This is a tribute to all those lost in the World Trade Centre catastrophe on September 11 2001. Written two days after the September 11 attacks, this piece is arguably the most emotionally charged piece I've ever written. And it's also terribly long...

8.30 am.
76th Floor, North Tower, 1 World Trade Center.
New York City, New York.

"Coffee?"

Harold beamed at Daryl but did not stop to receive the steaming cup. "No thanks. I had two cups already. I want to sleep tonight." He edged past the workers crowding the corridor leading to his cubicle, nearly causing a stack of reports to topple over. He rescued the tottering pile of paper and continued on his way. Casting a glance over his shoulder, he caught Daryl shrugging and rapidly downing the coffee.

Harold sat down heavily on his seat and promptly deposited his burdens onto his desk. He leaned back and sighed, taking time to let his arm muscles relax and regain some flexibility. Right now they felt like rods of cooked meat.

As he let his arms revert to their usual, powerful state, he peered over the wall of his cubicle. There were rows upon rows of nearly identical compartments all over this floor, filled with people dressed in all sorts of colours. Delores was wearing a tight blue sweater today, Daryl had slacks hanging from his hips and Rachel was wearing her usual sari.

Twisting his head, he let his eyes wander from the chaotic mass of humanity to the glistening world outside. New York had woken up and was going to work. Bug-like vehicles crawled along the clogged Manhattan streets, ferries plied the glistening Hudson River and several helicopters buzzed along in the air. As Harold took a deep breath, he marveled at the shiny new day bursting with life. It promised to be beautiful today.

8.30 am.
109th Floor, South Tower, 2 World Trade Center
New York City, New York.

"Hit me, baby, one more time..."

Britney Spears blared through hidden speakers in the colossal office. The pop goddess seemed inappropriate for the subdued colours and conservative furniture of this room. The plush carpet was in royal blue, and the scattering of chairs and tables were all made of metal and leather. A magnificent bookcase was flanked by two tall glass display cabinets filled with trinkets from all over the world. An African effigy stood by a Chinese charm, and above those was an antique Greek bust.

On the far side of the room, just before the great articulated windows, there was a monster of a desk. Made of oak with bronze fixtures, the desk screamed power and dominance. It took a helicopter to get it to the office; it was too big to fit in the service elevator. Its sheer weight made lasting indentations in the carpet.

Behind the wooden structure sat a gaunt man in a tall leather armchair. His hands were steepled in front of him as he surveyed the magnificent city below. Lower Manhattan was full of money, flowing in and out of ATMs and banks, and even gushing through telephone lines. The streets were choked with money, and the New Yorkers breathed its seductive scent with every breath. And most of it was his.

As Britney Spears broke into another chorus, the man began to smile. To think that he owned much of Lower Manhattan. Who would have thought it possible?

The nameplate on the table said "Harrison Drumston"...

8.42 am.
Hudson River.
New York City, New York.

The ferry chugged along as it sliced through the aquamarine waters of the Hudson River. On its deck stood dozens of tourists wearing colourful shirts and caps, cameras at the ready.

Harry was jumping up and down excitedly, trying to see as much of the Manhattan skyline as possible. The Big Apple shone and glowed under the rays of the new day’s sun. Skyscrapers gave out radiance as sunlight reflected off windows. The concrete monoliths stood proudly, attesting to man’s ingenuity and fortitude.

Harry stopped jumping around, as he was feeling slightly seasick. Nevertheless, his little heart still pounded with excitement. He always wanted to come to New York, to see the Statue of Liberty and the famous skyline. He wanted to see the great metropolis that has been heralded as the greatest city in the world. He wanted to take in the sight of the two World Trade Center towers, stolid blocks of steel and concrete. No self-respecting American would feel complete without setting foot upon this hallowed soil.

He looked up as an aeroplane roared overhead. He liked aeroplanes. He rode one from Atlanta to New York. The stewardess on that flight was very nice to him.

As the plane streaked towards Manhattan, the boy saw the emblem on its tail. Two tall A’s. It was an American Airlines aircraft, and it was headed to the Big Apple. Harry hoped the people on board would have a good stay in the city.

8.44 am.
76th Floor, North Tower, 1 World Trade Center.
New York City, New York.

"Hey, Harold. Looking good!"

Harold shook himself out of his reverie to see Charles standing at his side. Charles playfully punched his biceps. Luckily, his arms were in working order again, and he promptly sprang from his seat to catch his mischievous assailant. Charles yelped as he was caught in the grips of Harold. "Hey, hey, take it easy, I surrender already! Looks like you’ve been working out."

