YD6-65(TRT) | To the Edge of the Map – Strait Ferry to a Survey Outpost
BOOK SYNOPSIS: This story is an unfolding suite of chapters clarifying my book, The Code: Horizon of Infinity—a philosophical memoir exploring how the universe sculpted our minds. Through Aetheria, the lens of consciousness, aware of her need for a body to reveal herself and exercise her wishes, the narrative leads to her birth and the name she will claim: Sunshine — Step into this journey of becoming, where the cosmos whispers its secrets, and identity blooms like dawn.
PROLOGUE TEASE: Through the haze of transit, the Balinese road dissolves into the tide—Bali fading, Lombok rising. A ferry groans in the belly of darkness, carrying us across the strait. Then, land—an unspoken call to stake a claim, to settle a survey outpost where the map still wavers.
HASHTAG: #Bali #Lombok #TopographicExpedition #NomadicJourney #FerryCrossing #WildRoads #SurveyorChronicles
YD6-65(TRT) | To the Edge of the Map – Strait Ferry to a Survey Outpost
Leaving Kuna, the Toyota Kijang, loaded for the mission, slips steadfast along the unmarked double asphalt lane. Deep trenches’ shadows reach out the flanks. We pass yet another "Taxsi" flagrant misspelled signages — against the unfolding road. We ease alongside a donkey’s hooves trotting - tack-e-ti-click - against the road, before awakening in disbelief, a man stands by the stream, at leisure squirt into the current.
Ahead, a donkey drawn cart goes berserk in its shackles, exuding rage, resisting its driver. The beast veers right across the road, heading for the bristling green fields. The driver, frenetic, struggles to rein the donkey in, blind to the stretch of a shallow gutter, unable to count his luck. But as we slip from view, the creatures and cart are bound to tangling the only roadside tree.
But beneath my window, the trench glimmers — precious water rippling in daylight. I imagine the endless sprawl of a village, lost in the folds of the countryside fields. A small group of women washing their clothing in the stream. ‘That’s not the worst,’ drifts through my mind.
Men posture “Manneken Pis” dips the fountain water, punctuated on high ground before the stream. ‘That’s foul!’ Yet forgiving, But further downstream, a woman bathes her child. At an out of sight stretch, where the current flows through a culvert beneath a junction road, clothes pile the far off concrete parapet walls. Only to find the dark-faced naked man calf-deep in a slip, his torso, and arms frothing white with soap.
My perception drifts in the dead silence, stretched along the rhythm of the roadside, a man brushing his teeth by my window. Until Michel’s voice breaches the blind silence beside me, on the rear bench. "They're like in Africa."
Sjefril steers the microbus toward the sea expanse. The Padang Bai port emerges ahead. Sjefril, the TRT Philips-Jakarta translator, too. His voice sharpens with anxiety, “We’re too late.” Sjefril’s popping eyes tighten in silence. Where the roadway ends, the ferry’s stern ramp, which vanishes from sight, as the windshield tugs behind the heavy load. The tailgate tarpaulin cargo tent, obscuring us from a chain of truck beds lined up to roll aboard the shadowed garage deck.
When from the roll-off bustling lane, a man in a long stride of authority approaches Sjefril’s wound down window — 'A tip, an incomprehensive transaction?' Sjefril veers from the tarpaulin tailgate, steers through an upcoming crowd of pedestrians and rickshaws, squeezing through alongside the massive truck cargo-tents to coast onto the ferry’s wide floating ramp.
Another man polices, rolling hands, calling, “Parkir.” boxing us in, the engine purr to silence. A foghorn blast twice. We grow agitated inside the microbus, the doors hinge open a hair from the cargo tent to the truck’s undercarriage, while the nimble translator wriggles through the crack. From the rear, Michel writhes out, sidling forward, by the front fender of Kijang. He is tailed by Nina, traverse the muzzle, as I squeeze out the door slit giving way to Sjefril upfront locking up. In Indian file we dwarf through the stilling crevice of cargo tents. My eyes skim skull-crushing cargo beds, humbled by the fortunate still-wheels of monstrous trucks.
Our single-file procession disappears, into the echoing foot stamping metallic stairwell, accruing and reverberating throughout the hull. When I squeeze through trucks tailgates and bestial heated radiator muzzles cooling. The hand of daylight reaches down the stairwell, dissipate at my feet, before I climb. I Level out onto the upper deck, claiming a first-class seating under the expansive upper deck.
Then, in slow motion, awesome perceptive, the water body widening, glade we got ahead of the bottlenecked trucks onshore. I edge reliving my toddler’s awe, as the fringes of land sink into the blues, and the deck jitters beneath my feet. Stepping up to the railing, daring the endless seas. Rising wild spiky surf stir a hold of my body, a spiritual call to dare dive, onto the hammering slap of wave, a poltergeist resonating through the hull’s riveted steel plates, unable to frighten a steadfast murmur of engine pistons.
