About six months ago, I went to visit my sister in Melbourne. I had a wonderful time at the Moomba festival with her and my two nephews. Going to Australia has always been one of those things on my big list of ”what ifs”. Now that I’ve been, I can honestly say I’ve been an idiot for ever doubting myself. Lovely country.
My sister’s wife is a flight attendant, so I managed to get a juicy discount on the ticket; even though she exclusively traffics flights to Europe rather than the states. Can’t say I blame her though; the 14-hour trip from Melbourne to LAX is torturous. I would want to be anywhere near that on the regular.
So after two weeks in the land down under, I was heading back home. I said my goodbyes at 6:30 am, got through customs, and made my way to do a little Duty-Free shopping. Got myself a mystery novel, some snacks, some backup earbuds, and a Koala plushie. I don’t get to play the annoying tourist often, so when I do, I go hard. Koala plushie hard, mate.
I was heading to the gate (well in advance) when someone bumped into me. I heard something small clink against the tiled floor and noticed a large man in a black coat wandering away. He’d dropped some kind of pin. I picked it up and considered running after him, but he was already quite a way off and I didn’t want to make a fuzz. Besides, it was just a pin. I kept it in my pocket just in case I ran into him again.
I waited for the boarding to start, watching all the people waiting alongside me. It didn’t look like much considering the size of the plane, but it was still a lot of people for such an uncomfortable flight. Some were already yawning, having tried to tire themselves out enough to get a good night’s sleep on the flight. I hadn’t even thought about it. I don’t fly much.
I saw a few heads nod on and off until we finally started boarding. Nonstop flight from Melbourne to LAX. Thanks, United.
I got to my window seat, put away my bag, and waited patiently. A middle-aged woman sat down next to me, with her teenage daughter on the other side of the aisle. However, it got apparent that there’d be a lot of empty seats on this flight, and the two of them moved next to one another; leaving me with two empty seats next to me.
I thought it was gonna be my best flight ever. Hell, I even considered buying something overpriced from the on-flight shop.
We got through the safety check, the instruction video, the captain’s introduction, and we were in the air. That feeling where your gut gets sucked in and your head feels a size too small. It passed quickly, and as the “belts on” light turned off, the lights stayed dim for those wanting to get some early sleep. I considered it myself, having been up since 5 am.
I connected to the plane wi-fi, put on a true crime podcast, and completely zoned out. I felt a little daring and put up my feet on the empty seat next to me, thinking it’d bother no one. A flight attendant gave me a curious look, but said nothing. Leg room; check.
I must’ve dozed off for at least an hour, maybe two.
I had this dream of burying my feet on a silver beach. Someone called out to me from far away, as if standing behind a pane of glass. A voice grew closer and closer. Finally, it whispered something into my ear.
As it did, something passed through my body. Something cold, like snowflakes hitting every pore on my skin simultaneously.
I jumped awake to the sound of a text message coming through, thanks to the wi-fi. My podcast had auto-paused, but soon kicked back into action. I had no idea what the episode was about at that point; I just liked the noise. Turns out I had a message from an unknown contact. This long, complicated series of symbols; all from an unknown number. It looked like nothing I’d seen, and some symbols even seemed to change when I blinked. I couldn’t make sense of it.
I looked around and noticed I wasn’t the only one checking my phone.
No one else looked worried though.
I had this strange thought running through my mind; to respond to it. Just to kinda see what happens.
“Who is this?” I typed in.
And the moment I hit send, all hell broke loose.
At first I thought I got some kind of confirmation message. “Who is this?” popped up on my screen. Then another, and another, and another. The du-du-dun message alert noise went bananas, stuttering a feeble d-d-d-d-d-d-d over and over, as dozens and dozens of identical messages flooded my inbox.
There were some slight variations. Some messages had small letters, others were capitalized. Some had a question mark, some had several, some had none. One message read “who dis”, for example. But with the sheer volume of messages I received, some of them were bound to be similar.
621 messages in total, all received in less than a minute. I thought my phone was going to melt through the floor.
I just watched as they poured in. After a while, new messages started to pop up.
“What the hell?!”
“Unsubscribe.”
“This isn’t funny.”
I thought about writing something myself, but couldn’t think of anything to say. Instead, I just observed. It looked like I’d been thrown into some kind of massive text chain.
