©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 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.
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