Transmat World: Prologue, Episode 3
Jakarta, 2045 A.D.
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The sound of ejecta became an almost-done bag of microwave popcorn. When the hits died completely, he eased the truck forward until the flip-flop noise of shredded rubber gave way to the abrasive, metallic din of bare rims on concrete louder than the distant roar of burning towers. He was traveling a scorching twelve kilometers per hour. BNI was still two and a half kilometers by road. They could see its pointy buttress, the highest thing around. Though the glass was gone and it was smoking, it was not burning like the others. The fire management system must have worked. Daniel focused only on the path he needed to get to the tower, ignoring details of catastrophic tragedy in every direction.
“Sujatmi, a big wave is coming and … oh, crap, the wind. I forgot about the wind.” Daniel pressed down on the accelerator, going as fast as he could while dodging bodies and wreckage and temblor cracks in the freeway. Sparks flew from the rims as the decibel level rose. Even with the windows up and the air conditioning on re-circulate, the charnel house smell was horrendous.
“The tower,” he continued, “is the safest place to ride it out, but it may be days before we’re rescued. When we get there we have to hit every vending machine we can find for food and water. Here is some money,” he reached in his pocket and pulled out his money clip. The wadded-up thousand rupiah note Guntur had given him fell onto the console. Everyone looked at it with a tight, forlorn intensity. Daniel retrieved it and stuck it in his shirt pocket.
“I’ll just hang on to this,” he said. A consensus of grief was acknowledged and appeased, if only for an instant, by this sentiment for two people they did not even know.
“Daniel, my husband, Indro, is a chef at The Cilantro, a restaurant on the 46th floor,” Sujatmi said. “There will be food.”
“Poppy good cook,” Liani said. Sujatmi manages a smile.
“I can’t wait to try his cooking, Liani,” Daniel told her and looked at Sujatmi, “nevertheless, the power will be gone. The restaurant owner may have different ideas about food distribution.”
Sujatmi divvied the money up and explained the plan to everyone. Their mood brightened at the chance to take part in their own salvation. The BNI Tower loomed on the left half a kilometer west of the freeway. Daniel went past it almost to the river just to the north, turned left onto Jalan Karet Pasar Baru Barat and another left to get to the building parking lot.
Bodies and riddled vehicles, many burning, filled the lot. Blood, oil, and engine coolant drained into storm sewer openings. Daniel parked at the edge of this killing field, and they emerged from the vehicle in slow motion as though distrusting of the environment beyond its protective shell.
A giant sword sticking out of the ground with the thickness of the blade greatly exaggerated, the BNI Tower thrust skyward. Stone and blue glass once clad the building. Now the blue glass of Bank Negara Indonesia was gone. The north main entrance marred the blade where it entered the ground. They made their way to the entrance along a bare strip of concrete next to the building.
“Don’t look at the parking lot,” said Daniel. He knows there would be nightmares enough for this group without staring at that particularly vivid carnage.
Sujatmi’s bosom shielded Liani’s view as she carried the child. Everyone held their nose. The light and heat from burning buildings gave a hellish cast to the landscape — Dante’s Inferno become real. Daniel walked ahead of his group into the ground floor lobby. A few survivors milled about the lobby in shock.
A haggard bank guard approached. He spoke English in a tone of strained civility. “Sir, if you don’t have business with the bank I must ask you and your friends to leave. Please return after the authorities arrive.”
All communications were down. First to arrive at the building since the catastrophe began, they did not know what to expect and neither did the bank personnel. The bank guard thought the ejecta was a terrorist blast that coincided with the earthquake. As Daniel told their story, the guard crumpled to the floor and wept openly with the knowledge his family was probably dead. Sujatmi comforted him while the others spread out to collect provisions. She questioned him concerning the survivors.
The guard haltingly related the events. “A fire started in the upper floors. Some people got trapped and died before the sprinkler system controlled it. Evacuation of the building began. It was somewhat orderly until the earthquake hit. Then everyone panicked. Many people trampled. It was a terrible thing. Everyone headed for the parking lot, and that is where they were standing when the explosion came. It blew out the windows and killed everyone outside in the parking lot.”
The Shangri-La Hotel sat just west and north of BNI, leaving a gap between the two buildings that gave no protection from the ejecta fussillade out of the west. Everyone in line with that gap was killed by ejecta. That included everyone in the BNI parking lot. Sujatmi got up, yelled “Indro!,” and ran toward the parking lot. Daniel sprinted after, intercepting her before she made the door.
“Sujatmi, it’s too late!” He had visions of her combing through hundreds of shredded bodies as wind and water approached like death on wings. “The wind is coming! If he’s out there, what can you can do? Think of Liani.”
Liani had now caught up and wrapped her arms around Sujatmi’s legs. He put his arms around Sujatmi while she cried into his shirt. Coaxing her away from the door, they head back to where the bank guard sat cross-legged on the marble floor, still in shock.
“His name is Yandi. Yandi Durmali,” said Sujatma. “He is worried about his wife and children.”
“Yandi,” said Daniel.
The guard looked up.
“I know this is difficult, but it is not over. We must act now to save these people from the wind and water that are coming. It is all we have time for.” His appeal to the guard’s sense of duty seemed to bring him around. He gave Yandi a mission to keep him occupied and focused. “Yandi, gather up these people, tell them what is going to happen, and lead them up the stairs to the 39th floor.”
The 39th floor was the last floor clad in stone, protecting it from the elements. The stone-clad portion of the tower had small windows recessed a third of a meter. Daniel hoped the recesses spared at least some glass from ejecta and would repeat that performance in the upcoming wind. The guard was on his feet gathering shell shocked loiterers together as Daniel’s party straggled back with their loot of chips, candy, bottled water, and sodas. Taking inventory, Daniel decided he should scavenge for vitamins later. As they made their way to the stairwell, two boys surrender their shirts to use as booty bags.
The stairwell was part of the core of the building, a reinforced concrete honeycomb of an inner tower. It contained elevator and utility shafts stretching from the basement to the top. Floor trusses spanned between this stone tower and the tubular, load-bearing outer frame of structural steel. Daniel now realizes the concrete core saved the glass on the east wall. The west wall of this central tower, pockmarked and cratered from ejecta, still maintained integrity. Hypersonic stone missiles destroyed the thin strip of glass on the sharp western edge of the blade-shaped building, going through office walls of gypsum like tissue, shredding everything until it hit the concrete core.
They trudged upwards, taking a break on fifteen and another between twenty-nine and thirty. The wind hit while they were catching their breath. The initial vibration knocked them to the concrete.
God, not another earthquake, thinks Daniel before the noise identifies it as wind.
The vibrations continued at smaller, faster amplitudes, and the sound filled up their reality. They saw each others’ mouths open wide, screaming, but could not hear it. Clutching their ears, they laid down on the concrete stair landing and used their feet against the walls and arms on the hand railing to brace themselves against the swaying vibration of the building. The one-minute duration seemed like thirty. The noise and motion soon died down as they lay on the landing assessing their condition. Liani was the first up. “Let’s go. Let’s go see Poppy!”
Daniel turned a cautious glance at Sujatmi. Sujatmi has not talked with Liani about this, and, before he can say anything, she spoke up.
“Yes, Liani, let’s go do that now.”
