London. Heathrow Airports. Terminal 9A.
We landed on schedule, which is quite unusual when travelling on the verge of the speed of sound.
Waiting for all 720 passengers to exit the plane through the front doorway. One by one, they obediently allow the crew to lead themselves out. After the flight everyone is stunned. It must have something to do with those eight para-sonic engines installed along the hull. But how did it work in those medieval Concordes? Six-hour long exposure to jet roar works really like an incapacitant.
‘Thank you for flying...’—a nice brunette stewardess puts something into my pocket. ‘Between you and me...’ she says and curtains-off the deck.
Struggling to find my way through all border and security controls. I remember taking a taxi...
Next morning I woke up in my apartment. Inside my pocket I found a ticket with contact details to an illegal sound conditioning facility. So this is what should stay between me and her... Huh! No way! I’m keeping away from this sort of dodgy treaments. Some say it protects from hearing trauma and as a result also from deafness... but I won’t get fooled again. After my first conditioning session I spent six days at home—nausea kept me sleepless for four days and vomiting every two hours. But the worst was that low-pitch buzz inside my head torturing me for a whole week.
I did not finish that treatment.
Though I know people who benefited from it. That woman I met on a flight to Cape Town—she was sound conditioned and she did not need any assistance upon arrival. She claimed to be an assistant during the implementation experiments in early 2011. But they never succeeded in developing a safe technology for the general use.
At least officially...
