Day 144 - Babel - Chapter 40 (1359 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

BABEL

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 40

There was the constant hum and vibration to keep them company, but that was all that could be heard in the depths on the Pacific Ocean. An Observation Lounge made absolutely no sense on a military submarine, there was no science or exploratory nature to their work, just purposeful journey to deliver destruction. For most of Captain Frank Grundy's career it had not been delivered, it was threatened or balanced somewhere, a reminder of what could happen and not what would happen. That had been good because he had relied on the human instinct of self-preservation. There were no human instincts here, only invaders that needed to be pushed back.

They had already decimated the population of the planet, he had seen the footage and saw the largest cut to the fleet resources he had seen in his lifetime. He felt very lucky to have been part of a group inoculated and isolated from the disease as it ravaged his country, working on an extended tour of duty underwater. The entire crew of two submarines were engaged in a race, of sorts around the globe. They were recreating the voyage of the USS Triton's underwater circumnavigation of the globe, They were completely cut off and out of touch with the rest of the fleet for a couple of weeks in preparation, when the first bout of the flu hit the world and they, like everyone else assumed it was just that, so they remained isolated all the way up to the departure date.

When they re-emerged after a tightly run race between themselves and a second boat also vying for the best time in the Triton's footsteps, they did not realise that they had not only missed the initial phase of the Babel, but they had no idea that their victory was going to be the last official operational tour they would have before Phase 2 kicked in and everything started to collapse in on itself. A large number of the crew were still on the boat when the Babel hit and they lost only a third of the current crew due to rotation, bringing on new sailors who had already seen Phase 1, which had burned out, and then began the language difficulties.

They let the sailors who could not speak off at the base and tried finding answers, but there were none to be had. Frank was a Navy man and he reverted to orders and protocol whenever he could, but there was no longer a chain of command outside of his ship, so he became what his crew needed to survive, the boat became their world and they took to sea and awaited orders. Nothing came and they stayed out for a long time before coming home to stock up, take what supplies they could and take stock of the situation.

It was almost a year before they were contacted on emergency channels by the interim government of the United States after they had spotted them on satellite feeds patrolling in the Pacific Ocean. Order had been restored and they were once again in the Navy, such as it was. They trained, patrolled and spent a long amount of time scavenging parts and weapons on orders from the new government. There was no president, but there was a couple of Generals, an Admiral and number of former government agency types who were making up orders for the security and defence of the United States.

The problem was that there was simply no one to fight, defend or protect against anymore. They assumed that there were others like them in similar situations, but they had seen and heard nothing of these. They had travelled to allied countries and to enemy states and found nothing but chaos and disorder, with no concerted efforts making it work without the ability to communicate. Europe was a loose collection of villages again, the Middle East had become nomadic in nature, as was almost exactly like the faintly racist expectations of their superiors. People the world over fished and farmed for themselves, but there were troubled areas too, most of the United Kingdom was empty, they had fled to the continent for warmer climes and competing for larger areas of land, unlike the tiny island they had overcrowded for centuries. Riots and violence made most of the cities no longer liveable, people took to boats, makeshift ones when necessary and crossed the channel to a better life. Hundreds of thousands of people perished in the exodus and the fear, the desperation left bodies lying in roads, fields and plenty washed up on the beaches.

The world had settled down, and some areas were better than others, but humanity was surviving and the ship that Frank captained that patrolled beneath the waves for a country that was no longer really a country, was becoming increasingly irrelevant as time wore on. Then the Ships arrived, huge saucer things that appeared on the radar and satellites that the provisional government had access to, and they came to earth in the Southern Oceans, floating so very slowly through the atmosphere and then creeping up the coast lines of New Zealand and attaching themselves to the largest city there.

As soon as the ships appeared in the atmosphere and made for one specific area Franks boat was given orders to intercept. They had been in Europe and had been given their orders to head home to base for new equipment and crew before deploying again to the South Pacific country, so far and isolated from the rest of the world. They were home again within a short period and in that time they had learned more about the ships. They had settled in place and stopped moving on either side of the largest population centre of the country, at least historically. A little w

They did not know what it meant, but the centralised provisional heads of government all came to the submarine base to welcome the Ohio class back to base at King's Bay in Georgia. They also brought with them some nuclear weapons specialists, men who looked at home with the idea of war on a personal level. They moved quietly into quarters on the submarine and the Captain was given the orders by the provisional government, to take out the invaders.

They were in the water and submerged again, deploying first to Pearl Harbour to pick up supplies and to stage the attack from there. The plan was to take the long way at first, replenish supplies and check the local warheads in Pearl Harbour and rationalise the ordinance they had to hand before making the attack run. There was a tightening of the urgency and time-frame once they were in the water. Frank Grundy had seen the footage, and seen live feeds of the ships moving, the scale of them beggared belief. They would need to hammer the ship with everything they had to take it out of the sky. Satellites had been taking images, thermal scans and electromagnetic readings for weeks now and still there was nothing of any use, they were impervious whatever technology and tools they had at their disposal.

They were in Hawaii when the Babel join with the Nodes from the Ship and the Loop was created. It was a day or so before they fully grasped the situation with the Babel of New Zealand being connected, but it became apparent after the bombing on the wharf that they were now acting as a cohesive unit, and they reached the same conclusions about alien mind control as Victor had over half a world away. They got in the water immediately and set course for the Hauraki Gulf in Auckland, New Zealand with the nuclear powered, nuclear armed submarine.

It had been almost forty years since the country had barred the visitation of Nuclear powered ships in the nineteen eighties, and now a decade or two into the new century a submarine, powered by a nuclear reactor, and armed to capacity with Trident missiles, each with eight nuclear warheads apiece, crept quietly into the harbour and waited for orders.  

Day 143 - Babel - Chapter 39 (1742 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

BABEL

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 39

Philip, Bob and Evan were left to their on devices for large amounts of time, but they knew they were prisoners, they did not have to be told that. They had left the plane at gunpoint, knowing that the people at the other end were not like them, they were of the Few, the immune.

The fear and confusion that registered on them required no spoken language to be translated though, it was plain to see that they could not understand how three people could manage to fly a plane and land in their city from so far away. They had established that they were form New Zealand, the shape and position of the country on a map was not hard to communicate, but beyond that it was getting harder tell why they were there. They were put inside the airport terminal, among abandoned duty free stores, restaurants and boutiques that had serviced travellers in and out of Sydney before the Babel came.

There were markings in the cockpit on the instruments to mark points of reference to keep airspeed and altitude constant enough above sea level, but mostly it had been instrument free and using the pilot's knowledge coupled with what they could get from other pilots on the ground back home who were taking in all around them at the same time. They had access to everyone's view from the cockpit as they flew or just stared out the window. The Looped in minds of the Babel were taking in things that the people on the plane itself were not necessarily seeing themselves. Philip spent a lot of time looking at the horizon, looking for land and where he was going. In that view he saw weather, position, the sea below him without really taking it in. The hive-like connection of the Loop saw it all too and they could focus on those things while Philips mind was elsewhere.

A pod of whales was breaking the surface below them and while Philip did not initially register their presence the Loop did and started processing what they saw, with people who had the ability quickly identifying them as pilot whales, assessing the trajectory of the path the were taking, the time of year and the seasonal habits of the creatures to confirm the identification. Philip had 'seen' the disturbance in the water but had not consciously noticed it, while the Loop had. They processed the information into a usable source and then it fed back to Philip all a very short space of a few seconds, and he turned his head to see the whales better, reaching for binoculars and allowing alal who were interested in them a remote view.

