Unstable atmospheric circulation

A story by Valentin D. Ivanov

The Superjumbo limped across the sky for a moment before falling to the ground...


1. "Aisle or window?"


The check-in area smelled of polluted rain and human sweat.

"Good afternoon, sir. Where are you flying today?" The airline girl smiled at me.

"Hello." I passed my ticket over the counter.

Faint reflections betrayed the silicon gloves she was wearing.
They didn't do that when I was young.

"Aisle or window?" She asked and looked up impatiently.
An endless line started behind me.

I probably appeared rather confused because she switched to broken Bulgarian:

"Do pa-tek-a-ta il-i do pro-zor-et-s-a?"1

She probably read it from the screen.
The airline was using the cabin crew to speed up the check-in.

"Aisle, please."

"Oh, I am sorry sir. Somebody just took the last aisle seat."

"It's OK, a window will do fine."

The girl started the chant that sounded alike in all languages.

"It is forbidden to bring aboard firearms, knives, flammable materials ..."

The windows of the passenger lounge were stained and I could hardly make out the distant planes on the runway.

2. The Sicilian from New Jersey

"Where are the Arabs today? The richest are in Canada, the not so rich - in Siberia, and the rest are gone." My fellow traveler smashed the air with his hands. He was in his early twenties, his name was Robert but he insisted on calling himself Roberto. "And the Arab terrorism is gone with them too."

"The terrorism had an economic basis. It was the poor that..."

"Yeah. I saw them in Toronto - one house is Arabic, the next is Jewish, the third is Arabic again. Their kids play together and they borrow the lawn mowers from each other on Sundays."

"Did you study in Toronto?"

Roberto thwarted my attempt to switch topics and launched into a new speech about the ruthless behavior of the Great powers toward his historical Mother Land. He was born in New Jersey, but looked like the proverbial Italian - curly black hair, dark mediterranean face, and sharp gestures supporting every other word. Half an hour into the flight I knew everything about his family, from their alcohol smuggling operation during the Prohibition to the successful insurance joint venture with some Japanese in the recent years.

Instead, I wanted to enjoy the feeling of ease coming as the acceleration of the Superjumbo pressed my back into the seat, leaving all the worries remained in the departure lounge. I wanted to see the airplane emerging from the cloud cover and to look at the forgotten circle of the Sun. I had even found a pair of sunglasses, an unimaginable feat in this ever overcast world.

The front wheels lifted above the runway, and the vibrations disappeared as the heavy plane escaped from the grip of the Earth. The engines screamed and Roberto relaxed, relieved that the old man hadn't asked him to swap seats. Unfortunately for me, this meant an even more powerful stream of words about the injustice toward the Italians after the CC.

"Yes, the Climactic catastrophe..." I tried to make him laugh.

"Climatic catastrophe." Roberto didn't find anything sexual about the Humanity dying in its prime.

We circled above Sofia once, just as I remembered. Rather impolitely, I turned away from Roberto, put on my sunglasses, and looked at the bald scull of Vitosha Mountain. As a student, I used to go hiking there in the forests.

The gray line of the horizon waved slightly, and the plane took course for Egypt. The captain thanked us for choosing his airline, first in French, then in English. The signal went off but I kept my belt tight - the memories of old encounters with turbulence were still fresh in my mind.

Roberto, silenced for a moment by the captain's speech, quickly recovered and started to complain about the indifference of the French, who imposed strict quotes on the Italian immigration.

"The European solidarity is dying..."

"There has never been any European solidarity. Look at the Spanish Civil War. A century ago the French didn't want to accept refugees, the same as today."

"That was before the European Union. They have no excuse now. And it's only a temporary settlement, for about ten years or so, until the climate gets back to normal and the air cools down..."

This was not a topic for an in-flight conversation. Certainly not for a flight crossing the depopulated equatorial zone. It felt like the first years after September 11, when nobody dared to mention the word terrorist near a plane and undercover cops hid among the passengers. There is no need for all that now, with ground computers running the flights.

Roberto looked fresh and enthusiastic, forcing me to use my last defense - an ancient notebook I carried to write my travel notes. It was a way to add meaning to my free time. The sense of purpose is a rare commodity for people of my age.

My neighbor was stunned.

"Hewlett-Packard! Man, this thing should go straight to the Smithsonian!"

"Yes, it is kind of old." I was searching for the power plug. In my youthful days, only the business class passengers enjoyed this convenience. The plebes in the economy had to carry two batteries on the long flights.

Roberto kept silent for a moment surprising me so much that I found myself checking up what's wrong with him. He was just taking out of his suitcase a thin tube, actually two rolled up pieces of plastic - a keyboard and a monitor. The Italian-American turned the power on, and the plastic hardened. He hung the screen on the back of the seat in front of him, and looked at my notebook defiantly.

