Sky Squid

N33°11.78′ E150°19.69′

1310 ZULU

The long tentacle of the Milky Way flops lazily over the equator, reaching up into northeastern skies above us as we cruise towards home. The Japan coastline, along with its heavy rain showers that are driving blooming cherry blossoms to the ground, has dropped over the horizon behind us, leaving nothing more than the memory of the light. In our newfound darkness, thousands of stars, some well-defined but most nothing more than scattered grains of sand across a black canvas, flare across the night sky.

Due to a confluence of events—none serious but each one pressing in its own way—this is my first trip in over three months. Even while keeping busy with other things, I found myself glancing upward with increasing frequency at the sound of jet engines passing by overhead. A quick visit to the simulator a few weeks ago knocked off whatever rust I may have accumulated, but even the best simulator can’t replicate the fuzzy mental drift that creeps around the corners of your eyes when it is three in the morning somewhere and you are floating between a dark sky and an even darker sea.

The cockpit lighting is turned down to its bare minimum. Across the way from me, the Relief Officer leans forward in his seat, his elbows resting on the tray table, where the remains of a late-night snack are pushed to the side. We’ve been talking about nothing—and everything at the same time—in an attempt to keep the flight clock rolling onward. We seem to be having mixed success. The glowing white digits do turn over, but ever so slowly, each one replaced by the next in an endless cycle that will repeat itself literally until the end of time.

I realize that thought is becoming too complex to keep working through at this hour and so I push it out of my head, using the crunch of the last of the mixed nuts, picked up in a convenience store pre-flight, to do so. Not only has this been my first trip in a while, but it has also been my very first work trip to Japan. I have visited the country several times as a tourist and deadheaded through twice while returning from other work trips but hadn’t actually flown in myself yet. I’d ended that omission in my life—although from a flying point of view, one international destination is pretty much the same as another—yesterday with a dusky arrival into Kansai, dropping through layers of haze and clouds with the last rays of the sun bouncing off the top of the sky above us.

Now, just over 24 hours later, four hundred miles off the coast, we leave Japan behind us until the next time, the rain-soaked streets of Osaka surely still reflecting thousands and thousands of city lights. To the southeast, thousands of lights are shining as well, as the Milky Way continues to spread out across the curtain of the night. To the north, satellites—or maybe aliens—the jury is still out on that—spin circles in the night sky. I lean forward and rest my chin on the edge of the glare shield and stare out into the night, while the clock continues its own endless circles, one number at a time.