Everlasting Daylights

Chapter 1-3

“Right away, mates.”

The engine roars to life. Shifting balances inside the moving vehicle adds to the mayhem building in their day. From the jump seat, Drissa slides around to face her girls with dad in the far corner.

“It’s going to be alright. You’ve got to believe me. Right, honey?”

Drew nods, refusing to admit to anything less, “Yes, it will.”

“Look at your cell phones. What time is it?” Drissa says, knowing that her girls need some familiar activities in order to grasp an understanding of events.

“A couple of minutes past seven,” Dena says.

“Yeah. The same.”

“Okay, then, look outside the cab.”

They do so. She examines her girls’ faces but does not see any lights come on.

“Alright,” she holds her cell phone up and near to theirs, trying to get them to focus. “Go pull up the local weather page then tell me when sunrise is supposed to be.”

After a moment their expressions have changed. Drissa sees they are starting to get it.

“It says five forty-five,” Deanne says very slowly.

Her sister concurs. Their demeanor shifts towards a blend of anxious and curious, though Dena speaks, “Mom? Dad? What does it mean?”

Drew throws in, “We do know that Australia doesn’t observe a daylight savings time.”

“I’m not a rocket scientist but a nurse. Your dad sells real estate. But we do know that when the bright light in the sky stops coming up in the morning then something is dreadfully wrong.”

“Instead of hanging around here waiting for answers,” dad chimes in. “well, we decided it would be better if we just got home first. Quickly.”

“And then find out what has happened.” Drissa adds more, “You see, we also know that adverse weather can affect airline travel and we want to get on a plane bound for home before panic breaks out.”

“Panic. What panic?” The cabbie chimes in above his driving, “So what if the sun’s a little late coming up. No worries, eh?”

“Let me know how that works out for you, mate.” Drew counters.

Drissa, for the third time this morning, revels about her husband. This time in his polite way of telling the driver to mind his own business. She perceives the driver to mumble something under his breath, but leaves it as he is still driving fast.

“Guys?” Dena says sullenly, “In science class, the teacher told us that planets that don’t rotate end up fiery hot on the sunlight side and frozen like our polar regions on the dark side. Is that going to happen to Earth?”

“I don’t think so,” Drew says, using his best calming voice. “I took geography and Earth science in college to help in real estate. According to my professor, the Earth has an atmosphere and lots of water to help dissipate radiant heat from the Sun.”

Drissa is surprised at her husband and queries, “You actually remember your college classes?”

“Well, my parents were paying good money, so, yeah.”

“I think we can expect the weather back home, and everywhere, to be different,” Deanne tosses her idea into the mix.

“Well,” the father reasons out loud, “if the world has indeed stopped turning then the sun will remain somewhere in the sky according to what time it was.”

“What time is it back home, in Los Angeles?” Drissa urges her daughters to search, thinking another activity would help them stay calm.

“Seven hours difference,” Dena announces proudly, without needing her cell phone.

“Seven hours since when?” Drew inquires.

She closes her eyes a moment to help recall, then, “I set up my wake up call for five.”

“You got up at five, but there’s no way to know when the sun stopped. It could have been any time last night,” Drew surmises.

“But I’m certain I saw some color to the east, so for all intents and arguments I’m calling it at five, which means it’s twelve back home.”

“No, wait,” Deanne says, already happy with herself although supporting her facts with a cell phone app. “It’s eleven o’clock, instead of twelve, because the United States uses daylight savings time. Australia doesn’t. So, it’s eleven.”

Conversation is cut off by the appearance of a motorcade passing the taxi on the right. There is a lead car, one stretch limousine and two more cruiser cars following. From her venue at the right, rear window she leans her face against the glass and strains in vain to make out any people in the limo. The pack rockets past the taxi then drifts back into the lane in front.

“Wonder who that was?” Drissa speaks vacantly, now looking to the front as the auto string fades into the night.

“Somebody famous!” Deanne romanticizes.

“No,” Dena grounds her. “Too much security.

The mother spins half way around to face the girls, surmising, “It must be a senator or someone like it.”

Dena challenges her, “You and politics. I guess that’s supposed to be ‘your’ senator, the one you worked for last year without pay.”

“Dena,” Drissa begins, her voice not hiding her fatigue of the subject. “Sometimes you have to go out and work for something you believe in, even without pay. Besides, it’s just too remote of a chance for that to be Senator Hastings.”

Having noticed her husband’s distant stare while she was talking to the girls, she touches his knee and asks him, “Babe? You alright?”

