YD6-66(TRT) Aetheria Mirages: Across the Archipelago to the Komodo Island
BOOK SYNOPSIS: Step into this journey of becoming, where the cosmos whispers its secrets, and identity blooms like dawn. 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.
Chapter prologue: Step aboard an arc adrift across the Indonesian archipelago — from Gili Air’s silk sands to Komodo’s slumbering beasts. Among maps, mirages, where silence etches the soul, this is no mere travel. It’s a transmission from the edge. Aetheria awaits.
Back to: YD6-66(TRT) Aetheria Mirages: Journey Across the Archipelago to Komodo Island
Eager, I lift my NEC UltraLite—its clamshell sleek against my palms. Fingertips dance over the keyboard, ticking out thoughts that spill into liquid crystal. Brighter indoors flickers across the screen, a default truth in artificial glow. The date emerges: October 31, 1990—a tether of time. The line stretches, mind unfurling—too full, spilling onto the page faster than my fingers can keep pace.
Nyx drapes us in her quiet shroud, the night treading its cold fingers through the gaps. As the headlights reach and are adorned, a wakening roadside chorus stirs in the shadowed deep beyond the reach of lights’ spills and the narrow stretch of asphalt unspool beneath the dashboard. Our microbus enclave of quiet vigilance, upfront the engine whining through the gears, backtracking over the day’s gift—a world pulsing along the roadway’s empty length. Our topographic course, etching the way toward a laidback village caught in the hush of predawn.
When Michel’s team steps on an untouched swathe of golden sand, dissolving into the sea’s lappings. Six of us clamber onto the double-outrigger jukung. At the prow, a nimble, olive-skinned teenager skipper pulls the anchor rope, settling into a corner, driving the handle, and coaxing the whine from the 50-cc stern engine. We’re fragile against the glassine undulates expanse. Coral shimmers at the touch of sight. We press out to sea, the island’s shape elusive, as the skipper contours from drawing closer.
The jukung traces a broad, endless contour along Gili Air’s shores, slipping by the next strait. My gaze falters, unable to anchor to the liquid transparency and ground my mind—stomach-churning, disorientating. We press on rounding the third of Gili islands, darting toward the beachfront village. Land. Disembark. Bare feet mold into the golden silk sands. The crew edges inland, topographic bags slung over the shoulders, my dream, unformed, trailing behind. We walk the dark, quiet street past squat houses, where unseen lives stir behind the walls.
The official led us inland, quiet and unblinking, to the local telephone station. I move in Michel’s quiet wake, absorbing his measured demeanor and unrolling his topographic survey. Through the lens, the yard unfolds—a captured domain. Set the latent concrete footings to bear a trellis pylon, poised to rise, scraping into the sky for the relay antenna’s hold. Microwaves will drift through the ether across the archipelago, threading the signals descending and coursing down a cable, weaving through the hushed hum of the telephone exchange. The future murmurs, just beyond reach.
We backtrack. A Graphic Interchange Format, GIF of my mind—fragmented—loping, saving only changes, discarding redundancy. Until mid-morning. Government officials remain in their domain, and the team heads ahead, reducing Michel and me. We cross the airfield up to the Merpati twin-prop propeller blades and ascend the boarding stairs. Seats taken, figures settling. The engines roar, taxiing, pitching upward, anchoring the silver wings in the sky.
Around the portholes, the Lombok drifts—suspended, crossing the strait, held by the drone enclosing us. The air hostess hands past me a navy-blue cardboard box to Michel. Then I pose a carton brick upon a dollhouse tray table, paired with a glass of water. I run a finger along the lid’s folded corners. Hunger is nudging me forward. I bit through the banana-leaf wrap of lemper—sticky rice spills into my cupped palm.
