Diary of One Who Disappeared

by Jason Erik Lundberg

  Thankfully, I’m feeling fine. I have a strong inner ear, and I’ve always been solid on boats and airships. Dad claims I was born when the worst of Hurricane Ann hit Chicago, as if it conferred on me some special ability, an iron stomach. Like a swee. Man, what a boring superpower to have: Non-Vomiting Man!

  (I also have to say, even though I am 100% on board with O’Brien’s initiative to re-integrate all currently imprisoned swees, being around them at the camp in Orlando was unsettling. The propaganda against them has been strong since I was a kid, and I’m sure that this reaction is a holdover from that conditioning, but just being physically in the same place with them made me very uncomfortable. I feel ashamed at this ingrained reaction, especially since so much of my covert mission is to try and help these people.)

  It was probably my imagination, but I could swear that, as Ailene exited the mess, the captain’s gaze lingered just a bit too long on her. Regardless, he didn’t bother to invite me over to the captain’s table with the rest of his senior staff afterward, so I quickly finished my lonely meal, then left for my own berth.

  Not the most auspicious start to the trip.

  Thursday, October 4

  Ailene and I met up this afternoon at the observation deck, located just below the bridge in the forward section of the ship. 180 degrees worth of bullet- and shatter-proof plastic windows, revealing cloudless skies a startling blue. In another life, we might have been enjoying such a view while on a pleasure cruise, celebrating our upcoming anniversary. Instead, we were both bent over a table discussing operational and diplomatic tactics.

  She seems to have recovered a bit from her motion sickness, if it ever even existed, insisting on getting right down to it. I took her through my binder of research, the result of months of work, emphasising cultural details, chains of bureaucratic command, economic achievements, religious sensitivities, etc. As the superior officer, she’ll be taking the lead, showing her authority, blah blah blah, then turning things over to me to negotiate the actual details with the Ministry of Stability. I’m still doing the lion’s share of the work; O’Brien has already promised me a promotion to Grade Four if we succeed.

  After around ninety minutes, Ailene sat back, eyes glazed, and said she would read the rest of the research report later, that her headache had returned and she needed to lie down. And then, without a word, she closed the binder, tucked it under her arm and left the room.

  I couldn’t believe it. As a Grade Five, it’s certainly her right, but I do feel a bit possessive of all the work I’ve done. The only other copy is back with O’Brien at DESD headquarters. I almost got out of my chair to retrieve it from her grasp, but I had been shocked into inaction.

  PRIORITY COMMUNIQUÉ

  To DESD Director Richard O’Brien

  For Your Eyes Only

  Friday, October 5

  Dear Director O’Brien,

  We have successfully landed at Anchorage, praise the Holy Father for our thus-far uneventful sojourn! The wireless connectivity at this node is sufficiently strong enough that transmission of this missive should reach you immediately. Our stopover will last just under three hours, so that the airship’s engines and supplies can be replenished and bolstered before our transition out of NAU territory and into the Orient. I must admit to a certain nervousness, as I have never before left our holy homeland, but I trust in the Lord’s wisdom and in His divine plan to get me through.

  Agent Noonan has been brought up to speed on the mission, and has assumed operational control. She will take on the role of sole liaison with the officials from Tinhau’s Ministry of Stability once we arrive. I am only to act in an advisory capacity, as is more consistent with my station.

  The Alaskans appear to be a hardy people, well-acclimatised to the frosty climate, no doubt because of their fervent fundamental beliefs in the Word, with which all good NAU citizens share; I am chagrined to discover that the climate here is so cold at present, when the leaves have just begun turning back home in Manhattan. I find myself unprepared for the biting winds, taking refuge in the shops and food establishments of this way station.

  As always, I welcome any advice and guidance. Otherwise, I shall communicate once again when we have reached the megalopolis of Tokyo. I remain

  Your Obedient Servant and Emissary,

  DESD Agent Grade Three Lucas Lehrer

  FROM THE PAPER JOURNAL OF LL

  Friday, October 5

  Pirates! Sweet God in all His glory, I have never been so terrified!

