Flashback – liberty in Hong Kong

The wingman had never been to a place like Hong Kong before, and he had to admit in sober retrospect that it had intimidated the hell out of him. He had grown up in central Nebraska, at home on the Great Plains and prairies, used to the horizon stretching out before him like a modestly attractive but compliant lover. So accustomed was he to undifferentiated vistas leaping out at him uninterrupted for great distances that the first time he had gone to sea and looked out across the limitless span of waters, he had felt immediately at home in spite of the fact that he was very far from Kearney. Flying an FA-18 at high altitude, the views were also was familiar to him, as the whole world seemed to shrink into a two-dimensional planisphere, one of homely and familiar proportions.