With These Eyes (24 page)

With a crisp "Aye! Aye!", the helmsman
executed the order and set the ship's speed to full. Inside the
hydrofoil's generator room, the quantum bubble's glow changed from
bright yellow to a blinding blue-white color as it grew in size.
Its power output rose to provide for the ship's increased demand.
The surge of current brought the powerful rotors to their maximum
speed, pumping a massive stream of air under the heavy craft. The
two large wind generators in the aft pushed forward with the force
of Ralf's freight train. The air expelled from the hover skirt
moved so violently that water sprayed with the velocity of fire
hoses around the ship's perimeter. Soon, the hovercraft thundered
ashore in an area of the port that had been designed for neither
landings nor travel. A couple of grazing snow bunnies failed to
escape on time and became part of a hailstorm of plants, leaves,
and the contents of several seaside garbage cans. A couple who was
enjoying a romantic moment on the shoreline ran off just in time to
avoid being run over.

Isabelle and Ralf were speeding along on
Danish mainland when they saw the Captain and Tasha's Troopers
barreling alongside. Isabelle had enjoyed her time with Ralf. Her
short encounter with him shook loose a few positive emotions. For a
while there, she wasn't too concerned with her pursuer. The time
had come, at least for the moment, to move on. "How would you feel
if I delivered your bike to Berlin for you?" Ralf agreed to meet up
with Isabelle in Berlin. He wanted to see her again and it was
becoming apparent quickly that he wouldn't if she got caught by her
foe. After a short good-bye that left them both longing for more,
Isabelle climbed along the side of the locomotive and onto the
first train car. Across from her, the Troopers on deck of the
hovercraft were closing in. Isabelle quickly released the tie-down
straps that were holding the yellow super bike in place. It was a
motorcycle that looked fast just standing there. With one hand on
the gas, Isabelle put the key into the ignition. She glanced across
to the hovercraft where her eyes caught those of a Trooper standing
by the railing. It was like looking into the eyes of a shark - an
empty stare of death. Isabelle was reminded why she was fighting
this battle. She whispered to herself "I love you, dad," and put
the full-face helmet Ralf had given her on. She started the
motorcycle's engine and took it racing down the length of the train
till she reached the last of its cars. A strong wind was coming in
from the ocean. Isabelle had to struggle against its gale force.
She turned the bike around so she was facing the locomotive. With a
roar of the engine, Isabelle threw the transmission into first gear
and sped towards the front of the train. Second gear, third, the
wind that had been whipping against her suddenly felt like it had
completely stopped. Isabelle was traveling with the wind.

An access road was snaking past the train
tracks, this was her chance, but she would have to clear the
eastbound track that ran between her and the roadway. A slight turn
to the left, Isabelle had reached the edge of the car. She yanked
the handlebar up towards herself and, as if the wind of the ocean
was carrying her, Isabelle jumped off the train and landed safely
on the small frontage road. The Sea Captain saw Isabelle's actions
as a challenge, he was not going to be defeated like Tasha.

"Let's show her how a man takes care of
problems. Helmsman, reverse thrust. Get us on the other side of
that train."

The seaman at the ship's conn complied. The
heavy craft dipped its nose towards the ground as it slowed
abruptly. Ralf saw the Captain's move and slowed the train to block
the hovercraft from Isabelle. The train had almost come to a stop.
The mood was tense on the Sea Captain's bridge.

"He's stopping the train. Full speed ahead!
Get around the front of it."

The unusual convoy was approaching the
Copenhagen terminal complex which housed the sea port, train
station and a brand-new indoor shopping mall. The helmsman’s eyes
showed fear. "But sir, the station ahead."

"What are you, chicken? Step aside,
sailor!"

The Sea Captain used his shoulder to push the
helmsman aside. His left hand on the conn, his right hand pushed
the throttle as far as the lever would go. It its storm of debris,
the nose of the heavy ship lifted up and with tremendous force, the
craft thrust forward. A trail of destruction continued to mark its
path.

By now, Tasha had surfaced from below the sea
and was speeding towards the slowing train ahead of her. What she
couldn't see in her rear-view mirrors was that the passenger train
behind her was closing in on its way up from the ocean floor,
expecting a clear track ahead.