The journey progressively got less and less interesting the further away they got from land and the lower the dipped in altitude. If they could feel the link to the Loop softening then a climb would bring it back, but often they just kept flying until the reached the main land and the Loop became stronger again. It was not as strong as it had been at home, the sensations and feelings were dulled slightly, like a hangover, but the communication was still there and information flowed freely. So when they landed, they followed the gibberish orders shouted at them with fingers pointed had gesturing where they needed to go, but it was familiar territory for some of the Loop who had personal knowledge of airports, Sydney in particular with a handful of expatriate Australians and Kiwis in the Loop who had worked there before the Babel fell.

They wandered around the Duty Free section of the airport, it was a contained area with mesh gates and doors that were locked to bar entry or exit until they were ready to be dealt with. There was no power inside but the glass domed celling afforded plenty of light inside the area, so they felt comfortable if a little warmer than they were used to with stale air and no air-conditioning. A section of the Departure Lounge had been destroyed and was open to the Runway. A huge hole was there, big enough for a Jumbo jet to have crashed through it and cause the circular opening. Philip assumed that's what it was, and the guessing was feeding back to them from the Loop, with size and damage approximations being calculated in peoples heads, their judgement and memory of the ingredients of any potential crashes all being polled, analysed and compared as they wandered around.

The hole was where the men who had greeted them had stationed some guards, and the boy who had been pointing the fifty calibre gun at them from the back of the Jeep was standing there with a semi automatic in his arms, crooked uncomfortably, trying to look tougher than he obviously felt. After maybe an hour had passed the boy took out a book when he could see that the three of them were not coming any closer and they made no attempt to try anything risky or threatening.

Philip lay down on the row of chairs that were in the middle of the room and slept, closed his eyes and the Loop went silent in him as he drifted off to unconsciousness. When he woke it was dark and he was alone. He sat up with a start and he knew where the others were immediately.

The men had come through and take the other two and they had separated all three of them and taken them in different directions, leaving Philip alone to sleep with guards outside watching him. He could see from the way that Bob and Evan were taken away that there were sentries in the mezzanine above, just out of sight from the place where he was and he had to assume that at least one or two of them were still there. The hole was empty and so he got up and walked out of it, only to have a few torches shone in his face and to be restrained physically, more nonsense sounds fired at him to no avail other than to remind him that he was a prisoner.

The younger man that had been watching him had gone, he had still been there when the other two had been put into cars and driven away some time before while it was still light. Evan was on a river inside a boat, being taken somewhere down and out west. Philip and Bob could still see him and hear this thoughts clear enough as the water was not deep and they followed a narrow course of the River to a dock out west near Parramatta.

Bob was in a room, he had not seen too much other than he was being driven to the inner southern area according to the Loop, they had blindfolded him for his journey though why they did that it was not clear. The three groups that had taken them apart were operating independently of each other and all seemed to want to achieve different goals by different methods in splitting them up.

Evan was not going anywhere fast, the boat trip was aimless and the pilot of the craft looked as lost as Evan himself was, though he had as much information as he could get from the Loop about his proximity to the largest of Sydney's western suburbs. Bob was manhandled and the Loop were on the lookout for torture or duress from his captors, but the treatment did more to disorient than discomfort Bob.

Philip was being walked to a a large warehouse and taken inside, this was an area they had not seen yet and from what he could get from the Loop it was a storage building for airport consumables and products that maintenance staff would use. It was also used for repair work on Airport vehicles and emergency units. The men who led him there were keen to drop him off and leave, they opened the door and pushed him inside, turning away quickly and shutting it behind him, putting him out of sight and assumably out of mind.

On the other side there were people, and they were moving boxes of various products from this warehouse and stacking them in the back of a truck. Philip felt that he could reach these people straight away, just being near to other Babel made a physiological change in the way his body reacted to the air and the temperature, his skin had come alive and the intensity of his senses grew, as did Bob and Evan in their respective locations.

This was the connecting point they needed, there was a dozen people here in the warehouse loading up the truck and Philip had been thrown in here to help out, being put to work with other Babel. There was a guard watching him, but he looked away and started yelling loudly, nothing that Philip could specifically state for sure, but he was confident he needed back up as fast and as urgently as he could.

The Babel felt Philip's presence and stopped doing the work they had been on the truck and they formed a daisy chain of eleven people and the last one, the one nearest Philip stood apart from them and held out a hand to him, grasping it firmly as he Looped in and in seconds came up to speed with everything and everyone six thousand miles away in New Zealand, one in Parramatta on a boat and one in a dark room in an undisclosed but local area.

Philip reached out to touch the first in the chain the same time as the person he connected with first, Andy Rollins a former Bus Driver from Cabramatta, who had been working with the few to organise food and shelter for the people he had taken into his house. He understood following instructions, and he got that as a middle aged man he took whatever opportunity he could to look out for those he needed to.

The two of them connected to the remainder as a group of the Watch burst in with guns, shouting and pointing them at the group who were all smiling at them as one of the men opened fire and bullets rained pain and suffering on all of them as two of the ones nearest the Watchmen took fire and fell to the ground.

Day 142 - Babel - Chapter 38 (1507 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

BABEL

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 38

Barbara saw the boat returning, very slowly towards the island where everything was well in the moonlight and the sound of the small engine straining to push the boat ever so slowly sitting so very low in the water. She could not see what lay under the tarpaulin that covered the cargo, a heavy and bulky load, but she could also not see anyone else. Victor was piloting but there was no other movement or figures that she could see, which became more and more apparent as the boat drew closer and closer.

That meant George was either dead under the tarp or they had parted ways at the shore. She was beginning to think that the former default leader of the Village society where they lived did not have the bottle, the courage or the determination to take the fight to the next level. Not like Victor did anyway. George was solid and dependable, a good leader when all that was required was maintenance, but then someone needed to step up and be bold, be brave and just a little more insane than the problem that they faced, he was seriously outmatched.

Victor on the other was the polar opposite, with George you always knew what he thought and you could see how he felt about things no matter what it was that he said. That was probably due to the way the village worked, with the Babel before they stopped being human that was, they needed honesty in expressions because there were no words to contradict your feelings there were only what you could read of people and the clearer that was the better. Victor kept his cards close to his chest, he did not waver and he did not consult in his actions. There was strength and purpose there, he was driven to stand for what was right and he was a little mad, she knew that and could see it. Unlike George who also saw the same madness, she accepted that it was necessary to win.

Nice guys finish last, that's what they used to say when people still 'said' things and it was an axiom for a reason, it was a fact, you had to be an asshole to succeed, life had taught that lesson many times over and over. He did what was necessary, he was not limited or afraid because fear was not an option for him, only defeating the alien menace. The menace that caused the Babel, the menace that turned them from human to these disconnected zombies, slaves to some alien mind control, it was almost beyond imagination to contemplate what they had done. That was why someone who went beyond imagination was needed to combat them, someone who thought outside limits, outside morality and fairness and just needed to beat them, someone who thought like Victor.

Barbara stood on the jetty was the boat came closer and closer, and as it did she could see that something big and metal was hiding under the tarp, she could make out the hard edges and long straight lines, maybe fins at the rear, were they torpedoes? There was no sign of George in the bottom of the boat, which was possibly a good sign, at least Victor was not bringing back a body.

