Concordia Flight 1337

When a family attempts to take a holiday flight, their journey is derailed by a toxic fog, Kafkaesque security checks, and a wormhole that sends them forward and backward in time.

“We’re going to be late.”

Edward ran out of the shower, a pair of black slacks chasing after him, billowing like a sail. 

“I’m just going to change Jackson’s diaper. Then we’re ready.” Margot’s voice floated in from the other room. 

Edward put on his slacks, stood in front of the mirror, thought for a moment, then changed into gray ones. He glanced at his empty suitcase lying dismally on the floor.

They were not, in fact, almost ready.

The bags needed to be packed; Jackson’s toys corralled, binkies located and stashed in every bag. Toys washed and hooked to the car seat.

Edward flapped around the house, trying to be helpful. Margot handed him a banana and a yogurt cup for breakfast. Forty minutes later, they were finally ready to face the world.

Unfortunately, the world was trying to kill them.

Smoke from a once-in-a-century wildfire in Canada danced lovingly with the sublimating moisture of rapidly melting snow, trapping fine particulate pollution in a toxic fog that fell heavy upon the city, nestling among the buildings and wide, winding freeways. At first, the weather reports deemed the air harmful only to those in the “sensitive” population—the young, the old. The sick. But soon, that “sensitive” population expanded to include everyone; and the weather apps deemed the air harmful to all things living and many things already dead. 

Edward couldn’t see as he drove his family to the airport. The dense, gray-green fog covered everything. The tops of the skyscrapers were invisible, their towering steel masses disappearing into the lurid air. They were like ancient cyclopean ruins dotting an alien landscape. Edward was certain there were too many buildings—more than he ever remembered clustered around downtown. A few even strolled onto the road, and he swerved to avoid them, almost hitting the other cars as he careened across four lanes. He glanced at the clock and saw the minutes flying by. “We’re going to be late,” he said, stepping on the gas.

“I’m worried we forgot something,” Margot said. “I’m worried about those red marks on Jackson’s face.” She turned in her seat to look at her son.

“I’m sure it’s nothing.” Edward crossed three more lanes without signaling, dodging cars and buildings that kept wandering into his lane. “Remember, dear, you’re just hallucinating. The meteorologists said the air would have that effect.”

It wasn’t just that the air was dangerous to their lungs, it was deadly to their brains, too. The city was famous for its many cereal factories. Almost all the cereal in the world was produced there. Freshly harvested grain came from the vast, frozen tundras of North Dakota where they were mixed with sugar, salt, water and malt, and then pressure-cooked, belching even more particulate matter into the air. The factories were all in competition with each other, and naturally it was the fourth quarter of the year, the most important quarter, and all the factories, rather than slow output during the storm—as was recommended by policy experts—instead ramped up production in order to preserve their yearly forecasted profits; and the result was tens of thousands of metric tons of cereal byproduct mixing with the fog, producing a curious effect that still baffles Nobel-prize-winning chemists. 

The city was hallucinating.

Edward saw a cow standing near an exit ramp. It was holding a sign that said, “down on my luck, anything helps.” 

“I’m not hallucinating,” Margot said. “I saw the spots before we went outside.” 

The minutes were melting off the clock. Edward gassed the car farther, merging with tremendous speed onto the highway. The ramp launched them high into the sky where they were completely enveloped by fog. For a minute, it felt like they were flying. Soaring through the formless gray aether. How nice, Edward thought, to fly the car all the way to Florida. He imagined landing the car smoothly in Margot’s mother’s driveway; the luggage swiftly ferried inside; a margarita in his hand, poolside.

But reality—and the ramp—dumped them onto the highway, and Edward merged erratically into the twelve-lane stream of screaming cars. He felt light, as if the car’s suspension had sprung free, as if he could easily tip off the road. Edward pressed the gas to the floor, weaving and bobbing through the cars. He saw what looked like a speed bump on the road, but it shot them forward even faster and they passed a white jeep with a turtle at the wheel. The highway curved, and Edward took the turn fast, skidding the car on two wheels to maintain his speed. He finished his banana and tossed the peel out the window. Explosions filled the rearview mirror.

When they made it to the airport, Edward was sweating. His heart kept scrambling to escape through his throat. His mouth was dry. He was suddenly aware that his son was screaming in the back seat.

“We’re going to be late,” Margot got out of the car and went to soothe Jackson. “I don’t know why you were driving so slow.”

