Speaker 1: Polished terrazzo reflects overhead fluorescence scattered streaks left to dry
Speaker 1: just beyond the whir of my buffer. By now shortly
Speaker 1: past midnight, the terminal is nearly silent, its hum subdued
Speaker 1: to the particular quiet that settles in airports during the
Speaker 1: hours when the world outside seems to loosen its grip
Speaker 1: on purpose. My path takes me past every gate on
Speaker 1: the D side, but I've developed a ritual of saving
Speaker 1: Gate twelve for last, not by any assigned order, just
Speaker 1: by a stubborn thread of habit. Something about its glowing sign,
Speaker 1: vivid and unsleeping, draws my attention even when nothing else does. Tonight,
Speaker 1: like every night, I arrive at Gate twelve with my
Speaker 1: mop inhaling the subtle tang of lemon scented cleaner and
Speaker 1: faint machine aged coffee. The digital display scrolls its cycles
Speaker 1: with scriptidy efficiency. Flight six hundred seven to Bilisara now boarding.
Speaker 1: Not a city I've ever heard reference to the news
Speaker 1: or called out over the PA for landings, and certainly
Speaker 1: not a stop in the string of familiar layovers Chicago, Dallas,
Speaker 1: Raleigh that keep our runways busy. Next final call, A
Speaker 1: brief pause, then departed after a handful of minutes. The
Speaker 1: loop repeats, no queue at the boarding door, no attendants
Speaker 1: shuffling paperwork and luggage tags. If I hadn't watched it
Speaker 1: night after night, I could have convinced myself I'd dreamed
Speaker 1: it even stranger. The rows of vinyl chairs near the
Speaker 1: window are always aligned, never a skew from restless passengers,
Speaker 1: yet details betray use, bins not quite empty, a print
Speaker 1: out left at the boarding counter, fresh napkins at the
Speaker 1: end of the desk. The cleaning log on my clipboard
Speaker 1: includes gate twelve on every rotation, and whoever leaves the
Speaker 1: shift before me always ticks it off as done, as
Speaker 1: if cleaning a room, just in case some one invisible
Speaker 1: tracked in dust during a phantom departure. On most nights,
Speaker 1: these observations are little dramas, played solely for my own curiosity.
Speaker 1: I'm not one for ghost stories or conspiracy boards, just
Speaker 1: a thoughtful habit holder trying to pass eight hours with
Speaker 1: a sense of purpose. But Bilissara has wormed into the
Speaker 1: quiet compartments of my mind. The name itself unsettles, without threatening, melodic, foreign,
Speaker 1: almost plausible, but always ending in a hush like an
Speaker 1: off stage line. I find myself leaning in as the
Speaker 1: sign flips mouth dry, scanning for evidence that some one
Speaker 1: has claimed the invitation, yet always coming up empty. Sometimes
Speaker 1: the p A croons with those half awake syrupy tones.
Speaker 1: Passengers waiting for flight six hundred seven to Bilisara, please
Speaker 1: proceed to Gate twelve for immediate boarding. The announcement floats
Speaker 1: just under the heartbeat of the place, never jarring, as
Speaker 1: if meant to reassure the late, the lost, or the lonely,
Speaker 1: And always the gait remains obstinately empty. This airport has
Speaker 1: lived through upgrades, expansions, and enthusiastic institutional attempts at modernity.
Speaker 1: Some corners still betray seventy's ambitions. A beige wall here,
Speaker 1: a column with the luster worn down from endless hands.
Speaker 1: Under the palette of bad art and aging signage, there's
Speaker 1: an ordering normalcy I've come to respect. But every other
Speaker 1: gate by one a m flips over to gate closed.
Speaker 1: Only Gate twelve rejects closure. Its indigo glows softly insistent
Speaker 1: amid a constellation of blank screens. A part of me
Speaker 1: wants to ask the operations team to pull the plug,
Speaker 1: just so I could see what would happen if the
Speaker 1: loop would stutter or simply flicker back, as if nothing
Speaker 1: in the machinery could admit to absence. Instead, I set
Speaker 1: up my yellow bucket, replace the bin liners, and buff
Speaker 1: the floor, my reflections stretching in strange geometry beneath the
Speaker 1: always lit overhang. My name is Sam. If you picture
Speaker 1: a janitor at night, you probably think of some one
Speaker 1: resigned to invisiitability, shuffling with distant eyes through rows of
Speaker 1: empty seats. But solitude is its own form of stage.
Speaker 1: I watch, I listen, I catalog. My home is thirty
Speaker 1: minutes away, a rented duplex with plastic ferns and a reliable,
Speaker 1: if unremarkable partner who works early mornings and is asleep
Speaker 1: before I leave. We trade awkward smiles at breakfast, a
Speaker 1: language built more of shared routines than revelations. In the
Speaker 1: hours before dawn, I find a strange piece in repetition,
Speaker 1: the buffer's rhythm, the hiss of an atomizer, the way
Speaker 1: my footfalls echo differently on freshly waxed tiles. If there's
Speaker 1: an upside to the night's shift, it's a sort of ownership.
