YD6-65(TRT) | To the Edge of the Map – Strait Ferry to a Survey Outpost
BOOK SYNOPSIS: 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.
PROLOGUE TEASE: Through the haze of transit, the Balinese road dissolves into the tide—Bali fading, Lombok rising. A ferry groans in the belly of darkness, carrying us across the strait. Then, land—an unspoken call to stake a claim, to settle a survey outpost where the map still wavers.
YD6-65(TRT) | To the Edge of the Map – Strait Ferry to a Survey Outpost
Leaving Kuna, the Toyota Kijang, loaded for the mission, slips steadfast along the unmarked double asphalt lane. Deep trenches’ shadows reach out the flanks. We pass yet another "Taxsi" flagrant misspelled signages — against the unfolding road.
Sjefril steers the microbus toward the sea expanse. The Padang Bai port emerges ahead. Sjefril, the TRT Philips-Jakarta translator, too. His voice sharpens with anxiety, “We’re too late.” Sjefril’s popping eyes tighten in silence. Where Bali’s roadway ends, to the ferry’s stern ramp, which vanishes from sight, as the windshield tugs behind the heavy load. The tailgate tarpaulin cargo tent, obscuring us from a chain of truck beds lined up to roll aboard the shadowed garage deck.
When from the roll-off bustling lane, a man in a long stride of authority approaches Sjefril’s wound down window — 'A tip, an incomprehensive transaction?' Sjefril veers from the tarpaulin tailgate, steers through an upcoming crowd of pedestrians and rickshaws, squeezing through alongside the massive truck cargo-tents to coast onto the ferry’s wide floating ramp.
Another man polices, rolling hands, calling, “Parkir.” boxing us in, the engine purr to silence. A foghorn blast twice. We grow agitated inside the microbus, the doors hinge open a hair from the cargo tent to the truck’s undercarriage, while the nimble translator wriggles through the crack. From the rear, Michel writhes out, sidling forward, by the front fender of the maroon Kijang. He is tailed by Nina, traverse the muzzle, as I squeeze out the door slit giving way to Sjefril upfront locking up. In Indian file we dwarf through the stilling crevice of cargo tents. My eyes skim skull-crushing cargo beds, humbled by the fortunate still-wheels of monstrous trucks.
Our single-file procession disappears, into the echoing foot stamping metallic stairwell, accruing and reverberating throughout the hull. When I squeeze through trucks tailgates and bestial heated radiator muzzles cooling. The hand of daylight reaches down the stairwell, dissipate at my feet, before I climb. I Level out onto the upper deck, claiming a first-class seating under the expansive upper deck.
Then, in slow motion, awesome perceptive, the water body widening, glade we got ahead of the bottlenecked trucks onshore. I edge reliving my toddler’s awe, as the fringes of land sink into the blues, and the deck jitters beneath my feet. Stepping up to the railing, daring the endless seas. Rising wild spiky surf stir a hold of my body, a spiritual call to dare dive, onto the hammering slap of wave, a poltergeist resonating through the hull’s riveted steel plates, unable to frighten a steadfast murmur of engine pistons.
Overcast tresses break, brightening, I lift the clamshell of my NEC UltraLite, to a page’s liquid crystal displaying flickering, “October 19, 1990,” writing the topographic expedition. Until, Nyx lingers over the strait, the four of us crossing — bound for a flickering film. Echoing, sprockets stuttering through the gears, frames trembling before the lamp, unreeling scenes in a restless earthquake upon the wall — bound for headaches. The hours’ perpetuity stealing the amazement, until, the flickering coastal lights, on a blackboard’s lost depth. Until close up, revive in slow motion, the stern gate descent, and from a restless foot crowd, youngsters climbed the lowering metal ramp, mooring in a lunar-lit terminal, for an infighting onslaught of a three-rows-breast boarding crowd.
Sjefril calls out, “Watch out for your camera.” He stands by in retrieve, watchful over my bags and equipment case. The ramp jolts, and youngsters leaps off the end in rapid succession.
I glanced over my shoulder. “Ok!” Walking behind a ruffling crowd, and youngsters’ calls from the roundabout, “Carry, carry…” They dance off in a karate step, slipping past passengers. A train of massive rolling wheels, head trucks, slicing through the parting crowd.
