GMPM
2016
It was an uncomfortably warm night in Lagos, Nigeria. It had been raining intermittently all day which did nothing to alleviate the humidity. At times the thunderstorm activity which seemed to come and go in waves throughout the area brought down a literal deluge of water upon the city and airport. Perry Voinich just wanted to put the whole place behind him. Lagos was on edge like he'd never seen before. The 48-year-old geo-physicist had been to many dangerous locales on the planet. It was just a part of his job working for Atlantis Energy. The oil and gas were always located in the worst most violent unstable places. Lagos had been struck with an orgy of violence within the last 36 hours. A splinter group to Islamic State named Otito Jihad had launched several brazen attacks throughout Lagos. The terrorists hit a mall popular with the locals as well as Westerners. They shot up the business district, and the city's largest Police station. Over one hundred fifty people including the two dozen jihadists were dead by the time the smoke cleared. The international media descended upon the city like locusts. Images of the day's fighting were transmitted worldwide. Battles complete with explosions, fires, smoke, hideously injured civilians with their dazed looks and shaky camera footage were re-run on the TV screens for all to see in glorious hi-def.
'The world's goin' to Hell in a handbasket,' he thought to himself. Somehow everything that had happened since 9/11 was a precursor to something much worse yet to come. He thought the wheels on the proverbial bus called civilization were flying off. No matter how bad it was back in the Cold War when he was growing up the world never got this crazy. The only thing on people's minds then was keeping nuclear war from happening. Then you had two biggest kids on the block; the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Both set the rules to world order. Nobody did anything without their permission and both kept a lid on their crazy friends. Now the free world had the likes of apocalyptic Islamic terrorists, nuclear armed Iran, a dopey North Korean fat boy with his greasy finger on the button, and a Russian named Putin bent on recreating the Russian Imperial Empire.
At Lagos International the TV screens had been switched off so as not to disturb passengers with the looped videos of the day's savagery. Nobody wanted to be reminded of that. Now was the time to call it a day and leave the country. Many of the Westerners who worked in Nigeria were doing just that. Perry spotted a husband and wife with three kids in tow checking in for flight to Europe. The kids were asleep and blissfully unaware of the madness and destruction that was forcing them to leave Nigeria. The parents no doubt worked for a big corporation and were being ordered out for their own safety.
One of the slumbering kids, a little girl reminded him of his own daughter Emilia. Emilia was 7 and the apple of his eye. She was such a joker. Perry looked at his watch and knew his daughter was probably watching television and his ex-wife's house. Emilia was the only good thing to come from the marriage. Sharon divorced him two years earlier for some younger guy. Perry didn't have the energy to fight it out with his ex. She was stubborn and brash at times. Apparently, she still had a lot of the "party girl" still left in her to want to fool around with other men, especially younger men. So be it. He did however fight her for custody of their daughter, their only child. In the end they both received joint custody of Emilia.
Perry looked forward to seeing his daughter and put this whole trip behind him. Mother Nature and Nigeria Airways had other plans. Like so many other travelers Perry Voinich was stranded not only by weather but by the airline. He and seventy-two other passengers bound for Douala, Cameroon had stood by and endured delay after delay for Flight 202 to finally depart. Nigeria Airways gave scant word about the continued delay only to say that it was a mechanical issue. Perry bargained it had more to do with the increase in security that had suddenly materialized in and around the airport in the past twelve hours. Nobody was taking chances he suspected. With little to do but wait Perry went to a news kiosk and picked up a copy of the International Tribune.
A fellow passenger on Perry's flight struck up a conversation with him in the departure lounge. His name was Sanjay and he was a pharmaceutical representative for MollyGen doing the rounds in Africa. Perry asked him if he had visited Lagos before. He laughed and said, "Unfortunately, yes." Perry introduced himself and replied that he too was on business and the purpose for his visit. He explained to Sanjay that his section within Atlantis concentrated on oil exploration, finding new wells and areas to drill. Africa was a booming market and he told Sanjay that the company fought tooth and nail against any competitor to buy access to new oil and gas fields.
They discussed Nigeria and the terrorist attacks. At times lowering their voices as not to be heard by the locals or the roving pairs of heavily armed security police wearing black berets that walked by every few minutes. Both agreed the entire country seemed to be standing upon the precipice of an abyss. The Islamists were pushing the country ever closer to going over that edge. Nothing seemed to work correctly or on time. The economy was stagnant despite the abundant oil revenue. The country was a wreck. The corruption and greed were so rife that it would take a miracle to undo all of it and make things work properly. The whole place seemed to creak along with a top heavy bloated bureaucracy that constantly teetered on imminent collapse. The experts to the region would simply shrug and say that was Africa. It was on its own time schedule and did things at its own pace. Perry wondered if the country was really worth doing business in especially after today. But that was not for himself to decide but his superiors.
Through their conversation both Sanjay and Perry discovered their trip to Douala had something in common. They had been set at the last minute by their respective employers after being told to extend their trips by a day or so for something extremely important. Sanjay was asked by his company to go see Cameroon's Minister of Health. Atlantis put Perry on the same flight to Douala in order to head off the Chinese state-owned oil/gas firm Sinopec from claiming a stake in a new potentially rich offshore area for exploration. Cameroon's government was close to a signing a contract and Perry was sent ASAP to help pull their side over the finish line and seal the deal. Perry didn't complain. Atlantis had wanted him to go to Borneo but changed that instead for Douala.
