by Julian Cheek
His training immediately kicked in.
“Francois, get SAMU on the line. NOW!” he screamed.
SAMU 75 is the regional medical emergency response centre based in the centre of Paris. It is the first port of call for all communications in an emergency situation. The day team within SAMU 75 were quick to link into the monitor system for the area. The views that crashed across their senses numbed them into a state of shock. This could not be happening! This did not happen in Paris!
Now that the system was coming on stream, more and more contacts were made to relay information and seek urgent attention. The APHP Crisis cell was the next to be connected. The Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris together with the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital we immediately mobilised, the latter one of five civilian level-one trauma centres in the APHP group. The former, after brief discussions, ordered the triggering of the French White Plan, which effectively mobilised all hospitals, recalled staff and released all beds to cope with a possible large influx of severely injured people.
The President was notified, twenty five minutes after the first explosion occurred. Paris was brought to a standstill within thirty five minutes of the President being notified. By that time three television helicopters were fighting with the emergency service helicopters for space hovering over the disaster that was unfolding below them. No one had ever seen such a terrible event. The fires were raging on both sides of the Périph and on the main Gare de Lyon line. Rescue vehicles, including fire trucks took over forty five minutes before they were able to offer viable support to the dying and injured. By that time, traffic was stationary for fifteen kilometres in both direction, almost, for the first time, bringing the entire thirty five kilometre circuit of the Périph to a complete log-jammed standstill.
The world woke up at various places to the unfolding events happening in Paris. Confusion reigned as news readers tried to offer some explanation as to what had occurred. Stories ranging from an all-out terrorist attack with poison gas, through to a diesel explosion on one of the TGVs, causing massive disruption flowed through the ether, attracting billions to switch on to see the unfolding events with a collective sense of disbelief. Chaos had come to France. Chaos with a vengeance!
England, 11am. Morning news.
Sam’s thoughts were rudely interrupted by a loud banging on the container door from outside. Someone was trying to get their attention and their shouting left little to the imagination that something terrible had happened.
Alice quickly waved her hand over the air in front of her and the glow faded to be taken over by the single light of the lamp on her ramshackle desk. The silver handle, similarly, was quickly covered and put away again into the box from whence it had been taken.
“Alice. Alice, are you in there?” An insistent cry came from a lady’s voice outside of the container. She sounded very afraid and panic stricken. Without waiting for an answer, the lady hurled open the door and stuck her head inside.
“Alice, you have to come and see this. Something terrible has happened!” And with that, she disappeared, the noise of her feet quickly disappearing as she ran back to the café, all the while, her voice crying out to anyone who cared to listen, “Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness! The poor people.”
With one look at Sam, Alice stood up and followed quickly after the lady, saying only, “That was Mary. Something has upset her, that’s for sure. And you can be assured, that nothing fazes her, ever!” Sam and Alice ran back into the café, moving quickly through the kitchen area, which was deserted. A few eggs were still frying on the flat iron but no-one was supervising them and the slow smell of burnt egg white was already reaching their nostrils. The kitchen was deserted and voices of shock and horror could be heard growing from within the café itself. Sam was at a loss as to what was happening, but already he sensed that it was not good.
In the café itself, it was as if the room had been turned into an area for sculptures. The people were either sitting or standing, all looking at the television monitor on one side of the wall. Mary was leaning back against the counter gripping the edge tightly with one hand, the other scrunching up her apron into a tight wad in her fingers… No-one was moving as they tried to take in what was being relayed to them from the screen.
Sam and Alice quickly turned to look at what had caused all the fear palpable in the room and what greeted them, was nothing short of calamity on a major scale.
The BBC had stopped all other programmes for a major bulletin alert. From within the screen, a catastrophic view of a world in disaster was being shown. The camera was obviously in a helicopter, hovering over a sea of broken cars, smashed trucks and smoke billowing from multiple places. Glimpses of flashing blue and red could be seen everywhere as rescue and emergency vehicles tried to move through the turmoil. The anchor lady in the helicopter was shouting as loudly as she could over the din of the rotors, her voice shaking with the shock of what she was seeing, whilst at the same time, trying vainly to convey to the audience what, in her opinion, was happening.
Sam and Alice stared with shock as the carnage slowly unfolded when the camera panned back from the close up of a burning truck, to show the wider extent of the disaster. They now saw the bridge, a river below, smoke and flames somehow burning on the water, and wreckage and mangled burning vehicles stretching off into the distance.
“A bomb or something has gone off in Paris, Alice,” Mary cried, tears streaming down her face as she alternately glanced between Alice and the screen. “Something terrible has happened and they are saying that many people are dead!” The rest of her sentence trailed into silence as the graphic views being displayed took all sense of speech away from her. Elsewhere, people from the street outside, had now entered the café to see what was going on, gasps and cries of horror flowing freely from many.
The announcer came back into shot.
