Chapter Five
The Perils of the Journey
Barely a week had elapsed when Chantel received the call.
“Pack your bags. We’re going.”
“Are you crazy, Beren? Where, pray tell, do you think we’re going?”
“C’mon Chanty. Where is your sense of adventure? After what you saw on the glitch. Doesn’t that just arouse your sense of curiosity? Doesn’t it bite at your insides? Doesn’t the mere thought of purebloods somewhere out there make you froth at the mouth in rapture as your mind writhes in torment for an answer to what it could all mean? Surely you must just want to know.”
“Uh, no Beren I certainly don’t froth and I certainly don’t get as melodramatic about it as you do. Sure, I wonder what it’s all about. I can’t stop thinking about it and the whole thing baffles me. But being curious and wanting to run to the other side of the world are completely different things. One concept involves insanity for a start.”
“If you’re curious, don’t you want to do something to find out the truth? This is too amazing an opportunity to go to waste. I will never feel satiated until I unearth the explanation behind this all.”
“I’m sure there are plenty of things in life that are more satiating than risking your life on some adventure that you have no clue about except for this 60 second glitch on a single file download. You’ve only seen the thing once for crying out loud!”
“Well my dear Chantel, if you won’t travel with me you leave me no choice but to attempt this on my own. You know how vulnerable I will be, just one man in a wheelchair on his lonesome out on the high seas.”
Chantel screamed silently. She had forgotten how persistent Beren could be.
“Okay, can I at least have some time to think about it Beren?”
“Sure you can, but the boat leaves in ten days.”
“And where is this boat going now?”
“The boat is going to the metropolis of Cape Town. That won’t be our final destination though.”
“Freetown. You want us to go to Freetown don’t you?”
“Of course I do. Unless one of the other coordinates took your fancy. After doing my research I thought this one would be the easiest to get to. We can take a boat to the tip of Africa or location -64-103 on the grid. Then we jump on another boat heading north that travels along the west coast. Basically we can jump off at any of the ports along the way and then ride by road up to Freetown. Location -23-134 that’s where it’s at baby!”
“Right. Well I need some time to think and request leave from work and see if I have the funds in my payment account. I can’t just dump everything at the drop of a hat. A trip like this usually takes years of planning. And another thing, stop calling me baby.”
“Relax honey. I meant it in the purely non-sexual, generic sense, unless of course you were to act like a baby.”
Chantel terminated her communicator call with Beren. ‘Goddamit!’ she thought. She knew that if she showed the glitch to Beren he would make these hasty decisions. She knew that he would stop at nothing to track down the source of the footage. She also knew that this was exactly what she had bargained for and she had been secretly hoping that he would take just this initiative. The deep restlessness that Beren had always exhibited, that same feeling that had driven him to start hacking, had made his actions as predictable as the melting of polar ice. In showing Beren the glitch, Chantel had written their destiny. They would pursue this puzzle to the other side of the world.
The decision for Chantel, however, was not one to be taken so lightly. The thought of relinquishing from work, even for a temporary period was a disquieting prospect. She didn’t like work, but she liked what was in work. The familiarity of the job, the expectation of the mundane, the lack of surprise and lack of uncertainty. A comforting concept. The place where she could feel connected, part of something larger, a greater ideal, solidarity with something, whatever that might be. The prospect of being absent from this great civilising force was one that made her apprehensive. This freedom from the familiar was something she found at once terrifying and electrifying. She was on the cusp of embarking on a journey into the great unknown; harkened by an adventure when she herself was unsure what an adventure was. The idea of parting from her conscious routine had previously been an inconceivable notion for Chantel. Suddenly, this idea cast a deep rupture in her version of reality, both present and future. She saw the future now as appearing on the other side of an impassable void, a chasm forming in between the expected and unknown and she knew that once she passed onto the other side of the chasm, there would be no returning to the known.
