiation. The Big Bang. The event that started it all. The irony of staring into the ancient footprint of the birth of the universe as they raced back to the planet of their own births to usher in a new era of life on Earth was not lost on any of them. They were racing home to create their own Garden of Eden, their own beginning.

  Of course, they would only see the beginning. Even regenerative medicine had its limits. They would usher in that new era. They would witness that new spark of life, but they wouldn't live in these corporeal bodies long enough to see it grow to its fullest potential with their corporeal eyes.

  “Why should that matter?” Emily had reminded him. “You will not only see it; you will be a part of it. You are a part of it. You have been, you are, and you always will be a part of it...all of it. Once you shed your corporeal body, you will see life, all life, for what it is: infinite and non-linear.”

  David Phillips loved Emily Díaz with every fiber of his corporeal and non-corporeal being. He loved her now more than ever. But after six months spent with Emily as a non-corporeal being, a highly evolved life form, he still couldn't wrap his head around these concepts. Corporeal and non-corporeal. Linear and non-linear. Infinite. In David's corporeal state, the only state he had ever known, he could only wrap his head around linear. He could only wrap his head around finite. Emily had done her best to make him understand.

  She would separate herself from the Community of Light and adopt the form of her former self, her corporeal self. It made him feel safe and comfortable with her. It made him feel at home. That's what he wanted more than anything at that point: a sense of home, and he had fleetingly found it in the corporeal eyes of the woman he loved. That was before she had shed her physical shell and joined the Community of Light. He loved her every bit as much as he ever had, perhaps more so, but she was no longer with him. She was there but not with him. Not the way he wanted her to be. She was present, but she was part of something else, something larger, something he simply couldn't understand.

  He couldn't help but be bitter. He knew he shouldn't be. It seemed selfish. She had grown. She had evolved into a being far beyond anything in any corporeal being's wildest imagination. She was a being of pure consciousness, at home with her family in the Community of Light. He should have been happy for her, and he was to a certain degree, but he was also bitter. The part of him that longed to touch her hand, to hold her, to kiss her. Sure, these physical acts could be replicated, and they had been in the six months since she rejoined the Community of Light, but there was a distance between them. Her touch felt a thousand miles away. He longed for the simple beauty of her physical presence as he had known it in the few months he had shared with her after she had become aware.

  Now, she was gone, yet so close as she sat with him at the back of Encounter's cockpit. Their relationship was every bit as ironic as the status of their mission: staring out into the footprint of the beginning of the universe while attempting to create a new beginning for life on Earth. To top it all off, David and Emily were beginning a new phase of their very unorthodox relationship, a relationship that had only just begun before Emily had rejoined the Community of Light. This phase of their relationship was a new beginning, and it was the first of its kind: a corporeal being and a being of pure consciousness.

  Despite his bitterness, despite his reservations, he was hopeful. He had to be. He loved her, as much as any human being could possibly love a being of pure consciousness. He took solace in the fact that this new phase in their relationship wasn't all that new to begin with. Emily had been “that little spark of light,” as she had playfully referred to herself, long before he had ever set foot in this world. The only difference was that now they both knew it.

  He could feel the warmth emanating from her body. She certainly felt corporeal. They had been given plenty of room to sit in the back of the cockpit and take in the view as they grew ever closer to their destination, but the couple had chosen to sit shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. She felt warm, physical, tangible. He could smell her raven black, cascading locks pressed against his cheek as she leaned into him.

  Instinctively, he reached for her hand, interlocking their fingers. They looked at one another, immersed in each other's eyes, nervous but excited as they sat on the verge of the improbable, enthralled by the prospect of what was about to unfold once they reached Earth with their cargo. She gave him a warm smile, and he gave her one of his own. He admired her natural, if not corporeal, beauty. The presentation was perfect. She had kept the glasses, the scar she was proud to bear, and he admired her for it. He found her all the more beautiful for it. He reached across with his free hand and gently stroked the scar with his thumb. She closed her eyes, and her smile widened. Her scar was very tangible, and her reaction was genuine.

