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If you've ever flown long enough, you know there's this point—usually about an hour in—where the novelty of being in the air wears off and you just… drift.
Not asleep, not fully awake. Just in that weird, floaty state where time stops being a real number.
That's where I am right now.
Camera stowed away. Seat reclined just enough that the person behind me probably won't start plotting my murder. Hands folded in my lap, eyes halfway closed. The world outside is still the same endless sheet of clouds and soft light it's been since takeoff.
Honestly, it's perfect.
Which, if you've been keeping score, means it's about to end.
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It starts small. So small, I almost miss it.
The light shifts.
Not "sun's going down" shift—there's no warm gold or long shadows. It's more like someone somewhere just reached up and twisted the dimmer switch on the whole sky.
The brightness dulls, flattening into a cold, even grey. It's not dramatic enough to make anyone gasp, but it's… noticeable.
I glance around. The guy next to me still hasn't moved—he's in full "headphones fortress" mode. But a couple rows ahead, I hear a pair of voices. Low, almost a whisper. That slightly strained tone people use when they're pretending not to be worried.
A flight attendant walks down the aisle, calm smile in place. She's probably just checking for stray seatbelts or open tray tables, but I catch the way her eyes flick toward the windows more often than usual.
---
I lean against my own window. The clouds below are still there, but they've lost their glow. No more creamy whites or sunlit folds. Now they're flat, dull grey—like someone turned the color saturation down to zero.
The horizon is worse.
It used to be a soft, blurred line where gold faded into white. Now it's just… gone. The sky and the cloud layer have merged into a single, shadowed mass, with no hint of where one ends and the other begins.
It feels less like we're above the clouds and more like we're flying inside something.
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The plane lurches.
Not hard—just a sudden bump, like we've rolled over a speed bump in the sky. I've flown through plenty of turbulence before, but this doesn't feel like that. There's no rolling or dipping afterward. Just one sharp movement and then stillness again.
A few passengers glance up from their screens. No one says anything.
The captain's voice comes over the intercom.
> "Ladies and gentlemen, we're—"
That's it.
Half a sentence, chopped off like someone hit mute mid-word.
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Before I can even process the weird cutoff, the plane jolts again. Harder this time. Enough that my seatbelt digs into my waist and my camera bag slides forward under the seat in front of me.
The businessman in the row ahead of me finally looks up from his laptop. Across the aisle, the kid at the window lets out a small "whoa," like this is the coolest roller coaster ever.
I press a hand to the window, half for balance, half because I can't stop staring outside.
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It's quiet.
Too quiet.
Then, out of nowhere—lightning.
Not the usual kind, where it branches across the sky like a glowing tree. This is a single, thin arc, far away but sharp enough that I swear I can see exactly where it begins and ends.
It's there for less than a second, then gone. No thunder. No follow-up flash.
Just silence again.
---
The captain's voice returns—only now it sounds… wrong. Garbled. Like an old recording warped by heat.
> "—flight path—adjusting—"
The words crackle and distort, the syllables dragging too long in places and cutting short in others.
Then the sound cuts out again.
This time, it's replaced by something else.
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Not silence—static.
Not the faint hiss of white noise you sometimes get over intercoms. No, this is the real thing. Loud, fuzzy, full-bodied static, like an old TV tuned to a dead channel.
It fills the cabin for three long seconds. Four. Five.
Then it cuts, leaving behind the hum of the engines and a hundred pairs of eyes glancing around like they're waiting for someone else to explain what just happened.
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This is the moment where, if I were watching this from the outside, I'd be shouting at the screen: "Hey, maybe take this seriously!"
I should feel afraid.
I don't.
Not yet.
But I do feel one thing:
Whatever's happening, we're not in the same calm sky anymore.
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