Matt Eaton - Blank

“There’s a way to make it easier,” Pat told him. “I’ll travel with you. Two people work much better than one.”

Luckman smiled. “But this chair ain’t big enough for the both of us.”

“I’ll stand up. Behind you. Don’t worry, I’ve done it loads of times.”

Luckman nodded. “Do you have a program recorded already? Of the day the Sunburst hit?”

Pat shook his head.

“Do you have any idea of today’s date?” Luckman asked him.

Pat shrugged.

“It’s February 19th. Like I said, the Sunburst hit two months ago.”

“Feels like it’s only been a few days.”

“Time is somehow standing still here,” said Luckman. “Believe me when I tell you most of us have lived two long, hard months since the world ended. I’d very much like to know why no-one in Alice remembers any of it.”

Pat nodded solemnly. “OK, so you have to focus on that date – December 23, early afternoon. Central Alice Springs.”

“Then I sit down?”

“Exactly. Don’t worry if it takes a few seconds.”

But Luckman left the building the moment his arse hit the cushion. He had the strangest sensation of closing his eyes and opening them at the same time – in another place entirely. He realised too late he was in the middle of a road. A truck barrelling along at a good 80km/h hit him head-on without slowing down. It was followed by another and then another. An entire convoy of US Army trucks drove over the top of him as if he didn’t exist. Yet he had somehow remained upright and uninjured, and he realised this was because he was reliving an event that had already happened.

He sensed Pat with him, or more specifically behind him. He turned one way then another without catching sight of him but he could feel his presence. Dimly he wondered whether Pat could see him, then decided it didn’t matter. They were on the Stuart Highway at the intersection of Parsons Street, which led directly into downtown Alice Springs. The traffic lights were working, but nobody was paying any attention to them. The trucks were turning right, off the highway and into Parsons Street towards the heart of town. Several police cars were roaring along in the opposite direction, sirens blazing. Luckman remembered the police station was on Parsons Street. It was apparent a state of emergency had been declared. He might have gone so far as to say martial law had been imposed if not for the fact that the armed forces in this case were American.

The trucks pulled up about half a kilometre from where he was standing. He decided he wanted to get closer. Without any sense of physical movement he found he was able to traverse the intervening space instantaneously. It was like being inside a life-size version of Google Earth with everything still moving around him.

The trucks were being directed by a soldier on the ground who was waving them left, right or straight ahead in groups of three. Luckman instinctively followed the trucks that went on ahead a short distance to pull up at the Todd St mall. A crowd of people had gathered at the edge of the mall, where a policewoman with a loudhailer was screaming at them to maintain order so they could board the trucks as quickly as possible.

There were more people arriving, many more than would fit onto three trucks. He sensed a rising panic. It was evident in the shaking voice of the constable directing the traffic, who must have known she would be helpless if and when the crowd turned against her. Armed soldiers leapt down from the back of the trucks as the constable assured people more transport would soon be on the way.

Luckman recognised the look on many of the faces hurriedly clambering aboard the trucks. It was the fear of death. The trucks filled quickly and then became overloaded as dozens of people ignored the policewoman’s increasingly shrill orders to stop. The crowd saw the soldiers’ reluctance to intervene and began to surge forward in greater numbers. The trucks pulled out even as more hands were grasping the rear gangways. Several people ran to cars, deciding to follow the retreating Army vehicles. It was the typical chaos of a sudden and urgent evacuation.

The trucks could only be headed to one place – Pine Gap. But Luckman had examined Shearer’s blueprints of the base and he couldn’t think of anywhere that would offer shelter from the catastrophic mind-wipe about to engulf the planet.

Yet these people had been saved.

He began to feel a suggestion slide into his awareness.

Rise.

Above it all.

For greater perspective.

He gave in to the suggestion and immediately rose high above the streets and buildings. It was an enormous relief to leave the mall behind. Helplessly watching the town unravel without the capacity to intervene had been almost unbearable. He didn’t know whether it was the chair or the nature of this memory realm, but he had become more than an observer. He felt like he was part of it. He knew their fear, he bit down on their confusion. The nature of what he was confronting was also familiar to him – he’d been forced to watch scenes like this unfold all too many times in Iraq and Afghanistan. He had witnessed normally civilised people descend into rat packs and fight to the death in the final bitter twist of their battle to stay alive.

Clearly Alice Springs would never reach that point, but on this day the rot had set in. Soon there would be people dying. It occurred to him that any poor bastard who died on this day had already been forgotten by those who survived.

He was about 200 metres above the town now, high enough to see the different strands of the hurried evacuation plan unfold.

The police cars. They were headed for the suburbs. Scores of policemen and women were knocking on doors, urging the townsfolk onto the streets, where more US Army trucks awaited. The evacuation was more orderly out here – people were still close to home and thus more likely to maintain the veil of civility. Luckman guessed every police officer in the region was on the streets this day. Something about this was bothering him.

Again he felt Pat urging him on from somewhere just out of earshot. He paused for a moment to listen.

Town camps. The council.

He felt his attention directed toward a large municipal building in an industrial area a short way from the centre of town on the other side of the Stuart Highway. He reluctantly allowed himself to fall back to the ground. He was outside the chambers of the Tangentyere Council, the body that administered the Aboriginal camps dotted around the outskirts of Alice. A police car was parked out front. On the front steps of the council building, three men were having what could only be described as a heated discussion.

Luckman saw Detective Curtis Pollock was one of them. He was pointing his finger angrily at a man standing outside the council building like he was ready to defend it with his life.

In the midst of the sensory overload and unaided by the playback memory of the computer, Luckman found it hard to hear what Pollock was saying. But as he stared deep into the detective’s eyes he felt the force of their meaning and suddenly the voices came directly into his head.

“If you bastards don’t sanction the official evacuation, I can’t help you.”

“When have you ever helped us?”

“I don’t have time to argue with you,” Pollock told him. The detective was frustrated, but he looked like a man facing an overwhelming task with virtually no time to carry it out. There were 19 Aboriginal town camps in Alice. Getting the residents to cooperate with authorities without the support of local elders would be an impossible job. Of course, almost anyone might be better than Pollock in the role of police liaison.