Michel on long microwave leaps—tracing the arteries of connection, mapping signals where silence lingers. Pools spread over the flatlands, then lifts again—resurging into an orgy of green brush that faded into scattered houses. The flight dips lower, vision dissolved into the rough stitches of Ruteng. A central hub. The first tether to western Flores. We descend into a quiet airfield. Thread through a small, hushed terminal. Outside, before the sunny driveway, Michel hailed a taxi, and with a few words to the driver, we headed off. Pulled up before Dahlia Hotel, step out, entering the hotel, lagging luggage. Our paths part—his door, mine. I step into the stillness of my room.
My mind ran out of steam. Notes fragmented, and in a last breath, I lower the screen of my NEC UltraLite. Palming the clamshell shut, onto slip into my leather suitcase. Every detail now stilled—held in the quiet permanence of a hard disk’s repose. I surrender to the bed, unaware Morpheus arms are wide open, pulling me in.
We find the team acquainted—any one of them a local agent—all smiles: Intelkam, Perumtel, replacements, among a guide. Figures held in a hush of dignified patience, choreographed by protocol, besides the blue Toyota Kijang’s muzzle. They wait as we approach with our luggage. Sjefril slips behind the wheel—Michel settling beside him, unfolding a prophecy of routes across his lap. I climb in after the others, pulling the door shut. With a tweak of the ignition, Sjefril with a coax of the clutch into gear, hums into the pulse of the road.
The outbound trickle of rickshaws and motorbikes thins —traffic dissolves into deserted stretches. Village huts surge to the forefront, scattered in the distance. Sjefril pulls to the beaten ground, bleeding by the brush, shading a food cart. Doors fling open. We spill from the blue Kijang, and the crew reaches for canned drinks. Change bills, finger brush, turning slip slide back inside, smacking doors shut behind, we pull away onto the leading road.
The hills creep closer, swelling and swallowing us with thick foliage. Michel exchanges a few words with Sjefril, to veer off the ribbon of asphalt, to a halt by a woman emerging from the shadows. At the flanks of a lean-to-rusted corrugated iron roof, expressing. ‘I’m open for business!’ hold an anticipating gaze beneath a slouched gutter steep enough to spill a drain pipe into an oil drum.
The woman welcomes Michel; I hesitate, following at a skeptic’s pace. ‘Restaurant?’ I swallowed from voicing, but it lingers as I see the ease with which Michel and the crew eagerly ushered gracefully, vanishing into the shadows of the hollow interior.
The woman, both chef and server, from the shadows of a hidden ledge, returns in hand with an enameled bowl. To my dismay, dipping through the green-stale roof water, unfazed. Her hand vanishes into the depths, scooping fish with the quiet confidence of a cook. Returns to disappear before me into the dimly lit interior. Michel and the others settle scrap recuperated chairs at a wooden stretch table.
I step out of hesitation into the hollow somberness, blind to the trust they extend so easily. The blue glow of a gas burner flickering offside as the chef’s shadow bustles. I lean in, settling by the others as a forgotten guest. On a dented World War tin-plate she lays down a fish. But I see her, holographic—after a passerby—washing his leftovers in the oil drum, multipurpose, a wash and food for fish. And now a fish lies before me, too. I turn blind behind the monster of my ego. The men eat, savoring their meal to the bone. My taste buds numb—a primary signal blocked my imagination. I watch their figures rise, striding silhouetting, exiting into the glow. I follow, an obsessive gaze trailing behind. The fish, soft and royal on the tongue, as though served a royal dish—nightmarish. Sjefril tweaks the engine to a purr, rising to roar gear shifts whining heading into the bushwhacked roadway.
Meandering through a rugged carpet of flocculent, translucent green—the road fractures—a ribbon of potholes, ceaseless seesaw rock-and-roll heads dizzy with the ride, landmines scattered in an ongoing war with the rural terrain. Sjefril steers, hands firm on the wheel, eyes reading the inevitable scripture of the road. The compact interior lurches—a tire hits the broken tarmac. ‘You dodge one, you hit the third.'
