The Backstory:
"Where,
in storied grove of ancient trees, lay down the mist and rains,
Xara yet is still to come, yet Xara here remains."
In the present day, in an area of rainforest
thought to have been fully explored, the ruins of Xara are found.
It is apparent these belong to an
unsuspected civilization of tremendous accomplishment - and impossible antiquity.
A civilization of the spirit, surpassing technology, invested in human potential.
Edwin Ravenwood and his team have remained
on the site since its discovery in the late summer of 1999, though a veil of secrecy has
been drawn around the work. The physical evidence appears nonsensical and
self-contradictory, eluding all conventional, and acceptable, explanations.
But an explanation is appearing: one both
compelled and foreclosed by modern science. While this conclusion reconciles the
contradictions in the physical evidence, it must simultaneously shatter paradigms of
our understanding. And yet, it is the only conclusion that cannot be eliminated...
...Xara is a paradise civilization - from
the Earth's future. These ruins were hidden in time, like some reverse time capsule into
the deepest past. Still more alarming, it appears these ruins were intended to be
discovered now: a time remembered in future history as a crossroads for
humankind.
For Xara is an embassy from the
future - placed in the past - as an invitation and a warning to the present - to assure
that Xara can ever come to be.
Acknowledging this conclusion threatens
professional suicide for the scientists of The Xara Field Research Team. But work at the
Xara site has precipated more than a career crisis for these men and women.
Each of them has been pressed to the brink
of a personal psychological, and spiritual crisis, as well - in part by the physical
evidence, but also by something else. For they have found more than the cold bones and
broken stones of another time.
There has also been contact.
Sometimes alone and sometimes together, all
the members of Ravenwood's team have found themselves suddenly amidst the Xara that was
and will be - a paradise civilization in full career.
The jungle itself is transformed with
radiance and consciousness. And here they meet the living people of the once-and-future
Xara, celebrating rites of harmony, renewal, and transcendence.
But Xara is not haunted by ghosts. These
visitants are corporeal and real. They affect the environment, they interact and
communicate, and they share - across time - the tactile sensations of warmth and touch.
These encounters leave the members of
Ravenwood's team with nowhere to hide from the shattering implications of Xara's origin
and meaning. The hopes of the future have been pinned on them. Seeking only incremental
increase in human understanding of its history, these men and women must now be the
unlikely heroes of its destiny - or else - the agents of its failure.
"...Xara yet is
still to come, yet Xara here remains."
