At 26,000 feet, they hit again. Their angle of descent was steeper this time and the violence even greater. The airframe groaned and screamed in pain as the plane was twisted along its length and slammed constantly. Inside, an intense white light suddenly hovered just above their heads. Amid the torturous racking, the light seemed benevolent, welcoming, kind and caring. Mary smiled, and thought dying wasn’t so bad. Pleasant, actually. The passengers, screaming their terror a moment ago, now mirrored her serenity in the white light.
Chapter 15
Flowers couldn’t hold on any longer. At 60, he wasn’t the boy who had wrestled the crude fighters up and down through crosswinds and bucking decks. He turned to Jim, who saw it was his time. “Your aircraft,” Flowers said. This was what McGowan was hungry for, the impossible situation that he alone had the visceral gifts to handle. He took the yoke firmly in his hands and slid his feet onto the pedals The light enveloped him now, and told him that it was okay, that they’d be home soon. He embraced it and leaned into the controls. Every vibration coursed through his body and was accounted for. Shifts in heading and altitude were sensed, instruments checked in his peripheral vision. These were the highest and best moments of his life and he would grow old savoring them.
“Eastern 106, say your altitude.”
“Eastern 106. We’re at approximately 24,000, heading 345 and we’re declaring an emergency at this time. Must continue descent to pass through extreme turbulence of unknown origin. Please clear the airspace around us and advise an IFR heading to the nearest airport. Damage unknown. Will need emergency equipment upon landing.”
“Eastern 106 continue your descent. Your altitude floor is 1500. Set IFR to 93.700 for Macklin Air Force Base. Will alert to your emergency. Meet Macklin control at frequency 106.55.”
Then, the wrenching, shuddering, falling ceased. The white light ebbed away and Eastern 106 reentered the world. Mary Dalton’s eyes moved about the passenger compartment and saw a collective hope and calm, a legacy of the warming light. And she felt their loss of something shared and unknown.
Around the world, hundreds of aircraft were hitting the same turbulence and passing through, safely, in the light.
Eileen sat in the rockers with Margaret Mann on the delicious porch of the Victorian. The meticulously enameled floor felt like polished glass under her bare feet. The breeze drifted over them from precisely the right direction. It was a place that you attached yourself to as though you would never choose to leave. An island of perfection. They stared out blankly at the lawn, overly green from the intense watering needed in the semi-desert climate. They felt the rhythm of the Linden trees, their leaves twinkling in the wind. It was an altogether perfect moment and Eileen felt that and smiled to herself. How odd to feel this instant of joy displace her gnawing pain for Luke.
She saw now what he had meant about the sky as he mumbled his way into sleep last night, a sleep he now sought as his only escape from the dreadful feeling that had taken up residence in his chest and in a place behind his eyes.
Margaret broke their comfortable silence. “The sky. I’ve never seen it like this.”
“I was just thinking that. And Luke was talking about it when he came in last night.”
“Maybe we’re getting that smog like up in L.A.” In the next instant, Eileen knew what it was, from a flash of intuition or some other source. “No. Something’s coming.” She got up and hurried back to the house on the excuse that she wanted to check on Luke. He was sitting up in bed, smiling, his face radiant with peace. “I’m not afraid now. I saw him. Everything’s going to be fine. It’s really happening.”
“When did you know?”
“Just a minute ago. He was here and I saw him and he told me.”
“I knew a minute ago too. On the porch. I saw the sky and I knew. She slipped then into his arms in the tiny, fragile way that always reminded him of his love for her. Without words it was clear now that they shared a view of a future that was unimaginable a few months ago. Their tomorrows now could be endless and limitless. Their children could grow in a world of knowledge and freedom from all the troubles that had been the underlying fabric of daily life.
When they finally pulled back to look at one another, Luke saw that the joyfulness in Eileen’s smile had returned. It was the essential thing about her that he had fallen in love with on that first day. It was her capacity for complete and uncontrolled happiness, now intensified by the idea that real happiness would be commonplace.
“I’ve been somewhere for a while, Ei. But seeing him made everything okay again. No more of the craziness. No more living in hiding. We can take down the fence and go out again like normal people. We’re taking back our life.”
“I was just thinking the same thing. Well, not thinking exactly. More like feeling it or dreaming it, ya know?”
“Yeah. Me too. A dream, but not a dream.”
“I just came out of it and I could only think of you. The way you’ve taken care of me, of everything. I’ve missed you so much, missed us. I was just gone for a while, but I knew you were there.”
“It’s alright. You needed help and you gave yourself over to me. Do you know how much your trusting me that way meant?”
The reporters were waiting for Bill Flowers and Jim McGowan as they stepped out of the operations center. A two-hour meeting with the FAA district manager had produced little explanation for the plane-wrenching turbulence occurring everywhere. “What happened to you up there? What was it?” The chorus of questions overlapped and merged until they were indistinguishable.
“I don’t have any idea. It wasn’t like anything we’ve seen before. It was terrifying and I guess I would say it was . . .” Flowers paused, weighing the word before speaking it. “And beautiful. It was just beautiful is all I can think to say. I’ve never been so happy as up there. I’m sorry it’s over.”
