Day 136 - Babel - Chapter 32 (1515 words)

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BABEL

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 32

When Victor saw the ship this close he knew what to do, he didn't need the voice screaming in his ear to tell him, he had the idea long before the fifth columnist did. If anything Victor had his suspicions that the voice that was beaming to his head was somehow scanning his thoughts, not just the conscious ones that he directed as questions. Questions that rarely got answered too, which gave him no sense of trust or rapport with the mental interloper he was experiencing.

He had been very lucky to have been picked up by the couple, and they did not end up on Motukorea by some bizarre accident, they were led here by fate, by destiny or by some sub conscious desire in the man, George to fulfill the need to defend the human race. George had some knowledge of the island and why it was here, what purpose it had before the Babel changed everything, before it co-opted the human race into this alien pawn/zombie state which was just wrong on so many levels.

The woman, she was committed to the cause, she understood what was at stake here and Victor knew she could be relied on. George was less than certain, there was a reticence to follow the plan, but despite the reluctance he posed little threat to the mission. Who could he tell, and how could he possibly interfere even if he wanted to? He did not look like he was one hundred percent committed but he gave no signals that he was particularly opposed to the idea of taking the fight to the invaders. If he had been, if he went on to show any sign then that was another story altogether, but for now it was good.

They had made a number of runs to the bigger islands, Waiheke was rich for plundering the left behind supplies and tools that the islanders had abandoned when they answered the call to the mainland. There were no boats to be found, every seaworthy vessel had been removed from the island, Victor figured that they had been used to ferry the Babel to the mainland in some fashion. They had seen the mass migration of the Babel on the mainland, and from the numbers that had come to the big city, they must have come from everywhere, from the mainland as well. That meant that there had to be some kind of ferrying across the water, in groups managed somehow.

Water was they key, the signals they used they were weaker over water it all made sense. Why they kept away from the docks, why they could not see them right under their noses, the closer they were to a big body of water, the less influence these things had. So it made sense to get all the people off the islands, even the big ones, and get the to higher ground, thicker ground. He had seen that when the bridge blew and the Babel, the ones in control fell into the sea, they were lost and stunned. They drowned because the invaders could not control them, could not give them instructions anymore, they took away their free will and made them robots, then Victor put a break in the communications network and they just drowned.

He did not share this idea with the other two, he was still thinking it through but it did make sense to him now, it all became clearer that the Babel were no longer human. They looked human but the were gestating, pupating perhaps until the invaders made their appearance. No human being would not try and save himself when dropped into the water, no they had definitely lost their humanity before that explosion went off.

Victor was thankful he had set the mines, the traps he had laid for the initially paranoid fantasy of a full blown invasion that was now a reality. There was a line drawn in the sand between freedom and subjugation by this alien race, a cowardly invader that never showed it's face. There were these two massive ships and the Babel that could be seen, but not who was hiding and pulling the strings. These were cowards, hiding as far away from any resistance as possible, high in the sky above underpopulated and hard to reach areas, but they did not count on the resourcefulness and the tenacity of good old Kiwi ingenuity.

Victor had a plan. If it worked the alien menace would be stopped and the Babel would either be free or dead, he did not know which was more likely, though he hoped it would be freedom he firmly believed that death would be better than the constant ongoing enslavement of the human race. If he had been co-opted, if he had been Babel, not strong enough to resist assimilation as he was, then he would have chosen death over being an alien puppet. The Babel no longer had the choice, he would have to make that determination for them. Not on an individual basis, but for all of them, at least in his country, the rest of the world, they were on their own.

Victor did not expect to survive this plan, he realised with a great deal of clarity what the outcome would be. He was still going to do it anyway, he did not really need Barbara and George's help, not in any way that could not be easily replaced or handled on his own but they did fulfil the one need that he did have. Afterwards, after he was successful there was two potential outcomes in his mind and in both cases the two of them would provide the context for the victors, the survivors in reality, to understand the sacrifice and the price that was paid for their freedom.

In one scenario the Babel were too far gone and with the defeat of the alien menace, they would potentially drop dead or become inactive like the poor souls that fell from the bridge before the invaders stopped the remainder from lemming-ing into the harbour and their deaths. That would mean that someone, not Victor as he would be dead, would need to explain what happened to the remaining Few, the ones strong enough or genetically lucky enough to avoid the insidious alien disease that had infected the humans. They would breed and grow back to dominance on the planet of this he had no doubt. As they grew, as generations piled on top of each other and the genetic banks of humanity were replenished then they would need new myths, legends and heroes to build their world view on.

Victor would be the hero, his sacrifice would be the myth and the path he took would be legend.

The more that he thought that option the more he liked it over the second option that the Babel would magically be reinstated into independent thinking humans and regain control of their minds and bodies. The likelihood of this was low if he logically applied the lessons he learned from the bridge explosion/experiment. It was a possibility of course and much like the first, preferred option it was an education that the survivors would need, they would need to be told how it was they were saved, who it was that saved them.

By throwing himself as the sacrificial lamb, Victor was going to die saving humanity but through the witnessing of Barbara and George, he was going to become immortal to a whole new generation of humanity.

That was why he preferred that only the immune would survive as an option, because of the new humanity aspect. Forced to breed from a small stock, races could be bred out easily and quickly into a vaguely tanned Eurasian human, the modern person that would be bred from the Few. And with it religion could be knocked on the head as well. There would be no room for racism, selfishness, religious belief would be unlikely on the balance of evidence of alien life being so abundantly obvious. Maybe new 'religions' would sprout from this sacrificial grave, for the price that the one man would pay to be saviour of all mankind, but they would be based on his story, the one that Barbara and George would carry for him. This is why he was good to keep around, Barbara believed in him and the cause and George was the sceptic, when the word of what happened here was passed on? There would be the zealots version, the faithful but flattering gospel of the true believer, but balancing that would be the factual and begrudgingly respectful account of the man who was against the idea, until it came about. That balance would resonate and prevent the religion from becoming too rooted in worship of Victor, it would keep it with a healthy dose of common sense in the new world order that would rise from his grave.

It had to happen soon, there was no time to waste, there was no room for complacency.