de Sitter Excited State in Heterotic E_8 x E_8 Theory

We devise a novel duality sequence to study late-time cosmology in the heterotic E_8 x E_8 setup of Horava and Witten with dynamical walls that are moving towards each other. Surprisingly, we find that the dimensionally reduced four-dimensional theory does not violate NEC and therefore we do not see either a bouncing or an ekpyrotic phase. Instead, our four-dimensional setup shows a transient de Sitter phase that lies well within the trans-Planckian bound. This opens up a myriad of possibilities of addressing both phenomenological and cosmological issues, and here we concentrate on one such interesting model, an axionic cosmology with temporally varying axionic coupling.