Children of the Cloud

by Michael Holland

 

 

(c) copyright by Michael Holland, July 1996

The following is suitable for use as is in a public access setting. This copyrighted material belongs to Michael Holland, Box 36, Saxapahaw, NC 27340, USA. Its use is granted to Mits Ohba for use in their museum Web Page. Michael Holland retains all rights and privileges to this idea and content.


The Protagonist is Jessie, the son of a Japanese father and an American mother. He owns a small business selling sushi on the Mall in downtown Washington, D.C. beside the National Air and Space Museum (NASM). This is where the Enola Gay and a "Practice" bomb are on display. The Bomb is similar in design to the one used at Hiroshima. Jessie is a second-generation bomb victim, in that his grandmother was irradiated at Hiroshima and though she survived, was left with terrible keloid scars. His parents met during the war while his father was in an Oklahoma concentration camp where he developed tuberculosis. His mother, a nurse, who nurtured and later married him, was hung in the 1960's by the KKK, white-supremacists, while an undercover FBI official looked on, but did nothing to help her. His feelings toward the U.S. federal government are therefore bitter and quite complex. This government has destroyed or profaned everything he held dear. He is under a great conflict because although he hates the government he loves the country and its people.

Each morning Jessie awakens at the end of the same nightmare, which springs from a mixture of the images conveyed from his grandmother, war films, photos and his own imagination. He watched in his dream as a dark B-29 made its way down a pacific ocean island runway. It flew, heavily into the early light and approached an inland sea with a city by its shore. The dream switched to a beautiful garden, a school, a shrine and a peaceful bridge over a pond, with goldfish waking. Clothes dried on the line. Children stood in line for school. Priests said their morning prayers. In turn each person in his dream heard something overhead and looked up and pointed. Soldiers on the march stopped and pointed and speculated at the sight of one lone bomber and several fighter escorts high overhead. What appeared to be white leaflets floated behind the lead planes. The lone bomber must be a recon or propaganda plane, they thought, and they pretended to aim and fire, but laughed and kept marching while looking up all the while. Each group squinted overhead with brows furrowed as one lone object dropped in silence from the larger plane. The dream would change and Jessie would be back in the plane as the pilot gave the Bombardier permission to drop the bomb and the bombardier would call out the distance to target over the radio. In his sight the image of the city came into view. As he counted down the distance, a bride over a shimmering silver river slowly filled the sight and approached the deadly cross-hairs. In Jessie's dream, the scene switched to the bomb itself, riding in the bomb bay and vibrating with anticipation. The bay doors opened over the city which could be seen as a sprawling and healthy metropolis with sleepy neighborhoods greeting the morning. The Bombardier reached hesitantly forward, toward the release button, his fist clenched in painful turmoil as the pilot turned over the plane to his control. Having gone through the same motion countless times before, he quickly fingered the bomb release as the bridge hit the cross hairs. The bomb fell away and Jessie followed it down through the clouds. The incredible noise and vibration he had felt in his dream faded quickly as he fell with the bomb like a diving hawk. It became still and quiet. He heard the rush of the wind. He felt the cool clouds. He heard the sound of car horns, trains, temple bells rising up from below, in brief greeting. In each dream, he yearns for that sense of peace and falling to go on forever. But each time the speed to the ground seems to increase and the bombs track veers away from the bridge and toward a large building. Each time in his dream the scene switches unchangingly to the Norton Bomb sight in the bomber and the man leaning over it with his face in the sight. In the final seconds of each dream the man looks up as a blinding flash of white lights up his features from below. In silence, Jessie sees that this man is himself and sits up screaming, sweat-covered in his bed.

Each day, Jessie pushes his Sushi Shack to the mall and each day the police give him a ticket for vending without a permit. He does not believe in permits to sell something which he makes with his own hands. His father was a carpenter. As a boy his father told him that he was living in this country by choice, and freedom of choice was the greatest freedom. Jessie did not believe his "choice" to sell good food at a reasonable price should include a permit. His favorite place to "dance" with the police, as he called it, was near the National Air and Space Museum mall entrance, where he would snuggle in among the T-shirt sellers and ice-cream vendors.