She thought of her life as she knew it. The faces and names of her friends and work colleagues that lived parallel lives to hers, her parents battling to make a living off the land far away in the agricultural zone, the booth where she spent at least a third of each day. She thought of the one thing that she could identify as representing a uniqueness, an atypical quality, a je ne sais quoi about herself. Sure, she had made a massive migration from the agricultural zone to the metropolis zone when she was still a teenager. Such a move had been uncommon amongst her generation, particularly when her family for generations before had remained staunch agriculturalists and quashed any temptation of previous family members to migrate. Chantel felt that she had only been able to get away with it because her parents didn’t really want her there. Something still made her feel that her presence tormented them with painful memories. Her friendship with Beren was another aspect of her life that defied typical social trends. While every other work colleague at Pangaea had relinquished ties with such a criminal and ex-con, Chantel’s relationship with Beren deepened after he was released from jail and now she counted him as one of her closest friends.
She knew that he was right. She would never let him tackle the danger and risks of leaving Sydney metropolis on his own. Like Chantel, Beren had never left the island. In fact, she wasn’t even quite sure that he had ever left the metropolis, particularly not since his accident when transportation for him would be difficult. She knew that once Beren was determined to do something, he would persevere relentlessly. There was no talking him out of it now. She began making the necessary arrangements to take a well-earned ‘holiday’.
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Chantel had always been of the Pangaea camp. Her parents were Pangaea people, their parents were Pangaea people and so on and so forth. In her mind, she believed that she was onto a winner. Pangaea was now the ruling player in parliament, her faith in Pangaea had secured her a job as a tech eng, she was able to feast on discounted take away boxes each night. Although there were some devotees that became almost militant in their allegiance to a particular brand, Chantel was content to revel in the quiet satisfaction that she had picked the winning horse, or rather that her parents’ choice to stick a Pangaea implant in her ear had been entirely vindicated. Invariably, it was the brand of communicator implant that would eventually sway a person’s shopping habits for their remaining life span. Products and services for each type of implant were only available from the same brand. Customer loyalty schemes ensured that discounts were given for shopping with the same brand. With each brand dictating the specific format with which their products could be used and preventing other services from being used on their product, the concentration of power in the global five grew in strength until eventually it was impossible for any other player to compete in the global market.
The Wilds were an honest, simple, hard-working couple. Being agriculturalists they were prevented from moving freely into the metropolis region and as a result, Chantel only visited her parents once a year at most. Crossing the border from the metropolis zone of Sydney to the agricultural zone of -54+29 in the grid where her parents were located was a logistical nightmare. Restrictions were arbitrarily placed on inter-zone migration, so it was not easy to predict what level of bureaucracy it would be necessary to surmount in order to obtain the administrative privileges to travel
and when the next transportation across the zones would be available.
For this very reason Chantel’s parents begged her not to move to the city. It was like being cut off from civilisation, they would say. Once people moved to the city, they were never heard from again. She would never be able to find a way back, was their greatest lament. Nevertheless, Chantel made the impetuous and headstrong decision to leave her parents to their potatoes, parsnips and beetroots and applied for migration to the metropolis so she could enrol in an engineering course at Sydney University.
She would try to call her parents occasionally, but the communicator lines from the metropolis to the agricultural zones were frequently disrupted and her well-intentioned attempts to maintain contact eventually became a chore which she grew to resent.
“I’ll just be going away for a few weeks Mum,” Chantel explained to her parents over the fuzzy sounds of the communication system. “Nothing to be worried about. Just a cruise to the eastern quadrant. We’ll see some nice beaches, relax on the deck, I doubt we’ll even get off the boat on the journey there so we’ll be safe.”
“You just stay away from pirates now. There’s so many of them running around that part of the world,” Chantel’s mother fretted.
“Sure, sure. I promise not to play with any pirates on the holiday.”
The reception on her communicator started to crackle. The storms were again wreaking havoc around her parents’ agricultural area and the reception they received in their bunker was not the best.
“Okay, it’s getting hard to hear you now. I better go.”
