Long Story - Four Days of the Catastrophe - Part 9

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8

Part 9

It wasn't easy to start the quadcopter's simulator. First, I had to plug the device to a supply that was fed by the generator. I entered the password waiting to connect to the system, but it didn't initiate the training. After a long struggle, I learned that my finger vein map must be defined for entry. Fortunately, Bülent's fingers were identified, and I was able to reach the simulation at the end of an effort over an hour.

The documentation of the simulator was understandable, and the warnings could be easily understood. It wasn't hard to learn how to use the quadcopter; the device had so many automated systems that supported the drive. I mean, at least my impression was like that, maybe I just wanted to believe it, I was going to face the facts before long. When I informed Bülent that I was ready, he asked me to take another round of training. I didn't believe the need, but I did what he said, and we met at the track on the terrace of the HBR media building in the afternoon.

The quadcopter looked like sports cars. It was as if someone had leveled the four wheels of an electric vehicle horizontally into the ceiling and replaced the wheels with a propeller. After we got in the leather seats, the cross-seat belts caught us tight, and the doors closed down. I marked the navigation route roughly on the screen and instructed the vehicle to rise. On the screen in front of me, “we have to wait for the rain to end" message appeared. I thought that the message was wrong and that this error was caused by the translation because there was not a single drop of rain on the windshield of the vehicle. I converted the communication language from Turkish to English. There was no translation error, and the first raindrops started to fall. Then it began to rain as if the sky had been pierced, and as time passed, the air began to illuminate slowly. The rain washed a fraction of the dust in the air, and so more sunlight began to reach the Earth. The shower took less than we thought, we took off despite the warning of the central control software that the visibility was low.

A few minutes after taking off, the view of the Bosphorus Bridge had a full shock effect on me; the middle of the bridge collapsed and went down into the sea, and the steel ropes were swinging from the poles. We continued north through the Bosphorus of Istanbul; luckily there was no visible damage on the second and third bridge. We went around Sarıyer, followed the Black Sea coast and flew west. As we moved westward, we saw that the old multi-story buildings were collapsed, and there were still research and rescue efforts on the debris of the buildings.

The stone rain had been heavy around the Istanbul Airport; the runway had become a nest of moles, crashes occurred in some areas. As we crossed the airport and headed south, we faced the consequences of the great catastrophe. We knew that the camera placed under the quadcopter recorded these destruction images, and we wanted to share them with the authorities as soon as possible. When we reached the Marmara Coast, we started to see the devastation caused by the tsunami on the bird's eye. From the color of the land and the state of the buildings, we could predict the final point the water had reached. In some parts of the coast, the waves had penetrated within three hundred meters, creating significant destruction.

Bülent's phone rang when we reached over Bakirkoy Beach. Bülent's assistant finally came to work and started to manage the phone traffic. I called my father in no time, and when I found out he was fine, I got a big load off my back. The building was intact; they were on the street because of the aftershocks. As the waiting places were insufficient in the city center, they spent their time in a cemetery, among the graves. Fortunately, I acted fast, as soon as the news was spread, the system was locked because of overload and the phones could not be used for a long time.

We were both excited when we got off the quadcopter and got to the News Center because the phones had run for a short while. We could finally find out what was going on.

Four or five people who could come to the News Centre started sharing information through the phone as the air was lightened to a certain extent. However, the news was as consistent as the delusions of a schizophrenic and far from believable.

Everyone was trying to explain the reasons for the great disaster in line with their own beliefs. In an environment where the flow of information was limited, people had different scenarios and organized their lives according to these explanations.

The news that the natural disaster had destroyed the Kaaba had led to a massive excitement in the Islamic world. The idea that the apocalypse was imminent was rapidly spread when the great smoke on the Arabian Peninsula, the Great Fire in Yemen, and earthquakes in various parts of the world were added to this story.

It wasn't just Muslims who thought that the apocalypse was breaking up because of earthquakes, forest fires, volcanic eruptions, and stones fallen from the sky. In America and Southern Europe, many Christians thought that it was only a matter of time before Jesus landed on Earth. In such an environment, the disliked people were described as antichrists, and the leaders of the sects who claim to be redeemers were trying to consolidate their supporters and instill faith in them.

There were also those who considered the Great Catastrophe as the beginning of a World War that has not yet been declared. The Chinese Army secretly carried out studies on the ocean floor in California coast, triggering the San Andreas fault, and soon after the United States determined this situation, a war between the two sides had begun. When Russia and the European Union joined the war, the world suddenly became hell. The proponents of this hypothesis attributed to the absence of a large amount of radiation in the atmosphere. Supporters of the theory referred to new generation bombs that were secretly developed, but there was no information about the properties of these bombs.

Image Source: https://www.dronerush.com/drone-taxi-passenger-drones-10666/