Jessie has a past. He is an ex-MIT grad student who was dismissed after repeated warnings from his physics department Chairman to stop bringing the classroom discussions around to the question of the morality of the two nuclear bombings in Japan. He refused to stop his questions and although his advisor supported him, the department arranged to have his federal stipend withdrawn. By this time both his parents were dead so he began to wander the country and to experience its people. He loved their diversity; the Mexican influence in L.A., the Chinese in Seattle, the Polish in Chicago, the Irish of the south, the colorful history of the northeast. He made his way across the country looking for a home. He was inexorably drawn, inexorably to Washington D.C.. Here was the essence of the government which had taken so much that was dear to him; his grandmother's honor, his father's pride, his mothers life and lastly the hope for a better life. Here also were the colors, cultures, diversity and wonder from all over the country and the world pouring in to one city; a city that was more of a museum than a town. He was in love with the thought of so much wonderful variety and understanding. He made this his home.

In the mean time, his ex-advisor at MIT, quit over the incident with Jessie, because he believed the Department was wrong. He took a job with the Government cataloging huge and exotic pieces of equipment in large warehouses in New Mexico, especially Los Alamos. The government wanted a hazardous rating on each piece of equipment, but the designs were in some cases 50 years old and the original designers were long dead. There were many relics from the cold war. He came across an antique bomb casing and realized that it was the casing intended to be dropped as the third bomb to be used on Japan. The bomb casing was waiting on Tinian Island for the arrival of the internal explosive unit, when orders arrived to halt the nuclear bombing process, which optimistically was designed to drop 50 such bombs as soon as they were available. The bomb casings were assembled around the interior and did not exist in whole form until this time. The unused casings and other equipment were dumped into the ocean when the war was over. The third casing was saved from destruction and shipped back to the U.S. to be stored at Los Alamos for the next 50 years. The professor was very proud of his find and restores the casing to its original form then publishes his find in the Smithsonian News Letter which is read by the secretary of the Smithsonian Museums in Washington. The Secretary has a conflict of wanting to put on an accurate physical exhibit for the Enola Gay, but has been stopped, for several years by a congress which did not want a bomb on display. The secretary is saved when a very conservative congress is elected and tells him "OK", put a bomb on display. It is then that he reads of the surprising find of the professor. He contacts him and the professor is honored and thrilled that his finding will be displayed at the National Air and Space Museum in D.C. Arrangements are made to truck the bomb to D.C. Since this is just an old rusted, empty, antique casing, NO security considerations are made. The professor, his driver, a small truck are all that are needed to get the bomb to D.C. A local film crew interviews the professor before his trip and the bomb is shown on the local news. The professor calls his old-student, Jessie, to say that he will be in D.C. and would like to take Jessie to dinner and talk about his finding and catch up on old times. They arrange to meet. Jessie arrives for dinner but the professor never shows up. He waits for hours then goes home confused. He turns on the T.V. to hear that the professor and his driver were found in a ravine, apparently having plunged off a mountain road. The were found in the mountains of Virginia, on their way BACK to New Mexico, after having delivered the bomb to Andrews Air Force Base where the Enola Gay had been restored. Jessie is in shock and very confused over the strange events; the missed dinner, the secondary road instead of the interstate. He calls the professors