A/n : Okay, a new story – and one quite unlike anything which might be on this website, I think! It is modeled after C.' The Great Divorce (which itself was modeled after Dante's Divine Comedy) although it does not require reading of that book to understand. This story is entirely stand-alone.

To make it entirely clear – this story is allegorical, metaphorical and certainly not some “Narnia fanstory”. It is very odd indeed.

The inspiration came to me at Mass today, and I wrote the first chapter (this one) in about two hours. So, it may very well be rough and ready. I am posting this more as an exercise rather than a final piece of work. The story will doubtless be changed and reworked, and probably taken down and reposted.

This story is written in Lewis' “style” for The Great Divorce – one of the most noticeable things of his style is that he does not always place different people's conversations in different paragraphs. So, don't complain about that!

For now – enjoy, please review and comment, and feel free to discuss this on my Forum!

The Airport

It seemed as if I were standing in the main Hall of a large, modern airport. Certainly, the floor underfoot was tiled and from the ceiling above me hung signs and notices in a meaningless babel of languages. There was hubbub in the air, a constant noise of people moving and milling around – frustrated people, angry and tired and fed-up. As well as all this, there was the occasional interruption of a pleasant voice – female or male, it differed each time, and not merely in gender, for each voice was unique – making a call for a specific passenger. “Will Mister John Smith meet with me, please?” “Will Miss Jane Doe?” No locations were given, nor were the people told who they were supposed to be meeting – I rather got the impression that would be obvious to the person being called.

There were a lot of people in the Hall – it seemed to be full to its capacity, and yet there was a constant stream of people coming into if from outside. The place must have been vast – certainly, there was an echoing quality to it which suggested great size – and yet it was claustrophobic and enclosed. Each of the people was – as I suppose all passengers must – carrying a great mass of things. To call what they were carrying luggage, however, would have been a misnomer – for they were all weighed down with the most obscure, outre and even grotesquely mundane things. They reminded me of a horrible exaggerated parody of refuges, or the White Knight in Alice.

I watched as the Passengers moved past me, some shoving and pushing, some wandering listlessly, some simply standing there looking forlornly up at the meaningless signs above their heads. Each was weighed down with a great raft of domestic items – egg-whisks and juicers, a toaster and a fire-poker, the complete works of William Shakespeare, a coffee pot and a milking stool. I saw one passenger dutifully carrying a kitchen sink on his back, another who seemed to be struggling with a leather office chair.

There were some who had little – or not so little – carts with them, piled high with things. But the carts themselves were difficult to maneuver, with broken, wonky wheels and wretched brakes. They kept banging into each other, and the people pushing them. The Passengers cursed and shouted at each other and themselves, but I noticed that – despite these collisions and the fact the Passengers were weighed down with more things than they could possibly easily carry, never was a single screwdriver or potted plant or candlestick dropped.

I reflected that it would be easier for all concerned if the Passengers had brought cases or valises with them, and I looked around to see if there were a shop selling luggage – or even if there was simply a shop which might give out carrier bags to them. The idea seemed to have occurred to the other Passengers, but not to the people who had built the Airport. There were no shops to be seen, of any sort, and the Passengers were complaining.

“It's just not fair,” one of them was saying to another, “not a suitcase to be had anywhere. If they were to give us some bags or something then we'd be able to carry all this stuff so much easier.” (He was holding what appeared to be a bicycle wheel and a stuffed armadillo in his arms.) His companion shook his head. “They don't want us to be able to carry this stuff, see?” he explained. “They don't want us on their bloody planes, and this is their way of keeping us off. It's just a scam, that's all – why would they have given us all these things and no way to carry them if they didn't want us to keep off their planes?”

There seemed to be merit in what he was saying – and were it not for the fact that the objects he seemed to want to be able to bag (a collection of Coca-Cola bottles and a lampshade) appeared so ludicrous. Why, I wondered, did he not simply put them down? I held my tongue as I looked around, as there was not – so far as I could see – a single unattended item lying on the floor.

Puzzled by this, I moved as best I could through the milling crowd to where there was a wall – a wall which stretched without seam or beam as far as I could see left and right until it vanished into perspective. The wall was glass, far taller than I could reach, and I peered through its crystal clarity out onto the tarmac of the runway.

