With full stop at its end

Pain is not wrong,

I tell myself,

when I shed another tear,

I remember the words

of my beloved friend:

"Reacting to pain as wrong

initiates the trance of unworthiness.

The moment you believe

something is wrong,

your world shrinks

and you loose yourself

in the effort to combat the pain."

Facing the wind on the open

Indian Ocean,

scanning the surface for any item

to solve the mystery of the missing plane,

I think about my friend again,

where is he?

Does he feels pain right now?

PART ONE: MY FRIEND ARTIST

Artist Liu Rusheng had led a lucky life

his round moon face lit from inside

when he shook my hand for one last time,

showing me his rubber stamp

bearing the phrase: 'Shang Cang Hou Wo'

'God Bless you' he laughed,

you would never guess my age,

77 it will be when I land in Beijing,

my birthplace…

He was passenger number 89

No one knows what has happened to him

and his lucky rubber stamp:)

The Chinese art community

unveiled the special exhibition

in his memory,

As his close friend,

I have been invited too

to admire the exquisite calligraphy

framing the paintings

of people, birds and flowers,

on each them

hidden in a corner

number 7,

his lucky number:)

He had managed to cheat death

six times

before he boarded MH370,

the first time during the WWII

his parents were forced

to abandon him

several times

as they fled Japanese troops.

Every time

they came back

they were shocked

to find he had survived.

As a child he was hit by a truck

when learning

to ride his bike,

he nearly drowned

while swimming

with his friends.

Three heart attacks

scarred the death out of him

in his adult years,

when the third struck him

at home

he cycled several kilometres

to a nearby hospital.

I still wait to see him

grinning from the ear to ear,

his rubber stamp in his hand,

" I am here, I have survived

my friends, let me tell you

what happened to our plane:)"

But he never comes,

I hold in my hand

the thank you card

Liu has given me

before departure,

to acknowledge sweetly

the friendship

we shared

over the years,

it felt like

he was foreseeing

we never see each other again,

I opened it

and my eyes were full of tears,

"Love yourself

because

people come and go

from your journey,

and sometimes

you have to walk alone,

enjoy your own Company"

PART TWO: MY DREAM OF BEING A PILOT

That night I had a dream

nestled in the captain's seat

of a Boeing 777

it is dark outside,

inky black

I get a chill up my spine

flying the route of MH370

Take-off is effortless

the lights of Kuala Lumpur

International airport

quickly disappear below.

I call for undercarriage retraction,

than flaps up

as our speed increases,

a slow turn to the northeast,

once on track

I engage the autopilot

to take us to 10,600 m

for the almost boring flight to Beijing.

But even in my dreams

I suddenly painfully realise

this plane and its 239 passengers

and crew are not going there,

the scene is surreal,

we burst through the layer of cloud,

which is lit up by a half-moon,

the same that shines on my bed

while I am turning and twisting

it just looks so real…

I sit up sweating

in my bedroom

the clock is showing 1.07 am

so I lie down back to sleep

I find myself back in the cockpit

in my strange dream.

It is twenty seven minutes now

that fate take-off

and I switch off the 777's aircraft

communication and reporting system,

why do I do this?

Why do I press a button

on the flight management computer

on my right?

Just 15 minutes later

in dreams it seems

like 15 seconds away

I sign off

and turn a knob

to kill the plane's transponder,

I have now vanished

from air traffic control.

What else am I up to do

on the ill-fated MH370?

Am I irresponsible pilot

or a terrorist ready for a kidnap?

My co-pilot, a pleasant looking chap,

leaves the cockpit for a break,

I seize the opportunity and select

'deny' on the door access switch,

and he is never coming back.

I am changing the destiny of this flight

and I don't even mover from my seat,

how does it make me feel?

Who am I and why am I doing this?

Playing God with people's lives,

to own the plane?

Or to make a political statement as such?

A simple twist of the heading select button

on the autopilot

puts me on a new course

west

across Malaysia

I try to climb to 13,700 m

the highest altitude

MH370 climbed,

it takes a bit of coaxing,

the maximum height certified

for this type of aeroplane

is just 13,100 m.

Now for the rapid descent,

dial in the altitude

and vertical speed required

and pull back the throttles.

The 777 is certified to descend

a maximum 1524 m a minute,

at 3600 m I head across Malaysia,

my speed has dropped suddenly

because the air is denser.

Once in the Malacca Strait,

I turn north-west.

It is easy to dial a new course of 330

and push select,

the 777 obeys my every wish.

The early hours of March 8

that was my dial on the cockpit shows,

in my dream I live to that day,

time for the next turn,

if I am to reach

the accepted final resting place

of MH370.

I dial in 180-due south

and 10,600 m for the altitude

I press 'select'

and the 777 turns slowly

to meets its fate.

The day is slowly breaking up

and my passengers and crew

are already dead

from the induced hypoxia event

designed to mercifully

overwhelm them and put them to sleep.

It took them 45 minutes to run out of oxygen,

I am alone in the cockpit,

the only person still alive

and I have another 4 hours to live.

The sun is rising in the east,

the serenity of the moment

is shattered

as I cut the fuel to one engine,

all hell is about to break loose

when I cut the fuel to the second engine,

it is now utterly terrifying,

even in my dream,

my plane is a toy

for the wind to play,

a nose up

an aerodynamic stall

and then a dive

followed by another nose-up,

I am on the roller-coaster

from hell.

Bells and alarms ring out,

it s chaos when I suddenly

hit the sea,

the eerie silence of engines without power

suddenly hit me

the control column still shaking violently

the forward speed non existent

I forget I am in a dream,

this is real

and I am sweating,

this is the end of my flying,

time to wake up

or time to die….

But why? Why would I do that, why?

PART THREE: LIVING AND WORKING IN PERTH

A Perth business I work for

has been commissioned

by a global insurance company

search for missing flight MH370,

Scantherma,

remote sensing and thermal energy

imaging company

scanning 319,000 sqkm of ocean surface

1850 km west of Perth

trying to distinguish between white caps,

sea junk and plane debris.

We have been searching for over 20 days now

using US and Japanese satellites,

we have found debris

but unfortunately there is a lot of sea junk,

and containers that have fallen off ships

and a lot of rubbish floating on top of the water,

I look from the ship on the water bellow

the water was always restorative for me and so healing,

but not anymore, not now...

I don't know if we find something...anything...

but I can not give up,

in the name of my missing friend

and all other missing passengers,

I know if he could what he would tell me right now:

"We can't change our yesterday,

but we can change our tomorrows."

All I want to do is remove that question mark

and replace it with the full stop at the end.