The airport was insanely, incomprehensibly crowded. They could barely move with all the bodies packed inside. Edward scanned the signs, looking for Concordia’s logo, but none of the signs appeared to be in English anymore. They weren’t in any language that Edward knew; just pure word gibberish.

“Let’s get in line,” Margot said.

“Is that the right line?” Edward wanted to find an employee he could ask, but everyone appeared to be a traveler. Every single person was tired, annoyed, and laden with bags.

“Let’s just get in line. We can figure it out later.”

“What if it’s the wrong line?”

“At least we’ll be going somewhere.”

They stood in the nearest line, and Edward asked the woman in front of them which airline she was flying. The woman turned and stared at him, her eyes bulging with fear. She waved at him and mouthed I don’t understand and then turned around. She was wearing a pair of earphones that enveloped her head. Edward could hear her music. It sounded like someone screaming.

The line refused to budge. As if to compensate for their delay, time slowed down, too. Every time Edward looked at his watch, the minute hand hadn’t moved.

They followed the line through the terminal and then through a door that led outside. They queued along the highway, the cars buzzing past with an unrelenting hum. The line snaked through a forest, the fog clutching at the bare trees. They followed it through a grocery store, the shelves empty, ransacked of anything fresh. The line brought them back to their neighborhood and through their house. Edward was embarrassed that all these strangers could see their messy kitchen—crumbs all over the floor; the burners which hadn’t been cleaned in months. Margot was pleased, though. She went into Jackson’s room and grabbed a few more things to pack. The line exited through their backyard and brought them through an oil field. The shadowed rigs looming overhead, their metal arms pounding incessantly into the earth.

At last they came to their terminal. But the security guard who checked their IDs couldn’t tell them if it was the right line. “You’ll have to go through security in order to go back,” he said. 

He then asked for their pandemic passports, which they had left at home.

“But the pandemic’s over,” Edward said.

“The pandemic is never over, sir. Your passports, please.”

Because they didn’t have their passports, the TSA guards led them into a bare, windowless room. Edward and Margot sat on cold metal chairs bolted to the floor, Jackson fussing in his stroller. There were other travelers who also didn’t have the correct paperwork. A young man in an ill-fitting suit sat in a puddle of resignation. A woman with short hair was yelling at a TSA agent who weathered her onslaught with the imperturbability of a statue. Everyone shots looks of fear and uncertainty. The light bulbs were filled with angry, buzzing hornets.

“I should have been more prepared,” Margot said.

“I should have gotten us here sooner,” Edward said.

Jackson threw up his breakfast all over his shirt.

A man in a hazard suit entered the room, followed by two nurses in full surgical gear. The man ushered the three of them down a long corridor and into another room. A crowd of doctors in surgical gowns smothered them. They were poked and prodded with a million different instruments—only to check for communicable diseases, they were assured. “We’ll definitely miss our flight now,” Edward said to Margot as a masked and spectacled doctors shoved an enormous needle into his thigh. 

The doctors left Jackson in a corner, apparently uncertain how to administer their government-mandated tests to an infant. Margot asked if she could have a private place to breast feed, but the doctors told her it wasn’t protocol under a strict quarantine. 

At last they were lead to another room, a smaller, quieter one. The light bulbs there were filled with fogs who croaked pleasantly. They were given some water and stale crackers to eat while they waited for their results.

“It’s official. We’ve missed our flight,” Edward said, looking at his watch.

Margot crouched in a corner beneath a nursing sling, Jackson happy to eat at last.

After what felt like another hour, they were finally cleared and ushered down a long hallway which opened onto the terminal. They found their gate, and Edward approached the desk, hoping that they could get tickets for the next flight to Florida. But to their astonishment, they saw that their flight was still boarding.

The gate attendant announced over the loudspeaker that Rick Redford, the billionaire founder and CEO of Concordia Air, would be joining them on their flight. “As a special treat,” she added, “he will be taking you all into outer space en route to your final destination.” She smiled at the travelers, pleased to be delivering such exciting news. The concourse clapped politely.

“That must be why we haven’t departed yet,” Margot said. “Good news for us.”

“But how will Jackson handle the G-forces?” They looked at their son and saw that his rash had worsened. An enormous, pulsing red mass dominated the left half of his face.

“We just need to install the rocket boosters and then we’ll be on our way, folks,” the attendant said.

When they made it onto the plane, Edward collapsed comfortably into this seat, satisfied knowing that he had ferried his family safely to the airport and that the responsibility of navigating to their final destination now lay elsewhere. He saw Rick Redford through the curtain that separated first class from business. He was surrounded by a group of suited, silver-haired businessmen and four young women. They were drinking champagne.