There were no passenger planes that I could see on the runway – which itself was not a single strip of concrete, but rather a great complex latticed web of intersecting blacktop spreading as far as I could see across a grassy plain. There were fighter planes there, great muscular engines gleaming in brilliant blue and red paintwork and with hot engines that glowed like gold, venting haze into the scorching air. The blue planes were all either landing or landed – here and there I could see the Pilots themselves climbing out of the cockpits, exchanging some macho banter with the ground crews, and then walking with a nonchalant, leonine swagger towards the Airport. The red planes were both touching down and lifting off, and doing it with such speed and seeming confusion (although doubtless this was an illusion – merely because I could not see the order did not mean that there was none) that I was reminded of a beehive in the Summer. I could hear nothing of the scream of jet engines through the glass, but when I put my hand to the window I could feel the vibrations through it, hard enough to rattle my teeth. I shivered and pulled my hand off the window, looking upwards into the clear sky.

I say the sky was clear because there were no clouds, but the air was criss-crossed with the contrails of jet-to-jet combat. My head whipped from side to side as I saw the blue fighter planes chasing red ones, gunfire spitting from their swept-back wings and missiles screeching from beneath them. Periodically, a plane would explode in a blossoming fireball and the Pilot – at this distance nothing more than a red or blue dot hanging beneath the bright azure or crimson silk of his parachute – would float to the ground, where he would dash as quickly as he could to another plane, and take to the skies again.

There seemed to be a limitless number of planes, both red and blue, and I was at a loss to explain why some of the blue Pilots simply chose to leave the fight and bring their planes into land, walking towards the Airport. Here and there, the red Pilots did the same – but there was a constant stream of red Pilots leaving the Airport and getting into the planes, replacing them in the aerial dogfight. I watched for what could have been hours, and it did not seem as if the number of blue planes in the sky lessened, despite the fact that dozens if not hundreds of blue Pilots had landed and come into the Airport. I reasoned that the blue Pilots must make their base somewhere other than the Airport, and were flying to the site of the combat. They must have been choosing to fight in the sky above the headquarters of the red Pilots. I turned away from the window.

Standing behind me, having presumably been watching me watch the dogfight, was a young woman. She was – like everyone else – weighed down with a whole bunch of irrelevant things, but she seemed philosophical or even careless about it. “Watching the Pilots?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. There did not seem to be any point in denying it – but I was struck by the fact she had said Pilots and not planes. She nodded.

“I love the Pilots,” she said. “Loads of my friends don't believe they exist, or that they are just metaphors. But, really – I say how can you have a plane without a Pilot?” She laughed, and then lowered her voice as if talking about a simpleton and knowing that such a thing was impolite. “Some of my friends say that the Pilots either work for the Commander or the Rebellion, that the dogfights are real.” She laughed again – a careless, unthoughtful laugh. “They don't understand that there aren't any Commanders – there are just senior Pilots.”

“Really?” I said. I turned back to the window. The dogfights certainly looked real, and the two colors of the opposing wings of fighters lent a certain credence to the notion of two opposing factions in a war. Yet, my female companion seemed to be certain of herself. “The dogfights aren't real?” She snorted.

“No! Oh, really, don't tell me you believe all that old-fashioned stuff? That was fine before we understood what was happening, before we learned how to talk to the Pilots ourselves without making sure that we copied the Commander-in-Chief on the memos!” I raised an eyebrow. “I thought you said there weren't any Commanders?” I asked. She twisted her face. “Well, yeah – but you know what I mean. You've always been able to talk to the Pilots, but you had to call them 'Pilot' and it was always on the understanding that you were really just asking him to talk to the Commander for you. That was just what the Travel Agency wanted you to do – they were just scared of loosing their influence and power. You can talk to any Pilot you like, and they are really very kind and generous – and they'll tell you all sorts of things about the way the Airport really works.” I must have looked skeptical, for she laughed again. “Come on!” she said, “You'll be telling me that there are two sides in a minute!”

I looked at the combat that still raged outside without a hint of abating or slowing. “There aren't?” I asked. She shook her head.

“No,” she said, “and that's just what they want you to think. They are all just Pilots – just out there practicing. There's no red and no blue – that's a silly notion invented by the Travel Agency to keep us in line.”

“Practicing for what?” I asked abruptly. I didn't really like the tone of much of what she was saying. She looked at me, confused. I pointed at the planes – massive, enormous things with weapons that looked capable of leveling a city. “If they are all on the same side, why are they practicing? They don't look like anyone would threaten them except another Pilot.” She wiggled her face for a second or two, and then gave up.