Sjefril pulled up in the Kijang, picking us up, meeting inside, pulls off onto a few uniformed Lembar port guards by a raised boom, onto overtaking roaring trucks. Leaving the ports shadowing warehouses into the outskirts, thinning out houses for the countryside.
On a dark, moonless roadside, the Pondok Beach Hotel glows. Sjefril in a daze, steers to pull off the road. We crawl forward, sweeping headlight beams, awakening slumbering shadows. A driveway twists through a forest of roof posts, rotating in a cul-de-sac halt alongside an open-air lobby. Michel, step out. Nina jumps to the ground, rushing up a pair of broad treads. With the agility of a local, she startles Nyx to man, stepping out of the shadow of the night’s belly. She bombards him with words. When Michel reaches the reception desk, Nina has him engaged in negotiations.
Michel turns to Nina. “What are the prices?”
Nyx’s man shrugs. ‘It's full season.’
Michel, unfazed, insists on a room with a double bed. He wrangles for a discount, secures a room, Nyx’s man disappears into the shadows, while Michel and Nina return offloading their bags from the maroon Kijang’s tailgate, to disappear after Nyx’s man into the shadows.
Pondok stirs in mind where we left behind Michel and Nina, in Afrikaans, brings home the South African's animal wooden shelter. As Sjefril drives out of the loop, the headlight beams awakening the roadway from the blackboard. I can’t shake the imagery of a temporary refuge, a place to sleep but not to stay. Until, the headlight beams sweep across woven grass huts elevated on stilts. A man descends from the porch, steps over to Sjefril's wind-down window, exchange of words.
Sjefril throws back, "Yes. He has rooms."
We step out. Sjefril glances at the brick building behind us, but the man stares ahead.
"Don't tell me that's what he meant," I asked?
Sjefril nods, "Yes."
Exhausted from traveling, I sigh. "Let's have a look anyway."
At the sight of the room, I burst, "You mean they rent that!"
Sjefril, unsurprised, says, "Yes."
The light flickers on. Our shadows crawl the rough wall mats, rising from the edges of a double mattress taking up the wooden floor. I laugh, and bemusing Sjefril.
The next lit — Pondok Wisata, the headlights’ spills shading wayside stilted chalets, with the beams’ sweep leading up to a parking area expanded an apron across a logged hurdle into the sleek sands. A concrete footpath runs to a splitting curtain. At Sjefril’s knock on the door, a familiar male face peers from the door’s crack. I'm insisting, "Sjefril, ask if there is a shower — steaming hot water?"
No answer comes, but the man, wrapped in yards of cloth, persuades Sjefril to follow him to an adjacent chalet. I hesitate at the top of four treads, pausing on the porch’s extending planks. The sarong-wrapped man swings back the door, flicks a switch. Light reflects from matted walls. A backpacker’s quarters — a night table amid single beds. My wristwatch flashed the dial’s hands, marking the hour. My mind clouds, longing for a pillow to lay my head. One last thought: ‘Tomorrow Sjefril will have time searching for something better.’
The man and Sjefril’s figures dissolve into the night, leaving me behind. I dive into bed, surrendering to sleep before thoughts can take a hold — folding into the arms of Morpheus. Aetheria lags, unable to keep pace with the night’s velocity.
The night evanesces, it's remaining shadows stretching in skimpy reach, as the glow of sunrise skims the ground from behind the overnight-chilled Kijang besides the Pondok. The crew’s silhouettes board. Sjefril tweaks the ignition key, stirring chilled pistons to a warm purr. We pull away, tracking back into a renascent world -- bright, unveiled -- from the shadows of Nyx’s Lembar port landing. Ahead, Michel and Nina stand waiting, faces caught in a soft glow, before the porch that swallowed them the night before.
Sjefril opens the tailgate, hands load their luggage, and they slip into their seats. The engine purrs, hums, driving off, pushing a course northward—Mataram, the city’s pulse carried through a network of cables, voices threading into the silence of the central telephone station. Inside, local hands plucking switchboard plugs with soft clicks, threading jack field cord circuits, weaving conversation through the lines.