He knew he’d said too much. But he wanted them to know, somehow, a small part of what he’d felt. He wanted them to know there was another reality that he’d sensed in the warm, glowing, loving light. He wanted everyone to feel the sureness and peace that had been his for an instant.
The reporters drew quiet, regarding him with a sudden, solemn stillness. One broke the silence. “So far, thirty other pilots on flights in different parts of the country have said the same exact thing. So have their passengers.” What the reporters didn’t know yet was that the passengers and crews from all the affected flights now intuitively understood that they had caught a glimpse of the near future. A world to come had been revealed.
Chapter 16
“Everything’s changed now.” Luke spoke with a quiet, assured intensity that Jake had never seen before. “He was with me last night. Not a dream. Something else. But anyway, he made me know everything I need. I mean, I know for certain that it’s all real. Eileen had the same thing, the same kind of revelation.”
“So, what are ya gonna say on the air tonight? The whole deal?” Luke was already clear about that. “I’m gonna tell about him coming to me last night. It’s true and I know it, and people have a right to hear it. I can’t bottle this up, even if I take a lot of heat for it.” Luke swung by Zack’s office. “I wanted to give a heads up on this. You’ve seen the sky thing and the airline reports, and I’m gonna drop another bomb tonight.” They sat with the office door closed for more than an hour. Zack prodded and probed Luke’s conviction and in the end was convinced that he was, at least, sincere. And he’d be convincing on the air.
“I’ll have to call the network on this. We have to give them the chance to not air it, just as a courtesy. I think they’ll run it, with everything that’s been happening, but we owe them a chance to bail out. Probably ought to call our friends at the phone company too. They could get buried in calls again tonight.”
The newspapers and airwaves were filled with stories of turbulent flights, peaceful light and scientists who had nothing to offer. The zealots were scampering for center stage while the established religious leaders offered meas
ured statements that tried to say everything and nothing. Luke knew he was about to unleash a firestorm, but he didn’t care. The anguish of the months past was gone and he was immensely happy. Nothing bad could happen to them now.
He sat alone in the announcers’ lounge, leafing through the wire service reports and newspaper articles Jake had clipped for him to read. But he didn’t focus on the stack of paper in his lap. He didn’t know exactly what he was going to say, but he knew it would be fine. He was excited about the news he would be putting on the air. He found himself smiling broadly, but feeling a little foolish about it, in the empty room.
Jake slipped in and tumbled onto the fake leather easy chair. “So what’re you gonna say?”
“Don’t know. But call your guys back at the network and tell them to dump the commercial load. I don’t think we should be hawking aluminum siding and cigarettes tonight. I cleared it with Zack and he’s talking to the network people. But word may not filter down to the engineers and there’ll be a big hassle.”
“Maybe we should lose the call-ins too. Gonna be all the crazies. You should just talk about what you know and believe. And maybe, maybe we can get that first airline pilot on the phone.” Jake dove for the paper pile Luke was holding, rifling through them, scanning for a name. “Here it is. Flowers. I’m on it.” He whipped through the door, suddenly as graceful as a long-distance runner, weaving his way down the narrow corridors, dodging people without a misstep. He found an empty sales office and started dialing. This is what Jake knew how to do. He had Flowers on the phone in just five calls to his web of contacts across the country, reporters mainly, who knew the guy who knew the guy that did the interview in the Washington Post who had the pilot’s number and yeah he’d make a call to open a door. Twenty minutes later, Jake had convinced Flowers to do the interview. He would go on with Luke tonight.
Luke remained in the announcers’ lounge, not thinking about anything in particular, in fact, not thinking at all. But something was becoming a part of him. He felt a new level of awareness sweeping over him, but nothing that formed into words or thoughts that he could articulate. Nor did he feel the need to. He had ascended to a place few had ever reached. A place within himself where in knew the answers to every question. It seemed like perfect knowledge.
He felt a power to reach into any part of his mind and body and heal himself. All the wounds and damage accumulated in his short life, the pains and small neglects of his youngest recollections and the deep, deep loneliness of those brief years alone, before Eileen.
He slipped into the studio ten minutes before airtime, half listening to the network news reports of continued phenomenon in the skies around the world. Meteorologists now were reporting that the ceiling was dropping lower, but the turbulence incidents had ceased to affect aircraft, except for the reassuring light that was a transforming experience for all that went through it. He knew what it all meant and now he would tell the story.
“Welcome again to Voices in The Night on the ABC Radio Network, originating from KOGO in San Diego. I’m Luke Trimble. Tonight we’ll try and shed some light on the experiences of thousands of people traveling by air in recent days, and the unexplained changes in our atmosphere.
“These are a preview of what’s coming for all of us and it’s nothing less than the merging of the physical and spiritual worlds.” He paused, letting the last sentence just hang in the air for emphasis. The next sound was a pronounced thump, as the phone lines instantly jammed with hundreds of calls. Jake was already ahead of it, and gave the phone company engineers the go ahead to clear the lines and busy them out to protect the system from crashing.
