Everlasting Daylights

Chapter 2-3

“That was Drissa Philips!”

Melody rights her head and frame, pushing gently away from her husband’s embrace, inquiring, “Drissa Philips from your campaign committee?”

“One in the same,” he answers while picking up the passenger phone and buzzing the driver. “They are in major trouble and don’t know it yet. With GPS down due to satellite misalignment, planes from everywhere are going to be grounded any minute now.”

John quickly grabs the intercom, “Yes, driver, do not lose that cab we just passed. Those are Americans on board.”

With everyone in the Hastings entourage, plus five, and their effects on the plane, their flight was quickly taxiing toward the main runway. John had excused himself from his wife, Gena who sat next to Melody, and the other passengers to join the flight crew for takeoff.

All of the plane’s officers are former U.S. Navy pilots, excluding the navigator who was still former Navy. All were handpicked by the senator. Captain Blake Edwards, call sign Striker, sits in the pilot’s seat, followed by co-pilot Willy Stanz, known as Cobra. The navigator is Steven Wilcox, dubiously titled Spectre by his service shipmates, who secured his position with the Senator’s crew because he could accurately read a compass of the analog variety.

“What’ve we got, Striker,” John says as he straps himself into the seat beside Spectre.

“Tower is non-compliant,” he answers flatly, no emotion.

The senator adjusts a headset, ear phone in his left ear and microphone coming around his face from the same side, ordering, “Give them to me.”

“Tower, this is Senator Hastings. What do you boys have going on this fine morning?”

“Senator, we cannot clear you for takeoff. We have GPS failures fleet wide. It’s a safety issue. Everyone’s grounded ‘til further notice.”

John covers his mic, addresses first the Captain and then Spectre, “Line up the plane on your takeoff vector. Spectre, let me show you how this is supposed to look.”

To the tower, “Tower, we have all the instrumentation we need to make it home, so I don’t see what you can do to stop us.”

“Flight Niner-oh One, please stand by. There’s someone in here that wishes to address you.”

“I wonder whom the hell that could be,” he mutters without his microphone covered.

A woman’s shrill and painfully familiar voice fills his headset, saying, “Why, John, whom the hell would be me, Prime Minister Hatcher! I thought you all might stay for a while longer and talk over your plans.”

At that instant the runway goes totally dark. The senator is unshaken.

“Sorry, Prime Minister. We have somewhere else to be. Striker, punch it.”

True to his training, the captain of the Boeing 787 opens the throttle to the two Pratt & Whitney PW4062 engines for a total thrust of 126,000 pounds. All souls aboard are pressed back hard into their upright seats, except for the navigator who is coming unglued.

“What? Are you crazy? The runway’s blacked out!”

“Lieutenant, get a hold of yourself! What’s the matter? Haven’t you ever taken off from a carrier at night? This is only a little different.” The senator’s voice barks just like a seasoned officer whose commands are not to be tested, and he adds, “Now, lean over the compass here so you can see this.”

“Sorry, sir. Won’t happen again,” he humbles himself while he is doing as ordered.

“Striker, you’re looking real good. Spectre, you flip this mag lens down over the graticule and you should make out that we are at nineteen point two degrees off of north.”

Spectre leans up on the lens and makes the needle of the compass at an estimated two tenths between nineteen and twenty, remarking, “Yes, sir. I see it. I see it.”

“Now, you call the ball,” the Senator says and leans back into his seat.

“Spectre has the ball. Striker, you’re drifting left. Three tenths of a degree, now six tenths.”

Amid the screaming jetliner, punching a hole through the inky black, the pilot faintly and deftly turns his yoke to the right, shifting the plane’s stabilizer to adjust for what is by experience a bit of side wind.

“Striker, you’re now dead on course.”

Spectre swallows into a dry throat, trying to wipe his mind of thoughts about crashing in the dark because of not knowing how points on the compass related to real world drift of the plane. He simply cannot feel it the way the Senator and the ex-Navy pilots seem able.

“This is Cobra, we have one, sixty knots.”

“One, sixty knots, aye,” Striker verifies with a glance then pulls back on the stick.

The yoke in front of Cobra leans backward in tandem with Striker’s controls but he makes no motion to grab it. They are taking the plane up a bit early but they are extremely light for the build of the aircraft, so it is responding to flight very well.

“Senator. We are airborne and headed home,” Striker says, still no emotion.

“Good job, men. Taking off in the predawn dark,” John praises them, feeling the long missed sense of camaraderie about the flight deck.

Cobra poses, “What about the Tower and the Prime Minister?”

“Let them eat static. But leave your intercom in the lounge open. You’re going to want to hear what’s going on.”

John entered politics at the will of his father but quickly found a prolific love for the United States of America and its people. His unblemished naval career and then his political career tailored him as a perfect man to be in charge whenever answers come hard to deliver. Easing back into his chair, at the top center of the lounge, he observes the people in front of and around him, all filing in from passenger seating. They are wide-eyed and taken in by all the changes as this present disaster unfolds around them.

