Day 151 - Babel - Chapter 47 (2027 words)

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BABEL

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 47

The first indication of the eruption was the shaking, like an earthquake of any magnitude it felt like the whole world was on a gimble and even the sky would move with the earth. That was what the eruption felt like, three million people experienced it, with plenty of death and pain to accompany it, this was a baptism of fire in the Loop for the newly entered Australian Babel.

They had a front row seat as the shaking and the rumbling increased exponentially from one second to the next. Most of the Loop had left the city centre, but there were enough of them on low lying coastal areas, some on the lower north shore who knew that no matter how fast they ran, they would not make it far enough to live. Others knew or could guess that a living hell of breathing in the air lit afire with heat, steam and ash would lead to a slower and more protracted death, in some ways it was easier and better for the seventeen thousand people who died in the first blast and it's after effects.

The top of the mountain blew outwards and shattered against the bulkheads of the spaceships in the air above it, the slopes of the mountain exploding sideways to land rock and earth in chunks the size of small houses and cars into the water below, and the land itself heaved upwards and split with a crack. That first explosion took place above water level, in the air and slamming through the shields of the Saucer, denting and tipping it on an axis no longer parallel to the earth’s surface. Following the initial bang, where the lives of Barbara, Victor and the Submarine crew were obliterated in a shower of rock and earth that fell on them like a football field descending, too big to ever have a chance of avoiding, there came seismic shock-wave that cracked the island, drove a wedge between in and it's neighbours, pushed it upwards, driving the lava in a nozzle through the new hole left by the explosion, and like water forced through a hose a plume of molten rock jetted skywards and punched a hole in the spaceships like a laser beam, all the way through it, cauterising it's own wound and reaching to a geyser like spray to fall outwards on the upper surface of the ship.

While the seismic shock-wave drove a wave of earthquakes and tsunamis towards the coast of the north island, and washing over the inner islands and in some cases fully submerged them, the lava jet falling now back onto the umbrella of the Saucer, burning then cooling quickly on the ships defences. The heat had damaged the ship and it tottered, unable to move quickly, but wobbling from the impact and now being overwhelmed by the weight of newly forming basalt on it's upper skin. The tilt of the ship from the first strike of the explosion, twisted further with the stabbing of liquid rock knives was now straining against whatever force kept it in place in the middle of the air.

The Looped in Babel who were far enough away to observe it without running for their lives, saw much of the this from the eyes of people about to die, or about to suffer a fate of proximity. They heard the cracking, the tearing of the ship as it snapped suddenly into three pieces and fell out of the sky. One full piece was over fifty percent of the ship and it was weighed down with cooling lava and dropping into the hole left by the eruption of Rangitoto. The other smaller half cracked into two pieces as whatever force held in it place finally gave in or gave way to the demands of nature and physics. All three pieces fell down, and landed either in water or on to an archipelago of remnants of the islands that had just detonated with the force that would have dwarfed the potential of the nuclear warheads the submarine had thrown at the aliens.

The tsunamis hit the shores, taking their time by comparison to the explosions, but the waves that were punishing the land were exacerbated by the displacement of the giant alien ship falling to the water, pushing hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of water aside and fuelling the second run of waves to be bigger than the first ones. Smoke, steam and ash now filled the air, and the Babel who were about to die could only tell by the vision of their brethren outside the blast zone what was going on as they faced down their fate.

The second ship above the Manukau harbour buoyed up like a cork in water as the Hauraki saucer broke apart and slipped free from the grip of the engine or forcefield. It did nobody any good to know that the ships shared the force that held them in place, but it was an obvious assumption they all made as the destruction and falling of one made the other bounce upwards faster than anyone though the saucers were capable of moving.

Ash from the initial eruption was settling on the city and shore, but it was not moving as far as it could have done. The Loop provided some context for the extent of the destruction. The ship, though decimated by the blast, had save potentially hundreds of thousands of lives. A blast this size would have been deafeningly loud, and catastrophically violent to the whole country under normal circumstances. The ship had been a buffer of sorts, and a cork that fell into the hole, the crater and the new caldera still live with lava, steam and ash. But with nowhere to go and with a ceiling stopping the skyward thrust of the usual output of an eruption, the effects were localised more and not taking to the winds that would have covered most of the country's north island in ash. Instead most of the inner city, which was emptying already and the immediate coastal areas were hit hard and would result in the eventual death of the seventeen thousand, four hundred and ninety three individuals over the following thirty six hours before the ash stopped falling and the tsunamis dissipated to waves only.