Harold let go of Charles and laughed. "You just had to find out the hard way, didn’t you?" Then he noticed that Charles looked distracted and turned around. "What’s the matter?"

Charles blanched, pointed and explained, "See that AA plane? It’s flying too low. It’s gonna hit something in Manhattan."

8.45 am.
109th Floor, South Tower, 2 World Trade Center.
New York City, New York.

Harrison’s train of thought strayed as he caught sight of the metal bird skimming the rooftops of Manhattan. It was flying too low and was bound to hit something. "Stupid rookie pilots," he muttered to himself. "Someone should train them to fly before they are allowed in the cockpits." Harrison steeled himself for the calamity that was to come, for it inevitably would. His mind started to think of ways he could capitalise on this…

The plane was turning. Intrigued, Harrison followed its flight path. He could see the gleaming nose of the aircraft as the plane righted itself and continued on its high-speed rush. And the nose was getting bigger.

Suddenly, it clicked. The plane had turned and was coming closer. The pilot was on a suicide run to ram the World Trade Center.

As the revelation sank in, the craft barreled closer. Harrison could see the portholes in the passenger cabin. He could see into the cockpit. He could see the fearful passengers, and the grimly determined pilots. He could see the whites of his eyes.

‘The whites of his eyes’ was way too close.

His heart sinking, Harrison gripped the arms of his chair.

"Good Lord, no…"

And the plane dived nose-first into 1 World Trade Center.

8.45 am.
76th Floor, North Tower, 1 World Trade Center.
New York City, New York.

"It turned towards us! It’s gonna crash!"

As Charles declared the end of their lives, the floor fell silent. Then, all eyes turned to the approaching bomb with wings. The truth of his statement sank in slowly, but steadily.

All hell broke loose.

Harold stood stock still, dumbfounded, as chaos erupted on all sides. People were screaming and rushing for elevators and stairs. People were getting trampled and pushed down. People were becoming animals in their futile bid to outrun a speeding Boeing 767 jet.

Harold could not believe what was happening. A jet was trying to ram the tower? His mind scarcely wanted to accept the fact, so he stood there and tried to stare down the pilot. He was fighting an unbelievable threat with an unbelievable method. He was pitting himself, a towering man of solid build and well-muscled limbs, against the oncoming aircraft. He was fighting it physically, mentally and emotionally.

Unsurprisingly, the aluminum bird won.

The jet speared the tower, rupturing the steel-reinforced wall like a knife through butter. Once the outer hull of the tower was breached, the plane went all the way in, arrowing straight to the structural heart of the building. Harold was right in front of the plane as the machine finally crashed to a halt. As he was thrown to the dissolving floor, he could scarcely believe the plane had stopped under his influence.

He was still pondering this interesting fact when the plane’s fuel stores erupted and incinerated the floor and its occupants.

8.45 am.
Hudson River.
New York City, New York.

The tourists on the vessel saw the jet blow its way into the North Tower.

They were still trying to figure out what really happened, being unwilling to accept the ridiculous fact that a jet had crashed into the World Trade Center. After all, it was one of the world’s tallest buildings in one of the world’s safest cities. How could this famous landmark be destroyed so easily?

Harry, too shocked to say anything, weakly gripped the rail as the blood drained from his face. As the North Tower exploded spectacularly and created a second sun in Manhattan, the boy could only think that his beloved city had been attacked. Only after a few seconds of looking at the twin towers, one of them now had a flaming hole in its gray, severe side.

One of the tourists, a Japanese woman, whimpered.

8.54 am.
109th Floor, South Tower, 2 World Trade Center.
New York City, New York.

"Ohhhhhh…My God."

Harrison sat alone in his cavernous office. The Britney Spears CD had reached its end. The only sounds in the room were his laboured breathing and the unholy roar of the inferno in the North Tower. Metal scorched and concrete sizzled as highly explosive aircraft fuel happily burned away.

He had seen the plane make its final, deadly run. He had experienced the colossal eruption of 1 World Trade Center’s upper floors, casting debris every which way. The enormous fireball had barreled right past those mullioned windows, mocking him, promising that he would be next. The fumes of burning concrete and evaporating steel blanketed the whole complex.

"Good Lord, will you look at that…"

He had experienced facing death in the face, and had survived. But he was eerily certain that evil wanted him, too. Suddenly, he did not want to be alone.

With shaking hands, he picked up his telephone receiver, and falteringly dialed the number that would connect him with his mother.

9.01 am.
Hudson River.
New York City, New York.

The pandemonium on the deck of the passenger vessel was beyond reasoning. As the officers of the ferry line tried to calm panicked passengers, the passengers were scurrying all over the ship like headless chickens. Cries, screams and yells soon engulfed all efforts to restore order.

