I knew you would come. I knew you would listen. There is space yet in your mind. The future

need not be consumed by the malignant designs that threaten to overtake us. Dust and

the next prize bring you Terminal. Written by Kevin J. Anderson, performed by Rosalind Ares.

At 4.58am on June 28, 2020, the passengers onboard ANA Flight 008 en route from Tokyo to

San Francisco are cruising at an altitude of 37,000 feet, approximately 1500 nautical miles

off the west coast of the United States. A small bump, otherwise noted as a barely

perceptible bout of turbulence, passes Flight 008 through a temporary wrinkle in the local

region of space-time. What these passengers will soon find out as they descend into SFO

is that the wrinkle has transported them 20 years into the future and the year is now

2040. This is the story of the passenger in seat 35K.

Turbulence didn't bother her. Magdalene Cross had enough going on in her mind. Her thoughts

and memories which had once been so organised were now as scrambled as unpredictable air

currents high over the Pacific. It was 4.30am in the morning, but on the long overseas flight

from Tokyo to San Francisco, the string of time zones made the hour meaningless. Magdalene

couldn't sleep and she couldn't concentrate. The anti-seasier meds always made her feel

dopey but not sleepy, the worst of both worlds. More drugs treated her dizziness and nausea,

and several varieties of potent pain meds battled the mind-shattering headaches that would

be her constant companion until the end. Magdalene would rather have been with her family

in her last days, but feared she had waited too long for the flight home, or was cutting

it close. Throughout her career Magdalene had prided herself on her punctuality, meeting

every deadline, arriving just in time so as to waste not a minute. 35 years as a corporate

executive, managing projects, leading research teams, jockeying for government grants, overseeing

...