Day 133 - Babel - Chapter 29 (1226 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 29

Benny was standing on the ground but it felt far from stable, much of it wobbled unsteadily under his feet as he walked across it at the edges nearest the Manukau Heads. Inland, the further he went the less he noticed it, the effect whatever it was relative to the thickness of the land and it's proximity to water, or maybe the depth of the land before it hit an aquifer or some other layer construction he could only guess at under the surface. The Alien Ship was pulling, pulsating or pushing at the earth and the earth was unhappy about that.

That was far from scientific, and Benny on some level accepted that there was some energy or exchange that was taking place that was causing the land to weaken and to fail in the thinner parts, the parts under more pressure. The black sands of the beaches, there were miles and miles of them on west coast, were constantly shifting and moving under the electro magnetic field, that had to be what it was, connecting with the iron in the sand? He knew what it was, he had learned it in school what seemed like aeons ago now, in a different world. He had known it's composition and had learned of the electro magnetic forces as well, but he had also learned of more esoteric concepts which had no scientific grounding, but they crowded his rational thoughts anyway.

The Mana, the Hau, the Mauri of the land was in pain. It was being injured and attacked by an alien force, not just alien to the nation he lived in but alien to the planet earth and the species of humanity. There was Titanomagnetite in the sand, it was mined for ore and would react to the electro magnetic forces being wielded by the behemoth in the sky above, it was using something to counter gravity, to defy the inward pull of the laws of physics. There was also the sense that the animals reacted to, the flora and fauna of New Zealand were also rejecting, fleeing from this thing, this effect and what it was doing. Was it poisoning the land? He did not know, he could see the ore dancing in the space above the ground, he saw the animals, retreating in fear and the felt the so sold ground feel like marshmallow under his steps.

What did it all mean? He could not tell what was right and wrong in this world, it had been hard enough for him to survive in a world full of strangers and the noises they made that drove him away from everyone. He had understood that world well enough even though he was incapable of living in it, it made sense and it followed natural, physical laws to the letter. He could not engage with the people, it's normal subjects who thrived in that framework where he could not. He could not breathe the same air, think the same thoughts and hear the same music that they could. He had grown in it, grown apart from it eventually, but in those years before their paths diverged he still knew it when he saw it and he did not like what he saw, because of the fact that he he knew what it was, how it made things true.

This now was not the same, not by any means of imagination in the laws physical or the beliefs spiritual within his experience. He climbed the hill nearest the beach, skipping over the stiles and fences that marked what may well have been property beforehand but was open and empty land now. No one would be able to stand living under that shadow, that disc that blotted out the sun and covered a depopulated area marginally smaller than it's own immense circumference. From atop the crest of that ridge of peaks he could see some way back across the harbour to the airport, no movement and no signs of life.

The land around him, falling away from the shirts of these hills and scattering across the lower plains were all under shadow and the weaknesses he felt in the edges, the shores and pockets of lower density earth that lay about, in his path to this point, were repeated again as he looked from the highest vantage point he could attain. The hilltop was solid, staid and safe under foot but the walk here was inconstant and the saucer, the ship that sat in the sky was keeping it loose and ready underneath it.

Earthquakes he had felt before when he spent a summer in Wellington, the shaky isles his Australian cousins had referred to his homeland as, and when he was in the capital as a teen, his parents hoping a change of scenery would have lighten his moods, that's where he felt that nickname make sense. There was a big one while he was there, a 6 pointer that shook, slammed the locals about and shocked even his aunt and uncle who were used to the regular doses of threes, fours and the occasional five that sprinkled themselves in Wellington’s daily existence.

This was happening here, little versions of earthquakes, not tremors, he knew those to feel and what they did to the ground beneath his feet, this was something like that, but not that. It was softer and localised perhaps, the rippling he could see in the softer shallower edges of the shadow's circle. The patches he thought were shallow, aquifer hiding or just weaknesses in the earth, these were like magnifying glasses over the ground. A shake would happen, it would be minor on the hilltop but as it radiated or formed a wave in the land, the places where he saw the patent difference, the effect was exaggerating each movement. A ripple would hit the area, become a wave of greater length and height, then hit the normal space and reduce to a ripple again until the next weak spot. All symptoms stopped at the border of the circle, just inside the shadow, like the dancing iron sand, it had a dissipated reaction the further out of the penumbra you went.

From here he could map the land, see what it's character was and understood it completely with this view. Was this the connection that more spiritual souls imagined they had? Seeing it this way, perhaps it was not imagined at all, the view was accessible in these circumstances, who was to say that others did not connect this way, or a way that allowed them this kind of perspective on the land? Benny could not say, would not say anymore about things he did not understand.

The earth was thin here, because of the weight it bore above in either spiritual or biological terms with the presence that did not touch it on any plane that they could comprehend, but it did some how, some way.

From here he could see clear to the other side, over the hump of the City, the saddle of Auckland that connected that thin strip between Onehunga through to the other harbour, to Orakei and the eastern bays. He was not high enough to see the other shore, the other harbour, but he could see the other ship from here, and what it was hovering over.