Both stood watching their airplane from the gate being readied for its next flight. The green and white livery of Nigeria Airways looked sharp and appeared to complement the overall shape of the spanking brand-new Airbus jet. Even the airline's green elephant logo on the tail was a nice touch. Curiously the two pilots who could be seen sitting in the cockpit from the vantage point from the departure lounge were not black but white. Perry turned to Sanjay and commented, "Strange to see a white flight crew for this airline."
"Ah, yes. From what I have heard the airplane is being leased temporarily to Nigeria Airways. The cockpit crew are Russian, or Belarussian I believe. The cabin staff on the other hand are Nigerian," he explained.
Boarding had come sooner than expected just as another line of storms threatened to the south and west. The shimmering light display in the clouds meant the worst of the weather would arrive within the hour. Perry sat back as the grumpy female Nigerian flight attendant passed by shutting any overhead bins that were not yet closed. The pilot came over the P.A. System as the plane taxied to the runway and spoke in English with a thick Slavic accent that the flight would be a bit turbulent after take-off but that it wouldn't last very long. Perry was thankful for that at least. He disliked turbulence ever since he had a nasty fright on a business flight in Brazil a few years earlier. He looked out the window at the line of storms that seemed to grow in size and intensity as they got closer to Lagos. Flight 202 reached their departure runway and the engines spooled up creating a crescendo that sounded like a giant metallic buzz-saw. The aircraft trundled down the runway slowly at first then picking up speed as the seconds ticked by. The bumps from cracks and uneven pavement ended as the pilots rotated the nose upward.
The A320 Airbus finally lifted off from the runway after a 5-hour delay and headed south over the ocean. The lights from Lagos and the coastal areas slipped behind them as Perry was pleasantly surprised to discover that the air was hardly turbulent at all. Below was only blackness punctuated only by the few lights of several ships waiting to head for Tin Can Island Port near Lagos. Peering out his window he saw that the line of storms extended a bit out over the Gulf of Guinea and that the pilot was keeping a healthy margin between their plane and the nasty weather.
No turbulence and lots of room. Perry had the entire row to himself and even the opposite row if he wanted. Now this was flying. 'Now this is the stuff. If only it could be like this all the time', he thought to himself as he relaxed. There was hardly anyone seated near him. After a few moments he retrieved his newspaper and began to read. There was a front-page article covering the U.S. going into Kenya to help that country's government retake the city of Mombasa and the nearby areas from an Islamic State affiliate.
FWUMP!
"What the...?" Perry said aloud as the Airbus had been shaken by a sudden jolt. The A320 acted as if it had hit an air pocket. With hardly enough time for anyone on board to fully register what happened the lights went out and there came such an awful cacophony as everything in the cabin was suddenly thrown about by an invisible force. Perry felt all the air being sucked from his lungs and it made him gasp. Sand, dirt, and grit stung his face. He briefly heard screams as his body suddenly felt weightless. Only his seatbelt kept him in place. He was then yanked violently to his right or perhaps it was his left. It didn't matter. A tremendous noise assaulted his ears as if one suddenly opened a window on a speeding train in a tunnel. The wind assaulted his body and tore away his shirt and tie. A blanket of cold enveloped him.
The wind and noise faded......,
Darkness overcame him........,
Perry had no sense of the passage of time. Had it been seconds, hours, or even days? The veil of blackness was punctuated by occasional diffused silvery light that seemed so distant and far away. He heard what sounded like voices, but they were distant, faint, and muffled. 'Are those voices?' He couldn't quite make out what they were saying. It was like hearing a radio broadcast playing in a faraway room. Sudden waves of heat and frigid cold washed through him. Perry felt he had been physically moved by someone or something at some point. More darkness followed.
He had the feeling that he was inside a darkened enclosure of some sort, laying upon his back. Someone looking down upon him? A muffled voice faded in and out. His body or a portion of it moved or was moved. A breeze of some sort flowing across his face. A muffled shout caused him to flinch.
Perry's thoughts were on autopilot for quite a while until one crossed his mind suddenly. A quick momentary flash of a notion struck him, 'Plane crash. I survived?' He thought he may have called out to his daughter Emilia. A while later (minutes or hours perhaps) Perry remember asking in a voice that seemed quite disembodied but nearby, "Sanjay did we make it?" He received no direct response other than some additional muffled dialogue between two or more people.
A silvery white light penetrated the blackness. Not as diffused as before. A bit harsher moving left to right. Strobe like. Perry asked, "Sharon? Sharon where's Emilia?" The dialogue going on around him was not only distant and muffled but quite garbled. It was as if his mind couldn't make sense of the language being spoken. At times when he'd tried listening to it, it had a staccato tempo. Other times it was guttural. Someone placed a palm on his cheek and what seemed like a kiss to his forehead. "Emilia baby is that you?" he asked.
Perry saw patterns or shapes. He had never noticed them before. Shapes that looked like animals, ships, faces, cartoon like blocks or squiggles upon a mint green field. He tried to concentrate on them, but it was so hard. Perry was so tired. His eyelids felt heavy. 'My chest has such a weight upon it for some odd reason.' Eyes closing. Floating away, so peaceful.
The sound of vehicular traffic brought him back to the mint green field with all the funny shapes. The light was different. He felt a pleasant breeze upon his face. A white curtain billowing. Perry realized he was laying down on a bed in a room. "Sharon are you here? Did you bring her?" he asked. For the first time that Perry could remember he turned his head to his right. He saw a strange woman sitting in a chair quickly put down a book she was reading. Very pretty blonde with brown eyes. She looked worried and quite sad for some reason. 'Excuse me Miss. Sorry to bother you. I have to ask you something.'
