Flash fiction: A sideways journey

A little flash fiction...

“We’ll go to Nidden for the summer,” my wife told me. “You can write your paper there. We can swim in the Baltic and you can draw inspiration from the artist’s colony.”

My paper is important. I am a metaphysicist and believe I have intuited an important facet of time: that it is not a single continuum but a series of parallel progressions between which, in theory at least, one might cross, by accident or design, to enter a reality that may be radically estranged from one’s own; or much the same, but rendered subtly different by some slight accident of history; a battle lost, instead of won; a weapon that wasn’t forged, a prince who lived when he had died.

A.Savin/Wikipedia

“I suppose we might,” I conceded. I do like the Curonian Spit with its light and air; it is conducive to one's intellectual process. Before I could change my mind, she had opened her computer and booked our tickets online. 

So now we sat in the departure lounge. We became aware of an elderly man, dressed in a suit but without a tie; he looked quite distinguished. He was staring at his ticket and at the signs over the gates. He seemed confused.

My wife stood up. “Are you looking for your gate?” she asked politely.

He looked at her. “Yes,” he said. “I thought it was announced. I am on the Easyjet flight to Bratislava.”

Now my wife looked confused. “Easyjet?” she said, “I do not know them. Where is Bratislava?”

“Bratislava. In Slovakia,” he said. “I am going to attend a conference. I am giving a paper. On philosophy.” He laughed nervously. “I am a logical positivist. But it seems one must use intuition to find one’s gate.” He pointed at the gate sign for our own flight. “Surely that sign is a joke.”

My wife frowned. “Might I see your ticket?” she asked. She studied it, then nodded briskly. ”Ah. Look, that is this gate, here.”

“You are sure?”

She nodded, and took his arm and guided him to his gate. He thanked her, but seemed uncertain. Beyond the window I could see the tail-fin of his jet, with the big red-and-white flag, the familiar crest offset a little to the left of centre. She walked back to me.

“What on earth is logical positivism?” I asked. “I suppose it may be one of these wretched modernist movements that question the use of intuition. And where is Bratislava?  It sounds vaguely Bohemian.”

“I really don’t know, dear,” she said. “But his ticket was for Austro-Hungarian Airlines Flight 470, Pressburg via Lemberg.” She glanced at me a little mischievously. “I wonder,” she said, “perhaps he has strayed, by accident or design…”

“Oh, do stop,” I said. Ahead lay the Baltic, sun, sea and the warm sand of the Curonian Spit. 

I smiled; she smiled back.

“Last call,” said the Tannoy. “Last call for Imperial German Airways Flight 1918, Königsberg via Breslau and Danzig.”

Rhodri Hactonby's Maps
A question of human geography

Hiraeth
A yearning…

Strange Places
A spirit in the sky 

Displaced
Encounter on E94th Street

Belonging
Do you? Where?

Leaving Home
A house has memories

Mike Robbins’s latest book, On the Rim of the Sea, is now 

available as a paperback or ebook. More details here.