I considered my options, but as I did, I saw my thoughts pop up on my screen in real time; sent from someone else.
“Is this an in-flight thing?”
“Ads???”
“WTF”
It was so eerie that I had to try something. I input the first three words that came to mind.
Pineapple. Pizza. Arctic.
The second I hit send, the same three words came back to me a hundredfold. The same order, the same spelling, mostly. Some words were a bit jumbled. I could see one response where “Pizza” had been turned to “Sorbet” instead, and another where “Arctic” was “Cola”. Some responses seemed to have no idea what I was doing.
I took a quick stop at the bathroom. As I finished up and returned to my seat, I ran into one of the flight attendants. I held out my phone and asked her in passing if they had some sort of passenger network thing going on. She just tilted her head, clearly confused, and smiled.
“We have nothing like that”, she said.
She looked down at my phone, still dinging constantly with messages.
“Well,” she continued. “Someone’s popular, hm?”
I got back in my seat. I turned the phone over in my hands, trying to see if there was some kind of damage to it. Nothing. Finally, I decided to completely turn it on and off. The moment it came back on, I’d missed hundreds of messages. Good thing I have a feature that auto-deletes old messages to make room for new ones.
Some of the messages had started to target one another, asking direct and clear questions.
“What’s your flight?” one asked.
“What’s your local time?” asked another.
And finally, it asked my name. I typed it in and let my finger hover on the ‘send’ button. As I did, I noticed the number of messages slowed drastically. Finally, as I pushed to send, the messages started coming back.
And it was my own name.
Over, and over, and over.
D-d-d-d-d-d-d-
There were a few exceptions. A few used a nickname from college, and some wrote out my last name as well. A handful used my middle name instead. A few had completely different names that I’d never seen before.
I couldn’t make sense of it. I could actually feel my pulse rise, as if reacting to some approaching danger. It made me take an extra look around the other passengers, but no one seemed to have the same problem. Most of them were watching Netflix; blissfully unaware.
For the next 45 minutes, all I did was sit and watch. Every message, every word, directly taken from the back of my own mind. Like a hundred voices, all speaking at the speed of thought. Some saying things I hadn’t even considered.
And, after a while, a picture.
I couldn’t believe it. I looked at a picture of myself; but one I’d never taken. I also had slightly different glasses, and it seemed to be a different time of day.
I just sat there for a minute, gawking like an idiot. As I did, more pictures started pouring in.
In some, I was younger. In some, older. In one, I was travelling with an identical twin. In another, with a child. I saw myself with a wife, a husband, my parents… hell, even a service dog. In one picture, I was obese. In another, I’d lost an arm. I had different ethnicities, different hair, different gender. Like someone had taken the baseline ‘me’ and just put it all on a slight shuffle.
But it was all me. Hundreds, after hundreds, after hundreds; all me.
They shared personal details. Addresses, phone numbers, e-mails… all kinds of things. A lot of them had kids, all named Jonah. I’ve always liked that name for some reason. As they started sending me videos, I heard my own voice clearly over my headphones. Greetings, questions, nervous laughs; a gallery of all my personal quirks, all at once.
They were all trying to figure out what was going on, and I joined the discussion. Somehow, in some way, it seemed that we were all, essentially, the same person. We knew each other’s secrets, mannerisms, wants, and needs. We could tell each other’s passwords, security questions, social security numbers. Sure, some differed a bit, but most of it was identical.
Finally, we all said the same thing. Different letters, similar words, all with the same intent;
“We are the same person.”
It was as if for a moment, we all stopped. We were taking it in, digesting the fact. But as we did, a single video popped in. This one looked… different.
There was no sound. There was barely any light, as the camera shook violently back and forth. I could see panicked faces somewhere in the emergency-lit background. Oxygen masks coming down.
Then, a sudden light. In that light, the silhouette of a vague, massive humanoid.
A lightning strike.
In the blink of an eye, everything starts moving. The camera pans, revealing a wide gash forming on the side of the plane; ripping everything from passengers to seating in half in a storm of blood red and neutral blue commercial seating.
Another lightning strike. A silhouette.
A tilt of the camera, as it flips in the air; revealing the plane torn into pieces. Passengers falling from a black sky, like screaming raindrops.
“Sir?” a voice whispered. “Sir, are you alright?”