  Not thirty minutes after we reboarded the Zior at Anchorage and once more lifted into the skies, our airship suddenly echoed with concussive fire. We lurched from one side to the other (I’m presuming as part of evasive manoeuvres), and my notebooks, æ-reader and official materials all tumbled off my desk into a mess upon the floor.

  I left my cabin and made my way down the corridor and up the steep staircase to the observation deck to find out what was going on; halfway up, the ship jerked to the left, and I slammed into the railing (my upper arm is already visibly bruised, and aches like hell). The observation deck was empty; I approached the windows, gripped the handrail and saw our enemy.

  I’d expected an opposing airship of equivalent size and armament, but was shocked to see instead half a dozen small human-powered ornithopters, with wings like hummingbirds or dragonflies, a two-person crew visible behind each of their windscreens, and portable flak guns mounted underneath. They must have seen our ship at Anchorage and decided that it would make a fine prize. The small thopters were spaced out along even intervals, and partially encircled us. They fired in coordinated bursts, the blasts making the Zior shudder and boom, but they had underestimated our defences; the ship’s armour was more than enough to protect us. I shouted in surprise as our phlogiston cannons deafeningly returned fire, the green light annihilating two of the thopters completely and sending a third tumbling to the earth below in a trail of black smoke. In one shot, we had taken out half of the pirates’ attack force.

  As the ship turned to face the others, I realised that I wasn’t alone on the deck; Ailene stood beside me, her whole body quivering, just as mine was doing. She turned and looked at me, the fear evident in her eyes, and then covered my hand on the rail with her own. We stayed still and silent for the rest of the battle, as the Zior’s machine guns quickly destroyed the remaining enemy aircraft. It was over. It had barely lasted fifteen minutes; the only sounds in that room were the engines and my pounding heart. Ailene and I didn’t move; it was like a spell, and I didn’t want to break that tenuous connection, even as my body hummed with adrenaline and excitement. She breathed heavily through her mouth; I wanted to ask what she was thinking, wanted to know if this simple touch of hands meant something more. She turned to me, and inhaled as if about to speak, when the door to the observation deck banged open and Captain Bergeron strode in.

  “There you two are!” he shouted, and Ailene’s hand jerked back from mine. “A bit of excitement to shake up the day, eh?”

  “Excitement?” Ailene said, an icy tone in her voice, a tone I knew well. “A bit of excitement?! They could have blown us all up!”

  “Nah, those were small fry. Hardly worth the bullets, really. Wait until we get to southern China and northern Siam, where the ships are bigger, and better armed. Then we’ll see some fun!”

  “Captain…”

  “Relax, ma’am. My crew is trained for these types of engagements. We’ll see you safely all the way to Tinhau, no problem.”

  The captain made a noise in his throat, tipped his hat and stepped back out through the door, leaving the two of us alone again. Ailene glanced at me, any tenderness replaced by a mask of stone, and I knew that whatever that moment had been was now over. She hurried towards the door, and through.

  I stayed there for a while more, calming my thoughts, and my pulse. I’d forgot how her touch could make me tingle, even if it was brief. And I know she’d felt something too; she had lowered her guard, revealing a small par
t of the woman I used to love. It made me wonder if our marriage isn’t beyond help after all.

  Sunday, October 7

  I’ve spent the past two days confined to bed, when I wasn’t puking into the en suite toilet. I’m just now feeling good enough to write again. The ship’s doctor has diagnosed ’flu: fever, body aches, wet coughs, an unending river of mucus, all the horrible symptoms. Sometimes it’s God’s will that we fall ill, so that we can appreciate how good it feels to be well, but that’s of little comfort right now.

  I haven’t been able to sleep properly, so everything just feels off, and somehow heightened. Every small sound is like an explosion, every faint smell makes me gag; even the lights in my cabin leave streaks in my vision when I turn my head. Captain Bergeron, that generous man, noticed my absence and was kind enough to send the doctor to examine me, and then have his chef bring me chicken soup and electrolytic water. The captain himself has even visited a few times to check on me; it has made the loneliness easier to take.