The boat did not dock there though and Victor waved her back to the shore as he drove the boat at full speed into the sand, driving it into the beach and wedging it firmly there in very shallow water due to the depth the boat was sunk too with the additional weight. He jumped out with his hand still on the throttle and with the extra weight off the boat it surged forward a little more and came closer to nosing into the dry sand.

“Can you hold this, just keep a eye on the blades, get in, get in!” Victor was nodding to the engine and prompting her impatiently to jump into the surf, lightly lapping at the shore, in full clothes and shoes irregardless. Barbara complied and he lifted the boat as much as he could so that it surged forward even further and the nose was now out of the water barely. They bunny hopped the boat with this manoeuvre three more times, gaining a little less each time until it was as far as it could go and the blades were hitting sand and going no further.

The tarp came off and Victor beamed at his partner as she looked on opened mouth at the missiles, which was not too far from what she had guessed at but were shocking to see in reality, hard cold metal tubes that assumably would carry a decent detonation. She remembered the wharf and the story George told, and she recalled the bridge and how that had gone. Victor had denied his involvement, but she had her doubts about that. It was in fact the thought that he had done it that sealed his fate as the man to lead them to victory. He was willing to do what it took, he was willing to win and to fight at whatever the cost for freedom.

Whatever the cost, she could picture the people drowning, if they were still people that was. Maybe they were after all, they had no proof one way or the other, but sentimentality was never going to win the war was it? She looked at him as he rubbed his chin and contemplated the practicality of what they needed to do, how they needed to do it. She was not mentioning George, she could ask and Victor could tell her, and it would make no difference to what they had to do, to what he had to do with her help. He could lie, he could claim responsibility or he could shrug and say nothing one way or the other and any one of those potentially awkward conversational outcomes would still lead to them taking down the alien ship.

The missiles were big and heavy, they strained to lift one out of the boat and carry it to the shore, far enough that they could lay it on the grass away from sand and seawater. They manhandled a second missile the same way and though her biceps were cramping from the strain she held it together long enough to place it on the ground near the first.

“Let's take a rest, a few minutes before we take the next two to staging.” Victor rubbed the muscles of his thighs and stared out to sea again before pulling the tarp over the remaining two missiles. Barbara was glad to have a rest and she sat by the two grounded Sea Sparrows and looked them over, running her hands over the coll metal exterior wondering how volatile they truly were. They were heavy and they looked solid, big and deadly to her when she stood next to them. When she looked up to the ship, glowing eerily in the night, she had to wonder if they would even make a dent.

She closed her eyes for a second and tried to rest her weary muscles and when she woke up the sun was dawning on her and Victor was reading a book on the beach. She shook herself out of the half waking state and scrambled to her feet. Victor saw and pocketed the book as she approached.

“How long have I been...” She started but Victor waved her off.

“You needed sleep and I needed to read up on these things, they don't just fire themselves out of the launcher. I took a manual from the Ordinance Operational Guide, that's the good thing about the Navy, they're very organised. You needed sleep and I needed to study this.” He patted his pocket and then stood up and walked to the boat.

“We'll get the other two out and set up on the north beach then?”

Victor smiled at her and shook his head. “We’re not taking these two out just yet, not here. I just needed to lower the weight of the boat, we'll take them to the target site, two at a time so you can come in the boat to help me unload and prep in two journeys, but those two we'll put back in the boat again when it's empty, so we'll be able to get it a bit easier when its empty, we can use the jetty and lower them in. There's some ropes and harnesses on the big island, we can get them when we unload there.”

Barbara was confused, the Big Island was Waiheke, why would they go there?

Victor was not looking out to where Waiheke was, he was looking at the peak of the mountain beneath the ship, right underneath the very centre of the saucer, and he raised a finger to shake it at the Alien Ship that hung there, giving it a silent warning of it's fate.

Day 141 - Babel - Chapter 37 (1855 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

BABEL

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 37

Anne came back to her senses in the middle of downtown Auckland in a crowd of nine hundred thousand people. She had been at home in the village, sad but living a peaceful existence of making pictures to communicate with people like herself who had lost the ability. Times in the village had been frustrating but ultimately safe for her and George, and she knew that he could talk and she could not. All she ever heard was gibberish, though in her head everything she saw made sense, it was like there was a filter over everything to make it indistinct and abstract rather than precise and defined. She drew pictures of how to do things, and she was getting very good at that, she knew that when she saw the dawning in people's eyes, the click that it made lifted her tired spirits every time she saw it again.

That softened the harsh reality of her world, the insular existence where she was utterly dependant on the man in her life, a thing she would have railed against in her life before the Babel came. She did not know it was called the Babel until she woke again after the possession, the migration to become Looped in. These were concepts in her mind, not words or labels, but they made sense to her the way language used to do. The little pictograms that she had designed, the use of figures and motions, placement and amounts to convey information, she had a lexicon that she now shared with almost a million people, and if all went to plan maybe up to a billion or more, depending on how many people had survived the Babel.

She understood the death and destruction she saw in everyone's past, in the memories she now had unfettered access to. There were plenty of people like her, she was far from unique in the broadest aspects of her personality and skills, but she did stand out in one very helpful way. She had hated the sound of her own voice after the Babel struck, it reminded her of a bird squawking before it was killed, the gawkish and piercing shrieks of fear and uselessness they felt as the world was bent to the will of the person taking their far too short a life. That is how she heard herself when she spouted the gibberish that was trying to be words, trying to be feelings and trying to be heard when she opened her mouth and made sound. It was just sound, and she heard the sound, knew that it was as unintelligible to others as it was to her own ears.

When George spoke his voice was deeper and recognisably his voice to her, she could pick him out of the crowd if every one babbled at the same time, she knew him by the timbre, tone and tempo of that noise. She had not realised at first that he was still able to talk, she saw and heard him and she assumed it was out of habit, a lifetime of saying things and being heard, even now there were people who still maybe the sounds expecting them to work on some level, but it was less and less required when in the Loop. People would respond before you finished a thought sometimes as everything was more or less concurrent in the Loop, you did not have to wait for someone to hear or understand, as you thought it they got it and the response was as long as it took to think, which was nano seconds in some cases, and minutes in others. Some people did like to cogitate but the process was much faster with a million minds running over the options at the same time as you. This was cloud computing, distributed processing power and group think. There was many opinions and analogies in the Loop and they democratised themselves into the most popular and agreed to answers becoming accepted.

Anne was used to not talking, and she liked being so intimate with so many other souls, she thought of them as souls though the prevailing label was minds, but you did not have to agree to everything, there was room for dissent and point of view, but it could not be taken to extreme because it was all open to see, there was no trickery, persistence or persuasion to change peoples minds, only the chance to share a belief. Belief was something you could not argue, but it was pocketed somehow, like you knew it was there but you could not access it. It was saved, ready to be referenced to but not allowed near your ability to act.

There were definitely some extreme views in the Loop, some paranoid, some unacceptably deviant. They could not act on these thoughts without alerting the Loop and opening themselves up to counteraction and argument. It would have been impossible to steal, lie, cheat or abuse without everyone witnessing, without people stopping them. There was not a physical prevention, but in the case of a person who was boiling with rage and ready to kill the person in front of them, the thought was processed by them all in the instant. The victim, the intended got out of the way, could see the blow coming. Every move they made was telegraphed, every intention was known, but conversely all the countermeasures were seen and it created a stalemate. No move was without a counter and no desire or rage could be sated without everyone in the Loop approving, letting it happen and there was no excuse to let it go anymore. There was no ignorance.