  Emily relished his touch. It made her temporary separation from the Great Community a pleasant retreat rather than a burden. She was able to separate from the Community and take corporeal form at will, but lengthy separations such as these had the effect of making her feel more at home in her physical state. She could easily revert back to her natural state of pure consciousness, but in the presence of her corporeal friends, particularly David, she preferred the flesh. Besides, without being immersed in the Great Community, she would feel naked, disconnected, a lost soul in her non-corporeal state.

&nb
sp; There was no doubt as to which state she preferred. It was never a question. She was non-corporeal, a being of pure consciousness. She was at home with her kindred spirits. She basked in the warmth they provided. She loved each and every being she encountered, and she perpetually and simultaneously encountered each and every one of them. They were connected, a part of one another―sharing thoughts, ideas, information, emotions. They shared everything―openly, honestly and unencumbered. Nothing was hidden. Everything was out in the open. There was no possibility of deceit, jealousy or bitterness. These concepts went hand in hand with the flesh. Everything in the corporeal form was filtered.

  As much as she enjoyed her corporeal state in the presence of her Encounter crew mates and as much as she loved the physical sensation of David's touch, her corporeal state was a facade. It wasn't genuine. It wasn't her natural state.

  Such was the irony of Emily and David's very unorthodox relationship. She loved him as much as any member of the Great Community, but he was a corporeal being, filtered by the flesh, and he was bitter. He didn't have to say it. She could see it. She could feel it. She didn't resent him for it. She couldn't. Resentment wasn't a part of her make-up. Love and understanding were. She loved him, and she understood him. He was at a different stage of evolution than she was. She was no better or worse than he was. They were just different, and they processed information and emotions differently due to their different states of existence. She understood him. She had been at his stage of evolution herself, and due to her lengthy separation from the Great Community and her equally lengthy corporeal existence, she was in a better position to empathize with his struggle.

  Despite the challenges their unorthodox relationship posed, they loved one another, they had one another, and they had their mission. Despite the potentially dire ramifications of the mission, David was thankful for it. He had Emily by his side. It was like old times, before she rejoined the Community of Light. It was the homecoming that never came to fruition after their mission to Eden had gone so...haywire.

  They were together again, their fingers interlocked, in the only home he had known for six biological months, with his side of the family. The thought brought a smile to his face. Emily was an adopted member of the corporeal family. She had been a corporeal being herself, but she had moved on long before he entered the world. They had all moved on...well, with the exception of the five corporeal beings in Encounter's cockpit.

  David's eyes moved to the front of the cockpit. Captain Elexa Thomas and First Officer Deanna Kara were seated at their helms. They were the two newest members of his close-knit family. They had to be close-knit. What choice did they have. There were but five of them left. Could any bond be more common than that?

  Off to David and Emily's right, on the other side of the cockpit door, sat the couple who had become David's surrogate family over one-thousand years earlier when the Earth was crawling with corporeal creatures and human-made structures covered the landscape and pierced the sky. Richard Dentmeyer was his surrogate father, his adoptive father, picking up where his biological father had left off when David had attempted suicide in his jail cell over a century earlier. Richard's husband, George Dentmeyer, was everybody's uncle. Members of the family, including David, had even taken to calling him "Uncle George" on occasion.

  With Emily's assistance, this family of five had embarked on a mission, the outcome of which had yet to be determined. However, it was looking very good. As Emily had told them six months earlier, they were to usher in a new era. They were the only five corporeal beings left on Earth, but that would soon change. They were going to have visitors. They were on their way. They were to act as a welcoming committee, greet the visitors when they arrived and help them get acclimated to their new environment.

  As it turned out, Emily was being coy. It was part of her charm. The visitors had arrived all right, but they had turned out to be a bit of a...surprise. David had naturally assumed that surprising would have been par for the course when it came to extraterrestrials. He didn't know what to expect, as Emily had kept that information to herself, but he had expected some kind of surprise. A surprise was what he had received, but it had been a different kind of surprise. It had been a head-scratcher.

  He couldn't help but smile when Emily broke the news. The visitors were small, very small, microscopic in fact. They were microorganisms, at the very earliest stages of evolution, being carried through the cosmos by a small meteor. Good one, Emily!