Encapsulated by windows, at the mercy of our microbus small pistons, we climb into the hills—only to be diverted alongside a new subgrade of the roadway. Squatted figures line a spot of the stretch of the hardcore base course—women crotch, club hammers at hand, hammering at breaking larger stones into thumb-sized shards. Their fingers claw at the rubble, crane over a knee, rotating each load to release from their fingers growing heaps. A little further on the rolled rubble surface, the culprit of a still steamroller, a relic phased out in my childhood, in Kisenyi, contiguous with our hometown Goma asphalting roads.
I hover a gaze over the dashboard lights—the speedometer dial hasn’t exceeded the 30 km notch. Tire tracks chew into roadside vegetation, trailing along a stretch of black tar—glistening with diamond-flickering dust. A spray coating binds the rubble beneath in preparation for a hot roll, sticking the asphalt wearing course. Led back onto the former but trafficable stretch of asphalt, while under the hood, the engine whines—four small pistons laboring at Sjefril’s hand, his grip a fixture on the gear lever. Shifting up, the engine roars until near choking, struggling up the sweeping mountainside. Until contouring the kopje, the red earthen embankment bleeds off as the road rolls over the crest.
Sjefril’s imagination stays alert—tuned in from earlier potholes. He stretches his arm out the wound-down window, his hand beating the door, emanates a metallic warble, the eerie wavering only to prick one ear of the two scattered dogs, while another at the gates of the village pauses.
But lax, as the beaten red earth bleeds through the village, the dogs bask astray—from the middle of the road. Unmoved, like the numbered huts, by the creeping whine of the engine. Unperturbed in their deserted realm—a road lion stir, only by the persistent beat. Reluctant, he turns his head, inconvenience—uncoil his limbs—rises with heavy grace, pawing his way out, slow and sovereign.
The ride with Helios—weary from his arc across the sky—at 16hr00 begs for descent, waning Aetheria’s stir —loosening her mirage, while the road extends, reaching over the cliff—beyond, an expanding sea. My mind slips into hypnosis. We traverse the flocculent green bush until a fenced-off site foots an obelisk, steel trellis etched the fading blue. We stop. Survey the pride pylon over Reo’s port. Mapped.
We descend, the sun hiding behind the cliff—the escarpment’s hanging road winding down to the port village. Sjefril drops us before the hotel door. Michel and I weaved by tourists scattered through the dining hall. A man with a goatee holds a young couple captive in his story, tossing a few words to the locals nearby. By a woven bamboo wall, a cardboard pyramid on the front desk spells, “Reception.” The attendant gestures, showing us onward to our rooms.
By noon, the goateed man passes by as Michel and I step out. The sun’s skips across the looming town—of rusted rooftops aglow with a soft, smoldering fire to shade fenestrated wooden shacks. The blue Kijang waits in the street; officers held their shadows—on standby. We slip aboard, the doors smacking shut behind us.
Encapsulated. Sjefril tweaks the ignition—piston purring to a groan. Ahead, the sky is stitched with telephone and power lines, looping slack between poles, as the street peels behind an unraveling tapestry. We glide pedestrians socle shadows across sunlight and drive outbound. On a course meeting dusk, winding up flocculent-cloaked mountains toward the kopje—pulling to a halt. Where the microwave path cross here. We climb into the forest—voluntary, an agile assistant clambers the trees—a monkey among the branches, raising a monocle of his naked eye, tracking the microwave course, skimming the kopjes hovering in the road ahead.
Just before first light, the morning stirred a dream—vague in puzzling color and sensation, drawn out of my childhood. Poking and bending, nights through the rainforest, echoing deep bestial killing cries. While among indigenous dwellers, walking in Indian file. In fear, I walk on the heels of De P’pa, father before me, and almost piggyback my brother—a world I had forgotten.