Margot asked the flight attendant if they should be worried about Jackson’s face. The red mark now had a dark purple tinge.

“That’s just an adverse effect from the polluted air,” the attendant smiled. “It should clear up as soon as we leave earth. Space is so good for your pores.”

The captain reminded them to buckle their seatbelts. “We can expect some slight turbulence as we blast eighteen-thousand miles-per-hour through the earth’s atmosphere.” 

Margot flagged the flight attendant again and asked if she should buckle Jackson, but she told her to “just hold him tight.”

“Flight attendants prepare for takeoff.” The plane lurched forward and then swung ninety degrees, its nose pointing straight into the sky. The captain counted down from ten, and then the plane shot forward with tremendous speed. Edward felt his face melt off his body. Everyone in the cabin was screaming. After only a few minutes of pain and disorientation, the plane burst through the upper atmosphere and into space. Edward felt himself lift up, his seatbelt holding him in place. His face floated back onto his head. He looked out the window and saw a dazzling view of earth.

“It’s beautiful,” Margot whispered. 

But it was not the earth that Edward expected—the details were all off. The oceans were the wrong color, to start. Instead of the deep blue he remembered from books, the oceans of earth were a pale green-yellow color. And there was an extra continent in the Indian Ocean. Edward thought it was Lemuria, but when he looked more closely he could see it was an enormous island of floating plastic waste.

“We’ll keep the seatbelt light on until we exit the solar system,” the captain announced, and the plane shot forward, sailing past the moon. Edward thought he saw strange cities of dark onyx and bizarrely shimmering marble on the moon’s surface, but before he could get another look, they blasted further into space, hurtling past Mars and the asteroid belt. Past Jupiter and Saturn and its cold, unfathomable moons.

The captain came back on the loudspeaker to announce a wormhole ahead. “Unfortunately, this unexpected development may cause a fourteen-thousand year delay to our expected arrival time.” The loudspeaker clicked off, then back on. “But rest assured,” he continued, “that Concordia Air is committed to seeing you safely to your final destination.” 

The wormhole ate them, and Edward lurched in his chair and

sat

on the hard wooden plank of his treehouse. The hot sun glared in the sky, but a cool breeze lifted the leaves of the old ash tree, bright shimmering green. He heard the screen door bang shut, and his father’s shadow appeared a moment later, clawing up the wall. Then his father was in the treehouse, ducking his head. He sat beside Edward and told him that his mother had cancer. They sat in silence for a long time, the tree whispering. The sun taking forever to set. Edward stayed up there all night, alone, and in the gray morning, the ladder slick with dew, he climbed down and

fell

into a hospital bed. A man who was a stranger but also somehow familiar was holding his hand. It sounded like the man was talking to him, but Edward couldn’t hear what he was saying. He was having a hard time breathing. It felt like he was fifteen feet underwater. Then Edward realized that the man was Jackson. The eyes were the same. But his son wasn’t a baby anymore, he was a man. Grown, middle-aged. His face creased with sorrow. Edward forgot to take a breath. He realized his organs were failing. His body was

drifting

through space, enclosed in a metal tube, his family sitting beside him. Surrounding them were unknown stars and brightly-colored nebulae never before seen by human eyes.

“Folks, I’m sorry to report that we have passed beyond the limits of human knowledge,” the captain announced. “I cannot assure you, at this time, whether we will make it to our planned destination, or to any destination, in the common understanding of that term.” His microphone clicked off, leaving a soft static. 

Then it clicked back on. “But I’m pleased to announce that our beverage service will start momentarily.”  

They floated past a black hole. Its edged hummed with a demonic intensity, and Edward thought he heard the sound of flutes. He ordered a Diet Coke from the flight attendant.

Margot was sleeping, her chair leaning back as far as it would go. She was whispering under her breath, “don’t forget, don’t forget, don’t forget.” 

A swirling black void consumed Jackson’s face. Edward could feel it pulling at him, drawing him closer. He held onto his seat rest, but to no avail. He looked at his son and his son’s face swallowed him. He was falling through a dark passageway. He

landed

in his car seat. They were driving through a strange, foggy city. Margot was turned in her seat, fussing over Jackson. “I don’t want to be late,” she said.

“Nor I,” said Edward. It was important that he got his family through it. It was important that he got them to their final destination. A comet hurtled through the sky, turning the fog into an ocean of flame.

From the backseat, he could hear his infant son screaming, screaming, screaming.