Without waiting for an answer, she said with a horrified quality in her voice, “I don’t want to even try to imagine what kind of cataclysmic tragedy could happen next?”
“So,” Baltor asked, “this is the reason most earthlings are so unhappy in life—because death constantly looms around the corner?”
“Earthlings,” Nadia said before she began to laugh aloud.
Her laughter not only instantly drew his and Reva’s attention, yet also nearly a dozen other passengers sitting nearby.
“What?” Baltor asked.
After she was able to calm her laughter down, nearly six seconds later, she placed her hand on his shoulder, before answering, “Umm, I just thought it was funny how you called us earthlings, as if you weren’t an earthling yourself…which you are an earthling, right? Or are you from Mars?”
Her last question not only caused her to bust out laughing again, yet caused Reva to start laughing in the exact same manner!
Though Baltor was one hundred percent confused, especially as he had not ever heard of “Mars” before, he still managed to chuckle out, “No, I’m not from Mars, silly…perhaps the underlying reason for the hilarity is because Russian is not my native language.”
Only seconds later, Nadia stifled her laughter, before answering, “That’s true. By the way, I must compliment you on how well you speak Russian too!”
“Thank you very much…I try.”
“And I,” Reva cooed, “must compliment you for shaving off that facial hair—as well your new hairstyle! It’s cute…now I want to grab your cute chin.” She did, between her thumb and index finger.
“Thanks,” he chuckled, after she let go a few seconds later.
Before the conversation could carry any further, a beeping sound began throughout the cabin, which noise came from all the mini-speakers—it beeped three times until stopping.
A man’s voice then began to say over the intercom, “Welcome to Flight 707, bound for Amsterdam, Netherlands. We have nearly a 3-hour flight ahead of us, and as our destination is two hours behind us, we will land approximately at 11 p.m. their time. Please ensure you buckle your seatbelts at this time—if you have any problems or questions at all during the flight, please alert one of our staff, and he or she will be more than happy to assist. Thank you all for choosing Travel Easy Airlines!”
After Baltor had watched Reva and Nadia buckle herself in, he followed suit.
Only a moment later came four more beeping sounds…the stewards and stewardesses had just started to walk down the hallways, checking their guests’ seatbelts.
Nearly a minute later, Monique came to the front of the hallway, and a mechanical voice on the intercom began to deliver a lengthy safety briefing—only twenty seconds after the briefing had begun, the plane slowly began to pull away from the terminal.
By the time the briefing had concluded, three minutes later, the plane was now on the runway—only seconds passed before the crew of the airlines was buckled into their seat belts.
Once so, the plane quickly began to speed faster and faster down the runway, until it finally took off into the air.
Though Baltor had flown many times before—never before in an airplane—he began to feel his stomach lurching into his very back from all the g-forces…once the plane’s speed had gotten fast enough, it lifted off into the air and began to fly….
CHAPTER XIV
When they finally did arrive in Mexico, which was at 12:32 in the afternoon, Baltor henceforth booked a guide to take them on a half-day tour of the ancient Mayan pyramid and ruins at Chichenitza. This tour even included snorkeling through water-filled caves that zigzagged all over the place for hundreds of miles, as well an authentic Mayan dinner prepared in a local restaurant. Sometimes they chitchatted about this or that, and sometimes they simply enjoyed the incredibly beautiful views (manmade or natural) in silence.
After getting back to the hotel around 7:30 that evening, they next went to the beach and gazed out into the crystal-clear blue waters that were only now beginning to darken. Following a wonderful dinner spent in the hotel’s all-you-can-eat buffet with every type of food imaginable, they headed for the hotel’s beach bar, whereupon they began to drink and party.
Soon after, dozens of the hotel’s guests began to join them in conversation and drinking—before anyone knew it, the sun had already set and they were now “partying hearty” with a huge group of about fifty different people! Mainly females…not surprising to Baltor, Reva and Nadia clung like wet noodles to him.
For the next few hours, that party continued nonstop…around one the morning, Baltor managed to escape from the girls by saying he had to go to the restroom. Instead of going there, however, he went to the hotel lobby, where he had earlier seen a desktop computer.
Once seated before the desk, he typed the words “quickest form of transportation around the world” into the Internet, picked the top website in the list of millions, and began to browse through it…
Upon being satisfied with the looks and authenticity of the site, nearly ten minutes later, he booked a flight via the Internet, paying for it all with his plastic credit card right then and there.
Just after the transaction had registered on the computer screen as “transaction complete,” Reva and Nadia walked around the corner—Nadia was the first to say with a slur, “There you are, you sneaky boy…what are you doing?”
Baltor answered, using nonchalant tones, “Oh—I just booked us a flight tomorrow morning, set to depart to our next location at 10. I was just about to come back there to the bar…and party some more!”
“Oh…where are we going?” Reva asked. She too had a drunken slur.