I hadn’t even realized I was hyperventilating. My words got stuck in my throat as I pulled up the window cover. We were fine. Clear skies and cumulus clouds, as far as my eyes could see.
“Sir?”
“I’m, uh… sorry,” I said. “I, uh… got some bad news on the, uh…”
I just pointed to my phone, and she nodded. She politely asked if she could get me something, but I shook my head and excused myself. She wasn’t entirely convinced, but she had things to do.
I took a moment to ground myself in the here and now. The other passengers were calm and collected. Watching their favorite shows, chatting with their online friends, sending pictures and texts to their families. The middle-aged woman across from me was trying to talk her teenage daughter out of coloring her nails mid-flight. It was all there. It was all ordinary.
Then, another message. A long string of random numbers and symbols, followed by a clear text;
“User has left the group chat.”
The text chain panicked. People asking one another what the hell that was. Someone suggested it was a lightning strike, others that it was a rocket. Some focused on the vague silhouette, saying it was a bomb. Someone sent me a few pictures of passengers, but none of them looked like the people on my flight. Although the people in my group chat looked very much like me, the other passengers on our planes seemed to be vastly different. There were a few thoughts about this; some of which were my own.
“We’re a congregation,” someone suggested.
“A nexus? A collection?” said another.
“A dimensional thing?” said a third.
I was inclined to agree with all of them. It didn’t make sense.
Then, a picture.
A bright white image, showing the inside of a devastated plane; struck by lightning. And right there it was, again. A silhouette of something vaguely humanoid. But it was a bit clearer now.
It was thin, black as ink, and stood 8 feet tall. It had an almond shaped head, with fingers as long as my forearm.
Reaching.
Closer.
There was another message of a user leaving the group chat, followed by a moment of silence. Then all hell broke loose. Panicked videos, voice messages, emojis, entire paragraphs. All my fickle thoughts, from a hundred minds, making the phone buzz like it was trying to break itself apart.
Moments later, another user left the group chat.
Then another.
And another.
I got up from my seat. I don’t even know why, I just had to act, somehow, in some way. I walked down the aisle, trying to see out of every passing window, but there was nothing; just clear skies, and confused faces. There was no immediate threat, and I felt like I was going crazy. I was panting like a sick dog, trying to swallow my heart back down from my throat. A cold itch crept up my spine, like I was anticipating a sudden pain.
“Sir?”
The flight attendant again. She put a hand on my shoulder, and I recoiled. It wasn’t even a conscious reaction; it just happened.
“Sir, I need you to take a seat.”
I didn’t argue, but I felt like I wasn’t done. Like I was missing something. Meanwhile, my phone kept buzzing with reminders of people – me – dropping by the dozens.
I couldn’t stop looking at the screen. Symbols and numbers, all followed by the same sentence, over and over.
“User has left the group chat.”
“User has left the group chat.”
“User has left the group chat.”
I looked up at the flight attendant. I could barely form any words. On my third try, they came through.
“They’re dying,” I wheezed. “They’re all dying.”
Two more attendants joined her. They escorted me back to my seat. I tried to explain without sounding like a madman; explaining that there was a threat. A storm. That we were on our way straight into something bad. They assured me that we weren’t, and that we were looking at a clear sky. They asked me to turn off my phone. At that, I just put it down and looked her in the eye.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll be quiet. I just need to make sure they’re okay.”
“We don’t want to take your phone away, sir.”
“No, I’m sorry. Really.”
“Alright then. Have a pleasant flight.”
There was an option in the top right corner of the chat where I could see the number of participants. We were down to 305; more than half of us gone. While I’d been busy talking to the attendants, the others were trying to figure out whatever they could about the lightning strikes and the mysterious figure.
“Look”, one wrote. “Feathers. Just before the video cuts off.”
“I see them too,” another joined in. “Feathers, then lightning. Looks like snow.”
I looked out the window. No feathers. I was safe for now.
We compared our local times. Some were ahead with as much as two hours, others less so. Some didn’t even answer. Every few minutes, another one of us would drop, and I’d feel my heart sink. We started noticing that some of those who were ahead of time were dropping out faster, while those of us who were behind didn’t. Every now and then, a picture would come through, or a video. At one point, an auto-playing audio message screeched into my ears with dozens of tortured souls thrown haplessly through the air. It made me jump, earning me another concerned look from the other passengers.
