The Voyage

by Douglas Falk

  “Family dinner minus one,” Vera observed. “Where’s father? Is he out touring again? Where’s he now, Indonesia or something like that?”

  “Perth. It’s in Australia,” said Clara.

  “I knew Perth is in Australia.”

  “Sure you did,” William whispered to himself.

  Australia. If either of them only knew how close to that location I am set to find myself en route to within a span of just weeks from now. Maybe we should even set off from somewhere in Australia as our last harbour before we sail to the final frontier, Antarctica. It would be a logical move. A few days in paradise before we walk the land of eternal winter…

  “It’s summer down there as of right now,” said William. “I’m sure he’s better off than we are in this frostbite we have right now up here.”

  Clara studied them both with a look of angst.

  “William! How’s it going for you, in school and all? What’s coming up next for you?”

  Oh God. What shall I tell them? Even the most honest of men would lie at this point. She would never, never understand, even if I told her the truth. I have to think of…something…whatever works!

  “Uh…actually, we’re going south. Heading to Ystad for a couple of weeks. You may not hear from me for a while. Might even be a month.”

  “Ystad? A month? What brings you there, and when are you going?” Clara was confounded.

  “The first week of March,” he said as confidently as he could. “By train. We’re going to stay at a bed and breakfast and then if time allows it, drive over Öresund to Copenhagen.”

  Vera looked at him with a mischievous look on her face. “Doesn’t sound like you at all, big brother. Doesn’t sound like you at all. Heading down to the countryside just like that, in no man’s land? Are surprise voyages out of the blue really your hallmark? I doubt it.”

  No man’s land. She’s closer to the mark than she thinks.

  Even Clara had her doubts. “It does sound a bit odd. And for so long. What are you going to do down there?”

  What in the hell does one do in Ystad, and why did I even mention it? Ystad…Wallander…Mankell. We’re going to a Wallander-museum? No! Wallander has nothing to do with my class.

  “To visit the Mark Twain residence. Did you not know that he stayed at a house in Ystad during the late 1800s? He had a modest-looking patch of land there and a house, right next to the beach. As you know we are currently analysing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a project that will be crucial if I ever aim to graduate from that hellhole. We are going down there to breathe the fresh air and seek inspiration. Think of it as some time off, a little bit of escapism.

  Neither of them will know I made every bit of that up, for two reasons. I doubt very much that they are well read enough to know that Twain did not take up residence in Ystad nor in any Swedish city…and on top of that, I don’t think they would even care to look it up.

  “Sweet, big bro. Moving up in life.”

  William had tired of the passive-aggressive dynamic and could not stomach dining with them any longer. He cleared his throat and rose from his chair.

  “Ahem. If you don’t mind, I will take leave a bit early.”

  “I do mind! We’ve barely eaten!”

  “That may be the case,” William said. “But I have pressing business to take care of. And oh, Mother? Could I take a quick look in Father’s room before I leave? I am in need of some sturdy winter clothes, among other things I may find up there. Ystad is terribly cold this time of year…”

  8

  “Argentina, Australia, or New Zealand? I feel like we should set off from Tierra del Fuego, which is located on the border between Argentina and Chile. For no other reason other than I like that there’s an area called the Land of Fire next door to Antarctica. Ushuaia.”

  John took a sip of coffee and looked for a reaction from his friend across the table. They had met at William’s favourite café located next to the beautiful Vasa Park, Ritorno.

  “But then again, you’re the guy with the dough, and you are the brains behind this notorious voyage we are about to embark on. So, you call the shots.”

  “I’m still weighing the options on where we should go next.”

  “You will take care of the bill for all of this, right? Like you said, when I accepted this offer. I can’t accompany you on this expedition with funding from my own pockets, because they are about as empty as a bird’s nest in December.”

  William nodded.

  “Of course, don’t worry about it for a second. Like you said, this is my brainchild. I want you to come, and I want you to make it to the end. Not everyone is born with privilege, and it has not always been to my benefit…but now, it most certainly is. I will foot the bill for everything and spare no expense.”

  John gave him a pat on the shoulder. “You’re a good friend.”

  William smiled. “We have planning to do now. Your three picks are all viable—they are all nearby to our final destination. Might even throw in South Africa there as an option.”

  William pulled up his cell phone and opened the Google Maps application. He studied the lines of longitude in the southern hemisphere and measured the distances from various points in Africa, South America, and Oceania.

  “South Africa is too far away.”

  “Too far away from the South Pole?”

  “There is no such thing as a South Pole,” William reminded him. “There’s only a ceremonial South Pole. Remember what Celeste told you—you have to unlearn what you have learned. Why would the compass point towards north on a ball, anyway? Think about how much sense the flat Earth makes, with a magnetic force in the North Pole, the true magnetic north. What makes magnetic declination in the North win, so to speak, over the South on the globe? It makes no sense on a sphere, and it makes all the sense in the world on a planar surface.”

  John took another sip of his cappuccino, and his eyes wandered around to the café patrons.

  A part of me wishes that I was still asleep. A zombie walking around and doing things mindlessly, forever stuck in his mundane bubble consisting of first-world problems and so forth. Back to when the days consisted of complaining about the poor roster of quality movies that Netflix has to offer and worrying about not having the latest material gadget out in stores. I am on the verge of piercing this bubble. But for the rest? How will the world react to when the few becomes the many? An awakening from a mass hypnosis for this long could only end in blood and chaos. We live in a most intriguing age, and I am lucky to be alive.

  William chuckled for himself.

  “What are you so happy about?”

  “Hah, well. I remembered a stunt I pulled yesterday on my mother and sister. I used Mark Twain to evade a pickle.”

  “What pickle?”

  “They cornered me yesterday at Djursholm. I was asked by why I would go away, and I made up a story about us heading down to Ystad to check out some imaginary lodge where he lived. I should try lying more often; I seem to be good at it,” he said and laughed. “What did you tell your folks, by the way?”

  John paused. “I haven’t told them anything.”

  William waved a finger. “You should, and be quick about it. We have to depart soon—even if we had an armada to our disposal, we don’t want to explore the edge of the World in complete darkness.”

  “I will,” he assured.

  William took a bite of the cheesecake that the waiter just had brought in for him.

  “It’s funny how I used Mark Twain to get out of that trap. One of his most famous quotes is serenely perfect, if you attribute it to the flat-Earth conspiracy. Not that Twain was a flat-Earther by any stretch—heavens no. But it works all the same.”

  John was befuddled.

  “The rumours of my death are severely exaggerated? Wasn’t it something like that?”

  “Not that one. The quote is this: ‘It’s easier to fool someone than convincing them that they have been fooled.’”

  “Nev
er heard that one.”

  “Well, the man said it, and it’s so true. It’s so hard to make people even look in to this with an open mind. Their ego, whether they would admit it or not, simply would not allow them to stoop so low as to investigate the foundations. Cognitive dissonance.”

  William leaned back in the comfort of the puffy leather chair. “Want to hear another quote?”

  John sighed. “I guess you’ll tell me whether I say yes or no, so go ahead.”

  “Make the lie big, keep it simple, and eventually they will believe it.”

  “Who’s it this time? David Icke?”

  “A man named Adolf Hitler, in fact.”

  “Charming.”

  “Isn’t it. I’d say that quote is one of his few good contributions to mankind, because it’s accurate. Along with the autobahn, perhaps.”

  “Indeed.”

  William took a sip of his espresso. “Hmm…hmm. Our next move, yes. Do you know who I’d like to sit down with for a quick conversation? The name of that man is Sir Ranulph Fiennes. He is the only person in the world who currently is on record for having traversed Antarctica and having completed a full north-south circumnavigation. Naturally, I don’t believe for a second that he did pull this feat off, since a north-south circumnavigation is impossible for obvious reasons. He is a proven liar in court, but he might still be keeping some interesting information close to his chest, things he saw down there that would be useful for us to know. I wager that he pushed far inwards—let’s give him some credits, so a couple of hundred miles—until he gave up and decided for his own safety to head back, but he wasn’t going to return empty handed, so he turned around and lied that he crossed the entire continent. That is what I believe.”

  “What did he lie about? And who is he, more specifically?”

  “Let me punch up Wikipedia on the phone, because his full name and title is so ridiculous that you might think I made it up.”

  William went to Wikipedia and found him.

  “Voila. Behold Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, 3rd Baronet…of somewhere, it doesn’t say. Anyway, he is a notorious explorer and cousin to the queen. His name sounds parodical, does it not? Like some character from Family Guy used to mock the British upper class. In any case, he is accused for forgery and was convicted in court for the very same crime—his accuser was a young woman whom he travelled with, and he faked an injury…because he wanted to pepper up the video documentary they filmed with him. He wanted to amp up his exploits to the public in order to appear more heroic than he actually was.”

  “Sounds like a charming man,” John said sarcastically. “So he is the only person in the world who claims to have traversed Antarctica?”

  “That is correct, with a strong emphasis on claimed. There are many who have reached the ceremonial South Pole they’ve put up there, of course, but that is another fiver entirely. My point is that we are literally off the charts here—we are on stranger tides. There is no one we could really ask about this without garnering unwanted attention at best. It would be a fool’s errand. Of course there are some people who must know—the ominous they—but it’s not like we are going to get any help from them, whoever they are. They would know exactly how far the ice extends from our known world and what lies beyond, if there are other Earth-like craters far away on this plane we call home. I assume you know that there are many who believe that we live on an infinite flat plane?”

  “Yes, of course. Some believe it goes on forever, and others are adamant that there is a dome at some point you will run into, enclosing the world. Like the Bible and the Quran speak of.”

  “Exactly. Let me give you a visual, though, so you understand precisely what I’m talking about.”

  William handed the phone over to John, who saw a familiar image appear on the screen.

  “It’s only a theory, of course. But a hell of a thought-provoking one. Imagine if there are other Earth ponds adjacent to our little puddle!”

  John’s eyes widened.

  “I’ve seen this picture before. Imagine if this is true, holy smokes. Instead of the infinite universe of space…an infinite Earth.”

  William’s eyes glistered. “Seeing this makes me want to just hop a freighter, or an icebreaker more like, and just delve right into that ice and keep going. Full throttle ahead and just smash the ice right through…but that would not be realistic.”

  “What is the most probable alternative, do you think? Finding additional land or that the Earth simply ends at Antarctica, and that’s where you’ll find the dome firmament? Admiral Byrd did say that there are lush green lands down there in that interview. If this is the case, it makes perfect sense that they would want to keep us on a ball. And if there’s minerals and other metals and natural resources to harness…”

  “You’re starting to get the hang of this, John. But in any case, even if there is land and an ocean of natural resources like oil or precious metals, the monetary gain always comes in second. Money’s no good if the small folks decide to call for an uprising against your rule. Even if you are fine with being king of the ashes, it would be most unwise to play with fire like that. We’ve been over this before; the human species simply could not handle such an abrupt cosmology swap. If the Earth is flat, then there absolutely must be a creator of this place. And if we were created, well…yeah. Everything changes. Even something deemed as fundamentally true, like evolution, goes out the window for obvious reasons. Atheism would simply self-destruct within no time and would be a crisis of faith—what now, people would ask? Which god is it? Which religion is true? Those are dangerous questions to ask, my friend, and the deceivers asked themselves these very questions as they made the hard call not to tell the public. For all the flaws that science has with their cult-like narrow-minded consensus think…do we really want to revert to the Church? Do we really want to hand over the keys to the city to the Vatican or some other religious doctrine? Inquisitions, witch trials, other horrific things done in the name of God…there’s no saying such archaic procedures could not resurface again, should science collapse on its own head.”

  John nodded. “I can definitely see the problem. Should science fall, which it will if the globe is proven to be hoax, then everything else will spiral out of control in a domino-like effect…because the faith in the scientific community will be absolutely demolished. There could be a power vacuum left in its stead. If we are to give the conspirators some credit, they might have chosen the lesser of two evils by not throwing the false scientific paradigm under the bus, considering it could have gotten worse had they done so.”

  “Especially not if your life work is on the line, like the celebrity scientists of today,” said William. “Take Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Cox, Bill Nye, and Michio Kaku. If the accepted model of the universe is false, then…well, you can see the problem. They have spent their entire lives preaching this model, and therefore they could not possibly concede defeat in this arena. There is no way, at all. Even if they stared the bullet-proof evidence right in the face and saw the truth, they would deny it to the very end.”

  John took another sip of cappuccino. “So, it’s up to us to lift the veil. Two average students in their upper twenties, lost in the world.”

  “I’m not so average. And more peculiar things have transpired throughout history, John.”

  “Have they?”

  They laughed in unison, and John’s spirits were high.

  Maybe we could actually pull this one off.

  John cleared his throat. “There’s something you said that I’m wondering about—maybe it was just a random choice of words, but do explain nevertheless. You said…let me think.”

  “Yes?”

  “That we are up against Satanic powers. That day when you asked me to join forces with you on this…escapade. I know that many astronauts of today and even more so back then were Freemasons, like the thirty-third degree, ring-wearing Mason Buzz Aldrin, but what do they have to do with Satanism?”

 
; William’s smile vanished instantly. “It wasn’t a random choice of words. We are literally up against Luciferians, and make no mistake about it. This is no child’s imagination I am spewing here. Their occultic symbology has shone through ever since the inception of NASA.”

  “Like what? If they are Satanic, they certainly haven’t telegraphed it. At least not to me.”

  “Well, you have to look in to it a bit deeper than just taking it at face value. Let’s start with the NASA logo. What does it look like?”

  “Uh, I think it’s blue and…there’s stars…”

  William smiled knowingly. “You don’t remember it, do you?”

  “Well…not exactly.”

  “Let me refresh your memory.” William made a hand gesture to John signalling that he wanted the phone back. He held it for a moment, Googled something, and handed it back over. “What do you see?

  “Well, I wasn’t too off the mark, was I? Blue starry background. White font, capital letters, and some kind of red forked line in the middle of it.”

  “And there’s nothing about this logotype that draws your attention?”

  John looked into the eyes of his friend, who had that unmistakable gleam in his eye.

  What is he thinking about? What could possibly be sinister about such a generic logotype?

  “Not really.”

  “All right. Give me the phone back, will you.”

  John abided, and when William once again got the phone back and handed it swiftly back to him, he understood.

  Okay. I see the connection now.

  “This is the logo for the Russian Space Agency?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s…it’s the same weird red stroke that kind of looks like two-thirds of an incomplete triangle. What does the symbol mean?”

  “That, my friend, is the vector symbol. Sometimes called the chevron. An esoteric and occultic sign cherished by many of the Satanic forefathers in the modern era, such as Aleister Crowley and Jack Parsons. Why do they flaunt this symbol in their logotypes? It isn’t just Roscosmos and NASA, John. Every single space agency that exists for some reason uses this symbol as their official insignia. JAXA, the South Koreans, the Chinese, SpaceX…they all have decided to use this symbol!”