“I'm going to be a Pilot,” she said. “After I've been through the Airport a few times, probably,” she added as a corollary. I did not ask her if she was sure people went through here multiple times – once seemed quite enough for me – but contented myself with looking through the crowd at one of the Pilots. He was – like all of them (and all of them, I noticed, were exclusively male) – tall and well-made, dressed in a pressure-suit (his was blue) and carrying his great helmet at his side. His eyes were hidden by big sunglasses, and his jaws were working at a stick of gum. He looked utterly unlike the Passengers milling around – he not only knew where he was going, but he seemed to be able to get there – that I questioned my companion's certainty.

“Can girls even be Pilots?” I asked. I hadn't intended to, but it was the masculinity of the Pilot which had struck me. “And he looks . . . awfully big.” I looked her over – she was, like all the Passengers, a slight, scrawny thing beside the Pilots.

“You get bigger every time you go through the Airport!” she yelled as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “A few times through and you're quite big enough to be a Pilot!” I looked around – not a one of the Passengers was even close in stature to the Pilot. Even those who were closest were not proto-Pilots; there was something definitely other about the tall men in the blue and red.

“I don't see anyone who looks . . . big enough,” I said, almost apologetically. She rolled her eyes at me.

“Oh, you're just a brainwashed Travel Agency drone!” she cried. “You can't believe all that misogynistic rubbish! Of course girls can be Pilots!” I looked around. “I don't see any,” I said reasonably. Her eyes flickered around with something that was almost desperation – I suspected that her knowledge of aviation had never actually encompassed the reality of the Airport. Neither had mine, of course, but it seemed as if the “brainwashing” the Travel Agency had given me was more accurate than her knowledge. “Well, just because there aren't any here right now doesn't mean there can't be,” she said, somewhat lamely. She looked at me scornfully. “And I bet you think only men can be Travel Agents, don't you?” I shrugged.

“I . . . don't know,” I said. “Are girls allowed to be Travel Agents?” She shook her head.

“The Travel Agency says that only boys can be Agents,” she sneered. “Girls can help – or what they call help – but they can't be Agents.” She snorted. “What do they know? Some people have got together and started their own Travel Agencies, but I don't think we need them at all. People know where they want to go, they can decide for themselves.”

I didn't want to offend her any more than I already had, but I felt that there were weaknesses in her argument. “But how would people know if where they were going was nice or not?” I remembered a few attempts to arrange a foreign holiday myself – they had not been a success. “I mean, what if the food's bad or the hotel is lousy or something? Wouldn't it be better to have a Travel Agent?”

“The Travel Agencies say that there is only one Destination.” She shook her head. “Well, that's just silly. And look at this!” She pulled a sheaf of glossy brochures out of her pocket. “Look at those – doesn't it look dull and stupid? Anyway, they say you can never come back. It's not a holiday, they say – it's emigration.”

I looked at the brochures – they did not, it is true, appear to make the Travel Agencies' single Destination seem very attractive. But I noticed that the colored pieces of paper she had given me were not originals – they had been photocopied a few times, and I thought that some things might have been missed and a few other things put in their place. I did not say anything, however, as I handed them back to her. “I see,” I said. She laughed, shaking her head at me.

“Well, it's been nice,” she said in a voice that suggested something entirely different, “but I must be getting to the Checkpoint. Gotta get through the Airport as quickly as I can.” She made to move off.

“Wait!” I cried, starting after her – more because she was the single point of contact I had in the Airport rather than the fact I liked her company. She did not check her pace, but she did not object as I caught up with her. “What's the Checkpoint?” She looked at me with pity and rattled the things she was carrying.

“That where they look at all this stuff and decide where you are going,” she said simply and obliquely. “But I know where I'm going – so I made sure that I packed what I would need.” My face must have betrayed my uncertainty – I could not imagine that she was going anywhere with such an eclectic mix of items – and she snorted again. “Oh, what would you know?” she snarled.

It seemed a matter of moments before we reached the Checkpoints – for there was more than one of them, a series of what looked like metal-detector arches each leading to a turnstile. In front of each arch was what looked like a large funnel and under each funnel was a large black plastic box. My companion ignored the funnel, box and the sign posted above them – the sign showed things being put into the funnel and thence into the box - and walked through one the arches.

The lights blazed red and she was brought up short by the turnstile bar against her thighs. She could go no further. She stepped backwards and tried again – with the same result. She gave a little nervous laugh. “There must be some mistake . . .” she began.

“Can I help?” It was another Passenger who had spoken – a pleasant-faced man who was, if I were any judge, carrying less than some of the others. The girl looked him up and down.

“I don't expect so,” she said. “Why isn't the Checkpoint working?” The man looked at her carefully.