“Information is still sketchy at this moment, George,” she said, “but we are hearing and can confirm, that shortly after 10am this morning, French time, what appears to have been a major explosion occurred here on the E15, about 6 miles south-east of the centre of Paris. Rescue vehicles and the fire-service are still battling to come to the scene. Cars and vehicles have been thrown around as if a major bomb went off, and I can report as well, that a commuter train leaving the centre’s main southern station, Gare de Lyon, was also involved in this terrible incident. We can see carriages scattered over the ground and smoke and flames spewing from at least three, no four of them. There are also many bodies. People who, today, woke up to a normal existence, only for their lives to be cruelly ripped away by the disaster unfolding below us.”
“Jennifer,” the station newsreader cut in. “At this time, is there any announcement from the government as to whether this was a terrorist incident or not?”
“We have not heard any official announcement from the government at this time, George, but we have heard unconfirmed rumours that the explosion seemed to start from a large articulated vehicle which was travelling south. We can, of course, not confirm at this time whether this is indeed correct, or whether the vehicle in question was indeed part of the disaster here, or indeed if it had any part to play in any terrorist attempt to disrupt Paris. What we can say, however, is that if any attempt was made, today, whoever is responsible for this has been successful. Jennifer Wright, BBC news.”
The camera image dimmed from one view, opening instead on another, focussed on the balcony of the president’s residence in Paris. The doors to the balcony were shut but the camera zoomed in to get a glimpse of any activity from within. Fuzzy, grainy images of people walking past the windows, their heads ducking from view, the only sign that some activity was brewing within the power house of French democracy.
Sam looked around at the people around him. All were in a state of shock. Some were crying, others held each other for some form of comfort. No one was unmoved. He turned his gaze towards Alice to see her reaction, shrugging his shoulders at her as if to say, “W
hat on earth…?”
Strangely, Alice did not appear to be following the story, instead, her gaze seemed to be looking towards the corners of the screen, as if searching for something that was not obvious. Unconsciously, she moved closer towards the screen until she was close enough to touch it. Her fingers slowly moved up towards the flickering images and hovered over them. Then something caught her eye and her fingers quickly traced a line from the centre of the screen, where the centre span of the burning bridge was visible, and moved down to a small area to the bottom right. One car could be seen faintly on the edge of a road travelling away from the bridge. It, like many others around it, appeared to be abandoned but this was not what was catching her attention.
There! Moving away from this lone abandoned car, a rough line could be seen snaking off in another direction away from the bridge. Sam wondered why on earth this line, which appeared to be a path, was causing so much interest to Alice. And without thinking, he too moved closer to the screen until he stood next to her, gazing at the same tiny piece of the screen. “What is it, Alice?” he asked with some curiosity. “What is it you see?”
Alice said nothing. Her gaze firmly fixed now on the line, her eyes moving up the screen until the line disappeared from view. Strangely, it appeared to have smoke coming from it, which in itself was yet another strange anomaly added to the whole events being relayed in front of them.
With a start, Alice snatched her fingers away from the screen, moved back quickly and looked up to the heavens, her head lost in some thought pattern for a moment until she turned to look at Sam. What she said took a moment to sink into Sam’s head.
“They have come!” she said, looking between Sam and the screen. “They have come and they have come for one purpose and one purpose only. To find you. To find you and take you back.”
Sam was at a complete loss as to what she meant by “they had come”. What on earth did “they have come” have anything to do with a Paris disaster which would surely become yet larger as the day wore on?
“How could I have been so blind?” she said to herself. “Somehow they have found a portal and have made the leap. Oh the stupid, stupid people! Why would they do that? What possible merit could it serve? How is it possible that they could even make the connection? I must research and research quickly.” With that, and with Sam completely at a loss as to what on earth Alice had just muttered to herself, she turned to him and, with her eyes yet again blazing a strong violet hue, said, “Sam, we need to leave and we need to leave now! They have come and in so doing, have unlocked catastrophe on this place of a magnitude that will make this Paris event look like a Sunday tea party!”
With that, she grabbed Sam by the arm and almost yanked him off towards the kitchens, crashing through chairs and tables as if they were of no consequence whatsoever.
“What’s going on?” Sam shouted, trying to stop Alice dragging him off towards the kitchens. Alice had him in a very strong grip for a woman, he thought, and he sensed that it was a grip that he would not be able to wriggle out of anytime soon.
Alice said nothing until she had entered the empty kitchen and slammed Sam up against the wall to the office. “Listen Sam, now is not the time to pretend. Now is the time to act! Right now I do not care if you think that what you are seeing on the screen is the result of terrorists or a horrible accident, or even fluffy bunnies acting in self-defence. What I can tell you is that what you are seeing is the result of someone or something physically entering this realm from another reality, whose sole interest is to seek you and get you to return to Maunga-Atua either to fight or to perish.”