Luke spoke in a way that was later described as a voice of peace and certainty. It seemed to be the inspired word of a benevolence that was channeling through Luke. He was a messenger, the precursor of a change in the essence of being, when all would create their own, perfect level of reality.
“We’ll be free of the burdens of illness, pain and aging, if we chose. Provided with every need and want, without effort or sacrifice.” Luke urged them to not be fearful, to embrace what was soon to be. He related the visit the night before and its wordless exchange of a vision of the new world. “The essence of this is individual choice of how we want to exist in the future. Do you want to be young forever or do you want to age only to a certain point? Would you make new choices later? All of this is yours to decide. You will be able to create your own perfect world, all the time, any time.
“You can continue to do the work that’s important to you, or have all of your needs provided for without effort. You can exist in the physical world or as pure spirit and energy. Or anything in between. This, I know, is radically different from the accepted notions of an afterlife, a heaven on another level, distinct from our physical life. But this is, to me at least, a more comforting idea, the choices. I think this because I find the idea of usefulness to be central to happiness. I would want to continue to feel that I had a purpose, instead of existing in a kind of blissful state.
“I think people need to struggle. It’s built into our nature through millions of years. How many times have you reached a goal or achieved something you’d worked hard for, only to find yourself a little let down?
“I’m not saying that this is right for everybody. It’s just something to think about because the time of this merging is here, although it will be a gradual thing. A big question for people seems to be that of some kind of final judgement. But remember, he told us back a year ago now, that only the truly evil would be judged, that people are basically good, and our mistakes aren’t going to be punished. He is not vengeful. Those were his very words to me last night.”
Luke went on for another hour, touching on many issues that the merging posed. He was not conscious at all of what he was saying. He felt oddly apart from himself, with the sensation that he could look back and observe, could even judge his own sincerity and credibility. He did not find it wanting. He had the distinct sense that it was not really he that was speaking. That he was a conduit for the visitor, a mere broadcast channel through which the future was being revealed.
He wasn’t aware that, by now, more than two million people were listening on the nationwide network, many in groups, huddled around radios the way their parents had done during the war. The sky change had riveted the public’s attention and news reports had tracked the story back to this nighttime radio show originating from San Diego, whose host now seemed to be saying, in a compellingly direct way, that he had been chosen to tell them about a new way of being.
Jake eventual whispered into Luke’s headset that he had pilot Bill Flowers on the line and that he was ready to go. Flowers was uneasy. He regretted that he’d agreed to this, that he hadn’t checked in with Eastern’s PR department before saying yes. The airline was touchy, at best, on the subject of turbulence, emergencies and terrified passengers. Flowers knew if he asked for permission to go on the air it would be denied. But as a captain and as someone that the media had taken to for his candor, he had a certain amount of leeway with management. He had decided to listen to Luke’s show for a while, in preparation for his interview. In the comfortable surroundings of his den at home, with its pictures of planes he’d flown and buddies from the long-ago war; he felt a calm come over him from the voice on the radio. It was not unlike the feeling that he had on missions, so long ago, just after he had lifted off the carrier’s deck.
Feeling good had eluded Bill in recent months.
In the last year, he had stopped feeling still young enough to have possibilities before him. With the passing of his last birthday, he suddenly thought of himself as old. He no longer saw the potential for adventure or the kind of love he had longed for, but never found. Over time, Flowers had witnessed the slow erosion of his belief that the future held something other than more of the sad sameness that was his life. The central fact of existence was his searing loneliness and this slide into autumn. Now, listening to Luke, he sensed the return of belief.
Chapter 17
Flowers joined Luke by telephone hookup and told the story of the flight. He talked at length about the way he’d felt in the light. The tale came out easily, without caution or doubt. Listeners were struck by his quiet authority, but more so, by his new-found enthusiasm for the future.
After signoff, Luke and Jake left by the usual back door, noticing a disconcerting lack of a crowd. Only the limousine and driver awaited them and the security gates were curiously open. The driver usually tensed up for running the gauntlet of onlookers turned to them when they slid inside. His face was jubilant, oddly out of place on the hard-boiled, retired cop. “People aren’t gonna be a bother anymore. Everything’s changed now.” He turned and started to drive and Luke studied the man’s reflection in the rear view mirror.
“Did you listen to the show tonight?”
He answered Luke through the reflection. “I didn’t have to. Everybody just knows, now, everybody.” Luke saw what the driver meant on the ride home. People gathered in small groups everywhere, talking in friendly clusters, connecting with neighbors that they had never talked to, until tonight. They no longer were wary of the somewhat unknown, because there were no unknowns. Eileen was in a group of neighbors when he pulled up outside the house. Jeremy was sleeping in her arms and she smiled at Luke the way she had in those innocent days back in Connecticut.
That was it. The return of innocence. He saw it now on all the faces. But as he looked at them, his new, deeper awareness showed him more. It was the removal of the weight of guilt and the healing of all their own small tragedies. They looked now only toward tomorrow, released from their pasts and any ambiguity about the future.
He walked up and put his arm around her shoulders, steering her lightly toward the house as they nodded goodnight to the neighbors. ”When’s our fence coming down?”
A Voice In The Night Page 6