He silently gauges just how much of the truth, as he knows it, that he can tell them as they come filing in from the rear of the plane.In this he knows there are far more questions than answers but he is determined to try.

As the last persons find their seats, he looks up from his iPad and gives them, “Good morning, maybe?” A spattering of nervous laughter ensues.

“For the past three years, our scientists with those from around the world have been working the problem of the magnetic poles flipping. I’m sure everyone’s caught some news about it at one time or another. The scientists, most astrophysicists and geologists, the brightest in their fields, have predicted that the poles will do just that. And now it has happened at twenty-hundred hours Greenwich Mean Time. That’s three p.m. in Washington, D.C., or eleven a.m. on the west coast.”

The young Philips sisters exchange a knowing glance with each other.

He continues, “Our calculated window of this event was from right about now all the way out to sometime next year. But, we were convinced that it would indeed happen. Now it has. Only we did not foresee with certainty that the Earth’s rotation would stop dead in its tracks. Rest assured, hundreds of experts are currently pulling out their hair looking for answers. Fortunately for all of us, there was not the cataclysmic “train wreck” when the planet stopped that some had predicted. We’re trying to figure out that one as well. Right now it’s being deemed as a supernatural event.”

“Yes, Drissa,” he pauses and points to her raised hand. “Everybody, this is Drissa Philips, a hugely successful campaign worker who got her family on board by the skin of her teeth.”

A splattering of modest applause echoes about the cabin, but more importantly everyone is politely watching and waiting.

“Hello, everyone,” she stands up and is not shy about speaking her mind. “A friend of mine knows the head of the U.S.G.S., the earthquake guys so to speak. She just sent me a text message saying that doctor was surprised at three p.m. Washington time to see that the worldwide net of seismographs reporting no activity. No minor shaking at all. I don’t think it’s any small co-incidents that my friend informed the doctor that the Earth has stopped spinning on its axis as well. And that’s all. The doctor suddenly had a thousand people to call and my friend said I should get home.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Philips,” the senator says, begins reflecting on her words and point to another raised hand.

“A rancher friend of mine in Oklahoma sent me a text saying his horses and cattle were acting weird. Wanted to know if I knew anything.”

Another person across the lounge tosses in, “Someone I know said her GPS had failed and wanted the same thing from me.”

“Well,” Senator Hastings nods in recognition to those commenting. “Certainly question are mounting and people on the whole are about to go into panic mode, if they haven’t already. Global positioning systems worldwide are down because the satellites they rely on are in geosynchronous orbit, intended to be more or less straight overhead. When the Earth stopped the satellites kept on moving.”

He goes on, “This here aircraft has something that most commercial airliners do not have. There are two gyro-compasses in the cabin, one is a redundant backup. They are set to true north and will stay that way no matter what the magnetic fields do. The navigator up front is under the gun, having to plot our course the old fashioned way with maps and charts. The tower back in Sydney didn’t know this which is why we were not cleared for take-off. I trust no-one was terribly frightened when the runway lights went out and we took off anyway, with the aid of our compass. All commercial and private aircraft have been grounded until further notice. So, we are damn lucky to be headed home.”

More applause and a low whistle.

He turns his gaze on the Philips’s, “If I had not been looking out of my window in the limo and the exact moment when you,” indicating Drissa, “were looking out yours then your family would have been stuck in Australia ‘til God only knows when.”

She mouths a ‘thank you’ to the senator as thoughts of that reality make her eyes swell in gratitude.

“You can thank me in a later campaign,” he smiles broadly, there is a little laughter around the room. “I’m always there for people who are in my camp.”

“But all this is not my purpose for being here,” he says and walks out to the middle of the lounge. “The President sent me down under to discuss Australia’s readiness for this disaster. Sadly, I got nothing but laughter and a whole lot of ‘G’day mates’ from the Prime Minister and her staff. In order that what things I have to say will go toward good use, I’ll begin with you good people. Besides, we’re in an airplane and you have no other choice but to listen to me.”

There is laughter in nervousness around the room. All in nervousness.

“The Earth has stopped rotation on its axis,” he begins in his matter-of-fact tone. “The position of the sun at that instance, all around the globe, is where the sun will remain. How long? We do not know. We have a pretty good idea that real estate under the sun will grow hotter. Likewise, nations without the sun will grow colder. Again, we do not know by how much. We’re hoping the weather, our atmosphere, will go a long way in tempering the heat and the cold.

“The moon will still orbit the Earth, as far as we know, and will continue to affect the tides. Weather patterns are up in the air as well as the overall amount of polar ice at any given time. We could see biblical, Old Testament level flooding because of melted ice or new ice formations on the dark side of the Earth may balance things out.