Dozens of cameras clicked to record this monumental tragedy. Dozens of voices tried to reason this out, and failed. Dozens of eyes frantically searched the ship for a safe haven. One boy stood stock still as the crisis enveloped his beloved landmark and its home city.

Harry stared mutely as smoke followed the fireball up the tower, scorching and suffocating the silvery skin. As bits of the tower fell to the street, it seemed that glistening and burning angels were falling from heaven. Harry’s childhood dream of stepping into the World Trade Center was sundered by a soulless and pointless attack on that very facility.

Little by little, Harry’s legs gave way, and he slowly sank to the deck as the enormity of this catastrophe hit him. He was too preoccupied to notice another plane growl its way over the city of New York.

9.03 am.
109th Floor, South Tower, 2 World Trade Center.
New York City, New York.

"Hello? Is this Mrs. Drumston? Hi, mom, it’s Harrison. I really love you. A plane just hit the North Tower."

As the words left his mouth, Harrison felt the full implications of the collision fall heavily onto his shoulders. His powerful intellect logically sorted everything out, showing him the effects an attack like this could have on America. And he knew why the people in the North Tower had to die.

"Mom, it was terrorists. Terrorists just killed the people in the North Tower."

He glanced out at the horrifying sight of the wreckage of the North Tower, and another sight chilled him to the core. Another jet plane was headed straight for him. It was zooming closer at an incredible speed, and his logical brain told him he might be dead in a few seconds.

As the plane flew below his line of sight and closer than ever, he said what could be his last word, "Mommy!"

9.03 am.
Hudson River.
NewYork City, New York.

As Harry watched, horrified, another plane slammed into the other tower of the World Trade Center. It pierced the protective steel hull of the immense building and dove into it, not heeding the hardness of the steel and concrete at all. Within a second, it was deep inside the tower. Once it got there, the plane ignited like its predecessor. The building was engulfed in the resultant fireball, and a spectacular show of fireworks ensued as substances that were not meant to burn were incinerated. Fragments of the twin tower spewed out, bleeding from the fresh, hot wound.

Suddenly, all was quiet on board the passenger ferry as the new spectacle unfolded. Terrifying tongues of flame four floors high were licking hungrily at the South Tower, like a child greedily consuming a rare treat. Hands flew to mouths to stifle shocked cries and eyes brimmed over as sobs forced their way out.

Harry fell to the deck, too stunned to do anything but lie there, a marionette released from its strings. He was too numb to cry. The apple of his eye had been raped, its pristine sides breached and burning, its glorious beauty corrupted and shattered. As his unbelieving brain tried to take in this shocking development, as his emotions fought a war to explain this away, the shell that was Harry lay unmoving, unresponsive, on the passenger vessel.

As his parents tried to get him to stand up, Harry realised a horrific fact; there was nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide.

9.48 am.
109th Floor, South Tower, 2 World Trade Center.
New York City, New York.

Harrison cowered in the shambles of his office, eerily pristine and subtly ruined at the same time. At the time of impact, the United Airlines Craft had shattered many of the structural pillars on his side of the building. Two of the tall windows had instantly shattered, cutting his face severely. Thus, to avoid falling out of the tower, he had crawled to the opposite side of the office.

The firestorm that had been the 80-something-th floors of the tower had swept up its impressive height and flooded into his office via the broken window. Luckily the room had four metres of headroom, so all he suffered was the scorching heat of exploding jet fuel.

Now, severely shaken up, his life fallen to bits, all Harrison wanted to do was live. In his bloody hand, he still clutched the telephone receiver, now broken and useless. His brain overcoming the crippling shock, Harrison edged his way to the windows and dared to look down.

What he saw was horrifying.

Smoke as thick as pea soup poured out of the gaping hole of what was once 2 World Trade Center. Flames licked the walls in a leisurely manner, as if the devil himself was taking his time consuming his lunch. Steel and concrete stuck out of the once smooth side of the tower at odd and disorienting angles. Had Harrison had all his faculties, he would have thrown up with revulsion. He leaned heavily against the window and contemplated his means of escape.

He could not go down the elevators or stairwells because of the fire and blistering heat below. He could jump, but the fall would surely kill him. His calculations showed he would hit the ground at 228km/h. He could stay and wait for rescue, but it might come too late. Maybe he should end his life on his own terms.

Having made his decision, Harrison got unsteadily to his feet, and opened one of the tall windows. He leaned out, ready to drop himself over the edge. The dizzying height helped to distract him from the horror and anguish of the situation.