Chantel relieved herself of the communicator call and continued packing. Conversations with her parents were always a tortured ordeal, partly due to the communication systems and partly due to the past. What would she need for a journey to the other side of the earth? She had no idea what to expect.
‘Bring some laser shooters,’ Beren had suggested. ‘Just in case...’
She wasn’t sure what he had in mind for this trip but Chantel was dead certain that laser shooters would not be involved in her journey. She checked her boat booking details. Sydney to Cape Town. A 12 day journey. 11,042 kilometres. Two stopovers on the way for only one night each. Apart from that, the rest of the time would be spent on a standard passenger water transportation vessel.
The primary mode of transportation from one land mass to another was by water. Jet airplanes now relied upon rechargeable batteries to fly making a single journey for a person, prohibitively expensive. In fact, only the extremely wealthy could afford the price of an airplane ticket and even when the expense for such a purpose could be expended, it was generally for business not pleasure. Travelling for sheer leisure became a thing of the past as the price for transportation spiralled out of the average worker’s budget. Many people, particularly those from the manufacturing zones, could not even afford the excessive cost of travelling to a destination a few hours away by land and resigned to spending any time off from work they had at home hooked up for hours to their entertainment hard drives as their own form of holiday. The second most popular type of holiday was a cruise.
Water transportation became the most favourable mode of transport over land and air. Each non-cargo transportation vessel was equipped with a sail, electricity turbines and a rechargeable battery. Movement was propelled by the natural energy of the wind, wherever possible, or by aligning the boat to the existing ocean currents. Where additional energy was required the rechargeable battery would be used. The battery drew its energy from electricity turbines located underneath the boat. These turbines rotated when the boat moved against the tide of the water. Additional wind mills located on the deck of the boat also captured wind energy. Solar panels were also installed on the roof of the boat. These sources of electricity, once routed through an inverter, powered all electronic equipment on the boat making each boat journey by sea self-sustainable. Due to the ability of water transportation to take advantage of renewable sources of energy, it quickly became the most efficient, economical and affordable type of travel.
However, because of restrictions upon migration between zones, there were limited destinations available for a cruise to actually travel to. Certain areas had been designated as tourist spots within each type of zone. Travel for people from the Sydney metropolis zone to the Cape Town metropolis zone to experience the Cape Town tourist district was relatively hassle-free. It would not, however, be as easy for people from the agricultural or manufacturing zones to visit. Nonetheless, Chantel packed her passport documentation just in case.
Cross communications between the metropolis and agricultural zones were not as bad as communications between the other zones though. In the opinion of those from the metropolis and agricultural zones, the manufacturing zone was the place to be ostracised. Smelly, smoggy and dirty, the manufacturing zones had been pushed to the perimeter of the grid and were the place people would resort to only if they had no chance of employment in the metropolis or agricultural zones. Pulsating with the rhythm of industry, the manufacturing zones and all the people in them had become like machines. Each person in the zone knew their role, to perform like a well-oiled cog in the wheel, and with ruthless efficiency they completed each task on hand on time to the second. Not a moment was lost to unproductivity and as a result, the world kept churning up all sorts of products. New inventions for cleaning the bathroom, more vending machines than you could possibly store in a building, the world was becoming full of such things and almost as quickly as they were made, an oversupply of stuff would result in many of these items being discarded.
Most of these supplies were shipped to the metropolis zones. The metropolis was the core of the world, there was no doubt about that. The agricultural zones were the outer core. The manufacturing zone, on the other hand, represented the engine room of the world, a constantly changing landscape of factories, steelworks and processing plants. Each area chugging up waste and refuse as quickly as it produced the latest automobile, transportation device or implantation chip. As vast tracts of land became unusable, being consumed in a manufacturing mire, the industries in the zone would shift to some untouched region in the grid, rendering the previous manufacturing zone a wasteland.