  Yep, he couldn't help but smile. But the smile had faded from David's face when it dawned on him that he and his crewmates would never live to see these microorganisms evolve beyond their infancy. They couldn't even be certain if these new life forms would survive beyond the lifetimes of Encounter's crew. That new era they were to usher in might never come to pass.

  The darkness settled in over each of them, but they were determined to keep their chins up. This was the darkest hour before the dawn. The sun was just over the horizon, and they would find it. They knew that the darkness would come. They knew it wouldn't be easy. They were committed to facing the trials and hardships on the path toward the joys and victories, on the way to that next perfect moment.

  That perfect moment had been there, up ahead on the horizon. It had always been there...until Richard told them that the new era would be an uphill battle, that the next perfect moment might never come to pass. The perpetual promise of the next perfect moment had been extinguished. The promise no longer existed. The next perfect moment had become a possibility. There were no guarantees, and that was something that none of them had been prepared to face. The perfect moment was in peril.

  That had been two weeks ago. They had had two weeks to contemplate the possibility that life as they knew it would end with the five of them. It had been their darkest hour, but they had pulled together. With Emily's assistance, they had analyzed the situation, formulated a plan and carried it out. Whether or not the plan would be successful remained to be seen. They weren't out of the woods yet, but they were hopeful.

  “Coming up on Earth, folks,” Elexa announced. “We're almost home!”

  Elexa was excited to be returning home, but that excitement was tempered somewhat by the uncertainty of what lay ahead. She knew what the others knew: the future was in doubt. It was a giant question mark. Sure, they had every reason to be optimistic. The first leg of their mission had gone according to plan. But their mission wasn't complete, not by a long shot.

  "Here we go," Elexa said. These three simple words had become something of a catchphrase that Elexa employed just before giving the command to disengage the warp drive. It often came out as a partial sigh, as if she were speaking more to herself than the crew.

  Knowing full well what Elexa was about to say, Deanna instinctively reached for the warp controls before pulling her arm back to wait for the formal command.

  “Cut the warp drive.”

  “Cutting the warp drive.”

  The crew watched as the glow of the cosmic microwave background radiation vanished and was replaced by a star-framed blue and green sphere in the distance. There was a release of tension in the cockpit, a collective sigh of relief. No one had spoken about it, but the tension that had been building in the cockpit prior to the ship dropping out of warp had been palpable. It was as if they had doubted that the Earth would be there waiting for them. So much had happened to the crew in the past six months. There had been so many bizarre occurrences since Encounter had left Earth for Eden six biological months ago, culminating in the revelatory nature of their recent mission. A planetary vanishing act would have fit right in. But there it was, its blue and green seeming to reach out to them, welcoming them home.

  “She's gorgeous,” Deanna offered.

  They all knew what she meant. It wasn't as if any of them had never seen the sight before. Deanna and Elexa had taken in the view countless times together during the multitude of missions they carried out for NASA. But this homecoming was different. This homecoming m
eant so much more.

  Deanna's whimsical expression suddenly turned dour as she looked at her monitor. “Elex...uh...Captain, we're picking up something ahead.”

  Elexa looked at Deanna and fought the urge to smile, amused by the fact that Deanna had begun to refer to her informally, not that she would have minded. Their relationship had always been a bit informal. They were more than colleagues; they were friends, and due to the fact that they were but two of five corporeal beings who called Earth their home, they had grown significantly closer.

  “What is it, Commander?” she asked, teasingly emphasizing Deanna's title.

  “Not sure,” Deanna responded. “But it's...moving.” She lifted her head from the monitor, concern permeating her expression. She looked through the cockpit window and squinted, searching for the mysterious object in the distance. “It's not just moving. It's―” She paused, a sense of foreboding preventing the next words from escaping her mouth.

  “It's moving toward us,” Emily declared.

  Elexa and Deanna turned to the back of the cockpit. Emily was standing, gaping at the open space beyond the cockpit window. “Isn't it?” she said softly, turning her attention to Deanna.

  Deanna turned back to her monitor. “Yes,” she replied ominously.