The permanent cloud cover of Europe slid beneath the wing. My daughter had told me that I would see the Mediterranean only when we got close to the African coast.

3. Press "Enter"

I stared down at the water in surprise. I hadn't noticed the clouds getting thinner, but now there was nothing between us and the wrinkled surface below. Roberto stopped killing dragons in his game and leaned over to take a look.

"Dear passengers, we are approaching the city of Alexandria. It is to your right", announced the captain.

The name lied. The white domes among the dunes had nothing to do with the old town, drowned beneath the Nile's water. Further ahead a few crumbling rock piles stuck above the surface. My voyages had never taken me to Egypt before, this was the first time I ever saw the pyramids. "The Sphinx is in the Louvre for preservation, of course", said Roberto. "The damn Frenchies took that too".

"Why are you flying their airline then?" I regretted asking the question before I finished it, but Roberto just lifted his shoulders and returned to the dragon game.

The white domes soon vanished, and I returned to my travel log. It was a hobby. I had kept it since my first trip abroad. It made it easier to write letters afterward.

The flight attendants served the dinner.

"What would you like to drink, sir?" I saw a familiar face, the girl from the check-in counter in Sofia.

"Do you have cognac?"

"I am sorry sir, this is a non-drinking flight."

Apparently, many things had changed since the last time I flew.

"Oh, well... What else do you have?"

She named a few drinks. I recognized only the diet coke and ordered it. The girl handed me a plastic cap with an advertising smile.

The sun rushed toward the horizon, trying to sneak a peak at my screen through the illuminator, my eyes soon got tired and I just looked out, waiting for the sunset. A rugged rocky desert laid bellow. The sand in Sahara rules only the outermost parts next to the North African coast.

Flying at sunset makes me feel like we are about to climb above the sun. At least until that intangible moment when the yellow disk hides bellow the horizon leaving behind the sprinkles of stars.

It was dark when I opened my eyes again. Roberto was jumping nervously in his seat. He looked around, and pressed enter.

Several things happened simultaneously. Later, I had to think carefully to separate them. First, the lights went off. The seats descended in darkness. Some passengers screamed. Next, the engines cut out. I was painfully aware how their continuous buzz disappeared.

"Cazzo!"

Roberto yielded, and started to type frantically. It was to no avail, his screen had darkened too. Just a few electrical discharges sparkled at the corners. Left without power, the monitor of the Italian-American rolled itself up and fell in his lap. He tried to turn it on again, unsuccessfully.

A few seconds ago the Superjumbo, four hundred tons of aluminum and plastic, flew through the air eleven kilometers above the ground. She was still advancing, but without the same vigor. The seat below me softened. We were falling. Roberto stared emptily ahead.

"Italy is a monarchy and rules two thirds of the globe."

He did not hear me. More passengers were screaming now. I shook his hand.

"The flights are routine demonstration of human arrogance."

"What?!"

"Tighten your belt." I told him, and started to put my notebook back in the carry-on. I preferred to have the sharp edges of its old-fashioned case away from me during the emergency landing. Somehow, I was sure we would land. Of course, the captain could dive down and try to jump-start the engines, but I doubted he would. The passenger liners are too heavy for that kind of exercise.

"I didn't want to do it", uttered the Italian from New Jersey.

"You didn't want to do what?"

4. The terrorist sits on the next seat

First came the heat, then the pain. I could breath in only about a quarter of the usual amount of air, before somebody started to tear my chest from within.

"Broken ribs", a stranger confirmed my fears. "Spit, please".
He handed me a paper napkin.

I did, as much as I could.

The man pointed a flashlight at the napkin.

"Excellent, the lungs are not punctured."

"Are you a doctor?"

"Yes, a veterinarian."

"Thank you."

"For nothing."

"What happened?"

"We landed. The rescue will be here any moment."

Roberto was gone.

"Where is he?" I pointed at the empty seat.

"Was he your grandson? Don't worry,
he is here, and he is fine. I sent him to bring water."

"He is not my grandson. He is a terrorist. Most likely from the Green Mafia."

The veterinarian looked at me suspiciously. Pain shock, heat stroke and all that.

"I must speak to the captain."

"The captain... is the only casualty. The plane hit a dune."

"The first officer?"

"There is no first officer, this is an automatic flight."

My old friend, the stewardess appeared behind him. She carried a flashlight in one hand and an icy glass of water in the other. I figured we must have crashed recently if the ice still survived the heat.

"How long ago did we crash?"

"About two hours ago, sir," she said.

I asked her about Roberto.

