Far apart, and facing the same blinding sun ten wings tilt forward, preparing for the impending ignition of their low-hanging engines. We pretend that each of us feels the adrenaline of that momentum at exactly the same time. Small tears form in ten eyes, but don’t fall. For now, they just make everything blurry. Starting right now, a part of us won’t do anything but count seconds until we are reunited.
What is happening to us, and what are these feelings? Seriously. We’re professionals. Real, hard-working, well-trained professionals. Yes, we’re scattering in the wind, destined to be as far from one another as ever we have been, and for much longer… but we do so with excellent cause and not at all lightly.
The search for fact in the face of truth will not be easy. Working with those we must will be even less so. Still, it is hard not to wonder why we would have ever allowed ourselves to be so far from each other. We know that at times the pain will be nearly unbearable and that we will struggle to convince ourselves that we are making the right choice. What we will accomplish is of paramount importance, and it can only be us. Being the key to something big is gratifying… but the costs of something like this can’t be quantified until it’s done. Emotional, physical… monetary. Spending a couple of billion dollars of other people’s money on what not long ago was a pet theory doesn’t really help the cortisol levels.
There is another layer to it though, and it has been building for weeks. Each of the five of us can feel it. We’ve never been broken from one another for such a long time. It’s not truly the other people we might be with who are bothering us – it’s the simple fact that no one of us is whole without the others anymore. When something seems impossible for even a second, how can we confront a virtual eternity of it?
We ache. Together, and horribly. Even now, in these rapidly diverging aircraft. We long for one another already, and none of us really know how we’ll make it through the next months. Desiderium flares in no time at all. We need to be with each other… to touch each other. We are all to be tortured and teased for months, isolated in our own remote corners of the map.
No matter who we meet, who we fuck, no matter what amazing, hot, fantastic, erotic, passionate, overwhelming release we may find on our unique adventures, we will constantly suffer on a deeper level – until the very moment that we may happily entangle ourselves once more. Our bed which was once so full now lies fallow, sworn to remain empty until we are rejoined, faithfully waiting for its companions to return.
The most desperate parts of us begin to emerge already, lusting for the time when we are together again. Ten weeks… or – and we shudder at the very idea – more. Memories of touch haunt us. Of sex, and love, of fingers and tongues. Wet, slick, hot and oh so creative.
Deep feelings of loss torment us as we sit, strapped to our seats by constricting belts. Happiness seems to elude us but we know it won’t forever, and so the chase begins. It is hard to deny that there will be something wonderful about this experience for all of us, and for each of us. Of course, we all know what it will be for some of us.
When the work is done and this project is a reality, we aren’t going to be able to leave each other again. Hard to believe we’re still on these planes, even. Some of us will sleep as we fly away from the light, some of us will hold the arm rests for the whole flight like they’re the only thing that will save us from certain death. All of us will be ready to sleep when we land, but none of us will be able to. For now, all we can do is wonder what comes next.
