I was just relaxing tonight listening to some Beatles when the acoustic version of Back in the USSR came on. It sparked an image in my head of a dude landing in a totalitarian hellhole, and one thing led to another and I wrote this! I think it's a cool little story and it will have MAJOR implications for the future.
A stubble-faced aerotraffic director sat at his post on that cold, windy 20th day of December, 1935. He inhaled a puff of a Morton and took another sip of coffee as he waited for someone to land. It was another boring day at the famed Benjamin Franklin Memorial Aerodrome, and Bill Snow didn't expect too much excitement that day, quite simply because most every day he had ever had since he started working there three years prior was mindbogglingly snooze-inducing in the highest order. Sure, plenty of planes and aeroships would land throughout the shift, but the novelty of working in the control tower got old quite fast. There would occasionally be a Party big-wig or a governor or something, but that was rare. All the really interesting traffic went to Pt.-St. Crawford Memorial in New York City, or just straight to Philadelphia. Bill sighed and took another sip of the black brew in the pastel blue mug that was an ever-present companion throughout his working career.
Just as he sat back in his chair for the next wait, a bulb lit up like the Fourth of July on the alert system. The siren-like apparatus mounted on the wall before him strobe red, indicating the Aerodrome Commander expected an emergency landing. This was bad. This was
really bad. Seeing flights come down hard stressed Bill out beyond the pale, as could be expected from any sane man, and fiery crashes were not his idea of a spicing up his work day. He lightly slapped himself a couple times to help focus and then readjusted his silver microphone and receiver before him. "Here we go," Bill sighed. "Jehovah preserve us all...."
All over the aerodrome, staff and crewmen were scurrying about to clear the runway. If there was going to be a rough landing, no one wanted to come in the vicinity of it. Back in 1933, Bill had seen a small biplane get hit head-on by an emergency landing of a large military plane, and that little craft was scattered all over the runway, including its sleeping pilot. Bill grimaced. As everyone waited and watched, something strange began to happen. Large trucks, Ford Workhorses by the looks of them, were screeching onto the landing strip at break-neck speed. The diesel-chugging monsters parked in various locations and ORRA officers began to deploy from the tailgates, bayonets fixed and helmets on. Within seconds, they were rounding people up and forcing them into the trucks at gunpoint before the trucks sped off with their new passengers, leaving the ORRA men standing there.
All over the control tower, Bill's coworkers eyed each other with no small amount of fear. Whatever was coming down was something really, really important. The obvious question hanging unspoken in the air was finally popped by Greg Stone, the snarky paper-pusher from downstairs who had been passing out memos to control crew. "Gee, guys, are they gonna leave us up here?"
On cue, the wooden door of the control tower smashed open and ORRA troops rushed in and began to grab the control crew by their arms and lead them away. A surly-looking chap with gold piping and a drawn service pistol bellowed, "My fellow citizens, the state appreciates your hard work, and as a reward, you may have the rest of today off with pay. Enjoy and please follow all orders from my men or consequences shall be suffered. All hail." He dryly raised his right hand to chest height and the waved it, motioning for the civilians--and Bill--to be lead out.
Bill never knew true fear more than when two ORRA officers grabbed him by an arm apiece and hauled him, feet dragging, out of the control tower. His heart was pounding out of his chest and he could hardly breathe from the rush of it all. Once again, the only excitement in a working day at a control tower was not any form of excitement anyone but a sadist could enjoy. A few seconds later and he and the other crew were on the sidewalk outside the Aerodrome entrance, the gates slamming shut right after an armored military car sped in.
"What do you think all of this is about?" someone asked as the group of men began to head for the staff parking lot, and their autocarriages.
Bill took another Morton out of his pocket and quickly lit it with a shaky hand. "I don't know, pal. And I'll tell you I for sure ain't gonna stand around and find out. I'm gonna go have lunch with my family. See you all tomorrow I guess, if ORRA doesn't burn the aerodrome down with whatever they are doing in there. More power to 'em, I guess."
"They got quite a bit of power already, if you ask me," Greg Stone said, shrugging.
Bill stopped halfway through putting his lighter back in his short-sleeve white dress shirt pocket and raised an eyebrow. Holding the cigarette between his lips he shot Stone, that paper-pushing ninny, a filthy look. "
What did you just say, Stone?"
Stone recoiled visibly and replied, voice shaking, "I didn't say anything."
A long drag of Morton. "S'what I
thought, Stone."
The rest of the walk to the staff parking was quiet as a funeral.