We speculated back and forth. One of them, a version of me travelling with my parents, argued that there was no storm, no lightning. It just came out of nowhere, at some point. We figured out that in most videos and pictures, the emergency lights were on; giving us another indicator to look for.
Now and again, one of them would panic.
Some of them spotted feathers. Some of them had the emergency lights turn on.
And shortly after, they left the group chat.
The lights in my flight flickered.
I burst out of my seat. In a matter of seconds, the lights came back on. The captain’s voice came through.
“We’re experiencing a little turbulence. Please remain seated.”
Before I had the chance to do anything, I could see the attendants already heading my way. I sat back down. I put my phone back in my pocket, but they held up a hand.
“Sir, please empty your pockets.”
She held up a sick back, asking me to put it all away. Every syllable of protest I managed to spit out got immediately shut down. They were done with me, and they were only asking nice one more time. I did as I was told, putting down my wallet, phone, keys, and the pin I’d found at the airport. Strange little thing; looked kind of like a reverse sunflower, with a blue-ish tint.
“You’ll have this returned before the end of the flight,” she continued. “Please enjoy a movie or take a nap. We’ll get you a hot drink, sir.”
I sat down, and they handed me a blanket and a cup of coffee. I got to borrow a pair of headphones. I asked if it was alright for me to put my legs up on the empty adjacent seat again, which they agreed to.
Luckily, they didn’t know about the tablet in my carry-on luggage.
I brought it out, hiding it at an angle using the blanket they’d handed me. I plugged the headphones into the movie screen, putting on a cheesy mid 2000’s family-friendly comedy, but turning the volume to mute. Using my spare case of earbuds, I could stream the chat sound from my tablet. All the attendants would see was a scared passenger bundled up in a blanket.
I connected back to the wi-fi and found that this pad also had the group chat available. Almost like it was bound to me, as a person, rather than the electronic device itself.
We were down to 104 people.
I hurried to read up on what they’d gathered. Apparently, time differences didn’t matter; there was no set point when it would happen. Some had been ahead of me, some behind. But it all started the same way; feathers falling from the sky, emergency lights, followed by violent, blood-curdling upheaval.
Every now and then, a new picture would be sent. The same ink-black silhouette; long fingers reaching. And in every picture, in every frame, it would seem to get a little closer. It was coming after not me as a person; but me as a fucking concept.
They were all retracing their steps. Everything from a check of what we had for breakfast to a discussion of current geopolitics. Some figured it could be a weapon.
Somewhere in the mix of voices, one of them mentioned something peculiar.
“I bumped into a guy at the airport,” he said. “He asked if I’d seen his pin.”
Others joined in. Some had seen him, some had been stopped by him. Some swore that they’d seen him as they boarded the plane. One uploaded a picture, a selfie, where he could be seen in the background.
“I got the pin,” I mentioned. “Did anyone else get it?”
Silence. Complete, devastating silence.
“User has left the group chat.”
It was faster now. Some disappeared mid-sentence, others only had the chance to send whatever they’d already typed. They were being ripped apart and thrown to the winds, one by one, in quick succession; like a goddamn countdown.
I tapped my pockets, realizing I’d left the pin with the flight attendants.
We were down to less than 40 people. Not many of us dared to type anymore. One of them, a ‘me’ wearing what looked like a fancy suit, typed out a response.
“We’re screwed,” he wrote. “I know what it is. If you got it, you got to get rid of it. Out of the plane. It can attract lightning.”
“How?” I responded. “We’re on a goddamn plane!”
His voice came on, as he live-recorded a voice message. I could tell he was stressed, his voice strained. My voice strained.
“You can superheat it,” he said. “It’s hyperconductive. Probably the most conductive material there is. Heat it, and get rid-“
He left the group chat.
They all responded. Asking me to throw it out the door, burn it, melt it, flush it; to do something with it. If there was a chance that this thing, that only I seemed to have, was the reason for any of this, I had to do something.
They all begged me. Voice messages, screaming for me to hurry. Pictures of feathers starting to fall. Pictures of emergency lights turning on.
“User has left the group chat.”
I got up, leaving my tablet behind. I caught one glance off a flight attendant, who’d grown exhausted with me by now. I slowed my pace, calmly walking up to her. I’d forgotten to take out my earbuds, but I hoped she wouldn’t notice in the dim light. She didn’t.