  Ailene, on the other hand, has been a no-show since the battle; I don’t know if she is also miserable in her own room, or if she’s just avoiding me. As I talked to the gentle doctor, a tall man with an impressive beard, I ended up telling him about the difficulties that we’ve had, and how hard it was even being on this mission with all this tension, etc. After I finished, he confided that he’d been divorced for almost twelve years, and that it has been the happiest time of his life; he and his ex-wife just were not compatible, no matter how hard they’d tried to make it work, and the separation was the best thing he’d ever done.

  I was shocked at his frankness; the DESD’s official stance on the sacrament of marriage is One-Man-One-Woman-and-Their-Children as the ideal family unit. There was no way for the ship’s doctor to know whether I would report him for subversion, or at the very least lecture him on procreation being the duty of every NAU citizen, citing the massacres by the Range twenty-five years ago, and the mass starvation following the devastation of our food supply. Is it really so obvious that I’m putting on a front? That I don’t hold completely to the party line? Or was it a test, to prove my loyalty and adoration?

  I’m now exhausted, and this worrying is not helping. I’ll deal with it later.

  Monday, October 8

  I felt a bit better today, but still spent it largely in my cabin; I only emerged for meals, in order to minimise the odds of coming across Ailene in the corridors. The metal walls thrum with the vibration of the airship’s engines; the dull grey seems to close in on me. I imagine that this is what the cabin on a submarine feels like. A submarine in the clouds.

  The clouds are no longer a threat, and thank the Almighty for it. I was thinking about the Range again today, back to that time just before the weapon disappeared forever. The safety lectures by our assistant principal, delivered with the same intonation as his morning sermons; the daily drop-and-scurry drills; the aftermath videos of attacks in the Midwest, some which had taken place in Wisconsin, so close by. I still have the nightmares so many years later, where I’m a helpless child, paralysed with fear, unable to move while that mobile upside-down mountain patiently hunts me down with its green lightning. Twenty-five years after “the Creator smote the abomination” (the official story), or it just drifted back to wherever it had come from (my theory), yet the Range still has the power to terrorise me.

  I’ve always taken comfort in the fact that I’ll see everyone I’ve ever loved in Heaven, and live in the bliss that comes with God’s grace; when I was a kid, I could visualise the afterlife so concretely that I felt like I’d already arrived there without the trauma of death. For so long, I’ve believed that the existence of Heaven is an inviolable fact, but now I can’t help having doubts.

  Ailene still doesn’t know it, but I actually read the pamphlet that was stuffed under our door by those anti-theist hooligans back in August, done out of curiosity as much as spite. They had some interesting points: that when we die (the 85% of us below the pay grade for life-extension treatments), our atoms and nutrients will merge with the soil, or drift through the air to blend with countless other living beings on the planet. That we’re all connected; in one way we pass on, but in another way we can never die. We’re only living here on borrowed time, in borrowed bodies.

  But still, no communion with the Almighty, no reunion with loved ones, no everlasting bliss? It’s just too unsettling to think about.

  Tuesday, October 9

  I’m either allergic to the antibiotics prescribed by the ship’s doctor, or they’ve had an unintended side effect, because my heart has been pounding so hard all day long that I thought it might explode. At first I put it down to stress, even though I’ve never experienced something like this, but late morning I asked for the doctor, worried I was having a heart attack or some other cardiac event. He took his sweet time getting to my cabin—if I was actually having a heart attack, I likely would have died before he bothered showing up—and then switched me to another medicine, something he claimed was milder. Even after, I still feel the occasional thwack in my chest, but thankfully my heartbeat has mostly returned to normal. The doc also recommended “Oriental breathing meditation” as a way to calm the mind.

  It wasn’t until mid-afternoon when I realised what day it was.

  Seven years it’s been now since Mom died. Every anniversary, it still punches me in the gut. I still have no idea what she was doing at the Biograph Theater that night, and Dad doesn’t know or won’t tell me; the hit-and-run driver was never caught either. It’s got to the point where I’ve begun forgetting her face, so I pulled from my wallet the photo of her and Dad at the Empire State Building, taken when I was around five years old. I stared at the picture, the wind at the observation deck whipping her hair back, Dad holding his hat down, both of them laughing like little kids, open and heedless. I gave in to the suppressed sadness and wept for a good long while. I still feel so guilty for not being at the funeral, even if only to say goodbye.