Anne felt more connected to the people of the Villages now, the bulk of them were nearby physically, no one had perished in the bridge explosion, she had made it over the alternate route after the bridge had blown. She had not been 'awake' for it technically, but she had access to the memories of the journey, the confrontation with George, which she did not experience, but she remembered. She remembered also him groping and could see why he did it, but the ill jealous feeling and the shame that the girl had felt, not at the time but later. It was cold and calculating and done for a purpose, there was absolutely no accusation against George, he was doing something specific, experimenting, trying to connect, but the act was a violation and they all felt it. They all felt it exactly the same way, gender was beginning to blur in the Loop, and sense of individuality was blurring.

When someone in the Loop saw George, Anne saw him too. She felt things for him she had not felt for a few years because the raw processing power of the Loop, she felt fear, anger and shame of the girl he had ripped the short off of, and she felt love, loss and lust for the man that she had been with for so long. They all felt it, in a rush of feelings and desires they all needed to learn to suppress and process amongst themselves but now it was one sided. This was directed at someone where there was zero feedback and no open line to communicate.

She needed to see him and it was not enough to be near him via the Loop, though she was aware that he was there, and she wanted to find him. He was hiding on the wharf, and it was hard to see him, there was a blind spot over the water. They felt it, the Loop was weak closer to the surface of any significant body of water. The wharves were jumping off points for the Loop, unlike a shore line where there was a draw that moved gradually deeper, the wharf lay over a depth f instant proportions.

George was there, she knew it and felt it and walked towards him, wherever the sense of him was, the shadow of his presence as it registered on the Loop.

Then the bomb went off, she saw Victor's face as he reached the bomb he had prepared she knew who he was in that moment though she had been thinking about George, she had been pulling a significant amount of power and focus away from the wharf and from Victor in her pursuit, she split the Loop in half without knowing that there was a division in it. The Loop was still active though, and then when the bomb exploded all thoughts of everything disappeared in a flash of white and Anne, along with nearly a million other people, shut down again.

When she woke up it was dark, they could not see George and he was gone, out of the Loop. It was days later he was seen again, with Victor, the man that had delivered the pain and suffering that everyone had felt. This time when they knew he was there, with the other man they could not read, the Loop was more circumspect and approached them with a plan. They saw the shots, they saw George dive into the water, watched Victor look around and eventually give up before driving the boat away with some Sea Sparrow missiles, four of them in a low riding boat and then a few feet from the edge of the dock, he disappeared.

When George came out of the water he was being watched, and Anne was seeing him in the Loop as the car she was in drove down Lake Road to the Devonport shoreline and the Naval Base where he stood. She could see him long before she arrived and the feelings in her were intense, multiplied and confusing because there was no feedback, no response and no understanding. She had been Looped in for a little over a week and she already felt like everything outside of it hurt her when it was not in it with her.

When she got out of the car everyone felt her elation and her rush at the shock in his eyes, because everyone could tell that it was a good reaction, not a bad one. This was what love looked like from the outside, they could all experience it in the Loop and know it, feel it and it would not be deceptive it was as honest an emotion as you could get. This was surprising and unpredictable and therefore the power in it was unbelievable, Anne thought she may faint but one point eight million hands steadied her in unison.

When he spoke she recognised her own name in his voice. She could not speak to him directly, but she had not come alone, the Loop had prepared and used the new connection they had made, the singularly unique member of the Loop who had never been infected with the Babel, but was not immune to it or the Loop.

Benny was standing next to her and he spoke as she thought the only thing she and the others could make sense of.

“Hello George.”  

Day 140 - Babel - Chapter 36 (1385 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

BABEL

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 36

Dr Nick wondered where it all went so wrong, he had a life alone in the middle of nowhere and he had got what he deserved, to live alone away from the humanity he had inadvertently destroyed. He had been paying the lonely price for a mistake that he had not made, but had been connected to. There was no way to fix the problem, it was irreversible in that the mess that ASHA 3F made of the language centre of the human brain was untranslatable. In order for anyone to learn language again once the Babel as it had come to be known, had taken effect you needed to train all the synapses to work in different ways and to recognise new sources of information. It was entirely possible for a single person to learn that with years of therapy, exercises and patience in abundance. This was a whole new problem, as over 99 percent of the population had fallen prey to Babel's rewiring of the brain.

He had not actually caused it, it had to have been one of the lab assistants or the interns that had perhaps infected themselves or taken improper precautions and the virus spread, well to put a modern internet age word to it, virally. He had recognised it when the sample of the flu stage of the virus was sent to his company for analysis and feedback as it had been done to many of the viral research houses that had the research and the equipment to deal with it. He was one hundred per cent sure that Babel, and the resulting fall of human society was due to ASHA 3F. He had done the right thing in dropping out of the human race into self imposed exile, living and eventually dying alone, his penance for his unwitting hand in the fall of a species.

Now though he had been found and brought in to fight the one thing that he knew could not be beaten, he knew it for a fact. There was nothing to beat for one thing, the ASHA 3F disease was gone, it was only ever going to last in the wild for a short term before the strain ran it course, it was not designed to be persistent. If they could make it past the uncommunicative generation that brought them up, then any one born after the first phase had completed, and before the second phase came in, they would have a language centre intact, and there would be some people left, approximately one in a thousand, that retained the skills and neurological pathways that could process languages.

There was hope, it was not impossible but it was slim hope. There would be wars, there would be melt downs, disasters and violence on individually unprecedented scales. Getting organised was mercifully hard, so religion and military group thinking would be near impossible, but it would still underline the acts of some without a doubt.

The people that came for him though, they were immune and had found each other to form a solid group of the most paranoid individuals he had ever met in his life. The way they operated, like a black ops unit from a spy movie, was frightening. He did not know what to make of the claims of Alien Ships, they looked real enough and the footage he was shown made a semi believer out of him.

The narrative they had did not fit the facts as he knew them though and the madness they were pursuing was based in this false narrative. He was taken to a base, a bunker a days flight from his mountain retreat, and taken a long way underground. They spun him a long story about how the Babel was an Alien tool of domination, how they had used it to soften up the earth for an invasion and established a beach head in New Zealand on the other side of the planet. They had access to satellites, trained on the ships that flew above the small nation of islands in the South Pacific. They had ICBM's that could travel over six thousand miles, but New Zealand was at the outer edge of that range.

They did not have the manpower to man a ship that would take them in range, they had a small number of ex soldiers, a general with access to nuclear missile codes and a few operational 'experts' who they could draw on. They wanted to pilot a submarine half way around the planet, put it in range of the ships and fire on them. They seemed lucid, reasonable and determined to carry out their plan to the letter. The Submarine had been deployed, it was going to be in range within days operating on a skeleton crew and would be rounding the north cape of New Zealand in days and steaming for the seas beneath the larger of the two ships.

Nick was appalled, and still he was unsure that any of this was real. He looked at the live satellites feeding the pictures of these super-massive saucer shaped ships that blotted out the landscape beneath them on the video. How could this be real? He could only stare and stare at them wondering just when it was that he lost his mind. They wanted him to work on the Vaccine for the Babel, they knew from the files they had cobbled together that he had identified and named the Babel ASHA 3F, and that he was working on the vaccine when the shit hit the fan and then he dropped off the map.