“It’s a surprise…you’ll be able to sleep on the plane, so we’re going to party until seven in the morning, get cleaned up, eat breakfast here at the hotel, depart by limo back to the airport, get checked in, board our plane, and fly the friendly skies. In the meantime, let’s go have some more fun in the bar…sound good?”
“Yes,” the girls responded, before each grabbed one of Baltor’s elbows—together, they made their way back for the bar and followed his plan to a T.
For, at ten in the morning, they were already on their next flight—this time, however, the girls were shocked and ecstatic to learn that they were riding on a private jet. Only after the plane had taken off the runway, Baltor revealed, “This sucker’s costing $2,000 USD every hour, whether moving through the air or grounded—the overall cost until next Monday night when we get dropped off back in St. Petersburg is going to be around a whopping $236,000!”
Though both girls’ mouths dropped to the floor upon hearing the astronomical bill, he was very nonchalant as he chuckled before asking, “What other better way is there to explore the world than by a private jet?”
Neither girl could answer that question. He next asked, “Hey, do you guys want to play a video game, watch a movie, or what? We’ve got about an eight-hour flight ahead of us until we reach our next destination.”
“Where are we going?” Reva asked.
With a wink of the left eye, Baltor answered, “Again, as I told you last night, it’s a surprise.”
“Okay,” the girls sighed in reluctance.
“So what do you guys want to do?”
With a yawn, Nadia answered, “We want to sleep.”
Perhaps ten minutes after the plane had left the airport…the girls passed out and slept for the first three-quarters of the trip.
As for Baltor, he played around on the Internet, for many-many-many hours, punching into the keyboard almost every type of subject he could think of, learning about how this world operated….
The plane landed in Rio de Janeiro, at 8 p.m. on the mark—inside the airport at their gate stood a limousine driver holding up a sign that read the name “Mr. Baltor Elysian” on it. After the quick greetings and they had picked up their luggage, the driver escorted them to his limousine, which limo took them to a 5-star hotel.
Once they
had checked in at the hotel and had deposited their luggage in the room, they drank quite a few alcoholic drinks in the hotel’s bar until two in the morning, crashing out in their shared bedroom with two queen-sized beds.
Around seven that morning, they all—some moved faster than others—got out of bed, showered, dressed, and ate another all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. After exiting the hotel’s tropical paradise property, they strolled through the five-hundred-year-old city.
An absolutely beautiful city is what Rio turned out to be, with both a seaside and a mountainous view. In the early afternoon, after a tasty Brazilian lunch, they went shopping through the various bazaars and stores.
In the late afternoon, around four, they arrived back at the hotel’s beachside, and laid out in the sun for a few more hours—after dinner in the hotel’s all-you-can-eat dinner buffet, they again partied in the hotel’s beach bar until one in the morning.
At ten in the morning, they performed all their morning duties, before packing up their luggage, checking out of the room, and going by the same limousine back to the airport. An hour later, they were once again flying for their next destination.
Only minutes after takeoff, Nadia asked, “So where are we going this time?”
Baltor answered with a half-smile, “Again a surprise…but we’ll be there in about twelve hours or so. In the meantime, do you guys want to play a video game, watch a movie, sleep, or what?”
Nadia suggested, “Well, let’s watch a movie…‘Love Letters!’ I’ve wanted to see that flick real bad, ever since it came out two months ago…okay?”
“Okay,” both he and Reva agreed.
After he had picked up the remote, he flipped through the movie screen’s menu until finding the movie they were looking for. He pushed the “play” button and they began to watch it….
This “love story” consisted of a thirteen-year-old boy and a twelve-year-old girl who meet each during a coed summer camp deep in the woods, and soon after, fall in love. Three weeks after their romantic adventures had begun, sadly for them, they have to go back home, yet they exchange physical addresses.
For the next few years, they share love letters with each other, about once or twice a month—finally the boy turns into a young man with a driver’s license, and he even drives across the state to meet the woman of his dreams.
Upon arrival, she takes him to her high school basketball game, where the two watch opposing teams play and her team wins. However, after the game is over, and they are now sitting on opposite ends of a booth in a family restaurant, her demeanor instantly changes, for she reveals she is no longer in love him—she had met “someone else.” At the end of this scene, he angrily throws down twenty dollars, the cost of the meal that had not even yet been served, left the restaurant, hopped in his car, and drove back across the state for home.
Many-many years pass, and the young man, now in his early forties, has made himself into a millionaire through his 3-D computerized paintings. It is at a public awards’ ceremony, that the two reacquaint—now he sees that his ex-girlfriend is even more radiant than ever, especially with that black evening dress that revealed all her perfect bodily features.
She, of course, not only confesses that she is once again in love with him, yet pulls out all his hand-written letters she had saved over the years, and sets them onto the table, where he had been signing autographs for his fans.