To protect Isabelle, Ralf threw his
locomotive's speed control to maximum. The train once again matched
the speed of the accelerating hovercraft, where the Sea Captain was
not about to give up. He was determined to outrun Ralf once and for
all, ignoring the ever-closer terminal complex that laid ahead. His
narrow vision was on Isabelle who was riding along the access road,
almost close enough to grab. "I'll get you," he muttered and turned
his attention towards the direction of his travel. It was too late.
He had reached the terminal complex's parking lot. Like a snowplow,
the hovercraft was scooping parked cars in both directions. A
tornado of bent metal, broken glass and luggage inundated the area.
Loose items on the bridge became airborne from the rocky ride. The
Sea Captain was dumbfounded. His pride as a warrior was at stake
and his mind was desperately searching for a way to still catch
Isabelle. He refused to accept defeat, especially to a woman, but
there was no good way out of this for him. Finally, he reached for
the throttle to stop the ship when a row of parked tour buses
exploded on impact at the bow of the hovercraft. The bridge crew
and Troopers on deck were knocked off their feet. With the throttle
still at maximum, the enormous mass of metal forged ahead, nearing
the shopping mall. The Sea Captain was busy regaining his bearings
after crashing through the interactive map in the middle of the
bridge.

Without a clue about the looming disaster
barreling towards them, inside the
Copenhagen Solaris Shopping
Center
, hundreds of shoppers were busily spending their money
on Apophis products. The mall was a four-story structure that
prided itself on offering virtually anything to buy. It had been
built by Apophis to eliminate local businesses by offering to sell
their merchandise at 50% of the price local products were costing.
The shopping center was celebrating its second anniversary, long
after Copenhagen's last privately run store had closed forever.

The logos of the shops in the mall all used
some derivation of Apophis' sun-symbol. Although there were tens of
thousands of products for sale, a sense of uniformity and
blandness characterized the whole structure. To entice children to
nag their parents about mall visits, the central plaza featured a
roller coaster that reached the four stories of shops under a glass
dome. A sign hanging at the ticket booth promised free rides to
anyone who purchased a flu-shot from an adjacent booth. The
coaster's train had gone up the initial incline and its lead car
turned downward for a large drop. In the front seat, the only
passenger was the man in the chicken suit, who had been peddling
retina scans and flu shots on Michael's show.

Not far from the flu shot booth, several men
filled an arrangement of benches, doing little but guard their
wives' shopping bags. The group appeared a bit removed from their
environment. Each of them was wearing ear phones attached to their
respective digital assistants. Digital music and a soccer game
broadcast from far away provided an escape from their stasis. It
was a busier day than usual, many shoppers were there to take
advantage of Apophis' global sale in commemoration of the big
merger. Inside the
Kosen-Rufu Clothing Company
, a very
popular shop on the ground level, shopping was about to be
interrupted. A pudgy woman was working with all her might to close
the zipper on a dress she wanted to buy. The garment was obviously
a couple of sizes too small, but she was determined to fit into her
high-school size. Standing in front of a three-way mirror, she
decided to cinch the dress with a leopard-print belt that the
saleslady had handed to her. A tug on the belt and she fastened it
around her bulbous waist, dividing her mass like sausage links.

"Are you sure this is an eight?" she asked,
upset the dress didn't fit any better.

Before the clerk could answer, the reflection
of the human sausage shattered into thousands of shards. The
hovercraft broke through the wall behind the mirror like a wrecking
ball. Both women were knocked to the ground by the craft's bow
before it blazed over them and across the store. The massive ship
leveled clothes racks and shoppers like a lawnmower going through a
flowerbed. In a trail of utter destruction, it forged through the
storefront's window and into the mall's main plaza. The husbands
waiting on the benches outside were oblivious to their impending
doom. Two of them suddenly jumped up and threw their hands in the
air and exclaimed, "Goal! Goal!"

At that moment, the craft entered their field
of view. Their minds, trying to escape their meek existences, were
still on the soccer game. Like a couple of deer caught in the
headlights of a bus, both men stood frozen, almost longing for
release. After a split-second, their lives were over. Benches,
shopping bags and bodies were sent flying everywhere. Many of them
died the way they lived: unaware.