  The Zior should be landing in Tokyo very late tonight (or, more accurately, in the very early hours of tomorrow), and I’ve asked the captain to wake me so I can send off another official missive to O’Brien; I’ll wait until we reach Tinhau before sending another encrypted signal, since I can’t be guaranteed of proper tech security before then. I should also email Dad and see how he’s doing. Maybe I can keep him from retreating to the solitude of his garden this year.

  PRIORITY COMMUNIQUÉ

  To DESD Director Richard O’Brien

  For Your Eyes Only

  Wednesday, October 10

  Dear Director O’Brien,

  I am heartened to receive your generous reply to my previous missives. I take great comfort and gain much spiritual strength from your gracious encouragement in our holy mission.

  Just as the NAUS Zior departed Anchorage a little over three days ago, our vessel was briefly beset by vicious aerial pirates, but Our Lord’s wrath effectively smote the heathens aboard their ornithopters, in the form of our ship’s impressive weapons arsenal. Captain Bergeron’s leadership and bravery during the incident must be noted; the man has been the epitome of grace under pressure thus far on our voyage, which from then on proceeded without further delay or antagonism.

  We have just touched down in the Nipponese capital of Tokyo, in the very early hours of the morning. It is the first time I have left my berth in days, laid low as I was by a particularly nasty strain of influenza, inadvertently transmitted, I suspect, by Agent Noonan. I do not hold her responsible, despite her careless lapse in hygiene; it was part of His plan that I experience such suffering in the days before meeting the Tinhau delegation, in order to instil in me the proper gratitude for all that He has seen fit to give me.

  Captain Bergeron tells me that we are now two-thirds through our journey, and if we are not delayed by further acts of piracy or unforeseen mechanical problems, we should reach the island-nation of Tinhau by midday of the 13th. Our Lord has blessed our voyage, and I will conti
nue to endeavour in my piety so that His wondrous protection shall envelop us the entire way until we land on that foreign tropical soil.

  Until then, I remain

  Your Obedient Servant and Emissary,

  DESD Agent Grade Three Lucas Lehrer

  To Joseph Lehrer, NAUAF, Ret.

  Wednesday, October 10

  Dad,

  I know that it’s been more than a year since we last spoke, and we didn’t leave things on the best of terms, but it’s still the 9th where you are, and I wanted you to know that I was thinking of you today. I was looking at that photo of you and Mom at the Empire State Building, during your second honeymoon, when you left me with Aunt Rhonda, remember? That big smile on Mom’s face, it’s how I want to remember her.

  I’m transiting through Tokyo right now, if you can believe that, on a mission for the DESD (which is classified, I’m afraid, but you know how that is). And yes, Ailene is here too. Things between us are not good right now, I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know, since she’s the reason you and I haven’t spoke in so long. I hated being put in the middle of that argument, even if it turns out you were mostly right about her. Still, even while I am trying to make things work with Ailene, I’m sorry that this drove a wedge between you and me.

  Please write back when you can. I hope that you’re doing okay today. Once this mission is over, I’m owed some vacation time. I would like to come home and visit for a while, if that’s okay. And also get some real pizza! As long as I’ve lived in New York, I still haven’t gotten used to the floppy slices of grease they dare to call pizza there.

  Luke

  FROM THE PAPER JOURNAL OF LL

  Wednesday, October 10

  I’m slowly getting accustomed to the shifts in time zones as we move westward, but today my body clock felt like it was simply out of alignment. Likely thanks to our early morning layover in Tokyo (which I had to stay awake for, in order to send my messages). But it could also simply be because I haven’t fully recovered from my recent bout of the ’flu yet: I’m still a bit wobbly on my feet, and at times it appears that a halo or aura surrounds the people I see, whether it’s the crewmen on the ship or the noodle eaters in that Tokyo restaurant. My throat is still scratchy, but I’m also constantly salivating.