Day 127 - Babel - Chapter 23 (1399 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 23

When the Looped woke up it was as individuals, in their own time-frame and according to their own body reactions. There was still the intra-communication they could feel, and converse with the group in feelings and in pictures, there were not really words being shared, no language but the sense or the instant memory replay to share ideas and thoughts. At first it was a light load of people, most took a long time to recover from the shock of the explosions and the deaths. The comatose, the unconscious and the dead among them had overloaded the system in a way. The sharing of the searing heat, the torn flesh and the compression wave of shock ran through them at light speed, each person seeing, feeling and touch the flame in their own minds, and that blew everyone back.

There was a central feeling of calm and repose that was overlaying the communications between the Babel who were now Looped, and while they knew that there was this brainwashing mechanism in place, they understood how it was for their own benefit rather than a suppression of the need for independent thoughts. There was an idea, of people going insane from having the mind opened so rapidly and completely to the sharing of thoughts with a million people, and this was not a soporific, it was a surgical stroke to cut through the link to that madness, the part of the brain trying to comprehend something that was too big to get.

The explosion, the deaths and the violence in that split second was unplanned for and the emotional feedback shut down nearly everyone connected in the Loop. No one could stand under the overwhelming pressure from the blast. It was similar to those point of view videos shot at the front of a roller coaster. At some point your eyes deceived your inner ear and you swayed, dizzy and reeling at the motion that did not actually exist in your reality. The same was true here as the shock wave of force slammed into the nearest fifty or so, but taking over every perception in the Loop. The tearing of limbs, the shattering of bones in the twenty or so who would die instantly was still feeding in, the connections not cut until the brain ceased to function. One or two people took hours to die, and the whole while the Loop was experiencing it with little or no filter.

The host organism, the unseen master of the Loop and the ships, they lost their input and there was no surgery on feelings and emotions for that period of time. The Looped woke up and had the independent thought they had all along, but also now had the full manual control of themselves without any censoring of the madness that filled some of them in fear and paranoia unchecked. The tension grew rapidly and fights ensued in some areas, others drew away from each other trying to hide from the view when they were so exposed.

The Looped were as confused and as chaotic as they had been when they first became Babel and things were frustration and fearfulness amplified. They were understanding each other and they were still connecting but without the safety harness, without the training wheels. A few punches were thrown but the connected sensations threw out their physical reactions. One man would lash out, but see his own first flailing and coming at him through the eyes of the nearest person broadcasting their own amplified connection. The thrower would duck, the person who he was aiming at would get the movement and so it looked like they were being operated with random tugs on an invisible marionette rig. Others would duck and hide their heads, only to see themselves cowering from outside their bodies, running, stumbling in an effort to satisfy the need for isolation.

It was most of the day later when the host reasserted some semblance of calm. None of the Looped had any idea why it took so long, whether it was fast or slow by the host's reckoning, the feeling simply righted itself and nearly a million people started breathing regularly again, heartbeats and blood pressure regulated and in control once more.

Everyone wanted to know where Victor had gone. There were people, Babel who knew him from before and shared the knowledge that they had of who he was, how secretive he had been with his friends, and that he was capable of much. No one saw anything beyond the explosion, the flinging outwards of his body. A section of the Loop made rough approximations of his trajectory through the air all minds were fed the view of the harbour in the fading light, but finding nothing.

A group made from nearby Looped persons walked out along both wharfs, but as they did the relationship to the Loop changed. The link became weaker and more watered down, like the visions of peoples memories were cataracted and opaque. Communication was still possible between them and the ones on dry land, but they moved further down the pier over deeper water and found that they could not clearly communicate outside of their section of the Loop.

The ships, they were out over the water in some ways, but directly above land as well. They had to be earthed, that was the way to see it. The picture was of the ships, fading out of existence, having less influence on the physical planes when above deeper, saltier water. The Manukau Ship was over the Airport and straddle the farmlands that were all but empty. The Hauraki Ship was over Rangitoto, an empty island high in minerals from it's volcanic composition, they could see the reflective flecks in their minds of the dirt, the lava tubes and the ashen layers from explosions centuries old. That was a mirror of sorts for energy, it made an antenna of the spaceship, they needed the individuals on board, in the path of that antenna to start the chain. Brought to the mainland, the signals from the island hovering ship and the Manukau saucer a repeater of the signal, bounced through the Loop and back into the former sufferers of the Babel, now each one their own node in a peopled network.

As the evening settled in the Looped were dismissed. It was that instant and simple, they were not required to be in physical proximity anymore. They could return to the homes and villages that they had come from or were welcome to be wherever it was that suited themselves. Now that they were connected it was going to be much easier to organise the division of labour, effort and resources to allow the Babel to survive in the Loop. It would not be a matter of helping or assistance, it would be a open and free hand of cards, everything was face up and the dealer and the holder had no advantage. There was little benefit in holding back or hoarding, through the thoughts persisted so too did the need of others and the guilt could not be pushed aside when everyone's felt it to the same degree.

Selfish thoughts were still foremost, but visible from everyone's perspective and virtually indefensible. Thoughts of violence, desire and perversion were all there and out in the open now and acting and thinking were of similar import now. The desire for something at the expense or price of someone else was an open transaction. There was no privacy, no hiding and no denial. If you felt it and it was OK, you did it with the understanding that you could not do it alone. Conversely if you felt no revulsion to things that crossed lines, then you were open to the thoughts and feelings of so much of the majority. Morality was democratised, and there was no moral high ground, no clergy or intelligentsia to hand out decisions to appease a society or even a belief system. There was a million people, in favour or against the grain.

No one saw Victor, no one knew that George and Barbara were spiriting him away in a boat, heading out to sea in the dark, looking for Brown's Island, uninhabited and with a single building where they could hide unseen under the nose of the ship that lorded over Auckland Harbour.