wife and they arrange to meet at a memorial service to be held in D.C. She arrives, and after helping spread the professor's ashes, they decide to visit the National Air and Space Museum and see the bomb which has been placed on display, in order to honor the dead professor. While there they walk through the exhibit to get to the bomb and walk by a continuously playing film of the restoration of the Enola Gay, The restoration of the bomb, the people involved, the time, and more importantly, the professors unique and lucky finding. The Wife stops to cry when pictures of her husband are shown finding the bomb, then again delivering it to D.C.. They exit the exhibit and she buys a copy of the film on CD-ROM. Jessie goes with her to the airport and she asks him to copy the film to video because she has no CD player for video play back. She leaves, he goes home and later starts the transfer. He calls the professor's wife to see if she got home OK and while discussing the events of the past few weeks he watches the film absent mindedly. She remarks that she was so glad that the police had been able to recover her husbands MIT class ring so she would have a memento of him that he always wore. Jessie is listening but becoming more transfixed by the film that is being copied as it is to the point where the truck from Los Alamos is approaching the gate at Andrews Air Force Base. The Camera man is from the Smithsonian film crew and is using their new digital Camera which they use for artifact cataloging as well. The picture is a long-shot of the bomb arriving in D.C. The "Professor" waves from the passenger side toward the small crowd of technicians waiting for their arrival. Jessie is surprised and confused to see the "Professor's hand" emerge from the cab and wave quickly at the crowd, but completely absent is the ring which was found on his Right hand at the crash site. Jessie completes the conversation, distractedly says goodnight, then began to replay and scrutinize the film. Prior to the scene of the bomb arriving in D.C. was a quick scene with the professor standing beside the bomb, which was sitting on a wheeled-cart, in the Los Alamos museum, taken from the interview done by the news service. Jessie advances the film to a quick scene with the bomb neatly painted and sitting on the same wheeled-cart, in the restoration facility at Andrews Air Base. He grabs the images with his computer and sets them side-by side and after staring blankly for a minute realizes that the later picture shows the hydraulic shocks depressed more than twice the distance as shown in the earlier picture. More curious now, Jessie uses his image enhancement software to find the edges of the bombs in both pictures, which is easy since they are both side shots. He flips the images to point the bomb the same direction then changes the size of one till they are the same size. He pulls the line-image of one over the line image of the other in a different pseudo-color and stares in amazement as he realizes that the only difference is in a series of screws that hold an access panel in place. The slots in the heads indicate that all 6 have been turned. He has been putting off the inevitable, and now replays to the scene with the "Professor" waving out the truck window. Only the arm is visible and he tell himself that it is reasonable that the professor took the ring off for some reason. He stares out the freeze-frame picture and realizes that at the gate entrance there was a large, convex safety mirror bolted to the side of the gate, so that traffic can see around the corner and that security personnel can see both sides of visiting vehicles. He zooms in the digital image and is rewarded with a distorted, balloon image of the side of the truck with the small image of the "Professor" barely visible in the center. He grabs this image and pastes it into a share-ware program that allows one to turn flat images into balloon images to put peoples pictures on funny post cards. He tells the program to reverse the process and is rewarded with a slightly distorted but easily recognized side-shot of a person who is definitely NOT the professor!