Withdrawn from Michel’s preparation for the mission, in a quiet corner. My NEC UltraLite, clamshell open. Liquid crystal display flickers—mercurial words at the top page: “[12:12] (Fri) November 2, 1990”—My eyes, lax in the room’s mild light, for writing the dark page of a screen. The dream foreshadow trip in mind, recollecting the puzzle pieces of the dream and reconstruing the moral of the story as I flirt with the keyboard—streaming words:
We drive off, juxtaposing the signal’s course with our winding path—into the twilight belly of Nyx. The beam of light pressing forward, brushing through wayside vegetation, carving the mountain roads. Michel insisted on being dropped off in the dark, solo, on a kopje. He sent Sjefril ahead, meandering the hillsides, tracing the planned microwave corridor—until we halt, stepping out camping in the chill of the night.
“There it is!” Sjefril’s voice cracks through the dark. I hadn’t noticed the star’s Morse-code stutter of light across the crest. Sjefril drives back in answer—headlights vanish into the night. Return. Sweep past us to the next kopje. Disappear again. Return to camp. A starry, leapfrogged signal.
Then: the beam returns. We slip aboard. A Bushwhacking drive—Michel picked up en route, headlights carving the road from the dark scrub. “Sixty-five kilometers,” Michel says, explaining the microwave’s span, as if the Obelisk trellis and relay antennas might reflect first light itself.
Pride edges his tone: “I hired a helicopter,” he adds, offhand—the expense boomeranged from head office. “Do you want it right?—They kept their peace.” Onto, only the Kijang’s pistons speak—translating the mountains’ language.
As we land at the hotel, Aetheria filtrates in kaleidoscopic pieces of my mind—a pre-emptive gift, configuring a puzzling moral. The drapes fall— I press the screen down, and shut. A backup of memory, entrusted to the UltraLite’s hard disk—a loop sealed with the follies of first encounters.
I wake—adrift, breath caught. The ceiling floats too high, align with a pale box of a room. Then, the night before kicks in: luggage. The Bajo Beach Hotel. Michel’s quiet nod. I rise from bed, clinging to the thought of a steaming shower. An eye rub—the blatant whitewashed room stares back. The night permeated into the plastered room, the chill steeped into the hard-core walls. I thought I’d fare better.
I step toward the gaping doorway, into a gleaming white-tiled bathroom. I stop. Posing. My gaze locks on a disillusioned laundry room—a corner-walled trough, a vestige of tribal pride, a custom for deep soaking. But no hot water faucet. The thought of cold water didn’t reach my mind.
Turning away from the single faucet, the void of the overhead shower rose. I withdraw—but not before pulling the chain of the high cistern, turning from flushing the toilet bowl to stillness. My mind opens, reading for the necessity. Standing before another and a solitary perched cold water faucet. There is no choice but to yield. Over the washbasin, toothpaste foams—bristles sweep, cold water spouts. Bristles rinse. I cup my hands—three successive fills, rinses, spills. Then a brush through my hair, the tube, and my Philishave vanish into my overnight purse. I decamp from the bathroom, my body unfinished.
But I head on, slipping into a shirt and pants, stepping into shoes. Walking off. I turn the key, pull the door open—and step into a novel outside. The railing nudges me right in the undercover passageway. I orient myself, past Aetheria’s mirage lingers in the flocculent leafy shrubs, to a hint of the street, I pay no mind—through the leading portal, I seek sings of Michel's local officials, the quiet gravity to the team.
I egress—left-eye trailing the distant street, right-eye into the covered veranda unspooling along the fenestrated facade. I catch sight of an active team—just beyond on official seated on a wooden bench—as the Witel Telecommunication engineer bends over a blueprint, spread across a small table. At random, eyes meet, greetings held in ritual silence. Until, I laced a quiet irony. “Morning, Herman,” I say. With a reversed-psychological quirk, masking my uncertainty. “Where is breakfast?” I ask, if not just to know—but to confirm what I perceived, ‘Who? What? There? . . .’
