Terminal Connection Read Free

She looked down the strap to her father. Below his hands, the loose end of the strap whipped around from the turbulent blasts of air.
    “Climb!” she yelled.
    He bled from a gash above his eye. Was he knocked out?
    “Dad! Dad! Can you hear me?” The wind whisked her words away.
    Her father lay still.
    “I can’t hold on much longer!”
    He did not budge, but his knuckles were white. Her arms grew fatigued, and the strap slipped a little. Her father looked up and Allison saw resignation.
    She locked her gaze into his and yelled, “You told me to never give up on anything. Don’t you give up now, Dad, don’t you dare.”
    He began to climb, the strap cutting into her hands as he pulled. He climbed faster.
    “Slow down,” she yelled. He was too heavy. Her left arm cramped, her grip loosened, and several inches of strap slipped through, the dull edges cutting into her hands. Her father screamed as the strap slipped. She had never heard him scream. The pain disappeared as her strength returned, and Allison tightened her grip. The strap slowed and stopped.
    She looked down. Her hands were covered in blood, and only a few inches of strap remained. Her father had stopped.
    “I’ve got it!” she shouted.
    He pulled himself up. The strap became slick with her blood, but now she felt no pain. He inched his way up the strap, and now only a few feet separated him from the netting. She could almost touch him. Her left arm convulsed, and another inch slipped through her fingers. Her father locked his gaze into hers and he climbed faster, the strap ripping back and forth. Her left hand went numb and she willed it to clasp tighter as the last bit of strap slipped from her hands.
    Allison watched as her father tumbled down the loading ramp and fell through the gaping hole in the back of the plane. His eyes remained locked with hers, wide with fear and disbelief.
    She reached out. “No! No! Daddy, don’t leave me! Nooooooo!”
    He faded away, his flailing body shrinking until he was just an imperceptible dot lost in the backdrop of Hainan Island.

The Incident
    “But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning. For what was great in the morning will be little in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening become a lie.”

    — Carl G. Jung, Stages of Life.

3
    Tuesday, June 9, 2020

    C amille gazed at the ocean. Fifty feet offshore two pinnacles of rock jutted out of the water. Gnarled and encrusted with sea life, they appeared as two anguished fingers rending the deep blue shroud. Beyond the pillars, the sun touched the horizon as it was setting. It flushed the sky to a fiery red and tinged the white caps a faint crimson.
    The pillars’ shadows inched their way up the sandy beach and rested on each side of Camille. A light breeze swirled around her and the sultry air held her like a warm blanket. She turned to the stranger who had brought her there.
    “This place is so cool—uh—and beautiful,” she said. Could he tell she was only seventeen?
    In VR, she was not an awkward teenager, but a twenty-seven-year-old knockout. Camille glanced at the time fixed in the upper left corner of her vision: 3:12 p.m. Her mother would not be home for another two hours.
    The stranger spoke. “It’s called Tianya Haijiao, China’s southernmost beach. The words mean edge of the heavens, corner of the seas .”
    “Oh? Are you from here?” She smiled. His shell was Caucasian.
    He nodded. “Throughout time this beach has marked the limit of China’s reign, her boundary. For thousands of years the emperor exiled poets and officials to this tropical Siberia. Legend has it that these pillars represent two lost souls, their lives and dreams forgotten.”
    Camille did not hear his words, only his confidence. She ran her hands down her full figure. Dark hair and features framed her new face in mystique. Her dark, olive skin made it difficult to place her origin. She gazed into his