skonen_blades

So far, the in-flight entertainment on this loud, rickety, rusty, hole-filled nightmare has consisted entirely of ‘not dying’. Which, don’t get me wrong, is something I’ve in favour of. But I passed white-knuckling the armrest hours ago and I think the stress is going to permanently damage some of my tendons. My fear is tuning my like a guitar but it’s not stopping. I feel as it these taut muscles in my are going to snap.

The starboard engine barfs and wheezes. Black smoke belches out and some of it even wafts into the cabin through the holes. This is the sixth time. It’s only been four on portside. Lucky them. I’ve screamed a few times and I don’t the person in the next seat even heard me over the noise. I’m getting hearing damage. I’m sure of it.

We rattle over what feels like rough country road even though we’re miles in the air. The overhead compartments don’t have doors. Some people have chickens up there. One has a child nestled up in there, holding on wide-eyed but smiling like this is fun.

There’s even a man in a hammock in the back. He might have the right idea. Most of the jerks and tugs of turbulence that are translating directly through my seat to my skeleton are merely rocking him peacefully.

Clouds smash across the front of the plane. It’s raining out there which means it’s raining in here now too.

I nearly had to crawl to my seat when I got on. Stooped in half with my back scrubbing the ceiling all the way. The seats on this plane don’t match. They’re all different colours and a dozen airlines are represented. Were they scavenged? Bought off ebay? Is it the design choice of a deranged interior decorator? Leg room is variable. I’m not too squished in which is a small blessing.

The plane drops and I can literally see the wing flap outside the window, the entire thing bending and wiggling. I can see the bolts shiver in their holes. I hear the bolts in my own chair’s constant rattle. How loose is everything? Are the plainly exposed wires okay in this rain?

The storm kicks us to the side and the oxygen masks pop down on six of the chairs, mine included. Mine’s a balloon with the logo of an insurance convention seminar on it. The guy in front of me seems to have a Ziploc bag hanging in front of him. I don’t know how air pressure sensors in this contraption work seeing as air is whistling through the holes around us in the fuselage. Are they rust holes? Bullet holes? Decorative?

I feel as if I’m about to forcefully molted out of my own skin.

I hang on as we go into another dive, praying that this time it’s the sweet release of either a hasty landing or a fatal crash. I’m just fine with it being either one.

I’ll never fly again.


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My worst fear is that I’ll have an embarrassing death. An inconvenient death. That I’ll die in the audience during a friend’s performance and the whole place with be struck with the tragedy of it, ruining the night. That I’ll die during a performance of my own and while the retelling of it would be dramatic and even amusing, the act itself will be chaotic and horrifying to anyone present. That I’ll die at work and forever scar my co-workers.

But I will probably have no control over where I die.

I realized the other day that there is no shelter from evil. There are manners, there are societal niceties, and there are agreed-upon laws and people who enforce them. There are houses with locks and the belief that evil is outside.

It makes life bearable but it’s a lie.

Lately, I turn to darkness. Not fulldark but trenchward. Like a dolphin going deeper to avoid an oil spill.




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Scientific experiments have proven that a person’s perception of time does indeed slow down when that person is involved in a near-death experience.

The threatened person’s body is flooded with adrenalin. The synapses fire at over six times their regular rate. Visual stimuli is examined in detail.

All of the senses are channeled through the cerebellum and catalogued for a way out, any way out, some way to survive. A side effect of this is excellent data recording and recall.

The channel scanner management took this data and applied it to their workers. The pay was great. The scanners themselves usually didn’t last very long. In most cases, the money they made was left to their next of kin. They sacrificed their lives to give some much-needed money to their families.

A scanner was hired, put into their chair, and told to look at the bank of television sets in front of him or her. The data would spool forth on all of the television screens at once. Every monitor would flare to life, sound on, channels changing randomly.

It was an influx of data from the universe.

We were far from the only world with television. Every since the first received broadcast in 2033, the others started pouring in. Apparently, our rate of development is normal and common. There are thousands of us sprinkled throughout the galaxy and we all discovered technology at roughly similar moments. We started receiving alien broadcasts close to the same time as our broadcasts reached the nearest systems.

We’ve started receiving broadcasts from older civilizations, farther away. There were tens, then hundreds, and by the end of this year, probably millions.

Like rocks thrown into a pool, the ripples are meeting.

They’re too far away to have a two-way conversation with but we can watch their shows.

They have scientific breakthroughs that we don’t. The scanner division scans their television stations for breakthroughs in weaponry or medical science.

The needles sink into the back of the scanner’s neck and the restraints snap into place. The eyes are forced open and the scanner is sent into a mode of Deep Terror. The most mind-numbing fear that it’s possible for a human to experience is funneled into the scanner through the drips. A complex array of drugs and surgical additions keep the heart from exploding or the lungs from collapsing. Going into shock or passing out from shallow breathing is prevented.

Scanners generally last about eight weeks.

Their terrified whispers are recorded as their eyes dart from screen to screen, taking in information as fast as possible.

We get about six valuable ideas a year and once in a while, a serious society-changing breakthrough. We can only imagine that the other races on far-away planets are doing the exact same thing we are. It’s a race.



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I’m going against my instincts. I’m leaving.

The boosters failed. We landed hard on the wrong planet. We passed through a magnetic aura somewhere on the way here and it wiped parts of the computer’s memory and instructions. It was lucky that so many of us lived but the bad news is that we have no idea what planet we’re on or what part of the galaxy we’re in.

The ship picked a planet with a breathable atmosphere. We woke up at an angle. A third of us were dead. This means that the emergency supplies we have will last us a lot longer. We have no idea how long we were asleep. There are nine hundred and sixteen of us.

At first we huddled close to the ship until we came to a decision on what to do. What direction to go in, how to repair the communication systems, that sort of thing. That was over a month ago. We’re still here. Sleeping in the cryotanks and eating the emergency rations. The fear of landing on an unassigned planet is keeping us close to the ship.

I’ve had enough. I don’t see any forests around to build huts with but it also hasn’t rained since we got here. It’s a dry planet but the atmosphere does suggest that water is present somewhere. I’m betting my life on it.

Later on today, I’m going to strike out over this new frontier and see what happens. I have enough rations with me to last a month if I’m frugal. I hope I find something to eat or drink by then. If not, at least I’ll die under a new sky trying to make a new life here. I’m going to ask around and see if anyone wants to come with me but I’m doubtful that anyone will.


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