He hated storms. Daniel Rumer did his best to go over his notes as the small business jet was rocked by the turbulence over the storm. The man, moving closer and closer to thirty and his black hair already prematurely thinning, had the window overlooking the wing closed. He did his best not to even consider the fact that they were thousands of miles above the earth and that one mistake, one tiny problem could send all eight passengers careening towards the earth to obliteration. He shifted in the denim shirt, speckled with a tinge of sweat from the warm cabin. His fingers tapped against his seat's arm-rest, an obvious sign of his nerves.

He scanned the room. There was the photojournalist he’d been working the Nazca article with, Jules. There was an older gentleman in a flower shirt somehow sleeping in all of this turbulence, still balancing aviator sunglasses on his face. There was a nearly-bald man sitting near the back, constantly checking his watch or looking out of the window. A few others dotted the plane as well, but no one really stood out to Daniel as he tried to focus on something else. He’d worked for New Scientist now for roughly four years, having dropped out of his graduate program to pursue something more lucrative than studying geological formations and tectonic plate shifts (and this was after he’d changed his major from paleontology after spending a summer workshop with a hardass doctor in Montana) and found himself penning articles for the “Earth” sections in the paper. Earth was just a fancy way of way of lumping together tons of different disciplines that no one in the technology, mathematics or medical fields really cared about.

Hell, they had four different tech writers on staff, guys who were on the cutting age discussing robotics, the possible future of nanotechnology and how computers were now possible of discerning trillions of lines of code in weeks. There was one article he remembered back when he first started, an interview with some Scottish CEO about supercomputers breaking down the trillions of lines of DNA from extinct creatures. The fact that his job was looking at old rocks, fossils and lines in the sand meant that his chance for a pulitzer was unobtainable. It paid the bills at least.

He and Juliet were flying to Costa Rica from Peru after doing some on-site talk with new studies on Peru’s Nazca lines. Juliet had managed to get a few incredible shots from a small plane of the lines as well; at least from what she told him. He’d been on the ground speaking with a few scientists and locals with the help of a translator. Now they were on a 4 hour connecting flight before the big airliner in San Josè would take them back to the States. But Christ, how long was this flight taking? Daniel did not keep a watch, but this was starting to feel like an eternity; something that made him want to look out the window and get his bearings, regardless of his fears of heights and death.

“Jesus,” he muttered, turning to Juliet who was sitting across from him. “Has it been four hours yet or is this turbulence just messing with my mind?”

Juliet Fournier looked at her watch. While Daniel’s unease was understandable, they hadn’t quite hit the mark of four hours yet. Though Jules wished they had. Then again, Jules wished that she hadn’t been placed on this stupid assignment in the first place. As an actual journalist she didn’t want to take pictures in a helicopter of some boring lines drawn in the sand centuries upon centuries ago. But apparently, her editor had suggested that she go with Daniel off to Peru to do it. “You’re the best photographer we have on staff.” He said, as a way of trying to ensure that it wasn’t a complete waste of time. Then again, New Scientist wasn’t exactly the job she thought she would be doing at this point in her life. She wanted to be like her heroes – Catherine Leroy and Georgette Meyer – covering the gruesome and politically relevant, writing commentary that meant something.

Perhaps this was all a sign. Like god drawing actual lines in the sand to tell her to admit she was fed up with it and quit working for the magazine.

“See this is why normal people wear watches. To tell time.” She sighed, eyes on her watch. “If you must know, it’s only been three.”

She returned her sight to the book she had been reading: the English rendition of Jean Baudrillard’s war essays on The Gulf War aptly titled The Gulf War Did Not Take Place.

It’s only been three. Daniel sighed at the thought that yes, his mental clock was just off kilter from being stuck in a flying sardine can. “I’m just ready to rest my feet on solid ground for a few minutes.” He just wanted to be back in his small apartment in the states. He thought working for one of the biggest science magazines in publication would have been more lucrative than what he was being paid. Sure he got to see the world, but he was living out of basically three cardboard boxes in a very unfurnished studio apartment in New York. It was no different than 1989 in Montana, actually.

He’d spent the greater part of the summer running errands for his professor. They’d spent weeks working on a dig site in northern Montana. They’d even run across Jack Horner, and he spent nearly 30 minutes balancing a cardboard box full of materials listening to his professor and Dr. Horner talk on and on about their craft and new technologies being pioneered. His professor, Dr. Grant, had not been too enthralled about such things. He was old school in the worst sense, and he was not the kind of guy to be kind to his students.

On balmy night in mid July, Daniel had sat on a bare stone, looking upwards at the sky. His professor had startled him. “You considering changing your major to astronomy?”

“What? No sir. I just…” Alan was gruff. He had a gentle aura the more you got to know him, but he could catch you unaware and off guard easily. “It’s just something I love about these digs. Getting out of the city, away from the world. Just the team, the rocks and the bones.”

Grant chuckled and patted Daniel on the shoulder, sitting down next to him. “You’ve been working under me for two months and I think that’s the first thing you’ve told me that wasn’t related to our work here.” He got quiet for a moment. “What do you want to do with paleontology?”