They did not know how that had come about, they did not find documents, which there were plenty of, that linked him to the disease he actually brought to life in his lab. He wanted to tell them that. That this Alien threat, which still he rubbed his mind's eye with a metaphoric knuckle over, was not related, it was a coincidence. Potentially it could have been the complete opposite as well, he had considered this internally that they had come because of the Babel, that there was no coincidence but a concerted effort to help or hinder our response to the virus we caused.

He started asking questions about the intent of the aliens, the message that they gave, the things that they did and he was met with hostility and suspicions galore. There was a plan in play, they did not need anyone poking holes in the plan, they needed a clean up of the Babel Effect. Humanity was infected, once the source of the infection was neutralised then the cure and the reversal could take place.

If he told them there was no cure, then there would be no need for him to be kept alive and they seemed insane enough to kill him for just not being useful. If he told them that it was not the Aliens that caused the Babel, but that ASHA 3F was in fact his creation, he would be as good as dead when he again advised of the lack of a cure.

But.

If he said nothing at all then the population of that City, which according to the records he had seen was over a million people before the Babel, and maybe a few hundred thousand at the very least by now, could die. And those that didn't die would suffer horribly in the radioactive fallout from the missiles, assuming that the ships themselves did not cause some kind of nuclear reaction in their own defence or any other outcome of a half dozen nuclear warheads being unleashed on each saucer from the sea of the Auckland Harbour, as per the plan.

Of course he could say nothing and work for years on a solution that would never work and claim that he was trying, he'd stay alive and well fed, but be a prisoner for the rest of his life, which could be cut short at any time on the whims of madmen.

He could tell them everything and they might even believe him and send the nukes regardless.

The world had gone mad and it was patently unfair that he was caught up in the middle of it all, with no way out.  

Day 139 - Babel - Chapter 35 (1701 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

BABEL

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 35

Benny did not really want to go anywhere near any of the people he could see, it was eerily silent as he walked from where he had been standing underneath the giant spaceship to the abandoned houses of Big Bay Road which faced across the harbour to the airport. He had seen the plane taking off from there when had been on the hilltop, looking up and around at the world as it now was.

He had no plans to go any further and find out any more, but he could neither go back nor stay where he was the way things were. The things that he had subsisted on, the birds and animals that flourished in the new world order were fleeing the site where the ship was, where it was hurting the land and unbalancing the spirit. Now that he stood under under and he got the measure of it's size and the power that emanated from it, he felt the need to move forward and to find another home. The problem was what would be his new home, what felt right to him changed every few hours.

At first he thought that moving up the coast was a good idea, but there was a pull to the land under the ship, like he was drawn to the hole that it was creating underneath itself. When he got across the narrow entranceway to the Manukau and stood underneath it, then his sense of home and place changed again. The voices, the noise and the rushing sound he heard almost constantly in his ears, the one that had been there for years and years, before the Babel, before he went 'Bush', before he dropped out of humanity, had dropped to a whisper.

When he sat in the very middle, where the ground was weakest now, where the earth shook like sand under his feet and the grass was having trouble keeping itself rooted to the ground, that was like the eye of his own personal storm and he extraneous noise, the ones he always knew were linked to his madness, disappeared altogether. Like slowly turning up the volume knob on a stereo the noise increased slightly every few hundred meters from the centre point below the Alien Ship. At the periphery it was still quiet, and only when he was all the way out from under it and well beyond it's shadow's circumference did the full volume return.

Benny sat in the middle for a long while, he even fell asleep there rolling from a sitting position to completely rested and relaxed, his eyes drooping slowly and blinking, longer and longer every time until they closed and he keeled sideways to sleep peacefully for longer than he even knew. When he woke and the voices were not there, the noise had gone and he was at peace he felt more rested and better able to face the world than ever before. He saw beyond the land where he sat, the softening ground and the pain of the land he first perceived was now at odds with the calm and balance he felt within himself.

He returned to the hill, and could see that there were still people at the airport and that they were bustling about working on a plane, for what reason he had no idea, but it seemed like the focal point for everything he needed to move towards. There were no voices arguing, no one jockeying for position in his head anymore, not while he was here at his nirvana central anyway. The need he felt pulling him towards the spot, the centre of the ship, was now pushing him to see the airport, telling him he needed to go there. Except that it was not telling him, not really, he knew what voices in his head sounded like, how they spoke, commanded and demanded things from him, and this was not like that. This was a feeling, and he we was guided by his feelings and his connection with the land.

So now was it the land that was telling him where to go or was it the ship talking to him through the land? He could not tell, but it was more subtle and guided by feelings, sensations and images rather than by the imperious or paranoid commands that were flung into his brain for most of his life as an adult. The affect of those things in his head, the things he knew were wrong and could be dulled and blunted with drugs, those voices were what drove him from the human race in the first place, where he did not have to listen to the sniping about what everyone's agendas were. This felt better, like he was being nudged or guided to do what felt right to him, he felt no suspicions about the intentions of the feelings, whether he was being paranoid or falling prey to the sections of his brain that were miswired in some way. This felt better, this made Benny feel better.

He walked all the way to Big Bay and walked the length of the beach there, finding a boat ramp but no boats to be seen. It took him the better part of the day, pushing through the sheds and garages of the houses along Big Bay Road, and he found what he was looking for, a canoe. It was a decent stretch of water to canoe across to get to the airport, and he followed the sandbars, staying in the shallow sandbanks over risking the deeper dug channel, he knew the weather could turn fast on him and force him into a more dangerous and life threatening sea at a moments notice, so he took a bit of a long way around the edge of the shipping lane, the one that was empty and unused. He stayed around the edge until he thought he was wandering too far south and then with a careful eye on the weather and a backwards glance to the giant spaceship he took the plunge and made a bee line for the southern tip of the airport peninsula.

It was getting on in the afternoon when he reached the jetty that stuck out from the outer edge of the runway that stuck out into the Manukau. The sniping was back though the further he got from the ship and he started doubting the wisdom of his actions, maybe the ship had gotten to him, maybe that whole trust and reasonable feelings that had guided him had in fact blinded him. He recognised that on some level that the nagging was the symptom, the same signs of the troubled part of his brain that he had all his life. Away from the calming influence of the ship though, it was coming back with a vengeance and the voices were now so much harsher, so more desperate to get his attention and ten times as vicious with their suggestions. They were punishing him for being cut off from him for the days that he was soaked in the rays of ambivalent calm from the saucer, and this was payback.

Benny followed the jetty all the way and only got out on to the land when he ran out of water, and it was then that he noticed that the voices quieted down again, as he walked further into the peninsula, further on the ground and away from the harbour the quieter they got. There was no ship above him, and the feelings returned, with some extra certainty that he was doing the right thing. As soon as he had got off of the surface of the water, the pain and intensity of his own brain lessened significantly. He felt connected to the ship again, and now that he was on the land he felt more like the real Benny was back again, the Benny he had not seen since he was in his late teens.

He walked slowly up the tarmac of the runway towards the terminal buildings seeing even at this distance that there were people there and it was the right thing to do to approach them, it was a gentle push he felt in his legs, propelling them forward to make contact with the locals. He had not seen a human being for a while now, the animals were his companions and his meals, all rolled into one. A companion animal was never going to be a meal and a meal never got upgraded to a companion to avoid the executioners axe, but that was the cold sum of his relationships in the bush. He was unsure how he would communicate and what it would be about, with these people, the leftovers of humanity that had survived whatever it was that had severely depleted humanity to the remnants that barely registered these days, but he felt that it was right to let them speak to him.

