For some background: Over the last few months, my hyperfixation has been airline routes. I don't have a real plan for where this story will go, so I'm just going to roll with it and take you all on a ride through my all-powerful mind, in which nothing is impossible. Enjoy.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 2024 - HIGH NOON

From the moment I stepped in that elevator, I was practically bouncing back and forth. My toes would not stay still, and neither would my fingers. I felt the urge to launch into one of my favorite vocal stims - singing "Need You Tonight" audibly.

But I couldn't do that. I had to stay professional under penalty of law.

You see, starting today, I was going to be responsible for the safety of dozens of civilians. In many cases, hundreds. Or really, many thousands over the course of a work day. There were no breaks here, no lapses in judgment.

In most jobs, the worst thing that could happen if you slacked off was that you'd be fired. In my new occupation, the "worst thing that could happen" was orders of magnitude worse.

So it was with a forced expression of gravity that I greeted my new boss in the control tower. He was a man a few inches shorter than me, decked out in a pilot's hat and a very formal jacket.

"Good afternoon, Mr. McBride" the man told me, scratching his beard. "Do you know who I am?"

"Uh…I guess you're my boss?" I enquired. My resolve to remain professional had wavered only slightly, and "slightly" can mean everything when it's your first day at such an important task. The imperative to make a positive first impression wasn't lost on me, but it occurred to me that I'd lost the opportunity to do so.

"That is correct, Mr. McBride" my boss responded. "I'm Mr. Fly."

"Hello, Mr. Fly" I repeated, trying not to chuckle. But let me tell you, it was hard. Very hard.

Mr. Fly showed me to my seat, and I accepted it without question. This was a job where you did as you were told, and there was a set routine for when these things needed to be done. But I wouldn't have it any other way.

"So you're going to watch for the call signs on arriving aircraft and make sure they don't land where they aren't authorized to" my boss kindly informed me. "If a runway is full, you should direct them to a different runway. We have six runways here after all."

I sighed. For now, our airport had a reputation as one of the more efficient in the United States, but that reputation's days were numbered. If we couldn't build another runway (and we couldn't, thanks to the airport's position right beside the ocean), then we were doomed to a future of increasingly numerous delays.

"I know how entranced you are by planes, Mr. McBride, but you must not be blinded by the headlights. You know that there are people in that plane - souls, as we call them in aviation."

"Yes, Mr. Fly" I replied, still having difficulty getting over the fact that an air traffic controller's surname was Fly.

"You have to be at the top of your game at every hour of every shift you're at work" Mr. Fly muttered. "Not just every hour, every minute."

"Right."

"As an example, Mr. McBride", my boss continued, "there are six flights landing in the next ten minutes. I'll assign you to Runway 15R - that's the longer one used for arrivals."

Oh boy.

I gulped. This was all covered in my orientation, of course, but there's still a world of difference between being told (and shown) what to do, and then actually having to do it in the real world. And, as Mr. Fly wouldn't stop reminding me, the stakes were through the roof.

"There's a B777 heading in for a landing. It's five minutes away. It's got to taxi to Terminal E" I noted, seeing a flight on the interactive map near me.

"Yes, that's correct" Mr. Fly remarked. "And why is that, Mr. McBride? Or should I just call you Blaine?"

"Blaine's faster, so use that" I said. "But it doesn't matter."

"Okay, Blaine. How do you know that one's going to one of the E gates?"

"Because it's an international flight. Its number is AA109, which means it's an American Airlines service originating from LHR. Therefore, the passengers will have to go through customs."

One of the other guys in the control tower, who seemed to be about my age (five squared,for what it's worth), snorted. "Those silly Brits, voting against staying part of the EU. Like, what were they thinking?"

I frowned. "Voting Remain wouldn't have let them travel here without going through customs. We were never in the European Union, because we're not in Europe, dumbass."

As soon as the word dumbass left my lips, I wished I could take it back. There's not much I wouldn't have given in order to avert the consequences of this mistake, because a chill seemed to hang in the air.

"Whatever" I muttered. "Let's just focus on getting these people to their gates."