Herman flicks his gaze toward the far wing, beyond the portal I just exited. A chef stands before a smoking open-air kitchen, scrambling eggs over a battered stove. Beyond him, the Javanese-quilted wooden facade toward a faint glow of the street. Short underneath the terrace, an outdoor table is set—a plate bearing an English muffin, a glass of murky brown coffee beside. “Is that it?” I ask. Nodding toward the unclaimed setting, the chair still empty, as if reserved, or display folly of the locals. A flicker of Herman’s eyes—‘eyes—'These Europeans, always fussy…’ to express. “Yes,” he answers.
We cross paths with a backpacker, drifting in from nowhere, mooring himself at the edge of the world. The thought of wandering the wilderness without a guide, to pity. But I’m left with the crew loading in a swoop of leaving the blue Toyota Kijang. Michel slips into the passenger seat, as Sjefril beside him coaxes the engine to a purring murmur. A map unfolds across Michel's lap, not a word exchanged. An eye signal from Michel, sufficed to pull away.
A preemptive screech rises from the turquoise calm—reaching us unseen on the golden beach. Our gaze drifts to a submerged outcrop—cucumber-obelisk sea- and weather-sculpted, a soft-breaching pebble. The source emerges a white speck from its shadows, the surging whining echo skimming across the glaze. “Speedboat,” the word rises from the indigenous voices, translated with quiet pride: “government-owned"—set apart from the derelict hulls drifting slack in the tide’s disinterest. A rich man's plaything, steered with reverence—a slight dark figure stands upright at the helm. He carves a wide in the turquoise glaze, a theatrical arc, the white wake trailing a signature—darts toward us for the golden beach, where we wait.
It's laughable—“speedboat” approaching head-on—a mere pleasure craft by our understanding. The whining cut, the prow dips, braking the onslaught, drifting in as a whale, too aware to beach. We step the soft ticking sands—to wade into the shallows, clambering aboard.
The skipper tweaks the ignition. The engine stirs to a purr. Nimble at the helm, he steers us pirouette away from shore, into the blue, sprouting outcrops. We slip between scattered rusted knuckles, scattered across straits, to dismay, a stealth cruise liner looms, anchored offshore.
Bodies lie sunbathing—a uniform hue, sandy shells outlined by a cast shade to the beach-notched boulder, guarding a tiny, secluded bay. My mind doodles, sketching ghostly passengers who may have plunged from deck, and our skipper meant to mis bypass the dozens of figures and the cruise liner veiled behind the shielding stone.
The question lingers: ‘Was this for real?’ The little engine whining, a forceful squirt calls our gaze to a burst of white—glassine blue foamed into bloom, spreading, dissolving, returning to the sleek surface. Then, an underwater phantom surge—a massive butterfly-swim. The gray dorsal hump of a whale breaks the surface, only to vanish again, leaving behind a forceful blast—a white fountain squirts into the air. I search the expanse with an eye, the other lent to the topographic lens, of my Canon Snappy S 35 mm—lost sweeping the blue. I fail to point and shoot before the whale ahead, distancing. The glossy blue sea hums beneath the slight skipper’s relentless little engine whine. Then—a large stingray unfurls, gliding in the opposite direction, a kite adrift along an immense and unseen marine highway.
The skipper, darts the craft toward a sandy, mottled tuft of island. The engine whine cuts—a silent braking, the sea rising a six-inches from the gunwale. We drift, carried by the idling engine’s whispers, yields to stillness. The archipelago stretches around us—Michel and the men kick feet over the gunwale, wading off to the beach.
Long evening shadows stretch ahead of the seven men strolling into the low glow. Reaching a beachfront thatched kiosk, where a map unfolds beneath Michel’s thoughtful gaze: Ruteng to Reo, Reo to Bajo, and now—‘Komodo’—thread a filament of frequency drawn across the air. The crew sprawls on the wooden platform. After a topographic survey, a latent obelisk trellis will rise, etch against the sky, to bear aloft antennas to buzz across the archipelago, villagers’ whispers.