The Sea Captain and his crew catapulted
across the bridge, windows shattering all around them. The roller
coaster train had just completed its first drop from the top level.
With the giant chicken in the front seat, it shot back up the track
with enormous momentum. Shoppers were running in all directions to
escape the carnage taking place in the courtyard. The hydrofoil's
powerful rotors continued to push forward at full force towards the
multistory amusement ride that towered in the central plaza. Like a
twig, it snapped one of the coaster's heavy steel supports. A
section of the track sagged with a heavy groan, muffled only by
screams of the injured. Another support beam snapped, the
hovercraft buried itself deep in the structure of the thrill-ride.
The impact took out the girders that supported the down-section of
track onto which the train was about to turn. More and more of the
structure collapsed, catching the hovercraft in a web of twisted
steel. The remaining section carried the speeding train towards the
missing downwards turn. With no track to guide it back down, the
train and its yellow-feathered passenger continued their assent. In
a barrage of shards, the giant chicken took flight through the
mall's glass dome. For a brief moment, he saw with the eyes of the
mighty eagle. This reminded him of a time long ago when his life
was majestic and proud. The man in the chicken-suit saw flashes of
his childhood dreams of Hollywood.

“Look for me on the screen.”

Those were his parting words to friends and
family many years ago. His aspirations of hearing “we’re ready for
your close-up” had soon produced another emotion - fear of failure.
This was the very moment, the chicken became aware of the gravity
of his situation. He visualized his imminent doom with no chance of
relief. Quickly, his mind threw up walls to protect itself from the
realization of what laid at the end of this rapid path of descent.
Like the lemming, the yellow-feathered artist in the train of doom
chose to live a life of self-delusion. In his need to be perceived
as a success, he compromised his pride and departed from the path
his dreams had paved for him in gold. The only gold he saw in his
fear, was that of a grotesque mutation of his dreams. It had never
occurred to him that chicken weren’t yellow. Darkness had plaid a
devilish trick on his mind.

The pursuit of a brilliant life in Hollywood
had been a prevalent thought in the man’s mind all his life.
Pursuit implies that one will never reach the goal. The misguided
artist had laid out a world for himself in which success was always
a step in the future. He failed to see that his life took place in
the present. He saw the shimmer of gold in the feathers of a
costume and the lights of a stage whose sole purpose of existence
were to create an illusion. His compassion and higher consciousness
would have warned him in an instant that he was pursuing a path of
false idols. The once mighty protector of the sky had chosen the
ways of a yard-bird, pecking away at his dreams.

The man in the chicken suit was the fallen
eagle.

Outside, Tasha was still chasing Ralf's
train. She spotted Isabelle on the access road riding just to the
side of the freight train. In the rear-view mirror, her eyes caught
a set of three headlights approaching. The high-speed passenger
train had emerged from the tunnel and was closing in. Tasha
realized it was time to get off the track. She jerked her steering
wheel to the left in the hopes of continuing her pursuit of
Isabelle. The rail-support wheels threw sparks but withstood the
force of her attempt. Tasha punched the control knob with her fist
and the four metal guide wheels retracted. Again, she steered to
the left. The truck's tires moved off the rail, but driving on the
ties made the vehicle bounce so violently that its work arm broke
loose and swung about uncontrolled. Tasha was driving entirely too
fast to remain in control of her vehicle. She so was preoccupied
with her desire to destroy Isabelle that she failed to properly
judge the truck's responsiveness to the extreme conditions she had
created. The stress from the unsecured work arm became too much for
the hydraulic cylinder that provided its only support. A hydraulics
line burst, leaving the man-lift free to flap around. A bounce of
the rail ties and the bucket at the end of the arm swung into the
overhead power line. The basket flipped over the power line like a
hook. Tasha was tethered to the cable and speeding towards a power
pole. She was quickly coming eye to eye with the steel girder's
solid concrete foundation. Tasha drew from countless hours of
training on the obstacle course. She briefly depressed her brake
pedal and steered sharp to the right. She was in command of the
truck and it made a clean turn back onto the track. With only a
hand's width space in between, Tasha triumphantly saw the pole's
foundation whiz past her window. She had failed to consider the
work arm, however. The power pole's large ceramic insulator
instantly snagged the cherry-picker basket.