“I think it's working just fine – you're going to have to get rid of some of those things, if you want to get through it, though,” he added. He pointed to the box. “Put them in there.” She looked at him and the funnel carefully.

“That's silly,” she said, “these are my things. How will I know I'll get them back?”

“Oh, where you're going you won't want them.” She snorted again.

“And anyway,” she said reasonably, making a half-hearted attempt to shove a walking-stick sideways through the funnel, “they won't fit. It's ludicrous.”

I was aware of the approach of a very striking woman in a blue uniform – smart and civilian, but with brass on the collar and ribbons on the chest. She looked very much like an airline stewardess. “Can I help you, Miss?” she asked politely, “I can help you fit that in there if you like.” The girl looked offended, and snatched the walking-stick back.

“How dare you?” she snapped. “This is mine – I don't want anyone seeing it, and why should I give it up? It's mine.”

“You can't take it on the plane, Miss,” said the Stewardess reasonably. “If you want to fly to the Destination, then you will need to leave it here.”

“And that's another thing!” snapped the girl, stuffing the walking-stick back away so that no-one could see it. “There's not just one Destination – don't lie to me!” The Stewardess did not look offended, although Heaven-knows I thought she had every reason to be.

“I'm not lying, Miss,” she said politely, “I stopped doing that when I became a Stewardess. There's only one Destination, and you can't get on the plane to go there with some of those things. There's no room for them, and you won't want them anyway.” The girl was incensed.

“There's only one Destination? Then how come everyone outside the Airport tells you to pack different things? Answer me that!” She looked triumphant. “If there's only one Destination, and you've got to pack just right how come everyone tells you to pack something different? What am I supposed to leave behind?” The Stewardess smiled a smile of infinite patience – I would have strangled the girl by now.

“Ideally, you should leave behind everything but that which you need,” she said. “I mean, leave it behind and don't bring it to the Airport at all. And you absolutely must pack what you need – even if you bring a load of other things as well. We can't let you on the plane without a Ticket, for example.” The girl's face must have fell in a way the Stewardess could read – although to my eyes she just looked angry. “Don't worry – if you don't have a Ticket, we can always give you one.” She paused. “If there really was nowhere to buy one where you came from, that is,” she explained. “And if everything you are carrying can be put into one of the boxes.”

The girl was looking less and less angry and more and more scared by the minute. “But what happens if I don't have a Ticket?” she whined. “And how was I to know I'd need one?” The Stewardess smiled.

“Well, that's not my choice – nor that of the Travel Agency, either. All those cases are decided by the Commander-in-Chief.” She smiled again, welcoming and friendly. “But I think it wouldn't hurt to get rid of a few of these things right now – if you can.” She looked at what the girl was carrying. “We can't allow passengers to fly with baggage, you see,” she said delicately.

The girl wasn't listening. “There shouldn't be a single list!” she fumed. “It's silly! Everyone tells you something different! How was I to know which Ticket I needed to buy?” The Stewardess, for the first time, looked a little concerned.

“You knew there were Tickets?” the Stewardess asked. “Did you go to a Travel Agency at all?” The girl shook her head. “They all disagreed!” she snapped. “They didn't say the same thing! How was I to know which one was right? They're all wrong anyway!” The Stewardess wrung her hands in embarrassment.

“Well, that's not quite true,” she said. “While it is certainly the case that some of the Travel Agencies don't quite have all the details about what you need to pack, and the journey, and even the Destination, most of them can sell you a valid Ticket.” The girl didn't look impressed. “In any case, the first Travel Agency was founded by the Commander-in-Chief personally, Miss – when He was a Passenger. All the others were founded by, erm, disgruntled former employees.”

“The Commander!” snorted the girl, recovering her arrogant composure. “I don't even believe He exists! What does He know about going through the Airport?”

It was not the Stewardess who replied to her, but the man who had joined me and her at the Checkpoint. “Well,” he said from my elbow, “He is the only person to have gone through the Airport both ways – I mean, He should know everything about it. And He was the one who set up the whole system of buying Tickets. Before Him, Passengers weren't even allowed to buy one.” The Stewardess nodded at him.

“Quite right,” she said. She turned to the poor girl. “And now, Miss, if you're not going to put some of those things in the box I'm going to have to ask you to move away.” The girl snorted and snarled, shouldering her burdens and walking away, muttering under her breath about the unfairness of the Travel Agency. The Stewardess turned to my new companion.

“And how can I help you, Sir?” she asked.