Day 135 - Babel - Chapter 31 (1693 words)

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BABEL

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 31

It was thirteen hundred miles from Auckland to Sydney as the consensus of memory in the Loop concurred. There was an aircraft undamaged and enough fuel to fill the tank and reserves on board the plane to carry it beyond it's maximum range over the sea, even in a head wind. There were three of them on board and travelling at two hundred and fifty miles an hour in the long range but single prop plane, they would be over water for maybe four hours or more before hitting the closest point, which was Tasmania. The plan was to make it as far as they could in open water to land, the plane was completely capable of the journey, and the shorter route to the largest population centre in Sydney was to fly all the way across the one thousand seven hundred miles, give or take, with 99 percent of the journey above nothing but ocean.

The idea that they would be over land in half the time was very appealing, though truth be told if something went wrong, they would be just as dead if they hit the ground as they would on the water. At least if the ground was there they could find a road or a field and effect an emergency landing, and then connect with some locals. It was thought that the population would be centred in New South Wales, a thought that had no real backing but was there anyway, like it was being piped in by the hosts, in that way where the idea would kind of be there without words, just a sense or an image of a large crowd of people concentrated there.

Australia was almost thirty times bigger in land size than New Zealand, the chances of getting the population together in one place and connecting people physically in such a vast land was going to problematic. They were only guessing at the state of the nation post Babel, there were no nuclear power plants to go critical and fail, save the experimental light-water reactor which was decommissioned and never in serious use, and in so danger of melting down. There were dams and infrastructure that could have failed, and certainly the climate was going to be an issue in the far north and the centre of the county where power could make the difference between life and death.

At first the noise in Philip's head was cacophonous, it was the first real modern age flight that anyone had taken in years and the novelty of it meant that everyone's thoughts were sharpened and directed at him, he felt the two way communication of feedback as everyone in the Loop sat on the edge of their seats as the plane climbed into the sky and a million hearts beat a little faster from the excitement of achieving flight again. Philip had the memories of the flight on the Alien shuttle, but they were memories and they were shadows of experiences, not the same as a live connection to sensations of the present.

There were three seats in the rear and the pilot pair in the cockpit, which meant they could have taken five people up in the air, but they limited themselves to only three of them. They would all take turns at the controls, allowing each of them only an hour or two as a shift flying the plane. It was going to take about seven hours in total to get to Sydney, unless they made landfall sooner and then it would be anyone's guess. There was an experienced pilot in the chair and an ex police officer, trained and expert in hand to hand defence and negotiation, who was there in case they needed some physical protection, where not just knowing what to do but having the advantage of muscle memory would help.

Philip had never flown a plane before, but with access to the Loop he had all the knowledge he needed and the instincts of plenty of people who would bubble up what he needed to fly competently through the Loop directly to him. Locally the Loop was stronger, the further they got away from the land the weaker and fainter the connecting was. It did not leave them, it just became a little slower and a little vaguer. In the cockpit though the thoughts and feelings of Bob the Pilot and Evan the Policeman were coming through loud and clear. Likewise they could feel with much more intensity than before, the loss and pain that Philip had experienced, so much more than most of the Loop, was amplified locally.

This close quarters connection gave up two new experiences for Philip and his companions. As it was there was no spoken communication between them, this was still impossible for the Babel affected humans, but there was a give and taken that flowed like a conversation that dealt exclusively in feelings, memory and sensations. The pain and proximity to the blast were things that weighed heavily on Philip and as the whole Loop now experienced things through him and two other nodes, who themselves were now disabled too, there was no respite from it.

In close quarters sharing that burden was a more equitable arrangement, where Bob and Evan both felt the melancholy, Philip began to let go of some of that burden. It was mentally quiet in the cockpit, not just physically so. They shared more of the space with him in that plane, they were beginning to equalise the pressure of the Loop, with only the local feedback available and the Loop stretched quite thin it was near impossible for them to not grow into Philips mind, it meant that when they landed the three of them together would act as Nodes for the first Australians they connected with.

The plan was to find a few dozen locals and pull them into a Loop, locally connecting them back to the Babel in New Zealand, using the strength of the connection to broadcast the call, the system by which the Babel had congregated into a single area to connect up with everyone and Join the Looped in Babel. The more people they had the more powerful the connection and the network would become. When Philip and his two new Nodes found locals to extend their Nodes to thirty two, then they could start connecting people locally in areas. It was not as easy to manage the population into a single area like it was back home, there would have to be sections, state by state.

The largest population centre was in Sydney, a large portion of Babel had fled Melbourne when bush fired took out a large section of the suburban areas, burning all the way to the river. As the plane flew over the southern Port city of Melbourne in Victoria, only an hour after first sighting land at Tasmania, they could see the devastating effect of a fire running unchecked through the sprawling metropolis that was now only sparsely populated. There were images being shunted from memories that were not his own that compared Wellington, also gutted by earthquakes and uncontrollable fire-storms. The Loop could compare the two side by side and the harrowing events for the locals that survived the conflagration in the former capital had sympathy for the similarly hollowed out city of Melbourne.

Philip was unsure if he would come back to New Zealand again, it would depend on fuel and necessity, but being as connected as he was there was less of a requirement for him to be in any place. The Loop was still there and he could see and hear events back home, even if the sensations that were usually so vivid were muted and indistinct at this distance with so few people to amplify the connection at this remote end.

Philip was at the control as they flew north east out of Victoria and approached the state where they would land first, handing over control to the experienced pilot only when Sydney came into view. As they came over Botany Bay and saw the light bouncing off the mirror finished blue/green of the sea, they could also see signs of life and activity. The hosts had no direct knowledge to share, just the sense that people were here and gathered in groups where it would be easier to Loop the Babel in. There were smoke from fires, deliberately lit fires, fires of industry and fabrication rather than the wild death dealing fires that had decimated the neighbours to the south.

Charles Kingsford Smith airport was not empty, there was a graveyard of planes that littered the runways and terminal entry points as they flew in and circled about looking for the best approach vector. The pilot, Bob Mountfoot who had been an Air New Zealand commercial pilot before the Babel, and knew this airport well, eyed up the best approach and all three of the occupants and the nearly one million people watching back home all understood exactly where and how he would land the plane.

The nose was down, speed reducing as they dropped out of the sky to the tarmac, mostly clear but edged with long grass and the occasional tuft cropping up in unexpected cracks, crevices caused by time and damages. The plane was committed to land, it was metres from the surface and the gear was down when two jeeps peeled out of a hangar and raced out to run along side the plane as it touched down, and slowed to a taxi speed.

The jeeps were manned with a dozen people and there were machine guns mounted on the rear, they were trained on the plane as it wheeled around and came to a stop. Philip looked out the window at the welcoming committee and was trying to decipher if they were Babel or one of the lucky Few who were immune. If they were Babel, then how were they so organised? If they were Few? They would not be able to Loop in, and then what?

There was only one way to find out.