“Can I take out the, uh… battery? I don’t want my phone to be out when we land.”
“You can turn it off,” she said. “That okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I nodded. “Absolutely.”
I just needed to get the pin.
She handed me the bag. Two other attendants joined up, surrounding me. I picked up the pin, sliding it into my long-sleeved shirt. I turned off my phone and handed the bag back to her.
“I’ll get back to my seat now,” I said. “Thank you.”
“No problem, sir.”
I tried to keep it all smiles and nods, but I could hear people leaving the group chat, one by one. It wasn’t stopping. If anything, it was speeding up.
I got back to my seat. The word “hyperconductive” came to mind. Supercharge. Heat.
I checked the pin again. It was clearly two different materials. A light metallic compound in the spike, and a cheap plastic in the flower. They easily broke apart, leaving only the strange metal. It was completely black; reminding me of the creature I’d seen in the pictures.
It was so warm to the touch, as if draining the heat from my fingers.
I had to get rid of it.
Using my seat belt as a sort of pincer, I carefully pushed the pin into one of the charging ports.
In a heartbeat, the plane went dark.
My tablet exploded with messages. They were all experiencing it. In every version, from every iteration of me, we all felt it. Their emergency lights came on.
And then, they came on for me too.
The pin was glowing, having been charged in a way I couldn’t quite understand. But it wasn’t warm anymore, it was almost cool. I accidentally touched the side of my seat with it, and the armrest just melted like butter.
Looking at the window, a desperate idea came to mind.
And outside, I could see feathers passing us by, like snow.
There was a rumbling noise. I wasn’t the only one on the plane feeling it. Murmured voiced. Loud exclaims. Worried questions and answers, flying back and forth. A captain barely heard over the electrically fried speaker system. I could feel my seat shaking as someone moved behind me. The middle-aged woman across the aisle kept looking back and forth, searching for answers; her teenage daughter finally putting away her nail polish.
The rumbling got worse. People were getting up from their seats, screaming at one another, and the attendants. Lights were flickering on and off. The hair on my arms stood up, as if an electrical charge was pulling them up.
I pushed the heated pin against the airplane window.
It went right through like it was nothing.
The pin got sucked out with a whistling noise. For a moment, I thought it was over; that we’d done it.
Seconds later, a silent lightning bolt from a clear sky shook the plane, throwing everyone off-balance. And there, in the light of an instant, I saw the same creature that’d haunted me in worlds untold. That vague, humanoid nothing. Reaching, but further away.
Disappearing.
I was thrown to the floor, scratching my elbows on the rough blue economy-class carpet. Some people fell over, others collapsed into the aisle. Bags shook back and forth in the overhead compartments. The whistling from the window was getting worse. In the chaos, I managed to snag some nail polish from the teenager across the aisle. She’d dropped the bottle as the plane shook. I crawled up on my knees and used it to seal the pin-sized hole in the window, trying to stop any serious depressurization.
I stayed there on the floor, trying to catch my breath, and my mind.
There were no messages coming from my tablet.
I was the only one left in the group chat.
We had to make an emergency landing in Honolulu. We were all shuffled out as an emergency standby-crew cleared us, one by one. We were asked to sign some insurance papers. I could see people shaking and crying into their phones; begging not to have to get back on a plane ever again.
Someone tapped me on my shoulder.
I turned to see the man in the dark coat. A tall bald man with peculiar facial features. A hawk-like nose and ink-black eyes, contrasting a sickly pale complexion.
“Can I have my pin back?” he asked.
“I, uh… I lost it” I said.
He gave me a long, curious look. He was searching for the right words, but didn’t make much progress. Then, as if a light came on in his mind, he smiled at me.
“That’s okay.”
Moments later, he was gone. I never saw him again.
We were all talked to. I didn’t know how to explain what I’d experienced, so I just implied that something damaged the window from outside. There was no reason not to believe me. Thinking that I’d gotten some kind of hyperdimensional premonition was not on the table.
Eventually, I got home, as if nothing ever happened. No more group chat messages. No mysterious lightning strikes. No one understanding the level of trauma I’d been through, and me not being able to share it with anyone.
So that’s why I share it with you, Reddit. I just need to know that someone knows. I need to know that someone reads this for what it is.
I may have prevented a plane crash that day. It was barely newsworthy.
But in another sense, I caused 621 of them to drop out of the sky.