The survivor

Forty-One

High above the Pacific Ocean, at approx thirty-seven thousand feet, the Man with the Bamboo Spine walked down the centre aisle of the 747 in an effort to stretch his joints. At just over six foot, he was tall for an Asian male, and lanky. His legs and arms were disproportionately long in comparison to the rest of his body.

On returning to his seat, he pulled out the laptop given to him back in Macau. He powered it on, punched in his password, SWORDS, then waited for the operating system to finish loading. The ticket he had purchased was for a window seat. He had also purchased the seat next to him.

When the flight attendant came by and asked him if he was thirsty, he said, ‘Yes.’ When she asked him if wanted tea or coffee, he said, ‘Tea, black.’ And when she asked him if he wanted anything else, he said, ‘No.’ These were the first words he had spoken since entering this plane the previous day on the other side of the world.

He waited in silence, looking at nothing until the flight attendant returned with his drink. He folded down the tray of the next seat, accepted the tea, and placed the cup down in the circular inset. He waited for the flight attendant to leave.

When she was gone, he got to work.

The laptop was an Apple, and it had a rotatable screen. He turned the screen forty degrees to the left, so that it faced the window, where only he could see it. He brought up the file folder that was password protected and encrypted by FolderSecure. He used his second password, THUNDERBOLTS, to gain access, then opened the unlocked folder.

Images popped up.

Spread across the screen were five jpegs. Four of them were the faces of children, smiling, happy. Three of them were now dead. One was presumably alive, the whereabouts unknown. The fifth jpeg was an image of a man he had not seen in decades. Not since those bad, bad times that he never thought about any more.

The sight stirred strange feelings inside of him.

The Man with the Bamboo Spine looked at the images for a long time as the plane crossed the Pacific Ocean and entered Canadian air space. He did not shut the computer down until the flight attendant announced that they would soon be making their descent.

He sat straight and said nothing more. Stared at the back of the seat in front of him as the plane prepared to land.

Vancouver, Canada.

He had arrived.