Echo: Chapter 7

 

Seven hours later, the dying notes of Far Out and Karra’s Constellation were abruptly broken by Bjørn’s call blasting through my headset. After Erik’s call ending our conversation and me looking at my phone, I put it away, went to my desktop, and looked at my workload for the day. Another long day, for which I am thankful: work, like dishes, keeps me sane and drowns the cacophony normally in my head.

“I’m leaving in two weeks,” was the first thing Bjørn said in the voice call.

Having too many things happen all at once made me constitutionally unable to react to his pronouncement.

He continued, not hearing my stunned silence, or perhaps not thinking anything of it, “Captain Josef of the Florence encountered rough seas on their run, and his first mate has been hit on the head by a crab pot. He had to be medevac’d the one thousand two hundred-mile distance to the nearest land.”

“The Florence? Another red king crab vessel?”

“Not mainly. It hauls skrei off of Skarsvag and not off Norkapp. I have to report 343 miles away from where the Klovn og Tosk is docked. In two weeks’ time,” he repeated. I can hear the smile on his face through the phone call.

I was still staring at my desktop, buffeted around with all this information and unable to react howsoever, when a new email came into my inbox. Not really seeing it, and out of habit and a silent plea for the world to return to normalcy, I clicked it.

It was an email from Professor Jin Qun of Waseda University Japan, this year’s Head of the International Conference on Education, Research, and Innovation.

Dear Professor, it read.

We are pleased to inform you that your paper, “Jacques Derrida on Destinerrance: The Traveler as Anti-Odysseus” submitted to us July of 2023 has been accepted as part of the 2024 Annual ICERI Conference.

This year, ICERI will hold its conference in Prague, Czech Republic, on 28-30 August. Follow this link for speaker registration protocols. Follow this link for conference schedule and other details.

We hope to see you there. Thank you.

I stared at the email. After two minutes, I read it again.

Perhaps finally noticing my silence, Bjørn’s voice, sounding so far away to my ears, broke through. “Are you still there?”

28 to 30 August. That’s in exactly two weeks.

“Bjørn. I have to go.” I listened to the echo of his “Okay,” without sparing another look at my phone.

I stared at the email again. What news, indeed. Might as well click on the links.

The two-day conference is to be held at the Centrum Architektury a Městského Plánování and starts at 9:00 AM of the 28^th. The organizers went all out this time, and by that I mean way out, since ICERI was usually held in Spain, and in rather modest venues. Relative to those Spanish halls, the Centrum was markedly different, favoring an industrial and high-tech interior with rather Spartan-detailed seating. It’s formidable, and from the looks of it, it will only allow spectators of a certain temperament, IQ level, and dress. I just knew my imposter syndrome will be triggered by the time the plane lands.

Wait. Am I actually going…?

Something near the bottom of the page caught my eye then, and, if I were of a stronger constitution I would have admitted everything that I am to everything in creation. It was a name of one of the other presenters, and seeing it petrified my decision to go to Czechia, without any thought of Nordic fishermen, of imposter syndromes, of propriety, of anything at all. In the middle was the name:

Professor Jakob Berg, University of Oslo. “The (Meta)Physics of Echo.”

I blinked.