Sam could not comprehend all that Alice was trying to tell him. It was not a few minutes ago that she was trying to tell him that he was a supposed saviour or another world and he had a magic staff as a toy and was able to defeat all and sundry with it. Now she was simply telling him that, according to her, the people from the other reality, which, when he thought about it, was still too weird and wacky to take seriously, were now intent on saying “Stuff all this waiting around, we are going to go and force him to sort himself out!”
“Bollocks to that!” he exclaimed, the expletive shooting out from his mouth before he knew what he was saying. “What did I do to deserve this? It’s not my bloody fault that there was an explosion in Paris, and it’s not my bloody fault that all that you say is occurring in your la-la land is also as a result of me not being special enough for you right now!” Sam, his senses yet again assaulted from all sides, reverted to his normal position of striking out at whoever else appeared to be wanting to attack him. He was now more than ready to tell Alice, his parents and the rest of the people of Maungableeding-Atua to take a running jump and leave him alone.
“Do you know why I was more interested in a thin line on the screen rather than the terrors that we were all seeing?” Alice cut into his red mist.
“Because you are all bloody heart and want to save the wildlife!” he retorted, eyes blazing with fierce anger, brought up from the depths of his soul.
“Because,” she continued firmly, “what I was looking for was not what was happening, but what had happened! That abandoned car and the line weaving off away from it in the opposite direction to the disaster was not some random event, Sam. What it was was probably an event I have been dreading since I came here and one which now appears to have been realised.”
Sam, despite his anger bubbling away inside him, listened.
“The Anahim are able to switch themselves, their powers, off if they so choose. They are, after all, the leaders of the Ethereals, able to create and destroy worlds. People, on the other hand, are not! What you are seeing on the screen is what happens when foolish people decide to take matters into their own hand and force destiny. Things get broken! That line you saw was proof of this.”
Sam was still at a loss and Alice could see this in his face. She continued.
“Sam, no one has ever made a jump from one reality to another other than you. No one. And why? Because if that were possible, it would be like trying to link a black hole here with a normal galaxy. The galaxy would not last long, which is why these things are not supposed to happen. But, for some reason, people have found the way to make the jump and have appeared here. The two worlds cannot exist together, that is why they are separated. Normality in one place is death in the other! What you are seeing in that, what is to you an insignificant little fuzzy line on the screen, is a track of someone or something who has made the link and even now, might be alive and their very existence in this world is starting to unlock the building blocks of what makes this place Earth. We have to stop this and we have to stop this right now!”
There are many times in a person’s life when no matter how strong the proof exists that a situation is either true or false, they still choose to believe another fabricated answer. This can be for many reasons. Upbringing, a lack of belief in one’s self or of one’s place in the order in the world, or, as in the case of Sam that morning, one of bloody-mindedness. Sam had been assaulted, it seemed, for a number of days, where it appeared that everyone was expecting him to conform or be something he was not. Now, it appeared to him that, even Alice had a similar view of what she thought he should be, and this was finally causing him to block every external influence in his world and to tell everyone to take a hike and mind their own damned business. Even in his dreams he appeared unable to escape this cruel injustice that he certainly had not asked for, neither was he wanting. Losing David was enough hurt and responsibility for one life time, thank you very much.
In psychiatric terms, Sam was having a bit of a meltdown right there in the empty kitchen and he did not mind one bit who got to see it. A deeply buried sense of respect for the person in front of him stopped him from telling her where, in his opinion, she could place her ideas.
“Alice, for at least a week, I have been assaulted from every angle. My parents reject me as a result of me losing my brother. A dream world that I know I have never experienced
before is now invading my night times and is telling me I am the only hope to save the day there. The people that I remember in that world just stand there and die because they believe I am supposed to be somebody. My friends here all think I should be certified and they laugh behind my back, and then you of all people land a line seeming to say that somehow, because I do nothing, even bombings in foreign countries are apparently my fault also! Man, I am sorry, but from my perspective, that’s a pretty shitty message to try to come to terms with.
“I wish everyone in Paris a safe and happy life, but for now, I am ‘hasta luego’. I need to get out of here, away from everyone and, for once, get some ‘me’ perspective back in my life, otherwise I am afraid I will do something stupid and someone will find me in a ditch somewhere with toads and wet lichen growing over my cold body!”
With that, Sam turned and walked quickly out of the kitchen, past the customers still gazing at the unfolding news report, and left Timber’s. His head and eyes downcast, not wanting to make eye contact with anyone, just wanting to have this whole experience passed onto someone else who at least would not stuff it up as he appeared to have done and, in his opinion, achieved so magnificently.
As so many times before, lost in his anguish as he was, he failed to see Alice follow behind him to the entrance door of Timber’s. There, she stopped, extended her hand upwards and outward in the direction of Sam’s disappearing form and, with her eyes for once unhidden from the world, now a vivid purple and green, she uttered one short call, the words full of feeling and emotion, yet the language coming from another world: “Shecha, meod otah. M’nassa té. É racha ma, Sam. M’lay o té tamid.” (Shecha, eternal. Keep him safe. The chosen one, Sam. Now and forever.)