He was about to hurl himself into the void when a shattering explosion rocked the tower, spewing smoke from below and declaring his dilemma moot. Harrison was immediately thrown back into the room, which was shuddering and shimmying like a live, angry snake. He landed heavily on his back and was momentarily stunned. As he regained his breath, he saw the flaming tower opposite sliding upwards in his field of vision.

As his body slapped painfully against the shuddering floor, his mind told him the tower was collapsing. The room rapidly filled with ash as the tower folded into itself. Then, the floor dissolved and Harrison was swallowed by the roaring darkness...

9.48 am.
Hudson River.
New York City, New York.

The South Tower was crumbling into itself, sending storm clouds of ash and dust into the air, engulfing the already smoking North Tower and blanketing Lower Manhattan. On the ferry in the middle of the Hudson River, tourists watched, horrified, as one half of the World Trade Center’s infamous twins was reduced to dust and broken slabs of cement.

But Harry just lay on the deck, impervious to his parents’ pleas and the tourists’ fearful noises, but paying full attention to the destruction of America’s safety and freedom. By the time the tower was cascading into New York streets, clogging vital arteries, there was a thin trail of blood dripping out of Harry’s nose.

As anguish engulfed the young heart, all he could do was process and feel. His body was too numb to obey commands to shout and scream out his pain. The pain was almost too much for the young boy to take. It became a core of intense heat, rivaling the heat rising from the remaining tower. With his body threatening to rupture from the pressure of built-up emotions, a single tear streaked down his gaunt and drawn cheek to join the stream of blood, mingling to form the material representation of pure human emotion.

9.49 am.
Ruins of 2 World Trade Center.
New York City, New York.

Pain. In his arm, in his leg, in his back, in his abdomen, in his chest, slicing into his internal organs.

Pain. In his heart.

Blood. Gushing, from wounds on his limbs and torso. Gushing from his shattered head.

Blood. Gushing from America’s fresh wound.

Harrison was alive.

After a fall of over 400 metres, Harrison lay, half buried beneath what had once been his sanctuary and his throne. The owner of half of downtown New York lay, broken, shattered and dying.

But he was alive and thinking. And he could see. And what a sight to behold.

Looking at 1 World Trade Center from down there, Harrison could see settling ash, burning concrete and silver blood pouring out of the mortally wounded complex. His buildings, his children, had betrayed him.

He saw gray figures hurling themselves out of windows. He followed one from the high reaches of the tower right down to the pavement, where the body impaled itself on a lamppost. Blood and flesh spewed all over his neat plaza.

His.

Foolish person.

And, as he knew would inevitably happen, the death throes of his most glorious child started. 1 World Trade Center started to buckle and break at the point of violation by the aircraft. Shards of steel and concrete splintered off and came crashing down. Whole sections of wall broke away, loosing tons of rubble to fall on the streets below. Dust plumes rose from the tower and the impact points of the debris, enshrouding the owner of the World Trade Center, the owner of corporate America, in a final, glorious salute.

The tower imploded, starting with the middle, then the whole structure gave way and exploded into millions of individual pieces of shrapnel. As the debris came smashing down onto the ruins of 2 World Trade Center, a million-gun salute was given to Harrison Drumston, the one fragile human that owned America.

Harrison’s superior brain was counting the cannon blasts of falling debris when a colossal block of rubble smashed him to pulp.

1…2…3…4…

9.51 am.
Hudson River.
New York City, New York.

The utter carnage held the tourists spellbound.

They never deserved to see the massacre. They were as innocent as those who were inside the two towers. And they were as terrorised as the innocent civilians that perished when the two monoliths collapsed like so much cardboard. Two colossal explosions reduced the glittering monuments to rubble in a mere ninety minutes. Untold thousands died in that senseless act of violence, and untold millions had their dreams for a better tomorrow gutted and killed. These are the living dead, whose hopes had been mercilessly skewered.

Harry went into shock then, convulsing sporadically as his being tried to reject the terrible truth that the blessed dream is in fact unattainable. His terrible loss is reflected all over the world as innocent children watched the World Trade Center topple over ad over again, seeing their aspirations collapse time and time again.

Harold was gone. Harrison was gone. Harry was going. There was no more strength and power. No more intellect and logic. Only pure, incorruptible emotion. On Tuesday, 11th September 2001, the world went to war with the inhuman, fueled not only by guns, missiles and bombs, but also by grief, anguish and outrage. It is a fight against extinction, for humanity became endangered when the planes demolished the twin towers. On this fateful and horrendous day, America united the civilised world in combating carnage and terrorism.

"The enemy attacked not just our people, but all freedom-loving people everywhere in the world. The United States of America will use all our resources to conquer this enemy; we will rally the world. Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve."