[YD6-62(TRT) Chapter code] “Marble Echoes, Paper Fortunes, and the Flight Toward an Unfolding Horizon”

This story is an unfolding suite of chapters clarifying my book, The Code: Horizon of Infinity—a philosophical memoir exploring how the universe sculpted our minds. Through Aetheria, the lens of consciousness, aware of her need for a body to reveal herself and exercise her wishes, the narrative leads to her birth and the name she will claim: Sunshine -- Step into this journey of becoming, where the cosmos whispers its secrets, and identity blooms like dawn.

This is the story in a self-sustaining chapter: A suitcase drags through transit’s void, hands bloodied, a breath between flights, between knowing and the weight of an unseen pull. A city unfolds—not as destination, but as a question. Signs rise, names scrawled in waiting hands, yet none are mine. Currency slips through fingers, its value absurd, its presence insubstantial. A taxi door swings open, the night breathes forward. Somewhere, beyond marble and shadowed glass, beyond lost luggage and whispered exchanges, something stirs—unwritten, waiting.

On my second leap -- ten thousand feet above the earth's crust -- a tightness knots my chest, tethering fate to a visceral ache that thrills at the adventure. Donald Duck flickers onto screen, at the flip of a thought. ‘Oh, well -- I'll watch it again.’ Forgetting Paris. Ranting. Straddling across the 747 threshold, caught between ground crew and the aircrew. 

The fate of my calf-bloated suitcase -- I tugged from the taxi, through the airport terminal, to the abyss. My hands, bloodied. My body slushed, as if I had stepped out of a steaming shower -- the door sealed shut on me. 

Aetheria’s hovers, incessant lingering. The best laugh belongs to Donald Duck, flickering back to life on screen. ‘How can I not watch?’ after Paris, now after Frankfurt. 

Pretty Woman flickers before me. I unleash a thought, ‘Ho! Let it be.’ I plunge once more, a second viewing. With Aetheria’s feathery hand -- under my skin -- fledging the void Francine left, the warmth that ought to be, feeding me, echoing -- ‘My Little Sparrow. . .’

With those missing feelings -- and a storm in my coffee cup -- midday's skim shadows splinter across a rising land, to Singapore. The undercarriage kisses the asphalt, gliding to a halt at the concrete terminal. 

In transit, I waddle through the kaleidoscope of duty-free shelves, saddened to miss the chance for a true perception of the city. My thoughts drift, riding the current of existence. The blondes -- something about them -- pull at memory, stirring Sasja, her mother Robin -- sisters-in-law to my ex-wife, Jean. A thread of familiarity, a quiet magnetism. ‘Only for the air hostesses would I fly Lufthansa.’ 

Under the green expanse, shifting in fractured light toward Jakarta, the porthole frames the distant, startling terminal, gliding past until we come to a halt. 

I alight from the aircraft, stepping into glass-tamed modernity -- a whittled forest of shining redwood columns and branching pitched ceiling poles. My eyes run wild, as I’m passing the passport controller. Light-footed through customs -- my customary self -- eyes everywhere except on the officers, neat in uniform, poised to pounce with some beastly, unexpected question.  In the back of my mind simmers -- ‘Where is my path leading?’ Somehow, I expect a reception.

The doors hiss aside, and I step into a whittled forest -- redwood machined into poles, rising like giant bamboo, a peripheral Circle-Dance of column, each branching, singled out, framing the vaulted canopy above. The air folds weightless around me, yet Aetheria drifts imperceptive, neither held nor hindered. 

Instead of another glass wall, I walk into pockets swarming with greeters, expecting my name. Scribbled letters on cardboard signs, sheets of paper gripped in hands reaching toward strangers. I scan, a flicker threading through me. Nothing. 

Aetheria lingers, unseen, in her redwood podium, fragments extending downward into a stairway, watching. A whisper of a presence, threading through the niggles in my mind -- this began in Paris. ‘I should have been met?’ The thought trails, frays -- Jakarta, the loose end of my journey. 

I edge left, away from the thinning herd of greeters, my thought tearing beyond the redwood intrigue. I cannot avoid the balusters, descending with lady-like, slender steps. At the base, the carved newel posts stand amid a crowd’s licking eyes. Only when the gathering scatters do the gleam emerge -- the sculptured dragons, greater than human, coiled in silent grandeur. 

And, ahead, cleared, a sturdy figure in uniform stands poised -- an airport official stationed by his sentinel’s void. Beyond him, ‘Where to now?’ I retrace my steps -- once, twice -- until on the third pass, my name is still nowhere to be found. 

I backtrack, retreating from the hailing light gapping the exit corridor, slipping into the concourse clearing. At the Info counter, a man dials the number I provided. I am calling myself to a survival course. The other two men scan the yellow pages, scour the white directory -- to no avail. 

Walking away from the Info counter, Aetheria persists -- her presence nudging me toward admiration, toward the central redwood stairway, smothered by my search. The Dragons’ tails coil, winding outward into the wide-shelved handrails stretching upstairs.  

“Can you help me?” I courteously ask the sturdy Asian in uniform. But inside, I scream into the silence -- ‘…help me through this unfamiliar milieu?’

Flustered, the sentinel driven from his deep void, he leads me through the exit corridor, past glass-sealed booths, to an open barrier -- out of the airport, the threshold to the city -- guarded. 

But the sentinel-officer spins away, tuning me toward a dark-face Asian man behind the reflective glass of an exchange counter. As a flicker of unease passes through me -- I feel fooled, drawn into a shady practice. 

Apart from small change left from France, to my regret, I slip my last twenty-dollar bill through the slot, watching my memento from New York vanish. The cashier's hand returns from the shadow of the counter with a stack of bills, slipping neat packs. Counting aloud, he declares, “Thirty-nine thousand Rupiahs.”

In the silence of my mind, I exclaim, ‘What! So many Rupiahs?’ The absurdity of the exchange rattles me -- I need to break the thought. I shove the wad into the back pocket of my jeans.

After the sentinel led me to the ‘International Telephone Operator,’ I understood. I find myself speaking to the three girls -- petite women and a man standing by behind the glass partition of the travel agency. 

The airport sentinel remained beside me, a silent presence. Body language spoke more than words, their fluent Asian-English slipping past my mind’s grasp, filtering through in fragments. Words stretched across time zones -- stirring Paris awake. At last, a valid address was handed to me. It’s been three to four hours. At 9 pm. I'm standing underneath the lean-to roof punctured with redwood poles along the deserted driveway. 

Out of the night, a two-toned car glides up, splashing -- “Taksi.” I slip in, press the slip of paper toward the Asian driver. He scans the scribbled address, hand settle -- overlap on the wheel. Sharp flick of the eyes, mirrors to over the shoulder. Without a word, we slip from the curb, accelerating into the empty roadway. 

I sink into my seat, untethered, my spirit lagging in the jet’s contrail -- stretched thin in the elastic drag of jet lag. My mind, dulled, void of wit for pleasantries. Ahead, thoughtless, I absorb the airport bleeding into the city’s bleak industrial sprawl -- a silhouette of third world expectation. 

Through the taxi’s peripheral windows, tight-knit suburban shadows press against shanty stores, makeshift awnings casting spectral shadows over restless peddlers. The thoroughfare leans, breached by a relentless curb, territorial median dividing the trickling traffic. Along the margined service roads, shanty shadows morph into the tangled undergrowth. flocculent canopies filtering light, softening the glare of suburban mansions. 

Through the shadowy canopy expanse, jagged towers mushroom in the distance, approaching, denser, into an organic glow of light pollution. Traffic plods along the stretching boulevard, hushed in the lull of Jumu'ah -- Friday prayers. Lantern light spills, fluttering over my laptop and the Samsonite case, steadfast as we slip into the looming footprints of skyscrapers -- glass and gleaming concrete, their checkered bright windows flickering in the dusk. We round a moonlit roundabout, gliding to a halt alongside the shimmer of a portal --  “Wisata Hotel” casting its glow over the canopy.

“A receipt, please.” 

The driver slumps, unmoving. I don’t budge either. I insist, rooted in my seat. Stunned, he fumbles at the cubbyhole -- His fingers graze the passenger seat before straightening, reaches behind the sun visor for a pen, leaning over his lap. Then, he hands me a branded fare card, I flip it over -- the back of a parking ticket.

“Taksi 25,000 Rupiahs.” 

Stepping out, I face the shimmer of glass and brass, deep along the gleaming marble. A bell-boy pulls the doors. A thought catches -- an inadvertent glimpse of the taxi slipping away. 

Inside, marble gleams beneath the eloquent gaze of the receptionist. She hands the room’s key over the counter, gesturing toward the elevators. Another bell-boy who hails the elevator. I step into the mirrored bronze cabin, then out again, through a corridor door -- crossing the room toward the window’s edge. I stop. My stare plunges into the slums -- a surveyor’s token, marking the wilderness awaiting ahead. 

I turn away, sentient of a survivor’s mission -- bushwhacking terrain since Paris, since childhood, when the jungle was my Tarzan's playground. I turn myself into bed. 

Sleep drags me through to Saturday, two o’clock in the afternoon -- until my spirit, tethered to Paris, snaps back, filling the jetlag void where my body should be. 

I turn the shower faucets, releasing a cloud of steam, and step in -- shedding my skin like a wetsuit, cleansing through my body dissolving, suspended in a buffer with my mind. Feeling invisible, I dress -- air rebuilding the wetsuit, and head downstairs, ready to discover my new surroundings.

I map the hotel lobby -- sleek expanses of marble and polished brass. My gaze catalogs the reception, away from the dining hall, tracing my way along the gleaming marble floors -- untouched by sound, unmarked by a lingering figure. 

Through a gaping opening, a dark wood bar counter cut across my path. I approach, slipping onto a middle stool in a row of bare seats. Behind the counter, in the dim gleam of the far-left corner, a wood-shelved backdrop flickers a kitchenette under lantern light. Two girls chat -- I catch a glance. One of them detaches herself, steps over with quiet efficiency, and takes my order. I sit back, scanning the milieu. Both girls return, setting down a cup and a coffee percolator before me. With a sense of reverence, they retreat -- trailing whispers, and shy giggles. 

I linger, nursing my coffee, swirling the last dregs from the jug. Shadowing an approaching figure over my shoulder, leaning on the counter besides me. During a pause for service, he speaks -- “… Irish. . .” -- a brief conversation hanging in the air. 

Contrary to the quiet ease of my reception, it dawns on me: ‘The girls are not condemned to smile by management.’ Their reluctance lingers, until one of the girls offering him a polite, “Can I help you?” before retreating. 

In the void she leaves behind, I’m taken aback as he introduces himself, sliding a business card forward with a sense of importance. I hesitate, thinking, ‘What can I do with that? -- as a stranger in the country’ -- before taking the card, the girl returns with a whisky. 

The Eire pulls me into reminiscence -- these opportunists, men with a scent of their own. Dressed in suits, moving through Goma’s sparse houses and retailer stores, cradling its infancy in the African wilderness, while residents known to each other in the garb of colons. Colonists emerging from the surrounding hills, a daylight away, arriving in boots and muddy utility vehicles for their purchases in town. 

The Eire gulps down his drink, sets his glass down, and spins away -- vanishing behind me, the reception hall in peace. 

Until the girls’ laughter tapers into measured glances, their demeanor shifting, barmaids slipping into the decorum. I catch in their gaze -- over my shoulder, another figure breaches the stillness. 

He slinks in, raw underneath his impeccable dress, sliding up to the far end of the bar. The girls grow restless in their corner, like patients bracing for a root canal -- as childhood’s chilling memory without anesthesia. 

One girl steps forward. Contrary whispers hiss -- “the doctor.” She moves past to serve him, while I sit back, thinking -- ‘What’s brewing behind that man?’ 

Like the Salesman with a business card, the Doctor vanishes. Behind the bar, girlish whispers and shy laughters resume. I linger a while longer, exhausting my stay, rise to leave. I head across the reception hall to dinner, then back to my room -- strategizing my weekend.

As Sunday dawns, my body settles into rhythm -- rising with the birds, though non are in sight. I dress, drawn to the vertiginous ledge of my hotel room floor, the transparent glaze revealing an awe-inspiring plunge. Shadows have vanished; the sun reflected a gleaming thread of the stream -- nature’s hands mold the soft clay, coaxing the riverbed’s dark, slapped-over muddied banks to higher grounds. 

A parking of tub-shaped carts rests along the edge -- a gruesome tableau, ghostly in absent of men, horses, or donkeys. A cluster of weathered rickshaws linger in the backyards, poised to wake, stir the weekdays, trickling out past the distant fenestrated row of houses, small industries -- blurry like a floodwall -- before spilling onto the front street. 

I descend for lunch, to be recognized by the slight-framed, Asian dark-olive staff as I step across the threshold, to a phantom hand sweeps, awaking rose bud at wide spaced square tables across a vast dining hall grid -- offering a choice: window seats or quiet corners. But the red buds gatther, shifting, reforming -- figures tow women who catch up to me from afar and near, halting my indecision at a middle table. 

While I'm distracted, the white-clad Balinese chef looms into my periphery, asks me, “Are you an actor?” 

I should have said, “Yes,” I've been mistaken for Clint Eastwood on Walls Street before. But the doesn’t flash in time. “No.” I reply.

The red-budded tables pool around me, a blemish in a distant corner, Asian faces clustered -- pressed into quiet conversations. The waitresses hover, in a tide -- one serves, the other, in silent symphony, tilts a water jug, just, just so trickle swelling my glass trembling on the brink. 

The girls linger. And in their lingering, memory unfolds -- the shadows through a maze of plate-glass. The bar counter. The last breakfast. Last night’s dinner. The same girls? Or ghosts of them, slipping through the dim edges of vision standing by. 

Until -- behind the girls -- I catch a glimpse. A pair of Nordic men stepping in, their voices carrying a familiar cadence. ‘New York accent.’ 

I shrink as they brush past, the last thing I want is to be caught in small talk -- a salesman’s pitch, a doctor's idle inquiry, the weightless words of passing strangers.

I twist off from my table, slip away, drift across the reception hall -- drawn to the dark wood bar, where a row of gleaming, bare stools wait in quiet invitation. “Coffee” I say, addressing the girls in red. They giggle -- soft. Unaware, perhaps, that their bemusement speaks, ‘A poor man’s alternative to liquor?’ open on display.

One of the girls drifts toward the far corner, facing a shy kitchenette. She returns with a small percolator, to set down, allowing me the justness to pour my cup. 

I linger, through the soft clink of glass behind me, time distilling into the hush. With a last sip, I spin off the stool, with a glance trailing over the girls, my wit silent, for being misunderstood. In view of retreating to my room, nestling into me routine wearing out the hours dissolving into the night.

At breakfast, dawn spills through the dining hall’s glazed front, casting light across the tables. Beyond, the city’s pulses -- Monday morning traffic threading through the boulevard’s restless veins. 

I twist from my chair, stepping away from the table, from the girls -- offering only a passing smile.  my crunched notes unfolding in my palm as I approach the receptionist, focusing, inquiring, following up on my arrival, in a brief exchange. Then, she hands me the phone. 

With a fist of knuckles resting against my cheek, I announce myself. 

“Philips, can I help you?” 

Our voices thread through Philips’ organism, a brief procession of echoes carrying my name and Paris. Then, a man cuts in -- knowledgeable, direct. “We’ve arranged your evening flight to Bali.” 

‘What a leap,’ escape me -- then handing back the handset, leaving me with a rattling thought. ‘He’s been busy over the weekend.’ Though open with the morning.

Marbles gleam beneath my steps. The bell-boy calls the elevator, and I step through the mirrored cabin -- emerging into the silent stretch of the corridor. My mind meanders, looping through the voices I’ve heard before. I enter my room, the city’s suburbs furl as I step up to the glazed pane, perching at the vertiginous edge -- a mercurial sliver, a serpentine thread slick within the dark clay-molded riverbed.

foreshadowing the distant world awaiting my arrival, I dissolve into the present -- lifting the clamshell screen of my NEC UltraLite laptop. The weight of unwritten journal entries pulls me in. 

Through the fogged-up screen, letters shimmer, as I type, each keystroke casting a flickering mercurial light, I lean in, refocusing -- but strain creeps at the edges of my sight, gnawing, tightening. Frustration mounts, until, I slap down the screen shut and take a break. 

Downstairs, I step through marble-wash light, past the reception counter, toward the double doorway. Unfolding the white-dressed dining tables, huddled by red upholstery -- backrest, armrests -- a stage where oriental men in dark suits converse. 

From the behind the swung-back sentinel of door leafs, the girls in flirtatious red glide between tables, approaching with polished, folkloric grace. One of them asks, “Are you here for lunch?”

My mouth ignites. Heat blooms -- relentless, I drain the water -- every last drop -- but the fire clings inside my torso. The girl keeps refilling my glass. Then -- punched deep in my guts, sends pockets of compressed air bristing free -- Hick. Hick.

Even the shyest among the girls gathered, watching. A local tone of English, in my mind, echoes the young waitress states plainly. “You are eating roots.” 

Satiation settles -- instinctive, animal. Like a dog turning away from a full bowl, my body resists. Minerals sit heavy lingering in my veins. my mind idling, doodling over the memory of that past lunch. Although the day stretches too long, wasting hours that lie ahead, suffocating in luxury and attention, pressing against me. 

“No. I’m not.” 

The words land -- final. I turn, lifting my gaze toward the receptionist, ready to plead for her to call a taxi. 

With a pressing urge to release myself into the wilderness of freedom -- escape the suffocating indulgence. my indecisiveness closing the loop.

The light-washed marble beneath my steps bounces across to the reception desk, and I slip out of the air-conditioning’s sterile chill into the hush of tropical air. “Philips House,” I call across the backrest to the slight driver. He nods, pulls away. 

The boulevard head against fleecy clouds flirting overhead in an afternoon sunlight, with sharp-angle turns, stretching -- unraveling a path between footed towers, each twist disorientating. Then, a pause, as i settle the fare. Framed by the window, the portal transom catches a silver shine. “Philips House.” I step out. Pushing the door swing the taxi’s reflection shies away behind me -- the hollow at my encounter raises a glittering reception hall swallowing me.

I'm coming to a stand at the reception counter, stirring the soft, sleek-faced, petite inter-receptionist. Calling on an elderly superior’s stern surveyor’s wrinkled gaze between tasks, clinging to the front desk. The women dwarf against the staggering weight of “Philips . . .” I scan, the names of derivatives cascade in polished letters, mirroring the stacked floors of the tower extended above the voluminous reception hall.

Distracted by the groups’ company that piques my interest, my gaze catching on the words -- “Philips Rural Telecommunication Department.” Then, from a ghost door, a Nordic figure emerges -- ill-fitting among the lean milieu of olive-dark petite women. “Sjef . . . I’m from the Netherlands.” The Dutchman introduces himself -- clued-up, assured -- spurring me forward. “Artono will take you to your hotel, settling the bill. . .” Besides me, the native concierge has crept up -- silent, attentive, on standby. 

Sjef counts aloud, “One million rupiahs,” slapping an oven-mitten-thick bundle of banknotes into my palm, Another bundle, “Two million.” He lifts the third -- ‘Ho!’ -- my hands shoot up, stopping him mid-motion. The sheer bulk of the money before registering the actual worth, blinding me to my mission’s expenses. “Already you've made me a millionaire in a matter of hours." 

The Dutchman slides a receipt to the counter’s edge, a pen waiting. I sign off on the thick bundles of ten-thousand notes, then pause -- their weight pressing a question into my mind -- ‘Where to stow them away?’ I tuck a bundle in each of my jean’s back pockets, feeling the bulk -- so unlike the fragile of a few loose notes, prone to mishaps -- a careless hand digs, a bill clings -- slips out, catching the wind, flocking into flight.

With a reminder -- “Artono, he will take you to the airport.” -- my concerns ease. “You suitcase, still adrift in lost baggage, Will be collected and following through.” I nod, and follow Artono, He swings open the Peugeot’s door -- a silent invitation to slip into the seat. We glide out the underground parking, merging into the boulevard traffic, where towers shake off the sunlight’s refections, conceding their glow to the flocculent suburban green canopies. 

Off to the side a few cranes sketch the future -- thin lines poking at the skyline, reaching distant flocky clouds. While ahead, slow, jostling swarms, the “dinky-dinkys” rattle along, Artono’s frustrated voice punctuating their presence -- persistent, unyielding. They hop along the thoroughfare, pesty like grasshoppers, clinging to the road that stretching toward the airport.

---

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