Michel folds his map, heads with a guide past the Komodo dragon in the shade beneath the adjacent four-post kiosk. I pause—in a kind of stupor, frame the dragon snoozing, and click. Then, I trail on, drawn into an idle course toward the interior. We pass a raised thatched outlook post, echo tourist attraction. ‘Are the dragons close?’ The dreadful boast lingers unanswered, dissolving behind me. We file in Indian line, on a bypass trail, edging up the slope deeper into the bush, until we join the groomed pathway of the park.
We turn off—into a junctioning path where the dessert creeping in. The ground cracks of thirst-cakes, lifting puffs of dust with every footstep. Out of a sun-bleached dry bush, a knee-high wire-mesh fence, warped and twisted, catches up with us, keeps pace with us, curving offside as the parched earth bleeds away. A voice rises, warning about the massive dragons basking in the sun, through a dry riverbed to the opposing bank and into the surrounding terrain where no blade of grass or leaf of green remains.
Not pet. Not to be seen. Though timid, they linger—a primal hush beyond the fence, which delineates the crew through a lost path joining tourists onto a wooden bridge’s guardrail, and peer down. I stay back, not skeptic of their apparent still submissive survivors—snake-faced titans, prehistoric limbs flanked sprawl, talons stretched open, relics of a dream dismembered. A bull exhales, lungs emptying in a slow protest, among a herd of lethargic females. They twitch, ripple. A tongue, slit and glistening, flickers.
‘This isn’t mine to see,’ slips to my mind, turning away before my foot touches the wooden planks to the bridge. My gaze clings to the people. The local crew. Sjefril, a pace behind Michel, leaning in, eye fixation. Michel turns away, drawing his crew with him, though their eyes remain tethered—glued on the creatures. A strange captivation unspooling . . . drawn toward hulking silence of those predators sprawled in the parched riverbed. Tongues flicker— a flame in a shifting draft—tasking the silage of the air for their meal.
I lead, finding again the fence to the groomed path, opening to sun-bleached monsters—octopus-wood twisted into forgotten gestures. Then—I’m invaded by a flurry, snow-white confetti unraveling beneath an azure sky. I search the source, and there, wayside, a skeletal bush blooming sideways—exhaling from its roots, a plume of butterflies. Bursting in the air—but as they spread, their wings fall, dropping caterpillars paving the way. While Aetheria’s mirage unravels—a whisper through metamorphosis—foreshadowing the shriek of a two-stroke engine, its frequencies beyond the cochlea, driven deep into the skull—to the mind’s vault. There, matter strikes awareness, fracturing in the brain’s lively interior—like a mother’s hand on the child’s shoulder, just before the fall.
I emerge from the fluttering white, concede to the trailing team—they lead. Then, across the junction, off-path descend the slope to the beach. Our naked feet walk the silk sands, dissolving into the lapping sea. We clamber aboard the “Government Speedboat,” gathering in the shade of a four-pole linen canopy. The skipper, tweaks the engine—forty horsepower shrieks as he steers a wide pirouette toward the open blues. The hull strains to lift. “Too much weight,” he calls over his shoulder. “Seven people!” Not counting himself.
Night falls, shadowing the sculpted outcrops—stone figures etched in silhouette against the moon's glow. But the moon retires, leaving the remnants of a fish-tail swell, shot loose by the propeller. Sailing without lights, only the sculptured outcrops shadows the skipper reads. A scripted course unfolding in the dark. Until, two specs of light cling to the horizon, sticky against a blackboard of sky and sea. Until, the foot of an island, spills lights spread across the void. The little village's stirs—bulbs creeping from their static sleep, flickering with an uncertain glow. But to the skipper—an open atlas.
Between the scarce lampposts, a barn shapes in the shadows. The engine cut—sinking into hush, water rising in a soft brake. We drift to a halt. Climbing out, we wade blindly from the water onto the beach, where the village’s ramparts rise from darkness beyond the sands remembering the moonlight. I approach children peering through the cracks in a wooden plank palisade. I catch the glint of their curiosity—just as a voice breached the beach. ”Where's the driver?"
From the seaside, a figure steps out of the shadows, just within speaking distance. "In there, I think," I reply—my logic flipping a coin in the air.
