Across the Globe [COMPLETE]

Time Is A Curious Thing

It takes me a moment to identify the weird machine-sounding noises around me as I pull the blanket tighter around my neck. My throat feels rough and dry and I hope I wasn’t snoring loudly. I’m lucky enough to have the window seat, as I’ve been having a pretty good sleep curled up against the wall until just a moment ago.

I feel a sting in my right hand, and I look down. I must’ve had a nightmare, cause I can feel the marks of the nails that dug into my palm. That would explain the sweat too. I rub my eyes as I try to remember, but it’s all so blurry. I remember darkness, and maybe fire. I feel like there’s a memory just there, but I can’t concentrate enough to make it into an actual image. I hate that feeling of knowing but not, it happens to me all the time as I try to remember things but I feel like they’re just an inch out of my reach.

“You’re awake,” Em says in a dreamy voice.

I look towards the seat next to mine, and I almost laugh at this little bundle of a blanket-burrito that’s half asleep by my side.

“I am,” I reply in a whisper, “Are you?”

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, ”I kind of am.”

I turn on the screen in front of me, and I open up the navigation map.

“We’re barely halfway there.” I say in a soft voice as I try not to wake anybody else up.

“This was such a stupidly long flight,” Em groans, and then she laughs a little while rubbing her eyes.

“It’s so odd to think that when you’re up here in the middle of nowhere,” I say. “It’s like… I don’t even know what day it is, what time it is. We’re moving against the sun at the moment, so the minutes won’t even be minutes, you know?”

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” Em says, and then she yawns.

“I mean, we’re travelling with time, so technically time is going by faster in this plane. Maybe there’s a way I could calculate how long a minute lasts up here in the air by knowing our speed?” I look at the screen, at the speed displayed there, and I start to think what kind of calculation I will need to figure this out when Emma punches me lightly in the shoulder. 

“Don’t you dare do math right now,” she says.

Right, I’m probably too sleepy for that anyways.

“Okay, okay,” I say.

“So when we return, time will go by slower… That’s why we’re departing and arriving pretty much at the same time, right?”

“Exactly. When we go back, we’ll be travelling against the rotation of the Earth. So basically, we’ll be static up in the air as the Earth moves underneath us. We’ll be in an eternal space of nothingness while the time doesn’t actually move for us. It’ll be like being stuck in a moment, pretty much during the whole flight.” I look at Em, and she’s looking at me like I’m losing my mind a little, but I keep going. “It’s just so mind blowing to think how time is such a relative term, you know?” I don’t really wait for an answer. “It’s like the same as when time seems to slow down sometimes, and you feel like you’re watching the world moving in slow motion. But then, there’s times when things happen so fast that you can’t really comprehend what’s going on until it’s all over.”

I look at Em, and she’s just staring at me, silent. I wonder if she’s fallen asleep with her eyes open, it wouldn’t be the first time.

“I just find it pretty fascinating,” I say in a whisper.

“Yeah, it is,” she replies. And with that, her eyelids drop and she starts snoring lightly.

✢✢✢
Rongo