At the end of this scene, which also turned out to be the end of the movie before the words “THE END” popped up on the black screen, his final line was, “Cherry, I have thought about you many times over these lost years between you and I—no doubt. But it’s too late…I’ve found the woman of my dreams. And you know who she is? As a matter of fact, my brand-new wife’s standing right behind you in line…she was with me every step of the way.”
Following the movie, in which the girls had to wipe away the tears of joy, the three played video games, surfed the Internet on the computer, watched a few more movies, and/or slept.
Precisely on time at 11 p.m., the jet finally landed in its next destination—the airport in Cairo, Egypt. The group of friends talked, ate, drank, played video games, watched movies, and/or slept until the following morning.
After a tour guide had met them in the limo outside the jet, at eight in the morning, they visited many historical places, including the pyramids and the sphinx—there, Baltor silently remarked to himself that even the Great Pyramid of Giza wasn’t even 1/10th the size of the pyramid in the Second Plane of Hell.
Following this delightful/educational tour, which included a delicious Egyptian lunch and dinner, they arrived back to the airport at 7 p.m., and the jet took off again—the next place they headed for, since Baltor realized that the time was starting to run out, was the city of Rome. Secretly he wished that they could just teleport around from place to place, but there would be no justifiable way of explaining to the girls about any of his magic powers.
After the jet had landed, three hours and forty minutes later, they toured Rome on their own, even though it was 10:32 p.m.—not only was much of the city lit up, yet so were all of the historical buildings—this beautiful city sparkled!
A few times throughout their tour, they stopped at a bar to get an alcoholic drink or two, and of course, to eat the most-delicious Italian cuisines.
By midnight, as most of the bars had shut down on this Sunday night, the party of three went back to the jet, and they crashed out in their beds.
The next morning at seven, they took another grandiose tour of the city, including going inside the Pantheon, the Sistine Chapel, the Coliseum, and the Palatine Hill, where Rome was first born in 753 B.C. with just a few huts. Later, as their tour guide revealed, imperial palaces had been built on this same hill, which ultimately, became ruins. The last thing they did was have one final delicious Italian dinner, which included a bottle of Chianti-Classico-Rivera wine, before they made their way by limousine back to the jet.
Shortly after five they arrived back at the plane—after all, the pilot had earlier told Baltor that though it would be around a 4-hour flight, the time would increase by an additional two hours, which meant they would land in St. Petersburg an hour before midnight in that time zone.
After the three had gotten comfortable in the lounge area, Baltor asked, “So what do you guys want to do now?”
“Let’s watch some news,” Reva said first. When no arguments came her way, she picked up the remote controller, turned on the television, and flipped the channel to the news.
A fifty-year-old newsman—wearing a suit and tie, sitting behind an oak desk, and in the middle of giving this report—continued to report, “—astronomers from all over the world are baffled upon seeing this new planet, perhaps three times the size of earth. Per NASA, this planet shot out of the black hole in the middle of the Milky Way Galaxy only two hours ago and is expected to pass through the middle of our solar system sometime next year. Although it will never get closer than a hundred million miles from our planet, it will be passing between us and our sun…there is the remote possibility that it will affect our gravitational forces with the sun, which could prove cataclysmic.”
After taking a deep breath, a series of photos began to display behind him on the wall. He explained the photos, “As you can now see from the pictures that have just been released only moments ago, pictures taken with the Hubble telescope, this is an angry black planet filled with gray clouds and massive bolts of lightning that frequently streak across her skies.
“Have no doubt that the world-leaders in the United Nations are already underway to finding a unified solution to this problem, including the possibility of launching every last one of our nuclear missiles at it as soon as possible, so that we can blow it up before it can affect Earth’s gravitational forces, which it might do if not stopped.
“Therefore, it is important for all of us—the people of this world—to remain calm and to keep doing your job. After all, by stopping in commerce, trade a
nd our lives, then we are guaranteed to die of starvation and anarchy. Again, please remain calm, and we will find our solution. This is Tom Rillings—XKW Ne—”
Before Tom could finish saying what he had to say, he said, “Just a second folks—I’ve just received word that the President of the United States is on-board Air Force 1, and ready to have an immediate Press Conference. Here is the President.”
The picture of an elderly black man popped up on the television screen, of who was wearing a black suit with a red tie. He began, “Greetings my fellow Americans, as well to all the peoples of the nations of Earth. Not a single person with a telescope can deny the fact that we may be in serious trouble. There is another planet that has just shot out of the black hole located in the middle of our galaxy.”
He had to clear his throat a few times before adding, “Though it is fast coming our way, expected to be here sometime next year, it is by us all uniting together under this single cause that we can overcome this obstacle, and survive for many more millenniums. Therefore, it is imperative that we continue to remain calm, to do our jobs, and to trust in the leaders of your nations—we world-leaders are all now flying to an undisclosed location at this time, including the leaders of former enemy nations like Iran and Korea. They too want to work with the United Nations in destroying this invading planet, so that our planet Earth can not only survive without any lives lost, yet succeed.”
The War of All Wars Page 40
