Illustration by Nick Howlett, from Abaddon #2.
Originally published in Abaddon #2, Autumn 1999.
I shrug off the clucking of my family and make my way to International Departures. With the ticketing formalities over, I slump at the bar and order drinks.
I sit and wait. To escape. A wicked love gone horribly, horribly wrong. Sour times polyfill the cracks, forcing me to seek joy in sepia-youth: I look at Mum and Dad so beaming and proud and picture the last time I was here. The last time, all those years ago…
He was all of ten years old then, sitting in the Airport Bar, and there was a big crowd because it was Sunday and the place was always packed on Sundays. Not just travellers — it was the only pub open in Melbourne on our Day of Rest. The bar was decked out like a sleazy suburban beer-and-brawl-barn: purple skylights meshed with brown and yellow carpet, fake-wood panelling. God knows what new arrivals thought. But it was exciting for him because he was just a kid and they were at the airport and those people all around were drunk and everyone seemed to be forging an incredible bond with each other, animatedly discussing the cricket and Packer’s Revolution.
“Wow, a revolution,” the boy marvelled. “Here in Melbourne!”
And where were those planes going? They were all going somewhere and he was just a kid, just ten years old, imagining the Moon or Mars, the stars their destination.
His father impatiently looked at his watch. Mother wiped the boy’s face with a spit-worn hankie. They were waiting for some long-forgotten cousin to arrive from the UK, another straggler from their far-flung clan. Father had a Scotch on the rocks, Mother a shandy. The boy sucked on raspberry lemonade. Australia — their Australia — had a freckly innocence, an immature nation finding its feet.
A bloke at the next table introduced himself as ‘Thommo’: he gave the boy a wink and sang the South Melbourne footy club’s theme song. Behind Thommo’s back, his mate — ‘Bazza’ — flashed the wanker sign at Thommo, eyes rolling for the youngster’s benefit. The boy giggled shyly.
Thommo and Bazza sported handle-bar moustaches and feather-cut hairdos. Their women drank from ‘ladies’ glasses’ and kept quiet; everyone knew their place. It was a sweet time and the boy savoured the moment, relishing the cartoon caricatures around him. His cousin and Mother and Father faded into nothing because he knew that soon, all this would be his. Life seemed impossibly easy, so neat. That’s the myth of mateship, of male pride.
It’s now. Today. Years later.
I’m old and I smell the crackle of neon. The ugly ockers of my childhood have vanished, replaced by Aussie gold Olympians: Cuthbert, Landy, Ford. A gallery of sporting heroes adorning the walls of the bar, spirit of the ‘56 Olympics, touched up and sprinkled with star-dust and Photoshop magic. Can technology proselytise the past? Can it invest those clapped-out icons with a metallic sheen, to cover their dried-rot?
A wide-bodied jet rumbles into view. I stare in awe. The windows of the bar are massive and I can see that the jet is a beautiful machine, a work of art.
I trust it to deliver me to safety.
My mind races. I feel the lattice of power, underpinnings, strings that pull the puppets: Melbourne Airport’s secret industry. What dramas are played out behind those white walls? Reinforced concrete, strong and able, houses the sub-structure through which electronics peep. Luggage chutes reach for the skies, inclined upward to who knows where. And how many lives have been saved by last-gasp quarantine dumps? Suspended between Touchdown and Customs, old norms and new; last chance to ditch your contraband, all to be forgotten, as the flowers turn rotten and the plastic is old and grey.
Who speaks their own body language well enough to play the game?
Sweaty palms, shaky-legs versus complex surveillance systems count the hairs on your mole.
galactic eyes
sharper than a poison claw
see into the beyond
Easy prey, the jet-lagged walk the gleaming chrome, resolving to greet the future head-on.
A flat, synthetic boarding call and I remembers my trip: “Last call for Silverwing 501. Please make your way to Gate 23.”
Just enough time for a slash. I make for the toilet.
The international pictogram for ‘man’ is suspended over the toilet door: straight-backed, featureless, brain-pan wiped clean. His partner, not ten metres away, is identical except for two half-triangles on either side of her legs. Some distinction! Merged seamlessly with tomorrow, poor Bazza and Thommo never had a chance to evolve. No time. How humiliating for them to witness their wives sprouting careers, orgasms…
Even robots need love.
On my way to Check-In I pass a glass cabinet marked QUARANTINE SEIZURES, prohibited goods snatched from hapless voyagers:
+ snake wine from Hong Kong
+ .22 calibre “purse-guns” from Freedom, Wyoming
+ used opium pipes from Marrakesh
+ “Harrods Dog Treats” from the Mother Cunt herself
Next to this, a gaudily-lit ad sells Southbank Apartments — “opposite new Casino.”
This airport is hyper-life, sniff-dogs pissed in the gene pool turn rabid on command. Robo-shotguns blast unattended luggage, a suspected bomb; hidden eyes spy digital ghosts, spool-and-replay eternal. There is a lack of overt ‘heat’ — where are the uniforms and sunglassed meat? They melt into light. Take one last look: flesh-and-blood for the dear, dying, departed. It’s a system built on deception and shadow-play, set up to tame its own kind.
I don’t know where this is going, anymore. Do you? Write to me, often…
Write him.
Silverwing five-oh-one holding short of runway. I request start-up clearance. My initial route is London two-eight, via Bangkok. Wind two-six-oh at one-two. Eight-oh knots. Vee-one.
Rotate.
Silverwing five-oh-one now climbing to six thousand feet. Change to one-one-nine point three
Autopilot engaged.