***
Midas Goldstein looked out a window of the mighty Eagle Airlines C-32 as it came in, balls to the wall. He was standing in the main passenger seating area, the floor shaking beneath his feet as the plane came roaring in for a landing. Aside from his "special guest" and a handful of ORRA men, the plane was empty, lending an eerie silence to the whole ride in from Europe. He used a handkerchief embroidered with a Star of David to wipe the sweat from his totally hairless head and tucked it back in his white trouser pocket. "Well, my dear friend," he said to a man who was handcuffed and strapped into a seat nearby, "We're almost there." The "Black Jew's" pale, portly frame came closer to the prisoner, a wild-eyed man with a look of sheer terror on his own sweaty face. "Soon," Midas continued, stooping over the man, "We're going to make history, you and I. We're going to change the world."
The middle-aged man in cuffs and a blue knit sweater-vest soaked in sweat frowned the deepest frown, the hope draining from his eyes as he realized they were about to touch down. "
Fick dich!" the man spat in Goldstein's face in a thick German accent. "I have told you a thousand times, I will never help you or your pathetic country, you fat
Jude. Burn in hell!"
Goldstein sat down in the seat next to him, bracing for the landing to come, and strapped himself in. He playfully patted the man's hand, laughing at his resistance. "You say this, as if you have
chutzpa, but we both know you have no balls." As Midas laughed the handcuffed man turned his head to face away. "Look at me, Meitner." To his great annoyance, the man still looked away. He grabbed the man's chin with his plump, pudgy fingers and forced his head back around. "Look at me, you dumb
schmuck! I could snuff you out like a fucking candle right now." The man trembled. That was better. "Good. You know, Otto, I think we could get along. We are both smart men, of Pinnacle Blood. Just because you are from the Second Bund doesn't mean you are Catholic. Why does a Lutheran like you research nuclear weaponry for the likes of the Papist Caesar? I fail to understand the loyalty there. We offered you a handsome sum to do a little side work for us, and you turned us down. That made President Steele very unhappy. And when President Steele is unhappy, he makes me do very uncomfortable things for all of us, Otto."
Professor Otto Meitner of Munich University made dead eye-contact with Midas and replied, trying to mask the fear in his voice, "You people are all crazy. All the same.
Verdammte Juden und Kultisten, all of you! I will never betray Europe to your kind, you Hebrew bastard."
A cold, harsh laugh came from the American. "We offered you money and fame to work for us. You would be more famous than even I. But if you won't publicly join us, we'll learn the secrets of the atom from you one way or another, my Rhenish friend. One way or another America shall march headlong into the future, leaving your pitiful Old World in the dust. We are approaching a new age, Professor. Can you feel it? Can't you just almost taste the victory and triumph of God's Children that is to come?"
An ORRA officer in a plainclothes suit, one of the men who had helped pull of the abduction of Professor Meitner from his hotel room in Amsterdam, walked down the pathway between the seats of the passenger area. "Comrade-Patriot Goldstein, sir!" he saluted and snapped to attention. "Comms on the ground reports we are clear for a landing. No witnesses are left in the aerodrome."
Goldstein shot Meitner a wicked smile with his perfectly white teeth. "Good! Good, Jones. Tell them to bring us in. And do we have adequate transportation on the ground?"
Jones, the plainclothesman, knodded and replied, "Yessir, we have an armored warwagon ready to move out with our special guest and yourself. A convoy of ORRA workhorses will be your entourage tonight, sir."
"Lovely," said the Black Jew. He turned his head back to Meitner and told him with a voice full of sheer glee at his discomfort, "We'll be writing those theories down before you know it, Meitner. I hear out west is beautiful this time of year. Our friend Supreme Chief Patton will be very happy to see you."
With a loud roar and a thud, the C-32 touched down at the Boston Aerodrome. The voice of the plane captain sounded over the plane's intercom, "
Hallelujah, we have arrived, gentlemen."
Midas clapped his hands and said in a chipper tone, "
Hallelujah, Meitner. God is good."
"Fick."
Flew in from Europe, overnight, y'see
Didn't get to bed last night
On the way the paper bag was on my knee
Man, I had a dreadful flight
I'm back in the R.U. of A.
You don't know how lucky you are, hey
Back in the R.U. of A., yeah
Been away so long I hardly knew the place
Praise be! Grand to be back home
Leave it till tomorrow to unpack my case
Honey, disconnect the phone
I'm back in the R.U. of A.
You don't know how lucky you are, hey
Back in the R.U.
Back in the R.U.
Back in the R.U. of A.
Well the Kissimmee girls really knock me out
They leave the rest behind
But Philadelphia fillies make me sing and shout
And Georgia's always on my my my my my my my my my mind
Oh, come on
I'm back in the R.U. of A.
You don't know how lucky you are, hey
Back in the R.U. of A.
Oh, show me round your snow peaked
Rockies way out west
Take me to New Antioch
Let me hear your banjos ringing out
Honey, I'm just a rollin' rock
I'm back in the R.U. of A.
Hey, you don't know how lucky you are, hey
Back in the R.U. of A.
Back in the R.U.
Back in the R.U. of A.