Overcast tresses break, brightening, I lift the clamshell of my NEC UltraLite, to a page’s liquid crystal displaying flickering, “October 19, 1990,” writing the topographic expedition. Until, Nyx lingers over the strait, the four of us crossing — bound for a flickering film. Echoing, sprockets stuttering through the gears, frames trembling before the lamp, unreeling scenes in a restless earthquake upon the wall — bound for headaches. The hours’ perpetuity stealing the amazement, until, the flickering coastal lights, on a blackboard’s lost depth. Until close up, revive in slow motion, the stern gate descent, and from a restless foot crowd, youngsters climbed the lowering metal ramp, mooring in a lunar-lit terminal, for an infighting onslaught of a three-rows-breast boarding crowd.
Sjefril calls out, “Watch out for your camera.” He stands by in retrieve, watchful over my bags and equipment case. The ramp jolts, and youngsters leaps off the end in rapid succession.
I glanced over my shoulder. “Ok!” Walking behind a ruffling crowd, and youngsters’ calls from the roundabout, “Carry, carry…” They dance off in a karate step, slipping past passengers. A train of massive rolling wheels, head trucks, slicing through the parting crowd.
Sjefril pulled up in the Kijang, picking us up, meeting inside, pulls off onto a few uniformed Lembar port guards by a raised boom, onto overtaking roaring trucks. Leaving the ports shadowing warehouses into the outskirts, thinning out houses for the countryside.
On a dark, moonless roadside, the Pondok Beach Hotel glows. Sjefril in a daze, steers to pull off the road. We crawl forward, sweeping headlight beams, awakening slumbering shadows. A driveway twists through a forest of roof posts, rotating in a cul-de-sac halt alongside an open-air lobby. Michel, step out. Nina jumps to the ground, rushing up a pair of broad treads. With the agility of a local, she startles Nyx to man, stepping out of the shadow of the night’s belly. She bombards him with words. When Michel reaches the reception desk, Nina has him engaged in negotiations.
Michel turns to Nina. “What are the prices?”
Nyx’s man shrugs. ‘It's full season.’
Michel, unfazed, insists on a room with a double bed. He wrangles for a discount, secures a room, Nyx’s man disappears into the shadows, while Michel and Nina return offloading their bags from the Kijang’s tailgate, to disappear after Nyx’s man into the shadows.
Pondok stirs in mind where we left behind Michel and Nina, in Afrikaans, brings home the South African's animal wooden shelter. As Sjefril drives out of the loop, the headlight beams awakening the roadway from the blackboard. I can’t shake the imagery of a temporary refuge, a place to sleep but not to stay. Until, the headlight beams sweep across woven grass huts elevated on stilts. A man descends from the porch, steps over to Sjefril's wind-down window, exchange of words.
Sjefril throws back, "Yes. He has rooms."
We step out. Sjefril glances at the brick building behind us, but the man stares ahead.
"Don't tell me that's what he meant," I asked?
Sjefril nods, "Yes."
Exhausted from traveling, I sigh. "Let's have a look anyway."
At the sight of the room, I burst, "You mean they rent that!"
Sjefril, unsurprised, says, "Yes."
The light flickers on. Our shadows crawl the rough wall mats, rising from the edges of a double mattress taking up the wooden floor. I laugh, and bemusing Sjefril.
The next lit — Pondok Wisata, the headlights’ spills shading wayside stilted chalets, with the beams’ sweep leading up to a parking area expanded an apron across a logged hurdle into the sleek sands. A concrete footpath runs to a splitting curtain. At Sjefril’s knock on the door, a familiar male face peers from the door’s crack. I'm insisting, "Sjefril, ask if there is a shower — steaming hot water?"
No answer comes, but the man, wrapped in yards of cloth, persuades Sjefril to follow him to an adjacent chalet. I hesitate at the top of four treads, pausing on the porch’s extending planks. The sarong-wrapped man swings back the door, flicks a switch. Light reflects from matted walls. A backpacker’s quarters — a night table amid single beds. My wristwatch flashed the dial’s hands, marking the hour. My mind clouds, longing for a pillow to lay my head. One last thought: ‘Tomorrow Sjefril will have time searching for something better.’
The man and Sjefril’s figures dissolve into the night, leaving me behind. I dive into bed, surrendering to sleep before thoughts can take a hold — crawl into the arms of Morpheus. Aetheria lags, unable to keep pace with the night’s velocity. As I’m folding in motion too fast. I wake. Sjefril, driving back to fetch Michel and Nina, the search pulling us forward. By the Pacific beach, Michel stacks his claim in the sand, his topographic base rising against the tide with Nina.
You are welcome to read all the chapters and explore more at my website: How the Universe Sculptured Our Mind. I spend an absurd amount of time chasing expression—perhaps to shame. But the challenge is mine, the shaping of my perceptions. The gift is yours: thoughts, echoes, reflections. I take them with gratitude. And you—who are you, reading these lines, stepping into my genre, my style, the quiet current of my subject?
https://sites.google.com/i-write4u2read.com/howtheuniversesculpturedourmin?usp=sharing