Remember More

Chapter 22

REMEMBER MORE

CHAPTER 22

"So you're not afraid of heights?"

"No, whatever gave you that idea?"

John and Yan were on a plane again, heading out to Greece. Yan was munching on an apple. John was having a steak. His second.

John put down his fork and wiped his mouth. "But you don't like to fly."

"Don't be crazy! I don't mind flying at all."

"But you…"

"I just don't like to fly…" Yan gestured with her hands. "…without a decent airplane wrapped around me."

John blinked at her.

Yan took a bite of her apple. Crunch, crunch.

Looking out the window beside him, he shrugged. "Whatever." He made a face. "I don't know what you're talking about. I find it exhilarating, to tell the truth."

She jerked up in her chair. "Oh, right! Of course!" Her eyes went wide. "It's different for you, though! You're the one who's…who's…" She waved her hands about.

"Well, you don't have to shout…" He reached up with his hands to shield his ears.

"I wasn't! For the last time…!" Yan turned away in a huff. "Argh!" She crossed her arms.

Adjusting his ear buds so they fit more snug, he bent his head and resumed eating.

What John had on, scrunched into his ears and so deep they were practically touching his eardrums, were his special, ultra high-tech, moulded with memory foam, noise cancelling earphones. Very expensive. One of a kind. Custom made. He had talked to Mike and had them sent out from his house to where they were, overnight express. John had them on now and they were screwed in tight, but it wasn't so he could listen to music. In fact, the other end of his earphones, the jack at the end of the wire, was just dangling in front of him and not plugged into anything at all.

Ever since Nazca and after he had learned to fly, John found that his ears had become sensitive to noise and so sensitive it made even normal conversation with Yan somewhat painful. And that tickle at the back of his throat was getting worse too. It didn't make him cough and it wasn't sore, but a sense of something in the back of his larynx was always there and only clearing it gave him some mild sense of relief for a few minutes at a time. It was annoying. To John.

The hearing thing was only annoying to Yan.

By this time, both of them were familiar enough with the process to know that these symptoms meant that John was finally and fully through the Gate of Earth and was now well on his way toward the Gate of Water. Once he got through this new hearing challenge, if he ever managed to get through it, his sensitivity to sound must surely surge forward in leaps and bounds and allow him to reach new heights of auditory hyperacuity. What the throat clearing was going to change into, however, neither of them had any clue.

Taking a look out the window, John saw that their plane was just lining itself up for the final approach into the local airport and getting ready for landing. He put his food away.

By the look of things, it seemed they had arrived on the Greek island of Santorini safely and without incident.

~~~

Santorini is a set of islands in the Aegean Sea about 120 miles southeast from the mainland of Greece. The key formation is best thought of as a rectangular lagoon surrounded on three sides by sheer cliffs about a thousand feet in height and two smaller islands on the side without a cliff, on the west. The lagoon itself is about eight miles long by four miles wide. The island group was initially formed by a tremendous volcanic eruption, the so-called Thera eruption, about 3600 years ago at the height of the Minoan civilization.