Day 147 - Babel - Chapter 43 (1916 words)

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BABEL

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 43

George was sick of having all his assumptions about the world turned about from one day to the next. There had been a life, a life he had become accustomed to before the Babel, when things were as they had always been and people acted as expected. Then the Babel came, and it all went to hell, but he and Anne found a way forward with a new paradigm that worked. He knew she was unhappy, but that was because she was crippled by her inability to express herself. George had thought that being an artist and a designer she would have adjusted to being only able to express herself though that, but once again it was an assumption that was overturned soon enough. They found a way to live, then people were attracted to them, they set up the village and he became a leader instead of a hermit. It grew beyond that and over time he became a quasi-mayor and people looked to him for leadership, but it was an extension of his world then. The ships, that challenged his assumptions about the universe and the Babel, their place in the cosmos, God and humanity. That all flew up in the air when the ships crawled across their sky. They had time to absorb what they were seeing, no fleeting UFO and accompanying grainy footage, this was a long hard look and something previously unseen, only imagined. The migration, that's what Benny was calling it apparently, that upturned it all again. The Harbour Bridge detonations, the falling bodies and the zombie state of the people flocking to the city. The Loop, there was a name for it now, this connected mind that they now shared, Victor had been and was still totally wrong on this score, they were human but had learned to talk a new way. Victor, he was a life changing force, a game changer and a paradigm shifter in the shape of a madman. He took Barbara with him, someone who held the same stock in the Village, the one they had named Fire then, seemed like a lifetime away.

Anne, she was back and there was this dishevelled and crazy looking man that was possibly the only sane person he had spoken to in what seemed like a life time now. He wished it would just stop, but here he was in the middle of it all despite the pain and the concern that weighed on him. He wanted it all to go away, but he could not leave it alone because the man that sat with him as Anne held his hand and would not let go, was a conduit to her and to them, the Looped.

“How does it work?” George gave in and asked.

“There are theories, but there is not a specific answer. There are no words to describe it.” Benny nodded to himself and the myriad sensations, feelings and images that bombarded him. “Before this, before I joined the Loop, I was mad. Crazy, mad. Schizophrenia. For years, I lived alone that's how I avoided the plague, the first part before it became the Babel. I was living in the bush. Then the ships came and I was drawn to them. And I don't know but I think what I am seeing is that you have an immunity, like you can't catch the Babel, like one a thousand people, but you can't join the Loop for the same reason.”

“But you can? How is it you can but I can't I'm sorry?” George could not concentrate with Anne's hand on his, he missed her so much that the sensations of her touch was clouding his mind. He tried moving his hand but she just gripped it tighter and Benny spoke.

“You'll make her cry if you do.” Benny looked like he was about to.

“She said that? To you?”

“You don't understand, I heard voices before, like real voices, voices? This, the Loop, it's not like that. The Loop is sharing thoughts, and we think in patterns, numbers, feelings, memories and images. There are no words, because no one had words anymore. The words are gone from their heads, like that part of the brain is wiped off. Cleaned out. So I get feelings, I get pictures and what things will look like, sound like and feel like. I can't say it any other way. I know what voices in my head sound like, and I don't hear them anymore. The Hosts, we call them Hosts because the first guys, they were taken to breakfast and that's the image I get, like a cosmic Bed And Breakfast thing. They were given a meal and made to feel at home, they were like … you know a good Host.”

George gripped Anne's hand as strong as she was gripping his and smiled at her, but she showed no facial expression.

“She is not used to it, it's only been days or maybe weeks, I'm not sure I have a good track of time here man, but she is used to everyone knowing what she is feeling. I know what she's feeling and I'd offer you some privacy man, but you gotta know that there is none anymore.” Benny barked a laugh. “She wants to jump your bones man, but she's not the only one. You'd be in … um.... you know... like having.... sex... with everyone. Or everyone would feel it, see it and know what it felt like. Or at least one side of it. Her side.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah, he's not here man. WWTLD? That's what you have to think.” Benny was smiling, he was loving being the middle man, the link in the Loop to people outside it.

“What?”

