October 19, 2022
Day 0
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It didn’t take Rahul long to spot Daniel, and after some hand-waving and shouting, his manager noticed him, and smoothly glided over.
"Hello."
The manager said.
Rahul stood still for a few seconds, reconciling what he saw with what he knew about physics. Then he put his thoughts into words.
“How on earth did you do that!”
Daniel sagely explained.
“I just thought of the direction where I wanted to move, and it happened. I don’t know how this movement magic works, but the rules and commands have started to feel intuitive after a bit of experimentation.“
Rahul just nodded, still a bit unsure, but determined to try this out for himself.
He thought about floating a bit to the left, but nothing happened.
Having struggled with this himself, Daniel sensed Rahul's confusion immediately, and helpfully added.
“You need to be precise with your thoughts. Ambiguous commands won't work.”
Rahul nodded again and thought about moving ten feet left, and this time, he did move.
Now smiling, Rahul thought about moving to the right till he was within earshot of Daniel, and nothing happened. Then he thought about moving to the right till he was one foot from Daniel, and that worked too. Finally, Rahul thought about going left till he wished to stop, and his commands were obeyed perfectly.
Satisfied, he floated back to Daniel and smiled.
“I feel a whole lot better now. Thanks!”
Those were not empty words. Rahul truly felt a dark shroud of helplessness disappear from above him. While having control over his own fate felt liberating, it also brought with it a sense of urgency.
Rahul cut to the chase.
“What do you think about the whole bastion business?”
Daniel replied.
“There is little information to go on, and your guess is as good as mine. That's not to say I don't have any theories."
Daniel smiled and continued. Rahul smiled too, Daniel always had theories.
Stolen novel; please report.
"This lack of information could be on purpose, to make things hard and ensure that very few make it to bastions. Or, it could be because no information is actually needed and the bastions are incredibly obvious at first sight.”
Rahul nodded in understanding and added.
“Obvious to everyone except those who are miles away from any form of civilization. Perhaps more importantly, from land.”
Daniel shrugged.
“At least that’s how I see it.”
Then he looked around and continued.
“When the flight disappeared, everyone was screaming, puking, or had passed out. I see a lot of people are coming to their senses now, and already a few groups are forming. We are on a deadline, one that’ll cost us our lives if we miss. I’ll meet up with other managers and try to restore order. Can you gather the rest of the team in the meantime and help anyone who's still in shock?“
Rahul nodded and did as told, going around and gathering his colleagues, making sure no one had taken any injuries from this whole ordeal. Everyone was still panicking, some more than others, but seeing the organization hierarchy kick into action provided a comfort of familiarity in a world where too much abruptly stopped making sense.
Soon, a headcount was completed, everyone was accounted for, and a circle was formed by the department director, all the managers, and the pilot. A few others were called in too, and the whole affair looked remarkably similar to the war-rooms often created in the office to deal with urgent and severe bugs.
A new circle slowly formed with the air hostesses and a few other passengers who happened to be on that flight but were not employees of the software company. Everyone else seemed to have grouped up with their teams by now.
After talking to his colleagues for some time, Rahul noticed the leadership circle looking around, first at the ocean directly below, and then in every direction, with their hands above their squinting eyes, quite like a sailor.
They are searching for any signs of land.
Rahul thought, having anticipated this, and with no small amount of anxiety, moved towards the impromptu war room.
When he was close enough, all eyes darted in his direction. He did not like this much attention. Unsure what to say, Rahul immediately blurted.
“I saw an island right before the airplane disappeared.”
Mark spoke.
“Please join us, ahem..”
Daniel came to the rescue.
“That's Rahul, he’s in my team.”
Mark quickly got to the point.
“Please join us, Rahul. In which direction did you see the island, could you tell how big it was?“
Rahul answered.
“I saw it from the window, I was sitting near the wing on the right side of the plane. I can’t quite say just how big it was.“
It was the pilot who spoke next.
“As I told you guys, the only major islands in this region of the Pacific are the Hawaiian Islands. All of our electronic devices have vanished, and I know neither the time that has passed since the aircraft disappeared, nor our current position relative to Hawaii."
He continued.
"Going in a random direction will be like trying to find a needle in the ocean. While we can use the sun for direction, it is much easier to just orient ourselves to go back the way we came by using our current trajectory as reference. At this speed, we are moving miles away from that island every minute. Since we have no idea what speeds are safely possible with our ‘thought bubble’, every second we wait reduces our likelihood of reaching that island on time. I vote we focus on eroding our velocity to zero as soon as possible, and then go back.”
After getting many assurances from Rahul that he was wide awake when he noticed the island, everyone was on board. Daniel, who seemed to be most comfortable with movement in the air, was tasked with figuring out a strategy to erode their momentum with an exact and reproducible thought so that everyone would lose speed at the same rate and stay together.
In the meantime, all the managers were tasked with going around and bringing their teams up to speed. Since Daniel was otherwise occupied, Rahul debriefed his team.