No that was not it, was it? They would not be speaking to him, he just needed to be near them to meet them, to be part of their company. To touch another human being, in no needy or demanding way, but to simply reach out and connect with any one of them physically, that was the compulsion. To touch, embrace and find the connection. That was it.

The chance came sooner than he expected, a golf cart with a single person on it drove towards him in an unerringly straight line to where he was walking towards the terminal. The cart closed the gap between them in short order and it stopped a few feet away from him allowing the occupant to stand clear of the cart as Benny kept moving forward, not breaking stride and not changing pace, just walking all the way into a hug with the woman who opened her arms, not smiling or grimacing, just opening up and surrendering to the embrace with a man who had not showered or changed clothes for months.

Benny's world exploded with information and in the middle of the hug as it all came flooding into him he swore out loud.

In English.  

Day 138 - Babel - Chapter 34 (3060 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

BABEL

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 34

George was looking for a chance to get away and this was the only opportunity he could see that afforded him any real option of survival. Out in the gulf he was literally caught between the devil, Victor, and the deep blue sea of the Hauraki Gulf. On the mission to the Naval base at least he had the option to disappear into the land, hide from Victor and whatever madness he had planned. Given what he knew so far it was entirely possible that being too close to any potential crash or blast radius of the ship would have been equally dangerous as being underneath when it blew.

Victor had left Barbara and him alone on the island for two days, and for a little while at least George had daydreamed that perhaps Victor would not be returning. It was a false hope though and on the evening on the second day after being left alone with Barbara who was increasingly distanced from him. She had been treating him like the third wheel in relationship that only existed in her mind and therefore the frosty nature of he attitude towards George only intensified. They were part of that less than one percent that could still talk, still human and possibly the saviours of the human race and yet they barely spoke any words to each other.

She sensed but never asked to confirm that George did not trust Victor and the leadership role that he had assumed from George, without asking but by force of purpose alone. He had dropped hints about taking the boat away for two days and scouting out Rangitoto, getting under the belly of the beast and staring up into it's maw, looking for weak spots. He had as much as stated that he would be gone overnight, but when he did not return and it was silent and calm in his absence, George allowed himself a sliver of potential that Victor would be dealt with by the same Alien Hordes that they were working to defeat.

How the three of them, sat as they were on a flat and featureless bird sanctuary island, would be able to effect a coup of sorts of the alien overlords George did not even temperate to guess. They had no weapons and no advantages that they could think of, no resources and not much of a plan that anyone wanted to share with the group. Victor was always thinking and was always plotting in his own mind, George was sure of this from the way he spoke and the way he measured his thoughts before saying things to him and Barbara that sound true, but felt like lies, at least to George.

Barbara was watching Victor through binoculars as he approached the much bigger island, it's extinct volcanic cone rose steeply from the centre of the island, now lush with bush and wildlife, rising majestically in the middle of the Gulf a focal point for the eastern coast of Auckland from the far north to the far southern reaches of the cost line. But now with the ship hovering there, hundreds of feet, possibly thousands even, above the highest point of the island. Victor's plan, as much as he had told them was to get across to Rangitoto Island, take one of the tracks, perhaps if he was lucky find a four wheel drive in the Ferry Terminal port, or one of the DOC houses, like the one they had lucked into on Brown's island where they were now. From there take the summit track as far as he could, scaling the peak and getting a close up look at the Alien ship and figure out how to bring it down.

He disappeared from sight within an hour but she spent the better part of that day and evening sweeping back and forth across the mountain, the crested peak and the beaches to see any sign of life. She also kept a close eye on the saucer itself, not that there was anything that she could do if it suddenly burst into life or if swarms of alien warriors poured out of whatever barracks or defences it had, but none the less she watched it carefully for any sign at all. Even when darkness took them all into it's nightly embrace, she sat on the roof of the rangers station, climbing up there with a blanket and her binoculars to watch for any flashes of light or signs of Victor's progress.

The next day, she was up before George and he knew that she had not spent the whole night up there because he had heard her come in to bed in the middle of the night and had woken him up. He had jumped at first because he thought it may have been Victor, but he could tell without looking that it was her. The heaviness of the footsteps, the shuffling tired and shambling gait. Victor was very light on his feet, like every step he took was the one where you shifted your weight just before you break into a run. Barbara walked normally and shuffled when she was tired, Victor was like a cat, a predatory animal always on the lookout and ready to pounce or flee at the drop of a hat. George woke the next morning and the sun was already up and breakfast dishes were in the sink, no sign of anything leftover for him, and he could here Barbara on the roof.

He walked outside to see how she was, offer her a cup of tea but she didn't look at him when he asked, just kept scanning the horizon and the mountain that dominated it, while gesturing with her free hand that she had a thermos and was good.

They had spoken less than ten words since Victor had left on his mini-mission as he had referred to it. George watched her for a moment and then went inside and fixed himself a simple breakfast to start they day, taking his time to enjoy the peace, quiet and lack of tension without Victor around. He contemplated escape, now that Victor was out of the picture for at least a few more hours, possibly a second day, yet no means of escape was affording itself. He was a halfway decent swimmer, but the options for a swimming escape were limited. Closest was Howick peninsula, and while the distance looked swimmable, George could see that there was plenty of activity there on the land, the Babel were very active there. He doubted he could get to the shore, close the gap from the beaches to hide in the golf course or somewhere else before being spotted. He had to find a place where he could not be seen approaching, and could not be caught as soon as he got out of the water. That eliminated the mainland as the coast was busy, whatever it was the Alien Invaders were doing with the Babel, or whatever weird gestalt being they had become, they were keeping them very busy. Waiheke was too far to swim, and Rangitoto was closer, but that was just following Victor so there was no way to make that work. Motuihe was quite some distance and the water between them seemed pretty calm, but there was nothing there, they had scouted the island the previous week and found nothing useful and no means of transport to anywhere else. The things they had found they had already stripped and brought back to Motukorea, Browns Island.

So he waited and as the day wore on and he felt well rested he heard Barbara exclaim from the roof of the shelter they had taken the last two weeks. He could not tell if it was a jubilant or distraught exclamation, and figured that one way or another he'd find out soon enough. Within the hour Victor was back and looking wildly excited with anticipation. Obviously he had found the chink in the Alien Ship's hull, the exposed hole or vent that they could magically “star wars” their way to victory with, but that did nothing to alleviate the foreboding of doom that George was getting from the situation. He just wanted to get out alive.

“WE need to go, now.” Victor stressed the word “we” heavily and was looking at George not Barbara.

She had not noticed. “Where? What are we doing? Did you find what you were looking for?”

Victor looked at her as if he had only just seen that she were there, and that fact had somehow surprised him. “Not you.”

“Oh.” Barbara sat down on the bench near the front porch of the rangers hut, deflated and dejected by a sharply spoken two word sentence.

“Get to the boat now George, we have some heavy lifting to do.” And with that he was gone again, disappeared inside the ranger's station and rattling about in there turning the place upside down looking for things.

He came out again and thrust a carry bag at George who took it and almost fell over at the weight of it, it was thick and laden with heavy metal objects. He looked inside and saw that it was every tool that they had scavenged together in the last two weeks, all in one bag jumbled together.

“Get those to the boat, George, now! Get on with it!”

He had stumbled under the weight but they were in the boat and motoring away from Brown's Island before he had a chance to think, ask or even comment on the fact that he had no idea what it was that he was doing. It was dark before they were even halfway to the city, Victor was steering the boat through the harbour, but not heading to the nearest part of the shoreline. Instead they were headed back to where they had stolen the lifeboat from, what seemed like an age ago from the docked frigates in Devonport Naval Base.