“What Would The Loop Do? You know like What Would Jesus Do? But with like everyone.”

“The whole country? Fuck me.”

“That's pretty much it yeah. Actually no, there's more. Australia is coming into the Loop, I can feel them now. It's gradual, the signal is building, getting stronger and more definite. We lost a couple of people, what the fuck is it with us that we have to kill people?” Benny had become agitated very quickly as the subject changed.

“You killed someone?” George was losing the thread.

“No, no we lost people. There was some misunderstanding with people like you, they don't have a Link into the Loop, the Loop is growing rapidly as people come into line, but there's no way to connect to the people like you. They have guns and some military stuff going on, but they don't know and they can't know. Not yet anyway. Two of the new … um the network people, the bases, the starters, whatever they have that looks like a spider's web with things in the middle branching out, those things, they lost. WE lost two of them. Like Victor did here, but with less death and dismemberment, no bombs.”

George remembered what it was that he needed to say. “Victor! Fuck! Victor, he got some missiles from the boat, that's what I helped him put in the … that's what he took away, he's going to fire them at the Ship, the Missiles. We have to stop him!” Anne pulled George in and kissed her him and then she nodded, having understood through Benny that they needed to focus on that.

“Sea Sparrows, they won't bring that down. Not according to the Loop.” Benny was scratching at his head, the Loop was working it out, but there were unknown variables in the equation, what he was getting was best guess really.

“They know that? Hey? I thought you got no words? How do you know they are Sea Sparrows? I saw that written on the Manual.”

Benny nodded. “So did I. They don't send me words, not like you think, but some people in the Loop served on that ship, they have read the manual, and I can see their memories. They can't reads the words they are seeing on the cover, but I can.”

George shook his head. “Doesn't matter how you know, I'm getting off track! We need to stop Victor. Can anyone shoot? Do we have guns?”

“If we need to yes, but I tell you that the decision needs to be overwhelming in favour. The Loop is useless when they disagree and there are some people already protesting murder.”

“Murder?” George was appalled. “He's going to shoot that thing down! He'll kill us all and probably turn off the Loop you're so fond of!”

Benny was silent. He looked awed and stunned for about three seconds. “Wow. That's Intense.” He looked at Anne and at George, yet he was left in the cold until Benny could explain. “That's them. They talk in Feelings too I guess, because that's no image and it's undeniable. I can feel the answer. They won't bring the ship down.”

George was not buying it. “Not to doubt your feelings but....”

“No you don't understand. I feel it, because they are talking to me through the feelings. The Hosts. I had not heard them before, but they were there, in the background, a calming feeling and they've been helping us all adjust quietly. Stopping us from losing our shit in this madhouse Loop. Now they are talking to us, to me and to you really, but we all feel it. It's stunning and amazing. You should feel this. You should.” Benny had to sit down, and George grabbed his head with both hands and forced it to stay still and calm when his frustrated brain rattled about inside his head.

“I...”

George never finished his sentence as the water of the harbour erupted and the roar of rockets came to where they stood and made them all turn and look to see what was happening.

In the time it took the sound of the missiles engines to get to them on the waterfront from Rangitoto the warheads were already halfway to ship. George fell to his knees as he saw the full compliment al racing upwards to the ship and one after another coming to a complete full stop in mid air a few dozen meters, as best they could estimate, from the skin of the ship. They lined up and were suspended in mid air, just hanging below the edge of the ship, undetonated.

Nothing happened for a long while no one dared moved or break the silence as they waited with breath held to see what would happen next. The Submarine surfaced fully and they could not see more than that this distance.

Benny tapped George on the shoulder. “We have binoculars and a telescope.” He waved vaguely around him, but implied that they could have been anywhere and the Loop would see them. “That's an Ohio Class Submarine from the United States Navy and there are men on the deck looking up and pointing at the missiles. They are not in the Loop.”

George suddenly felt less worried about Victor. These were nuclear warheads, they had to be, and they were useless.

“I'd like to just go home.” He teared up a little, wondering if Anne could ever really be with him again.

Benny heard him, she felt Benny's reaction and had one of her own.

“She'd like that.”