A Darker Plan

2. Strange cargo

I looped the strap over my shoulder while standing up, then waited in line with the others. We were all silent. Henry was just behind me.

When would we be stopped? I prayed for global nuclear war. The world had taken a very very wrong turn. Obviously I wasn't the only one wishing for an intervention of planet Earth.

You see? I too have settled into annihilation fever.

The line started moving back. Back to where they had installed a very surreally designed section of the airliner.

We're passing into it now.

Then the line stopped. What luck. I'm only two meters away from the onboard lab. This section of the plane had been fully remodeled. Seating left and right were gone. The lower deck is already nine passenger seats wide, so without seats this section seemed enormous now in fact. Then there was the bizarre lighting. We're talking the entire fuselage was back-lit in a soft frost light, and under my feet too. I couldn't see any seams in the install. It was amazing work. I looked at the light on my hand, it was an oddly pleasing blueish hue.

I took a good long stare into the long oval lab window stretching across.

On the other side there were older men, maybe sixties in age with lots of gray hair, lined faces. They were dressed in long white lab coats and black dress slacks. They worked on computer tablets, and glanced up at readouts on the silver wall behind them.

I imagined myself, something of a corpse, wrapped in clear plastic. Hermetically sealed even. My hue, my pallor, a light blue, as it is now, beneath some glassy cellophane, a packaged captive specimen, behind that wall of theirs, floating, waiting to be dissected - in due time.

There were six windows of data screens in there, probably even a couple more that I couldn't see. I was still too far away to make out what the readouts were for. I wondered what was beyond that hatch, behind those technicians. What were they monitoring behind that wall? What else is on this flight?

My eyes wondered to the right. One of those lab guys had eyes fixed on mine. He stared at me without blinking.

What the fuck.

I looked away. Around here you don't want any attention. I glanced back, he's still standing there, all mannequin-like just staring.

This is the worst airline ever.

But something tells me he's a drone bee, just like me. As suddenly as before, the line started moving again.
There was an Air Force officer waiting at the exit hatch. His face was devoid of anything that would reveal the slightest mood. Our eyes met briefly then he looked at Henry behind me, and nodded to him.

All of the senior staff apparently were in on it, the whole war thing I mean. Ready to kill the useless eaters like myself.

But not yet. No. There is a purpose for us.

Outside now I could see the broken line of engineers in lab coats walking toward open double doors, and there's Cleveland. His long hair wasn't regulation so he stood out. He had said he wouldn't cut it in the interview. It was who he is, and he would rather work somewhere else if he couldn't keep his hair long. Oh my f'ing god! They could have not bothered at all and killed him for his attitude. But they made an exception for him. He was also rail thin like most of us and with bad posture, and he liked to listen to speed-metal of all things. As if our reality wasn't metal enough.

Ten seconds later I reached those same double doors at the base entrance. I noticed that the structure had changed. All the lines were rounded. It reminded me of some fancy-arty type of structure thingy, abstract, white with gray trim, bulging in an organically beautiful way.