"Why?" The voice questions again—skeptical, dry.
"That's a cinema," I throw out back—as the barn hall holds its silence, and the silver screen flickers, unreeling its film into the dark.
Night shadows unveil the Sjefril and waiting Kijang microbus. We load our luggage and slip into the lit compartment; doors smacking shut, footwell lights die. At the tweak of the ignition, headlights surge—beaming down the street, punctuating squats of fenestrated facades, and hollows in their midst. The waterfront fades into memory as the pistons raise their tireless whine—a marathon into blackboard void, without perspective, beyond the reach of the sweep of headlights.
Nyx lays herself down, a tongue slipping from her mouth across the distance, slick and glistening—as the asphalt slips beneath the dashboard’s skyline, to a speedometer dial, behind the steering wheel in the grip of hands. The roadway is being swallowed by the traction of the undercarriage wheels.
Until the horizon stirs, lifting a smoking field of light pollution—we slip at the ghost hour, riding through hollow streets. Lampposts blink tired eyes until their dim glows spill into the cabin—waking our figures from the dark, only to draw them back as the light recedes. Through the tides of bypassing lampposts, sleepy voices raise, breaking the hush. From their language, springs free—“Ruteng” Gaze sprints from subtle exchange toward fenestrated facades folded deep in sleep. Until the painted transom “Dahlia Hotel,” Sjefril cuts the engine.
Michel and I step into the street, free from the crew. Until before us, after knocking at the door, a man stands in the gapping hollow of the doorway, rubbing eyes to a whispering gaze—‘I’m bound to the service of strangers?’ He dare not voice. ‘It’s three o’clock in the morning?’ Ushering us - click - to meager glow filling the hall. Behind the counter, he registers us in a quiet ritual, handing over keys and sending us down a corridor to glow a faint memory. Michel vanishes, and I, in the next doorway to my room.
The night stole a stretch of time from my life. Michel wraps up his topographic report, and by late morning, a taxi drives us to the airport. The team lingers in the tiny terminal, face-drawn, waiting. My eyes are fixed on the window-framed airfield. A distant hum raises from the ground, growing to a nearing roar, until the aircraft animates the rural grassy airfield and rolls to a halt. We gather our waiting limbs and lax luggage, stepping out onto the apron, meeting the jeep and trailer, where unloading gives way to loading the aircraft.
By the dreadful propellers we climb the boarding stairs, cross the friendly, bright-dressed aircrew, and settle among the scattered passengers in the twenty-seater compact fuselage. We taxi to roar—gathering speed—fear rising to meet the traumas my mind dares not name. We pitch into the air. Cruising, bouncing over the green volcanic peaks, away from the microwave routes, Michel spent weeks stitching across the pelt of the archipelago. Slipping behind us.
The droning engines released their cloud—a swarm of invasive insects cinching a helmet of needlepricks. A few break ranks, drill my straight into my skull. I can count them—microscopic, steel frayed cable ends, boring through my scalp, through bone, reaching the raw edges of my traumatized brain. The pain is rising—excruciating. I rub my forehead. My head cradled in my palms, but there’s no shielding from the invasive ones drilling through—deep-burrowing drills. They amplify through descent, butt-deep penetrating my brain.
I shift out the monster of my ego, curl inward—a hopeless tangle of limbs against the merciless swarm of pinpricks. My head burrows between my knees, fetal, mute to the sky’s indifference. And then—relief. The undercarriage shrieks—rubber meets asphalt. Soft, organic worms retrieve themselves. I lift my head. Healed, as Bali’s terminal glimmers through the porthole. Air hostesses’ smiles, posing with us for a photo--before the captain crawls out of the cockpit. We brush past the propeller, climb aboard again. Ahead, to hop the strait of Bali, en route—in quite fear—for Jakarta. Wondering why Michel shows no signs. Unmoved. ‘Did those little whining two-stroke engines permanently damage my brain?’
Comments
Post a Comment