No one knew what became of these areas once the manufacturing industries had deserted the area. The wastelands were widely believed to be uninhabitable. If it was difficult enough already to migrate between the zones, it was nigh on impossible to enter the wasteland. Shunned beyond the periphery of communication, various urban myths about the wastelands abounded. Some would say the places were rampant with mutant creatures, grotesquely deformed beyond recognition due to intense exposure to pollution. Others speculated that without the intrusion of human civilisation, the wastelands flourished into an animal nirvana where wildlife could roam free without being forced off the land due to construction or farming.
However, the general consensus was that the wastelands were simply that – fields of ashes. It was commonly thought that to completely eradicate the machinery and equipment used in the manufacturing zones, a nuclear bomb was set off. The explosion would completely vaporise any structures and a few hundred years later, when the nuclear fallout and all traces of radiation had dissipated, the land would be usable once again. It seemed to be the most plausible explanation.
Regardless, most of the general population living in the metropolis, like Chantel, would never know. The wastelands, and even the manufacturing zone, were areas which the typical city-sider had absolutely no inclination of entering. The city folk joked, chided and teased about being banished to the wastelands and almost immediately upon mentioning it, they would shudder with fear at the thought of what lay beyond, in the emptiness of the unknown. For city people, the vision of enormous steel structures extending endlessly to the horizon was a source of comfort. This was the view that greeted them from both the office and in the home environment.
Chantel thought it might be more difficult for her to get the time off wor
k. Rosters for leave were generally planned for months in advance with ad hoc or urgent requests such as hers being granted only in the most egregious circumstances. As it were, her leave request was approved without any questions being asked. Not only that, but the decision to approve her leave had come from someone very high up in the chain of command.
“Someone obviously thinks you need a break, ” Chantel’s supervisor scoffed when communicating the approval to her. ‘This is the first I’ve heard of anyone being given an indefinite period of leave just to go on a holiday. Usually a child or something needs to die before management will even look at a request such as this. Well, use it wisely Chantel. Remember time off like this is a privilege not a right."
Her supervisor marched off in scorn. Chantel was no less confused. She was certain that she would have had to concoct some elaborate excuse for leave to be granted. As it wasn’t necessary, there were no longer any excuses to be had. She called Beren to let him know that everything was in order.
“I’m all set,” she said.
“Really, Pangaea didn’t have a problem with you taking time off?” Beren asked in bemusement. Regardless of whether or not his leave request was approved or declined he would have taken his leave without a care in the world. The university knew better by now than to stand in the way of Beren and his various whims.
“Apparently not. It was all approved, no questions asked.”
“Interesting…”
“What’s even stranger is that they approved the leave for an indefinite period.”
“Why, Chantel. You should just not bother going back to work. You’re obviously giving them good value for money whether you are there or not. Might as well milk this for all its worth.”
Chantel became immediately defensive.
“Don’t be silly. Of course they need me. What will I do if I don’t work?”
“The answer is obvious. Become a pirate with me, argh!”
“You just keep dreaming Captain Marley. My mum warned me to stay away from swashbucklers like you.”
“Oh, your mum doesn’t know what’s good for you. Anyway, what are you going to bring?”
“Uh, a bikini, a—“
“I have my bags packed with everything I think we need. Hologram recorder, dried food supplies, re-hydrator, inflatable floaties –”
“You didn’t bring a laser shooter did you,” Chantel asked sarcastically.
“Oh, I have a couple of those. I’ve hidden them though so you don’t steal them from me. I know how you’ve always wanted to get your hands on my laser shooter.”
“Beren! Really, is it necessary? If they catch you getting on a boat with one of those things they will dump you at the nearest port and tell all the other boats that you’re a terrorist. Do you really have to bring one?”
“Ah, Chanty. Will you stop chucking a tanty again? Not even you will be able to find my laser shooter okay, so just chill girl.”
“Okay, but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again Beren. I’m not getting arrested because of you.”
Hanging up her communicator call, Chantel shook her head and resigned herself to the fact that in making the choice to travel with Beren, she was by default accepting all the craziness that would come with the journey.