As they closed the gap to be big grey ship they could see that the main part of Auckland had lights in it, electricity was being used in patches in the houses on the hills overlooking they city, which itself was still dark and cold. The city though, the houses and the bigger buildings were occasionally lit up and flickering with signs of life and activity. George saw these and hoped that it was a good sign, that maybe things were righting themselves again, and perhaps there was some hope. Victor saw the same lights and tightened his resolve to end the alien oppression that was enslaving humanity.

He was muttering darkly about the lights, how no one was human anymore and that it would all end soon. George said nothing at all and did not engage in debate, agreement or even commentary with the man that was now officially more terrifying than the prospect of Alien Brainwashing or Body Snatching.

Devonport was devoid of life. All the activity was further inland on the other side of the bridge, if there were any Babel left on the shore they were not on the Belmont to Devonport peninsula. Victor was scanning left and right as they skirted the edge of the land, still no sign of any Babel or any Alien activity.

“They can't stand the water, that's what it is, the water.” Victor observed more than once.

George had heard this theory many times, and while he neither agreed nor disagreed with it, he had no proof one way or the other. This latest activity and the lack of attention they drew on the thing crust of land sticking out of the water that they now called home, backed up this assertion to some extent.

“Up here. Bring those.” Victor indicated the tools and they docked the boat near the larger frigate, the one they had stolen the lifeboat from weeks earlier.

It was heavy work carting the tools up onto the deck of the Frigate, but they stood in front of the deck guns and stared at each other.

Victor broke into a grin and rubbed his hands together with glee. He fished out a torch and in the moonlight, with the aid of the flash-light he started disassembling the Missile Launcher on the foredeck.

George was feeling faint, this was madness. He picked up a wrench and moved to where Victor was standing, thinking that perhaps the best thing to do would be to just kill Victor and leave. He was that scared that murder crossed his mind, and it made him feel sick and weak just wavering on the point of being able to take action.

“Just sit down George, leave it to me. I need you to help me carry the things, not pull them out. You'd just as likely set them off.”

George sat down on the deck with a thump and dropped the wrench, his moment and opportunity gone. Victor started talking, to himself or to George he could not tell.

“Sea Sparrow, surface to air missiles. They have a range of 10 miles, but we have no guidance capability. You'd have to get up real close, and find the right spot where the maximum damage would be done, without the accuracy that most would be thinking of. You want each one of these puppies to put out their 40 kilo warheads out put in the best way. Exploit a weak spot, times the explosion by four, and then, hope for the best, a chain reaction.”

Victor had one of the four missiles loosened and he clanged the end with a wrench, the same one that George had been intending to crush Victor's skull with. “Come on then, these things weigh a few hundred kilos and we have four of them to move.”

“This is why you didn't want Barbara.”

“Heavy lifting is for the lads, you should know that George.” He spoke to him like he was a child on the bus being reminded to let the elderly have his seat.

Victor had a dolly ready and they heaved the missile onto it before hitting the ramps off the deck, off the ship and down to the docks. It took them about an hour to extract, move and load the missiles on to the boat. Each missile dropped the waterline on the boat a little more and before the third one was on there George already knew that only one person would be making it back on the trip to Motukorea.

“I guess I'll be staying here then.”

Victor was surprised by the statement but his eyes narrowed shrewdly and his hand lifted slightly towards his pocket, not quite reaching for the gun they both knew was there.

George raised both hands placatingly. “We have one more missile to bring down, so we could take the three back to base and be satisfied with three. Or we could load the fourth but then one of us would not be able to make the trip, the boat is pretty low already, we'd have to ditch the tools and the oars and any extraneous weight. So I stay behind and you either come back for me or I get another lifeboat and row back to the island, that seems like the best option. Four missiles and you, I follow by rowing a lifeboat.”

Victor nodded but said nothing, and George knew that his chance was going to be necessary to take as soon as the last missile was secured.

Less than forty five minutes later they stood next to the boat, all four missiles and Victor were in it and it was dangerously low in the water. George started to walk away back to the Frigate to make a show of looking for a lifeboat he knew he was never going to use.

“Where are you going?” He heard Victor's voice behind him and the audible click of the gun chambering a round.

He did not hesitate and dove head-first off the dock and heard the crack of the bullet as Victor took a snapshot from his sitting position in the boat. The water was cold and hard as he hit it blindly, in the dark he could not even tell where the water started and the night ended. He went down, down and as far as he could underneath the dock itself, pulling himself along the pylons of the wharf. The last time he had done this it was to save Victor's life, the man who was trying to kill him now.

He surfaced and despite the burning of his lungs, and the ice stinging at his eyes, he did this as silently as he could and gave nothing of his position away.

A few minutes in the cold and he started to shiver, but Victor gave up on searching for him quickly and started the motor on the boat, cautiously heading away from the area in the moonlight nightscape of a calm harbour sea, heading out to the home base and destiny.

George waited until his limbs were almost too numb before climbing out of the water and onto dry land again. He saw blood on his arm and wondered if he had been nicked by Victor's bullet or if he had cut himself in the water or during the dive. He could not see the wound and the cold made him too numb too care.

When he was standing on the beach trying to see if he could see any sign of Victor's boat heading away from the shore, he saw lights of a car and then the sound of an engine approaching where he stood. He was too cold and tired, possibly in shock from whatever wound was bleeding on his arm and had lost any will to resist so he stood there and waited patiently for the driver to stop. When the door opened he was ready to surrender or embrace zombification or whatever it was that was coming next.

He was not expecting her to get out of the car they way she did just at that moment when the engine stopped, greeting him with a smile he never expected to see ever again.

Day 137 - Babel - Chapter 33 (2260 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

BABEL

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 33

Eric Barker had been enjoying a cold brew when the alarm was raised and the news came down that there was a plane on the way. He was one of the Few and part of a network of defence that criss-crossed the state, forming an early warning for the expected invasion of the Great Southern Land, an invasion that never actually came though. They were waiting and ready, but most days were taken up in domestic issues, they only got involved when things got seriously out of hand. They looked the other way a lot, and unless someone was killing a lot of people then they just let most things happen.

The plan was to keep vigilant and on their toes for the invasion they knew would follow up the Babel. At first they had drilled and practised at ranges, shooting live and dummy round indiscriminately until the made the connection that no one was making ammunition any more, so it was a dwindling resource. During riots, only really big ones that sparked from nowhere and usually during a heatwave they would shoot live rounds into crowds, but it did not do much to solve the situation, as there was no word of mouth. Screams were one thing, but with no one yelling at others to run for their lives, or that they were being shoot and killed, the message was just not getting though unless you directly saw what was happening.

So they waited, planned and prepared for the taking of Australia by force, and in the end they did come to a conclusion that the Babel may not have been just targeted at Aussies, but maybe like early reports indicated, the whole world was affected. Eric was gifted with language, and he liked to read so he was pretty much satisfied with staying on watch for as long as possible. In the early days it had been strict and the idea that you could multi task on the job was an anathema to the code of discipline and readiness. Over time it had loosened up a little and the job of the people who had language and had stayed participating in Australia, they settled into a social group more than an army. The watch could read, study or pair up and have conversations, something banned in the original versions.