From the base, the pylon’s steel trellis, scrapping the sky with multiple directional antennas. Michel, and the crew chart a course topographic course, But with Nina's presence, jealously stirs -- Michel’s deviates, breaking from a logic sequences. We ride outbound, the road unspooling ahead. A donkey’s hooves trotting in rhythm - tack-e-ti-click - against the asphalt, before I awaken in disbelief. A man stands by the stream, at leisure, a casual squirt into the trench -- reckoning it as a one-off.
Until a village sprawls across beaten dark earth, scattered huts dotting the roadside. A donkey-drawn cart sways from our approaching lane, going berserk in its shackles, veering across the unmarked oncoming road into the oncoming deserted lane. The beast exuding rage, the driver -- frenetic, desperate -- struggles to rein the beast in. Both blind to the shallow gutter they’re heading for, and beyond the lush amortizing bristly green field. Locked in battle, man, and beast resist each other's force, neither count their luck. But as the scene shift -- from the windshield to the flanks of the windows -- the creatures and cart twist, bound for the only roadside tree.
I shift my gaze from Sjefril's wide shoulders to the pale, sun-bleached asphalt stretching ahead. Until the upcoming small group of women beneath my window, a trench glimmers — precious water rippling under the sunlight. Kneeling at the stream, washing their clothing, hands kneading on a stone clothes foam, rinse. ‘That’s not the worst,’ the thought drifts through my mind, dissolving the soap into the stream.
But after more furlong, of men posture “Manneken Pis” skirt their fountain. The punctuated gaps line up out of each other’s reach of sight on the high ground road shoulder their perch, overlooking the streaming trench. ‘That’s foul!’ The thought breezes through me, then fades -- forgiving. Further downstream, a woman bathes her child. Then, at an upcoming parapet, the current flows through a culvert beneath a junction road -- only to find clothes piled atop the far parapet walls. From the shadows, a dark-faced, naked man standing in the downstream, his torso, and arms frothing white with soap.
Imagination need not engage -- the squat of a man pulls at my perception, urging my eyes to skip the sight, retreating into the dead-silent interior. Alone with what I see, my gaze lands on a man brushing his teeth. Then Michel’s voice breaches the blind silence beside me. "They're like in Africa," he says, stirring the team from their dull inertia on the bench behind us.
Threading Lombok western contours, due north. While Aetheria lingers, a mirage in Helios’ rising glow, drifting en route for a latent, unseen relay pylon in the height to anchor the relay antenna. We land at Senggigi, where the surf folds the golden beach -- leaving me at the merci of our trundling travel agency, as one of the team, picks our lodging en route. Michel’s only remark, dropping me off, at my luxurious Pacific Beach cottage, lingering behind him; “I’m at a hotel.” I can only imagine -- Michel stakes his claim with Nina at a top-rated hotel, all expenses paid -- while the crew vanishes, retreating to squat within their familiar milieu.
I roam, about taking account of our journey, learning the belly of my NEC laptop, setting up a database -- knowing that though the horizon seems far, it will return to haunt me. How I spent my time, and the expenses I will have to claim.
The network unfurls—our route retreat to base in Mataram, threading another latent signal. Another side trail follows the quiet edge, bracing the sea, reaching farther north than Senggigi to Tanjung. From Lembar’s gateway, a path shadows the coastal road, falling short of Labuhanpon. Another trail from Mataram cuts through Praya, where the road drawn toward Kuta’s southeastern sprawl, to Serreng. There the land breathes in silence -- waiting, listening for distant voices to thread their worlds together.
The latent pylons rise, trellised into the sky, threading a silent voice into the telephone station. It dawns on me -- we arrived with Nina, yet her trace had vanished in Senggigi. She has been only an absence. I rather imagine her lost in a honeymoon phase, nestled in the luxury hotel where Sjefril picked up Michel, as the network of topographic surveys expanded. We are dropped off at the airport, by the team organizer, dissolving -- fading into the departing aircraft on the airfield. Nina’s mystery lingers -- without a ripple, or air stirring in her wake.
Comments
Post a Comment