The American Airlines flight from Miami, as well as the Southwest Airlines flight from Chicago-Midway, both landed safely, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Two down, hundreds to go.

In fact, it wasn't much longer before I settled into a routine of sorts. It wasn't terribly difficult to enter a "zen mode" in which I was not complacent, per se, but definitely relaxed. The closest thing I could compare it to is like driving when you're used to it.

Over the next hour, we gave advice to a couple dozen sets of pilots and copilots. Most of them were from short-haul trips across the eastern U.S., though one from Ottawa (on Porter Airlines, no less!) arrived ahead of schedule. Everything was going swimmingly.

Until, that is, I saw something on the radar that I wasn't prepared for.

This saga started normally enough, albeit with a small mistake as I was guiding the JetBlue flight from Dublin to its gate. (Okay, the result of such a mistake wouldn't have been small in the slightest had it not been caught.)

"Copy" I said. "B6 flight 354 may proceed to its gate in the E terminal."

"That is incorrect!" Mr. Fly barked. "DUB has U.S. border preclearance, remember? These people went through customs back in Ireland, so they are treated as domestic passengers as soon as they arrive here."

"Oh" I mouthed, my lips making that shape.

"That's quite a mistake to make, Blaine. I expect better in the future."

"Right, sorry" I stated, eager to move beyond this. Acting all "pity me" and excessively apologetic would only make that more difficult.

Anyway, once back on the radar, I saw a flight number that shouldn't have been there: PKMN1.

"Boss? Mr. Fly?" I enquired.

"What is it, Blaine?" my boss snapped. "Are you trying to butter me up after your little snafu?"

"Not remotely" I said. "What's this plane coming in? I don't recognize that flight number."

"Must be the Condor flight from Frankfurt" Mr. Fly offered. "I expect you to memorize these numbers, okay? I can't be here to remind you time after time."

"It's not Condor. There are four letters in the airline IATA designator."

My boss snorted with no humor whatsoever. "It shouldn't be that way," he said. "There needs to be an explanation."

"It could be a glitch" I suggested.

"Why would anything glitch here?" Mr. Fly bellowed, banging his fist on the nearest table. "Air traffic control does a lot of things, Blaine, but it does not glitch!"

I gestured at the radar. "Airline codes only have two letters. This one has four!"

As soon as my boss saw the number, he gasped.

"There must be an explanation!" he repeated.

"I'm sure there is," I replied sheepishly.

"Let me look up that number. I don't know why the plane would say that. But it's almost twenty minutes away. You should take care of those JetBlue flights from Tampa, Paris, and Amsterdam."

"Right, sir."

Mr. Fly frowned. "There's no need to call me sir, Blaine."

"Whatever."

Ten minutes passed. The two JetBlue flights from Europe, on which the passengers had spent roughly seven hours apiece, landed without further incident. However, Flight PKMN1 remained on the radar, and was in fact getting closer.

"Probably a NATO exercise" my boss said eventually, referring to the mysterious plane. "Those have really odd numbers."

But I remained far from convinced. "Wouldn't NATO tell us if they were operating so close to a major commercial airport?"

"Maybe, maybe not. Okay, probably. I guess it's not a NATO exercise."

With that, I returned to doing my job. Again, once you were accustomed to the rapid pace of operations at Boston Logan, it really wasn't too overwhelming.

It was only as I was guiding an American Airlines plane from Dallas that Mr. Fly returned with information.

"Not right now, okay?" I begged. "I'm trying to land the A320 that got here from Dallas."

Mr. Fly clapped his hands together so forcefully, my head felt like a gong. It was like that time I'd stood next to a giant church bell as it had gone off.

"You have to multitask, Blaine!"

"Right, sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Do better. Anyway, I found the origin for Flight PKMN1".

I raised an eyebrow. "What is it?"

"Saffron City."

I nearly spat out the glass of water I'd just downed. "Did you say Saffron City?"

"In your application for this job, you said your brain worked differently. You didn't say you were hard of hearing too."

That means…

I shook my head. I did not know how to feel, whether that be nervous or excited. What was far clearer was that either way, the emotion would be intense, and the world would stand still for some time to come.