“I-” Daniel sat there, dumbfounded for a moment.

“Some just end up working for museums, curating the findings of others. Some write books about their own theories for the K/T extinction. And others dig. You already know what kind I am.”

“I’m not really sure exactly what I want to do with it. I just… enjoy it. Studying these creatures that existed millions of years between us. It’s amazing to just imagine what they could have actually been like.”

“That’s our job.” The older man, already nearing his forties removed the hat from his head and placed it into his lap. “Just don’t expect to get rich or famous from it. If you’re not willing to sacrifice for it, you’re better off finding something else to do with your life. After all, there’s only so many bones for us to dig up out there.”

The conversation changed him, but not in the way Dr. Grant had probably intended. He realized that ultimately, paleontology had a finite end, and with technology increasing and more protected sites being placed around the room, the areas to dig were shrinking and fast. He changed his major to Geology in the fall and ended up jumping on with New Scientist when he finished school. And it had led him here, in a small box. Only this time, he didn’t have the beauty of the night sky to stare up to at night.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the buzzing sound of the airplane’s intercom shook Daniel out of his daydream, “we’re in the middle of a pretty bad storm right now. For your safety, I suggest everyone buckle your seats as it might get a little bump-” an explosion rocked the plane and Daniel in his seat. Lightning had struck the plane, but where? And how? Fear, and the need to understand took over and Daniel unlatched the cloth cover for his window and saw his worst fear: the left wing of the plane was now emblazoned in fire. Even worse, he looked out to a sea of black. No land, no roads, no nothing. Right now they should be near Panama, but...all he saw was endless ocean. “This…” Daniel moaned in a deep fearful gasp, “This can’t be happening!”

There was no way she wanted her orbituary to read that she was an uneventful photojournalist from Parksville, South Carolina. She stood there in silence for a moment before she felt her body shake as someone took her shoulders. When she came out of it, she saw Daniel, who was already going through the premeasures even though he was terrified. As Jules tried to get her wits together, dropping the book she held in her hands she could feel the plane whine and tremble. She knew it all too well. After all, her father had warned of her of everything bad that could happen on a plane and what to do in such a situation. Daniel spoke out to her, determined in his own way.

“Jules—”

Before he could finish his sentence there was a loud snap.

“Jules-”

He felt the air nearly suck out of his lungs as the aircraft rocked, shook and began to crack in the tail end--the same end where he and Juliet were sitting. Metal began to creak and tear as the dark ocean of night exploded among the lights of the plane going out. Daniel tried to scream but the only sound he was able to make was drowned out by the roar of wind and the crash of metal into trees.

Before the plane broke apart, the captain had attempted a landing it seemed, getting them at a low enough altitude that instead of becoming bloody grease stains on the ground, tall trees caught them amid their descent, slowing their fall and surprisingly leaving the few passengers that the plane held alive. Birds erupted from the treetops and after the horrific sound of metal and splintering wood, the forest grew silent, almost eerily so. Deep in the distance, beyond what the passengers could hear now, a soft rumble began to shake the jungle floor.




Not that Daniel knew. The moment when the wind began to whip him, he lost consciousness, and only now, an unknown time later (thanks to not being a normal person with a watch) he found himself waking through a continuous drip, drip, drip on his forehead.

Rain.

The tail of the aircraft was hanging precariously at a low angle, held aloft by branches of a tree. But not just any tree, this one seemed humongous, something you would find in a fantasy novel about traveling back in time than something you saw in Woodward Park.

“Urrrgghhh,” the deep voice on the main in the flowery shirt broke the silence. It was enough to know that they were alive. “The fuck happened?” The man groaned in a thick southern accent. Daniel couldn’t place it. Coastal Texas perhaps?

“We...crashed,” Daniel said, having to gasp for air between each word. His heart beat with the speed of a hummingbird’s wing, and he looked over to see Jules still alive as well. Thank Christ. “But we’re still alive.” Daniel tried to squint his eyes to see exactly where they were. A moment ago all he remembered was the ocean. Were they in Costa Rica? Or maybe Panama. Rescue teams would find them soon enough...right? His mind traveled back to the film he had seen a few years before. Alive.

“Jules,” Daniel muttered, touching the photojournalists’ arm. “Are you okay?”

Juliet grumbled, trying to focus her eyes following the very rough landing.

She wasn’t sure how she and Daniel – and whoever else it was – survived such a violent landing, but they did. She supposed that was the important part, the part that she should’ve been fortunate about. But she didn’t feel very fortunate. Not at all. The blonde-haired photojournalist coughed, trying to clear her throat so she could properly breathe. They had made it to some outlying island; an island that the pilot had recognized as an able landing spot in a crisis. If she hadn’t been so scatterbrained at the moment she might’ve laughed.

“I’ve been better.” She uttered to Daniel’s question if she was okay. She wasn’t completely sure herself, really, but she didn’t think anything was broken. Outside of the PTSD she was bound to have and the smoke she supposed she was fine.

“Where are we?”