The tremors and quakes continued for days afterwards as the gulf cooled, the water around new island configuration was boiling for most of the first few days as the lava squeezing out around the edges of the upended piece of the alien spacecraft hit water and added to the land mass as it grew over the course of time. The spectacle of the eruption cast a shadow of the operational elements of clean up and survival. The largest and most intact part of New Zealand was now way down south in Christchurch, Auckland a large parts of the Waikato were unsuitable with ash in the air, not just from the explosions, but also from the winds pushing dust and dirt rife with toxins and poisonous gases baked into their composition.

The Loop could still communicate with each other, and the signal had become stronger now that Australian Babel were connecting in, making up the numbers and extending the range that they could broadcast the call over. The second ship had been pushed up into the sky when the first one had fallen so dramatically, but it kept moving upwards and into the atmosphere. It took a week to drift so far away that it was a dot in the sky, but it had cut it's connection to the Loop at the moment of the first ship's destruction. They were on their own now, and the number of people adding to the Loop had exceeded five million as they drew in or made contact with so many more of the outlying areas of Australia and then on northwards and into Indonesia where they soon doubled the number of individuals in the Loop.

The Few who were immune had the tables turned, they no longer had the advantages that they had before, now they became tools to be used instead. The smaller subset of people who like Benny were not immune but had avoided the Babel infection, were suddenly the missing link and they were conduits for information to feed the group mind, the cloud based memory that existed in the collective brains of humanity.

Eric, who had become a Watchman because all that he wanted was to read, was now a servant of the Loop. He'd read and absorb as much information as he could and then pass that to Michelle Lee, who was sucking in information at a rate she could not fathom. Most of it came from other people like Eric who did not have to understand what they were reading, they just had to picture it in some form for the Loop to digest. There were so many in there who had knowledge already, they could assimilate the extra translations of symbols that were new to the Few who picked up new skills, but would assign a picture to that data which would then get context from the experts already in the Loop.

It was not a perfect system but it was fast, and a new language was being formed that was one hundred percent visual not audible. The Few who wanted to be part of the new world order would play along, and those that did not would be disarmed and let go back to whatever job or task was assigned to them by the Loop.

Boats were salvaged and used to island hop beyond Indeonesia and into Asia. Once there the population of the Loop grew and grew beyond the concept of the original Nodes and the immense amount of data being thrown about meant that there were becoming less and less global thinking, and more and more localising of Loops. They could still see and hear each other if they needed to, but geography and population density became more of a brake on the ability of the Loop than the inability of the mind to cope with so much thought, feeling and sensations.

Once they hit America, it was almost the last bastion of unconnected Babel on the planet. Asia had netted a land bridge to Europe and Africa, connecting on land was so much easier. Once they had that new global presence, the shorter trip to find the former American land masses was a matter of fuel and durability of vehicles. The provisional government of America was smaller than it had been before, many of them abandoning the concept after the of the Nukes to destroy the ship. Many had left before the Volcano had taken out the ship, and the ones that were left who celebrated that as a win soon saw that the departure of the Aliens was meaningless as the new Looped in humans, whether under the alien yolk or not, were spreading out and connecting globally regardless.

Times had changed and humanity had changed with them. More and more people came out of the woodwork who could connect the Babel who and the Few by virtue of a lack of immunity to the virus. Resistance was small in scope and could be ended in most cases without violence, though a small number were committed to taking themselves and/or their perceived enemies out at the same time, but they did not really know what they were fighting.

The world was in the Loop and it was growing faster and stronger than before. They had lost nearly eighty percent of the previous population to the Babel, the violence and the inability to cope without language taking out so many people. There was just over a billion people now, but they all connected and shared information instantly without borders or language difficulty. Children were being born with no Babel infestation in their genes, and they developed a spoken language to go with the pictograms that had formed in the wake of the Loop becoming a natural, human brain internet that was agnostic of any language.