A Past with an Alien

CHAPTER 1

ERIER

January 1997

The Earth's star's golden disc sank as the sky turned tangerine. I stared at the reflection of my hand in the glass of the sliding door, swung it, and stepped onto the veranda floor outside. I went to the railings, leaned in, and watched the serene scenery unfold. It had been a week since I arrived on this planet, and everything I had seen still took my breath away. I closed my eyes and felt the wind's breeze touching my body.

I am Erier, a Xyle-ver alien, and I have a mission. I came from a planet called Xyleveria, a billion light-years away from here. It had a solar system with three neighboring uninhabitable planets and a dwarf star. I came here along with six companions, and we were an expedition team. I had a crucial role because I was a subject for this mission.

My mission was to seek another subject—a human and a female. We needed something from her body that would be useful for our experiment someday. The genetic engineer in our world was attempting to produce a new species that might help our society in the future. It would be a hybrid of humans and us. Why humans in the first place? After lengthy and intensive research searching for the perfect candidate, we ultimately chose humans. We discovered that they were 80 percent compatible with our DNA. Thus, we travel a billion light years just to be here.

Right from the start of our training, I was curious about this mission. Even though I had no doubts, the hybrid aspect of it didn't quite add up. They haven't given us all the details yet, and it's a bit concerning. All they've told us is to concentrate on the task at hand. I also discovered that this is the second mission of its kind, with the first one taking place many years ago, though they only briefly touched on it.

The leaders of our world were serious about this, so they held a global search for a capable male subject, and of course, I won. The way they concealed so much about the details of this mission was a bit... let's say...intriguing. But I cast out my thoughts about it because what matters to me now was that I was here on Earth, from when I won the search and then the training. Being here was an accomplishment and a dream come true for me.

My team gave me a one-month assessment, and throughout that, I discovered so many differences between Earth and our planet. First, this world revolves around the axis, so its environment changes occasionally. Xyleveria was a Tidal-locked world, and we had a permanent day and night. Gravity had no difference from ours and was not a threat to our health. The atmosphere here was livable because the flora and fauna were so diverse. Although I knew it was safe to live here, I still wore a special suit in the likeness of a human. A human shell, we called it, because aliens will always be aliens, and it had been a protocol we should always follow. These humans should never know about our existence. We must be discreet if we are here.

I spread my arms wide in front of the glass railings and was about to yawn when a voice distracted me while my mouth was still open. "Look what we've got here!" I closed my eyes and became irritated.

Glancing behind my back, I saw a 3D hologram of our male leader, Okron, the divine asshole, standing in the living room with his arms crossed and a signature grumpy look. I wondered what his problem was again. He was always on my nerves from our training until we arrived here, and I never associated myself with him.

"Did I interrupt you from your nice life down here?" he said sarcastically. That suddenly changed when he raised his voice. "What happened to the search? You had been searching for almost forever, and there you are, feeling entitled to these free breaks!"

I rolled my eyes and went inside. Okron was much older than I was. He was in his fourth sequence, equivalent to a thirty- or fifty-year-old human. I was on my third sequence, which was fifteen and thirty. He was seven feet tall, while I was six. We all looked humanoid, except for the face, which differentiated us from humans.