Then it became even looser over time and games were organised, there was some semblance of organised sport and they'd even get a chance to rope some Babel in as spectators, though points mattered to the players who could understand them, the actions and the physciality of it mattered to the crowds that would gather. Babel gravitated to any organised sporting event, the ones that grew from bored watchmen that became a semi professional league of players that were run by the Few but soon played by the frustrated and denied Babel who could remember the games they way they would have to be played.

The refs were always of the few, and they would communicate the infractions and points with colours and codes, hand signals that everyone could understand. Cricket was the easiest to understand the action in, if you were close enough, but the points, runs and overs were a bit harder without constant oversight. Rugby and League, they were less complicated and the points were replaced with tries and kicks as coloured bars. The team that had most coloured bars on the board won. They had trouble with anything too complex, so it would be a simple matter of size that would solve the problem. Points were blue for one team and red for the other, the teams would sport colours that matched the score colour they added to. Kicks were one third the size of a try so it took 3 penalties to make the same impact on the size of your score as it did crossing the line, and of course four kicks if you counted the conversion.

Half the time not everyone knew what was going on, but they revelled in the chance to cheer and be entertained where they understood the language of tackles, tries and physical prowess. Captains lead by example and strategy grew from knowing your team-mates pretty well. The audience may have recognised some faces if they turned up often enough, but mostly games were played almost ad-hoc as it was near impossible to be too organised and have any kind of ladder or competition leader boards with the Babel playing or watching. So they played every weekend, when the weekend rolled around they announced it with signs and icons, visually signifying what was happening, the Few that could communicate that formed the militaristic watchmen amongst themselves found that they became the champions, the dealers of entertainment through the universal appreciation of sport.

The watch continued though, there was still the underlying paranoia that something worse was coming and that the Babel was just the first step in something bigger. Eric was happy to leave the sport to the people that loved it, which was just about everyone else, and while the filled the stadiums and the grounds for people to watch games, sometimes managing a dozen or more games in a single day to cover the largest amount of ground for people to congregate at, Eric and a few others, some of which were Babel too, would man the alarms.

Everyone had moved closer together, there were pockets of outliers, but as the population dwindled, especially after riots and the occasional bloodbath in the early days, the circumference of Sydney shrank by over half. Only hermits lived in the Mountains, people hiding from everyone and everything. There was no way to service the whole of the land, it was impossible with the lines of communication permanently jammed.

When the alarm sounded Eric thought he was hearing things, they were not due a drill for this week he was sure of it. They were always told that there would be a drill, only the Few could ever know it was drill of course, so knowing did no harm and it kept the Babel on their toes as well. They had no context for explaining a drill, but they were taken seriously and undertaken even though there was an occasional misunderstanding that lead to panic and death for the ones unable to contain their reactions.

They were not due a drill though and Eric rubbed his ears before getting up of his chair and taking his nose out of a one of the stack of library books he had taken from the Parramatta Public Library on a scouting mission he had gone on the previous week. Most of the far west was empty, Penrith was a ghost town and everyone was much further in, taking empty houses and shops as homes and places to work on things that they could do to help Australia stand together.

A large tract of Pararmatta had been dug up for farm land, using the river to ferry supplies back up to the city and the distribution network that the watchmen had put together, at first for them selves in defence of the country, but quickly co-opted in service of the population. Babel did the heavy lifting and the highly repetitive tasks that could be easily trained by mimicry or drawn instructions. The watchmen ran the show, and every now and then people died, it was a frontier justice and there was no tolerance for things that affected too many people at one go. Rapists, paedophiles and serial killers were executed and trials were mostly unwarranted, as no one very tried to defend themselves verbally or deny their crimes. What would generally happen is that the victim would be upset and unable to tell anyone what had happened, they would point out the offender and they too generally would not be able to deny or question what was going on.

If they ran then they were guilty, that was the prevailing thought. If they looked confused or upset themselves, but not running for their lives then they backed off and let things lie. When someone ran though, it was pretty much and admission of guilt as evidenced by them being driven to run by shame or guilt. It was not perfect and Eric was sure that more than one person ran because it looked like the best option, but a bullet or two later usually put that idea to rest and solved the issue for good. When the person acted innocent but was accused too many times, then someone just took justice into their own hands and made the call.

The watchmen had a lot of power and they could do pretty much whatever they wanted. Some took advantage of the fact and male or female it seemed to make no difference to the people who took their power too seriously. Eric was glad when the watchmen devolved from paramilitary to an entertainment and provisioning network. The ones among them that had been abusing their power, they still could do that and still did, with the new paradigm of food and sport, but at least there was a positive and generally harmonious output that worked well for most involved.

Eric stayed on watch, because watch was dull, repetitive and did nothing to increase your sense of power, importance or celebrity. The watchmen, good and bad were drawn to the jobs and positions that set them up as elite, as special and privileged. They all had those advantages, even Eric though he and his friends wanted to stay on the sidelines and keep the watch running, reading and learning as much as they could in their spare time. Eric had been prolific at breaking into book stores, libraries and other places of learning and taking away what lessons would be helpful.

Solar power, plumbing and desalination were major projects that came from foraging for knowledge by Eric, and the fruits of these provided power, some very nice conveniences like indoor plumbing and hot showers for the precious Few on the watch and the star sportsmen and women of the Babel. So Eric was treated specially as well, and though he avoided the limelight he had a house that overlooked the bay, on the hill above Bondi and he was given leeway and plenty of luxuries that the ninety nine percent in his land did not.

Still every day he took his stack of books and texts to get through, a pad and pen to make notes when he sat on the watch for the invasion he knew was never coming.

Today the alarm was sounding though and it was not a drill. He grabbed a walkie-talkie and radioed the station to either side of him. Within a few minutes they had shared enough information that he knew it was not a drill, but not a full scale invasion either. It was unlikely but someone had flown a plane to Australia, it had come up the coast, seen before it crossed into New South Wales, and the markings that someone recognised, and reported that from where it had come and by the look of what was written on the side, it had come from New Zealand.

Their commonwealth neighbours to the south in the shaky isles were making an appearance, but it was a small plane and heading by the course that some clever soul on watch down in Wollongong had calculated, was aiming for Sydney Airport.

Within the hour a shocked and skittish watch had driven the roads in what vehicles they could muster and got to the airport, where they assumed and hoped the visitors were heading. They found that the Jeeps they had ready for defence had not been serviced in a while and they were far from a threatening or unobtrusive olive grey. Long periods of inattention and boredom had repainted the Jeeps with bright colours as if made up in war paint to shock more than scare. The guns were fed with long roped magazines of shells ready to feed into the fifty calibre machine guns mounted on the rear.

They saw and heard the plane flying in long before it was in any danger of landing. They wanted to drive out onto the tarmac, fire a few warning shots and make them think twice about setting down, but the engines were not in the best condition and they barely had them turning over when the plane was making it's descent. The guns were in a condition that none were confident about but Eric was shoved into position behind one of the mounted fifty cals and driven out to meet the plane.

Eric was shaking and trying to look, feel and act tough as the aircraft touched down with him and another Jeep flanking the visitors as they slowed to a crawl and eventually stopped. The driver yelled out some harsh military sounding terms as instructions but Eric was not sure what they meant, the watch had been pretty simplistic with its command and structure, process and procedure even when they were serious about it in the first days. Now it had been such a long time since he had held a gun, let alone fired one. This fifty calibre monstrosity felt cold and ungainly in his grip and it frightened him more that made him feel secure.

None the less he trained the gun barrel as firmly and unwaveringly as he could on the door and waited for it to open.