Jessie is shocked and confused but does not know where to turn. The next day at work, standing in front of the huge National Air and Space Museum he comes to the decision to revisit the exhibit. He stands before the bomb and stares, unsure of what to do. He makes his up mind. He will find a way to look into the access panel and see what it was that caused the bomb to become so much heavier between New Mexico and D.C.. He thinks that the answer will help him understand why someone would impersonate the professor and as he is beginning to suspect, kill the professor after delivering the bomb. What ever it was it must be a dangerous secret. Whatever the reason he would have to take a look inside.

The bomb was surrounded by Plexiglas and cameras were trained on the floor from the corner of each room. A security guard sat in each room of the exhibit, very bored, and very underpaid. He noted the motion sensors below each camera which must be for after-hours to pull up the camera of the room in which movement was sensed. He listened to the disgruntled complaints of the guards as they talked to one another; their bad hours, their bad pay, the constant stream of people, the constant fear that someone would blow-up, attack, disfigure or destroy the exhibit. He watched them leave their posts for up to 30 minutes at a time. He noted the emergency exit alarm was a simple magnetic switch and the exit led to a walk way that led 30 yards to the street and 30 more yards to the mall, itself. He watched at closing as the head-guard walked through the exhibit from beginning to end, snaking through 6 rooms. The entrance door and exit door were side-by-side and his practice was to lock the entrance, walk through while herding people ahead of him. No further checks were made after the exit was closed behind the last visitor. He noted that the most heart-wrenching exhibit was the Large (1 meter x 1 meter) T.V. screen in the second to last room. 10-40 people would congregate in this room, standing in horror as the pictures of the Hiroshima victims were shown. This room was connected by a short hall to the end of the Enola Gay fuselage. The end was capped with a large single piece of plexi-glass, held to the wall with 4 easily removed bolts. The full length of the fuselage was visible including the open bomb-bay doors above the encased bomb. His plan begin to come together. He would wait by the large T.V. set until the guard began to close the exhibit. As many more people were crowded into the next-to the last room, already full of stunned visitors watching the films, he would slip casually behind the large T.V. screen. He practiced this several times in plain site of dozens of people and no one noticed. He also planned to stick a piece of aluminum foil to the Infra-red motion sensor. The sensor window itself was shiny and no one would notice the difference. The sensor was at 2 meters off the ground. He would wait until the guard locked the doors and left. He would wait for hours until the museum was still and dark. Wait until just before dawn when the one guard on duty in the camera booth far away in the security office was at his most bored and tired point in his day. He would then emerge from behind the T.V. If the Camera sensor picked him up and people came they would come through the doors and he would scoot out the exit 2 meters from where he would be working at the end of the fuselage. But he did not plan to be detected. He would wear loose insulated clothes and a cover for the hottest part of his body, his head. And besides the sensor was a type easily bought at a hard-ware store and was not that sensitive. He waited until a Friday night when everyone would be thinking of what to do on Saturday and not as careful. He hid asplanned. Was completely ignored in the crush and locked in place. He drank his water and read a book with his body propped on an edge of the T.V. set support. At 4 A.M. he carefully and slowly moved to the plexi covering the end of the fuselage. He removed the 4 bolts and set the Plexiglas to the side on the ground. He looked carefully for alarms or sensors but to be honest, the set designers never thought of this eventuality. His pulse was racing, as he looked across at the exit and back into the fuselage. This would be both a literal and figurative HUGE step because from here there was no easy escape. He crawled inside and began to make his way forward. Although his goal was the bomb, his eyes were locked on the Norton Bomb Sight. He crawled forward and as he did so he begin to see images from his daily dream of men in leather jackets and pilots in their seats. He approached the sight and begin to feel the plane vibrate and roar as if under way. He felt the wind rip through the open bomb bay doors and closed on the sights. He saw through the view finder a city by the water. His hands gripped the sight and his finger slid to the time worn release button. As the cross hairs centered on the Washington monument he pulled back screaming and saw his reflection in the glass of the view-finder and stood up shaking and covered in sweat. He stood numb and motionless but his movement had awakened the motion sensor pointed near the front of the plane. The security man on duty heard the warning beep and pulled up the camera connected to this sensor. He stared in amazement at the image of a man standing in the glass encased nose section of the Enola Gay. The man was shaking and glistening with sweat. The guard picked up the phone. While the guard was busy calling, Jessie regained his composure and returned to the bomb bay having figured out that the nervous tension he was under and the hours of remaining motionless had simply allowed his mind to evolve a waking version of the terrible dream he had each morning. He bent don and dropped beside the bomb, on its cart. He took out a screw driver, and removed the panel and looked inside with his flashlight. To his amazement, as he brushed aside wiring bundles he saw plainly stenciled on a hard-green, metallic inner-casing what appeared to be several words in Russian script and a fragment of numbers "45397-LKN-67". Below which was the universally haunting icon, warning of nuclear material on board. At that moment the Security guard's call connected. When the other person picked up he said "we have an intruder. Should I eliminate Him?" The person on the other end of the call was sitting in a national guard armory 30 miles outside of Atlanta Georgia. The voice was like Ice. The man was wearing a Sergeants uniform and replied "No. Do not interfere now. See what he does then copy the video from the camera and record over the tape. If he leaves quietly, send a squad to follow him. If it is a "noisy" exit, make sure nothing points to the bomb, before the cops are called in. The Sons of the South will contact you."


If you are interested in finding out what is hiding in the Enola Gay exhibit on the Washington Mall 1/2 mile from Congress, the White-house and Supreme court; If you would like to know who the Sons of the South are and how they became the soldiers of the Children of the Cloud; If you would like to find out how Jessie escapes to save his chosen city... Please look for the movie "Children of the Cloud".

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