"Yes, he came to me for water.
I sent him out to help digging a tunnel to the baggage deck.

"Get some strong men and arrest him." I told her what happened.
"He might be dangerous."

She looked inquisitively at me, then at the veterinarian. He nodded slightly and the stewardess disappeared leaving behind a flair of schooled efficiency and a misty glass.

"Doctor, can I stand up?"

"Yes but..."

"If it is yes, then help me, please."

"First swallow this pill."

5. Somebody, please turn off the oven!

We stood under the tail. A few meters ahead two groups of men dug trenches toward the cargo doors. I discovered that the hot air was more painful than the broken ribs.

Roberto was dwarfed between two basketball players from the University of Cape Town. "My" stewardess was interrogating him, surrounded by a few passengers. The Italian-American looked like a lost child about to start crying. I was lucky he admitted everything. Otherwise it would have been my word against his.

"I didn't want to do it, you see, I didn't want! We were just supposed to land in Palermo, and to take the passengers on a tour around the town. The news networks would come, and the world would see the suffering of Southern Italy..."

"When did you take the plane off course?" The stewardess asked.

"After sunset. Otherwise the captain would have noticed immediately."

This kid had used his supermodern rollbook - that's what they called the notebooks nowadays, - to take control of the plane, and he had brought us all the way to Algeria.

"... until the system suddenly asked me to confirm my identity, probably a random security check. I entered the captain's password. I had copied it from his PDA chip." Roberto knocked on his scull where these devices were implanted usually. "But there must have been another one..."

I wondered about the ground control. The stewardess thought of it too.

"Oh, the controllers thought we were on course all the time. You see… I fed their system a false signal..." A new wave of technical explanations followed. My experience with computers was too outdated to understand the details, but it was clear what it meant for us.

"So, the rescuers are searching the desert somewhere in Kenya now, yes?"

"Yeah, I suppose so."

"Can we reach somebody? There must be dozens of satellite phones on board."

"We tried," the stewardess answered, "but nothing works..."

"It is because the system didn't just stop," Roberto begun.

"Yes," she did not allow him to continue. "You caused a shortage in the main electrical power burning the interfaces of every biochip on board. We already know that."

"I didn't want it to happen this way..."

We could wash our hands with the few liters of processing liquid from the computers and telephones. Or we could keep it for breakfast. I heard it was high in calories.

"It used to be called an electromagnetic bomb." I reflected.

"Do you remember where we were before the accident?"
The stewardess went on with the interrogation.

"Of course. We flew overland, along the coastline. The sea is about twenty miles to the North. And the North is..." He raised his hand as if to indicate the direction, and froze in the middle of the gesture.

The flashlight of the stewardess started shaking.

"Which way?" She asked, her voice unchanged. "Which way?"

"I don't know. We took a few turns before landing, it was to the left, I think..."

I started laughing. Lightly at first, fearing the pain from the broken ribs. Fortunately, the veterinarian must have given me enough painkillers to knock out a horse. I continued to laugh deeper and deeper, and it felt fine.

The light cone pointed at my face. The stewardess braced herself to deal with a crazy old man when I finally managed to stop.

"This way," I pointed at the Polar star, "is north."

Then I gave them a short astronomy lecture drawing on the sand. I felt like Ptolemy or Hipparchus. Except that I was only a retired professor of astronomy from a poor God-forsaken country at the edge of the habitable zone.

I had to repeat the lesson half an hour later. This was how long it took the stewardess to put together a rescue party of two-dozen strong men and women. My pupils were excellent. They caught up right away, and even asked me a few questions. They would have figured it out for themselves by tomorrow night, I was sure. These days only a selected few could afford to fly, unlike twenty years ago.

Of course, they knew about the Earth rotation, they knew about Polaris, but most of them hadn't seen any stars since the CC. At that time they were just teenagers.

Nobody could explain the permanent cloud cover to the North and to the South of the Equatorial zone. The meteophysicists had expected a winter instead. They published hundreds of papers every year to hide their ignorance. I read them while I was escaping from the heat in the National Library, saving money from my home electricity bill. No one had an idea about the nature of the phenomenon, but at least my colleagues had come up with a good name for it - unstable atmospheric circulation.

#

The painkillers started to wear off and the veterinarian recommended rest. I found myself in one of the empty seats in the business class. It was more like a bed, actually.

The same stewardess brought me water, - the glass wasn't cool anymore, the fridges had given out, - and she asked. "Who are you, mister?"

"When I was flying before, people often asked me the same question rather. If I preferred to be left alone, I would say I was an astrophysicist. If I felt like talking, I would say that I was an astronomer."

She smiled.

The rescue team arrived in the morning.