“Yeah,” he says, startled from his wool gathering. “I was thinking about that fall. Right after the election.”

She approves with a smile, “Oahu. Our family time together. An amazing two weeks.”

“Your sister helped make it great. Coming along to watch the girls.”

“Yes,” Drissa agrees. “Dru has always been willing to help her baby sister.”

“Well, she got a killer vacation in the deal.”

“Dad?” Deanne muses aloud, “What will happen to the birds and other wild animals?”

Realizing he has never sugar-coated harsh facts for the girls and that this is no time to start it, he says, “I’m afraid a lot of them may die unless they can quickly adapt. Nature is going to be like a Charles Darwin event played in fast forward.”

“Ain’t he the guy that said we came from apes and monkeys?” Dena seeks to discredit her dad’s statement.

“No,” mom comes to the defense of the scientist, not being unkind. “In his works, he did note certain similarities between the species but went on to describe many, critical differences in anatomy and behavior. It makes me despise sources like Cliff Notes that attempt to summarize a man’s lifetime of work to a single phrase. So, no, he did not say that.”

“Now, I don’t know if birds can learn to roost in constant daylight,” Drew returns, “but I know most birds migrate at night. North American migrating birds may not nest and mate if they don’t migrate first.”

“We all can pretty well expect for average temperatures to go through the roof,” Drissa begins sincerely. “I was in central Texas just right after high school. The record daily temp was 127 degrees in the shade. All temperatures they report is are the shade, by the way. It was like an oven but you could get used to it really quick when it’s dry out. In those conditions, sweat evaporates off your skin and from beneath your clothes. It’s going to be important that we always drink lots of fluids.”

“You’re just trying to scare us,” the teenager Dena objects.

“And it’s working,” Deanne supports her sister.

“We’re trying to prepare you girls,” their mom continues. “Life as you know it is about to change.”

“Maybe forever,” the dad rallies.

The tone of finality places everyone to thinking.

“We’re there.” The father’s voice ends the silence.

In the short distance ahead of the taxi its occupants witness a scene of mayhem about the skycap zone where luggage is to be tagged and placed on conveyors leading to the bellies of airplanes. There are no other taxis about but arrays of luggage piles along the sidewalk; their owners engage in loud voices over sounds typical to airports. Their driver pauses.

A blaring horn sounds on the other side of the cab. The family turns to see the same motorcade as before, having pulled up beside them with the limo’s passenger window aligned with the taxi.

“If I hadn’t recognized you when my limo passed you,” the all too familiar voice boomed through the cab’s just opened window, “you’d be spending an eternity down under.”

“Senator Hastings,” Drissa’s voice screams back at him. “My God in Heaven! What are you doing in Australia?”

“Time to make nice and catch up on things once we are all on my plane. Follow me!”

The taxi driver needs no prompting and the five vehicles zip along through the avenue between the airline lobby and the parking structure. They pass through an inconspicuous gate on the far side of the entrance, heading for the back of the building. To an oblique corner there is a lone private jet, a huge one, bathed in area floodlights from the nearby building.

Dena’s interest in the situation peaked as did her posture, “Mom? Are we going to ride home in the Senator’s plane?”

“Are we?” Her sister joins

“Well, yeah, it looks like we are,” Drissa admits and gazes at Drew.

“Besides,” he says, “it looked like there was already some trouble with boarding flights back there.”

Drissa wonders out loud, “So, when have you two been such a fan of the Senator?”

“First class seats!” the two girls chime in excitement.

Like a well-oiled machine, the cars come to a stop and everyone springs into action as though well-rehearsed. The Philips struggle to keep the pace of much urgency around them. Drissa checks over her shoulder to see the Senator’s men handling their personal luggage onto the plane, entrances fore and aft, up two dozen steps. She is pleased that her girls are completely in line with the impromptu agenda, quietly for a change.

From the forward hatch, there is a wide open lounge where rows of seats must have been located. Past this and through curtained passages to either side rows of seats begin. This is where the men, and a couple of women, all wearing black suits with ties are settling in for take-off. So this is where Drissa leads her family. They are barely seated and strapped in when the hatches bang shut and the jet lurches forward into a hard turn heading for the runway.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have not been cleared for take-off but are proceeding anyway. Please remain seated until the Fasten Seatbelt signs are no longer lit.”

The jetliner made one last, forceful turn where it pauses for some pensive moments. Then its engines suddenly roar to exaggerated life, pressing Drissa and all the other passengers back into their upright seats. More questions without answers fill her mind but the take-off happens despite them. Just like that they are jetting outward into the darkness.