[2003] LOSS & PORPHYRY the novels  

0053 – Part 24 - US Clairvoyance 4 (1,617 words)

The return from my one-day convention to Kennedy airport retraced the route I had followed the previous evening; again in darkness, and again provoking a vague feeling of dissatisfaction. The only difference, this time, was the diversion offered by a seeming plethora of minor accidents; apparently caused by the day's snow having settled on ice. I was amused, where only recently the British pundits had been castigating the local authorities for not dealing well with an unexpected snowfall - by comparing their incompetence with the American expertise where any snowfall was immediately handled with great efficiency. As I watched the various incidents, with out-of-control cars charging each other like lumbering beasts from the zoo and their owners subsequently making roaring sounds that would do justice to any mating bull, I wondered what those self-sure pundits would make of this mayhem. Even the limo I was travelling in bore the scars of a very recent encounter.

At the airport I was booked on a TWA flight; and was, thus, deposited by my driver in front of the strange structure that Aaro Saarinen had foisted on the airline. The womb-like shapes were undoubtedly strange, and unexpected in such mundane surroundings, but I was impressed with their creative approach to handling passengers. They were, surely, an improvement on the anonymous hangers that the other airlines favoured. Making my way briskly through the undulating fallopian tubes that led to the departure lounge, I was in plenty of time to book a good seat on the aisle; this time towards the rear, but there would be no major delays at Heathrow - where I would not face the indignity of being treated as an immigrant.

As I sat in the lounge, facing the window overlooking the pier, I saw the vast bulk of the 747 being slowly trundled towards me behind a seemingly minute tractor; to finish with its nose just feet from the window. Within a few minutes the ground stewardesses appeared at their desks, next to the pier. The travellers in the lounge, myself among them, made our way to board. A quarter of an hour later, however, the queue had not moved; though there was no apparent reason for this. As my seat was, after all, reserved I gave up my vigil and returned to the seat overlooking the offending plane. It would not be the first time I had suffered from delays in such circumstances. On the flights back from Paris, which I then regularly took, delay was the norm; to the extent that I often managed to fly on an earlier plane, which had been delayed, rather than the one I was theoretically booked on.

I was startled, however, to realise that the 747 was being towed away from the pier. This had never happened to me before. Enquiries of the ground stewardesses, now besieged by the waiting passengers, elicited the grudging information that there was 'something wrong' with the conveyance and that they hoped to have a replacement within an hour or so.

As a rule of thumb, I always multiplied such estimates by a factor of three; and I rarely underestimated. It looked as if I was in for a long wait. But, I suddenly realised, there were other flights. During the night the air over the Atlantic was filled with Boeing 747's hurtling towards Europe, bearing their cargoes of hundreds of fitfully dozing businessmen. Driving along the M4 motorway near Heathrow between eight and nine in the morning, as I sometimes did, I could not fail to see the long line of 747's making their stately descent, almost nose to tail in an aerial parody of the traffic jams below; and almost all coming through the overnight 'window' from the US.

Each airline boasted several flights a night from Kennedy. Regrettably, the one that had just been so unceremoniously towed away was TWA's last for the night; intentionally so, from my point of view, where I had aimed to make the very most of his all too brief trip. But it might not be the only one still available. Maybe there was another one at one of the other terminals; maybe a later flight, maybe one also delayed - but not so dramatically. Unfortunately, at JFK, each major airline had its own separate terminal. That was the bad news. The good news was that I had all my baggage in my hand; if it had been in the hold of that sick airliner I would have had no choice. But I did have a choice. I started to walk back down those strange undulating fallopian tubes.

Back at the entrance, I knew that the next building, or the one beyond that, belonged to British Airways. That was the building to try, for British Airways had the most flights to London; indeed that was where almost all the flights from that terminal departed to. I strode through the automatic doors, and out into the New York winter. The next terminal was only a few hundred yards away, but only a few minutes later I was seriously beginning to wonder if I would ever make it. The snow had stopped, but it was deep enough to impede my progress; particularly, as I was finding out, there were no well defined paths between the buildings - only a mad Englishman would walk, in a country where the car was ubiquitous even for journeys of a few hundred yards. Worst of all I had seriously underestimated the cold of the New York winter. It must have been thirty below and, despite my overcoat, I soon felt as if I had been thrust naked into a freezer. After what seemed like an eternity of numbing cold, I staggered through the doors of the terminal - which, inevitably, had been the second building along my painfully cold path.

Rather to my surprise, for despite my confidence in starting the expedition it had been as much to while away the tedious midnight hours until the TWA plane was repaired, I found that there really was a flight available; and that there were plenty of seats available on it. Even more surprising, the counter staff happily accepted my ticket; which clearly showed that I was already on another flight.

This building was an anonymous hangar, without the idiosyncratic charm of TWA's terminal, but at least my plane was ready for boarding and I walked straight onto the 747, and to my seat. Needless to say, however, this flight was delayed too - and it was another hour and a half before I was actually in the air.

Flying through the night always proved to be a debilitating experience for me. It was impossible to sleep, even though the seat next to me was vacant and it was just possible to curl up in a foetal position. But there was no position I could find which was comfortable for more than ten minutes. In any case, as usual, the catering arrangements seemed designed to guarantee that sleep would be disturbed. Despite the delay, 'dinner' was not served until two hours into the flight; at two o'clock in the morning American time and, as my numbed brain calculated, seven by UK time, when I was desperately trying to obtain some sleep. Similarly, breakfast was energetically served when we were still two and a half hours out from Heathrow, somewhere over the grey Atlantic to the west of Ireland. Between the two events there had been barely two hours; just enough, in desperation, to see the film - which my numbed brain instantly forgot.

In those long hours, despite the slow workings of my brain, I had the time to review my extraordinary experiences. I desperately tried to put the clairvoyance in perspective. How could I see something so far away? What field or force would allow me to do that? Was it a form of electromagnetic radiation akin to the light or radio waves I understood well from my degree in Physics?

It was only then, in that dim grey half dawn above the Atlantic, that I first realised that what I had experienced could not have been just clairvoyance. The view I had seen had, to be sure, been distant. But it had not been of the same time! The latest revelation was the realisation that the images I had seen had included the clouds of 'steam'; which had turned out to be snow. There was no mistaking them, as I looked yet again at the picture I had drawn. They were the dominant feature of the design. Yet those snow-clouds could only have appeared the following morning, just before I looked out of the window. There had been no sign of snow the night before when I had arrived, and there could not have been any when I was drawing the picture on the plane!

The only explanation could be that what I had experienced was prescience. Albeit in a very mundane way, I had seen the future! The picture had represented what I was about to see, some twelve or more hours in the future! It was another shattering revelation. It was just possible to conceive of some form of radiation which might transmit remote pictures, perhaps the telepathic transmissions from other viewers. It was quite another thing to see the future. The mechanism for this was beyond my comprehension. The onward march of time was irresistible; it, almost alone, could not be reversed. It surely could not be 'travelled' within; like some daytripper declining to visit Brighton, but choosing instead to visit tomorrow. The very foundations of my scientific training were being challenged.

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