It was a humid afternoon when my editor at The Reality Register threw me the assignment of a lifetime. “Find Malaysian Airlines Flight 370,” he said, deadpan, as if asking me to pick up his dry cleaning. The plane, which disappeared a decade ago without a trace, had been the subject of countless theories, ranging from alien abduction to black hole entrapment. But our source claimed something even more fantastical: the plane had reappeared in Malaysia after vanishing into a portal on that fateful day in 2014.
For ten years, the world speculated and mourned, but now, an anonymous tip hinted that the passengers had experienced only a blink of an eye and popped back out somewhere near Malaysia, of all places. They’d supposedly landed on a remote island in the Pacific, having survived a decade trapped in time, and about half the passengers were victims of cannibalism. As soon as I arrived on the island, I was greeted by an eerie sight: the still pristine plane stood amidst the jungle foliage, a relic of a mystery that had gripped the world.
Through a mix of pantomime and physical bullying, I managed to locate the only passenger worth talking to: an American nerd from Texas. His eyes widened as I recounted the events of the past decade. He’d missed the entire circus of the late teens and early 2020s, a period that had turned the world upside down.
I told him about the runaway inflation that had gripped our economy, the presidency that brought out the worst in everyone, and the suspiciously overblown pandemic that broke the collective sanity of huge chunks of the population. The Texan wanted to know about the governor of his beloved home state, and I mentioned Greg Abbott’s controversial tenure and how he’d managed to never be photographed standing for the national anthem—an odd but contentious point that had sparked countless debates.
The Texan listened, a look of mounting horror on his face. “It’s like we entered an alternate dimension,” he muttered. Then, without warning, he jumped back into the cockpit of the plane. I barely had time to react before a shimmering portal—one I hadn’t noticed before—opened up, swallowing the plane whole once again. Just like that, he was gone.
I stayed on the island for a week, sharing songs and stories with the other passengers, despite the language barrier. They were resilient, their spirits unbroken despite the strange ordeal they had endured, and the meats they grilled were delicious. The Pacific sun cast a golden glow on our impromptu gatherings, and I couldn’t help but think that the Texan was really missing out.
When my time was up, I left the island, my head spinning with the outlandish reality I’d witnessed. The passengers, presumably, went back to their lives in China or wherever, where they probably work a job that they hate.
Back home, I penned my story, weaving together the threads of speculation and truth. The Reality Register had its headline: “Flight 370 Returns: A Portal to the Past?” Whether anyone believed it was another matter. But in a world gone mad, perhaps this was just another chapter in our ongoing saga of the bizarre and the unexplainable. And as for that Texan? Well, maybe he’s out there somewhere, navigating through portals, searching for a world that makes a little more sense than ours.
Mohammed Sinclair
