Why did this aircraft vanish from radar over the Pacific in 1938? What cargo manifest pages were torn from the logbook? Who scratched those strange symbols into the cockpit walls? And why do compasses still spin wildly when passing over the crash site?
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I heard an airplane passing overhead. I wished I was on it.
― Charles Bukowski
The Boeing 247 had been state-of-the-art once, its twin engines promising speed and safety across the continental routes. But Captain Morrison knew something was wrong the moment they’d loaded the cargo in Chicago—three unmarked crates that hummed with an frequency that made his teeth ache.
Thirty minutes into the flight, passenger complaints began. The windows showed impossible vistas: cities that spiraled inward like nautilus shells, mountains that bent at angles that hurt to perceive. Mrs. Henderson in seat 4A insisted she could see her deceased husband waving from a field of writhing grain far below.
The instruments spun wildly. The altimeter claimed they were simultaneously at 8,000 feet and negative 2,000 feet. The compass needle traced symbols that Morrison didn’t recognize but somehow understood—directions to places that existed between the spaces of normal geography.
Co-pilot Davies had stopped responding to questions entirely. He sat rigidly at the controls, his eyes reflecting a light that came from no source within the cabin. When Morrison tried to radio for help, the static that answered back contained what sounded like breathing.
The cargo hold door had warped, its metal frame twisted into curves that seemed to extend further than the aircraft’s actual dimensions. Through the gaps, Morrison glimpsed movement—not the shifting of loose freight, but something deliberate and vast, pressing against the boundaries of the small space as if the hold contained far more than it should.
The passengers had gone quiet now, all staring out the windows at the landscape that defied every law of physics and geography Morrison had ever learned. Below them, the earth folded and unfolded like origami in the hands of a mad god, and the aircraft flew steadily onward into angles of sky that simply shouldn’t exist.
When the fuel gauge showed empty despite having departed with full tanks only an hour ago, Morrison finally understood: they weren’t running out of fuel. They were running out of world.
