Aperture

Astor took a dry swallow. His eyes kept shut and his nine fingers involuntarily clenched around the armrests in a death grip. Fear made long waits quick and quick moments long, but this pushed the latter to its furthest extent. An excited child sighed in awe from across the cabin as the craft flared.

He grunted as the helicraft shook, its magnetized landing gear meeting the electromagnetic fields that flowed from beneath the tarmac. Though the shaking of the landing was much more mellifluous than that of the old rudimentary method of landing – the idea of having spinning rubber supporting the descending mass of a whole craft was frightening – he could barely keep himself from panicking.

For most activities that he despised, it was generally the end that gave him the most satisfaction. On the other hand, as for flying, he couldn’t stand the ear pressure that persisted throughout the flight and it tended to last for hours afterwards.

The deceleration of the aircraft pulled him tightly into his waist-strap and his ears were aching something fierce! The voices of the people around him sounded like a distant AM frequency. He opened his eyes and the television set in front of him glowed with white writing over a blue background:

Merci de nous avoir choisis.

Pop! Damn, at least his right ear was clear. Now his left ear seemed to be growling in jealousy. Astor yawned several times, but his ear remained painfully stubborn in its discontent.

He hated traveling. Luckily there was no view and he wasn’t sure what would have happened if there had been. He couldn’t imagine how panicked he’d be looking down on the Earth from above the troposphere.

A few moments later a chime sounded, indicating that the passengers could stand. Astor hastily stood and gathered his carry-on together. He followed the slow-moving passengers, smiled to the stewardess, and made his way down the low-ceilinged walkway.

A week earlier, he had been contacted by Ben Stratform, one of his old colleagues. The last time he had seen him had been a decade past, when they had both been assigned by the joint UN government to work on technological advances during the Orient War. They had worked together for five years on a project concerning ‘instant transportation’ or rather ‘teleportation’. Though the project had been itself a failure, both Ben and Astor had made a number of advances in both physics and mathematics.

At the end of the war, the project had been ultimately disbanded. Astor had become a professor back at his home town in Borden, Ontario, while Ben had embarked on his own private projects. Out of the blue, Astor had received an encoded telegraph from Ben asking for his help. He wasn’t sure what had made him come; they hadn’t even made contact in years.