Slowly the torrent of taxis choked the loading bay before the terminal. People drifting in the torrent braced themselves for the rush to land, clutching their bags and sliding their fingers across their door handles. The hornets swarmed around them, ready to swoop as the taxi-passengers made their break for the banks.
Inside a silver service taxi, sitting together on the back seat were Christina Alvaro and Ellen Panayi. They had been awake since 9:00 am the previous morning and had spent the previous night in the various bars and clubs of Kings Cross. Most of the night was lost to their memories in a haze of strobe lights and pounding low frequency bass.
They vaguely remembered cosmopolitans and cruisers yet the rest of their time had long since made its exodus from their minds. It had been a good night. Christina stirred, semi-conscious in the back seat, pulling her phone uncomfortably from underneath her she checked the time, her eyes pained by the brightness of the phone display.
"Oh shit," she cried as she forcefully pushed the sleeping Ellen off her lap. After straightening her short, silver dress, and hurriedly putting her shoes back on, she prodded Ellen out of her dreams of even wilder night clubs. "We're running late!" she yelled, "Stop the car!"
Dutifully the taxi stopped . . . abruptly . . . in the middle of the road . . . outside Sydney Airport.
"Ellen, get up!"
She threw herself from the car out into the fresh air and sound of the terminal, as Ellen sat up and rubbed her eyes. It was deafening, and the light was permeating her very being. "Fucking hell," she muttered, stretching every syllable to the extreme. While she opened the boot she shaded her eyes with her hand. A line of cars extended to the horizon behind them, beeping their horns like a musically stunted child with no lips forced to play a tuba in front of a large audience.
"Piss off!", the bag appeared to be stuck, pulling it harder did little.
"Give it to me," hissed Ellen, who standing slightly shorter than the very lean, angular Christina, looked as though she were about to violently implode. Her dyed blonde plait swung erratically behind her as she wrenched the bag from the boot. Her green eyes, staring into the bright blue of Christina's, might as well have been on fire.
The embarrassed tubist continued to play a discordant soundtrack to their tension.
A hornet flew down from the sky, stinger at the ready.
"You're going to ha-"
"Everyone hates you!"
Her black jumpsuit and sequin belt reflecting her mood as she grabbed her own bag from the boot. Christina adjusted her skirt once more, moved her hair from her face and took Ellen by the arm.
"Let's get some coffee," she said pulling Ellen away from the parking inspector whom she death stared.
As they walked away to the sound of furious drivers, Christina checked her appearance one final time in her hand mirror, the clasp mechanism wearing thin.
12th of February, 10:13 am (GMT), Dolpa, Nepal
The air was dry. Everything was cold, even an ice cube would have felt cold, frost was covering rocks on the mountain side, and a layer of frost was covering that first layer of frost. In this cold, was a young girl, dressed in her traditional Nepalese attire, seemingly unaware of the chill, although her lips were marked by numerous cracks. She was six years old, and had recently been given a haircut by her mother, forever busy performing chores. Thoughts of the bowl placed on her scalp still haunted her and appeared to amuse the other girls. They were further down the mountain, in the village, she did not want to partake in their games, they were nasty to her.
On the mountain side, her small frame was rocked by fierce winds, and she wept with her face in her hands, and the tips of her fingers covered by her perfect hemisphere of black hair.
Looking down she could see the houses of her quarter, the girls would be playing somewhere amongst them. Someday soon . . . she would make them understand.
10th of February, 3:25 pm
"So as I was saying, degradation of the environment due to harmful erosion of the river bank and bed resulting in sediment corruption is the single largest problem for the turtle population of Easter Australia.
Greater lengths need to be taken if we are to ensure the survival of such a beautiful species of animal."
Juliana's glasses rested on her nose as she stared out at her modest audience, seemingly daring them to respond.
"Ms Marin Cely," came the call of a particularly zealous young news reporter, waving her pen in the air. "What do you say to the allegations that you are wasting the zoo's money on conservation projects doomed to fail?"
"Listen white girl!" she said, throwing her finger out in disapproval, its movements synchronised to the shaking of her head. "I don't know who let you in here, but here's how I do things, a) . . . I get things done, if I say I'm going to save the turtles, just try and stop me, b) I don't care about money, if I have to knock on every door in the city bullying five cent coins out of stingy uneducated bogans then I will, and c), I don't take shit from whiney white girls with more money than talent and a fetish for poking holes in other people's plans simply because they don't have the capacity to make their own!"
She bared her glistening white teeth, shining against her olive skin and dark hair, and swung to face the rest of the audience, her South American style dress billowing behind her. "Any more questions?"
A camera flashed.
"Delete that photo!"
As she entered the airport lounge the following day for her international "save the turtles" tour, an acne ridden angsty teenager threw newspapers marked "Turtle Warrior Causes A Stir at Taronga Zoo" onto the lawns of Inner-Western Sydney.
11th of February, 9:07 am
Eyeing off the tall buxom Scandinavian at the airport bar, Matthew Best quietly and confidently swept his long, auburn fringe across his face, exercised his goofy smile and shuffled over to the girl.
"Hey" he said.
"Hulloo!" she replied enthusiastically.
9:15 am
The second button of his blue, checkered faux-flannel shirt ricocheted wildly off two walls of the toilet cubicle. She threw the shirt open violently, exposing his bare chest as he attempted to pull her white singlet over her head with little initial success. The cubicle appeared to be designed specifically to avoid such an act, having an uncomfortably low stall door and claustrophobia inducing layout. Nonetheless, they passionately knocked the wall of the next cubicle. Sitting awkwardly with his back to the water tank, Matt's current lover grasped him by the hair on the back of his head. His shoulder blade repeatedly caused a loud clunk as it rocked into the porcelain behind him.
She was beautiful, with large blue eyes and golden blonde hair in a neat plait. As her hand slammed into the wall, his grabbed for the pipe connecting the toilet to the water mains, the other wrapped tightly around her waist. He tried to gasp but could not, she tried to stay silent, but also could not.
The process of washing one's hands was made slightly more awkward than usual given the frustrated sounds of one reaching for a feeling just out of reach, coming from the stall closest to the exit.
He kissed her neck and she responded by forcing forwards, causing his head to chip the basin lid.
Then, as he shuddered, slipping away to another place, his hand, white from the pressure, crushed the PVC pipe connecting to the wall. A surge of disinfected blue water followed, masking the sound of the passionate tourist's own passage to the same mysterious place as Matt.
"Thank you," she said melodically, as she washed her hands in the sink. "One day you should visit me in Sweden."
Beaming wildly he accepted the fake email address she had scrawled on the back of a duty free receipt in her pocket and after writing a 7 digit phone number on her arm he progressed to button his shirt back up as best he could. With a strange disjointed jerk motion he flicked his now sweat glistening hair back into place and strutted proudly from the room.
11th of February, 9:16 am
In the airport bar, Captain Phillips ran his age wearied finger around the rim of his glass of Scotch and gazed upon his plane through the plate glass viewing window. The sunlight was reflected almost menacingly from the thick foreboding tar of the tarmac.
He sighed loudly, loud enough to attract the attention of the overweight couple at the table beside him; they glanced disapprovingly at his scotch before returning to their decadent ricotta cheese cakes, lathered in syrup and glacé cherries.
Taking a swig he felt an ice cube collide with his gold filling and then the sharp twang of the contact travelling up his nerve. For Phillips, flying had become a metaphor. Leaping from place to place, unable to settle or slacken, he longed for the feel of Earth beneath his feet just as he had once longed for the wind within his hair. He'd seen the rolling hills of Austria, stared into the Grand Canyon, kissed the Blarney stone; yet with every wonder he beheld, he felt more deeply, the absence of a wonder far more intimate, more sensual.
And there she was. Sitting only a table away, silhouetted by the primeval oozing tarmac, like a fallen angel, a beautiful red head, leafing through a worn copy of "Persuasion".
"I love Jane Austen," he stated casually. He did not love Jane Austen.
"Oh really?" replied the woman, slipping her bookmark into the folds. "I love a man who appreciates his romantics."
"Only the best literature there is."
Pushing back her chair she slid over to his table, and sat directly in front of him, battering her eyelids slightly as she did so.
"Where are you headed?" he asked, now running his finger around his glass for different reasons.
"Heathrow," she stated smiling.
"I might be flying you then," barely concealing excitement in his voice.
"Is that so? Are you flying Qantas?"
"I am indeed"
"Wonderful!" She leaned in closer, and looked him in his eyes as if to say "maybe".
"So is this your first time to London?" he asked.
"It's my first time on a plane!" she replied giddily. It was not her first time on a plane, in fact, the third year of her recently finished psychology degree had been completed at Oxford university.
"What class are you flying?" he asked.
"Economy," her voice betraying a slight sense of embarrassment.
"Would you like to fly business?"
Once he had left, giving her instructions to pass to the cabin crew, Aleks Geba uncomfortably readjusted her blouse and returned to her book.
"I am just too good at this shit."
Her coffee tasted like soil but she was too busy simpering to notice.
12th of February, 10: 25, Geneva, Switzerland
A small glass tank held a white rat with eyes more red than the fires of hell. Above that tank, a blond, well groomed man in a starch white coat, fiddled with dials on a large metallic contraption emitting a low hum. A green light flickered on a switch board metres away while A-ha played faintly from the iTunes, minimised on the desktop computer by the door.
The man left the room, leaving the machine humming ominously, like a flock of hummingbirds, using their combined strength to wildly wield a chainsaw.
When he returned he was clad in a white radiation suit, complete with perspex visor, cutting his face off from the peak of his high cheek bones down.
Synchronised perfectly to the beat of the song, and on minimum volume so as not to alarm him whilst working with the sensitive equipment, a warning signal beeped on his computer screen.
Warning: Equipment is Experiencing Overheating
Allow sufficient time for cooling before
proceeding.