Speaker 1: I see things most people miss. The drunk accountants slogging
Speaker 1: towards ground transportation at two a m. The vending guy
Speaker 1: who snacks on his own inventory. The tired parents half
Speaker 1: praying for their toddlers to collapse into travel strollers. There's
Speaker 1: a small club of us. Anna, the overnight security officer
Speaker 1: who wore her route like a seasoned lifeguard, posture perfect
Speaker 1: but prone to leaning against columns for off the record chats.
Speaker 1: She works her crossword puzzles during the midnight lull, wears
Speaker 1: her radio on her left and trusts her own eyes
Speaker 1: over any monitor. Marcus, our overnight desk agent, is a
Speaker 1: trivia fiend, cynical but with flashes of wonder, especially when
Speaker 1: tiredness strips away his practiced detachment. Missus Gillen, who comes
Speaker 1: in every other week to stock the vending machines, is
Speaker 1: frail and slow, but owns the memory of the place.
Speaker 1: She's got stories about the opening ceremonies and the original
Speaker 1: runway being too short for the President's plane. If you
Speaker 1: listen to the airport late enough, even the generic announcements
Speaker 1: begin to take on their own flavor. The robotic voice
Speaker 1: that tells you to secure your baggage, keep walkways clear,
Speaker 1: or proceed to ticketing, sometimes tosses in a sly passengers
Speaker 1: for Bilisara hidden in the cadence. I started noticing it
Speaker 1: at intervals that never aligned with real flights, sometimes once,
Speaker 1: sometimes three times within an hour, never with urgency, but
Speaker 1: with a cadence that soothes Marcus rolls his eyes. The
Speaker 1: software has got its quirks, or maybe the airports haunted
Speaker 1: by the ghost of a scheduler who really misses the
Speaker 1: Cold War. But every shift, whether packed or bleakly empty,
Speaker 1: my route draws me around to Gate twelve. I dump liners,
Speaker 1: smooth the plastic seat covers, and run a gloved hand
Speaker 1: below the counter half, expecting to find sticky ink or
Speaker 1: the hard edge of an overlooked ticket stub. If Gate
Speaker 1: eleven sits dark and silent like any other gate past
Speaker 1: eleven p M. Gate twelve persists if I focus on
Speaker 1: the contrasts, the faint blue shine of the powered seats,
Speaker 1: the muted green twinkle of the under cabinet strip lights,
Speaker 1: the slight hum of USB ports that power on with
Speaker 1: a certainty denied to the rest of the terminal on
Speaker 1: nights when storms shake the windows and planes delay for hours.
Speaker 1: All other gates eventually succumb to stillness, not Gate twelve.
Speaker 1: Early in my tenure, I thought it was some forgotten
Speaker 1: late night route, a regional red eye may be, or
Speaker 1: a training exercise. But months have passed, shifts have blurred,
Speaker 1: and I've never seen an actual plane at the end
Speaker 1: of that jet bridge. Still, the checklist always includes Gate twelve.
Speaker 1: I once skipped it for only one hour before my
Speaker 1: supervisor gently reminded me that the night rotation runs on details.
Speaker 1: We can't lose track of gates. Sam, That's how trash
Speaker 1: piles up and bugs find their way in, she'd said, wrote,
Speaker 1: but earnest, as if the routine carried more weight than
Speaker 1: the actual mess. I wonder sometimes how many jobs in
Speaker 1: the world depend on motions we only vaguely understand. There's
Speaker 1: an uneasy comfort in steps repeated for reasons forgotten, in
Speaker 1: stations kept ready for arrivals or departures that may never materialize.
Speaker 1: To night. While sweeping behind the row of molded seats
Speaker 1: near Gate twelve, I notice something new, or perhaps it's old,
Speaker 1: but has only just asserted itself fully in my awareness.
Speaker 1: Unlike every other gate, where blank screens signal the day's end,
Speaker 1: Gate twelves. Display never slips to a closing message, even
Speaker 1: during the transition points. When the last late night flight
Speaker 1: for Denver has left, then twenty minutes later the international
Speaker 1: flights cease. Gate twelve keeps cycling its polite sequence boarding
Speaker 1: final call departed, no gate closed, no sea agent at desk.
Speaker 1: This doesn't happen anywhere else, even the emergency exits. Get
Speaker 1: a friendly stand by. I crouched a scoop a gum
Speaker 1: wrapper from under a seat and realize that the luggage
Speaker 1: carts parked along the wall three to night are lined
Speaker 1: with suit cases. Nothing flashy, scuffed black roller boards, a
Speaker 1: tan Duffel, two identical nylon bags. I've never seen anyone
Speaker 1: claim them. Never seen a bag moved from cart to
Speaker 1: carousel for this flight. Everywhe the carts are there, sometimes
Speaker 1: shuffled in arrangement, sometimes swapped, but always present. I run
Speaker 1: my eyes over the baggage tags, squinting to read the
Speaker 1: faded barcodes. One label reads Transit twelve, which could just
Speaker 1: be internal notation, I suppose, but it's off compared to
Speaker 1: the b OS or O r D I see on
Speaker 1: other carts. There's something subtle in the way the area
Speaker 1: is cleaned and restocked, napkins refolded neatly, sanitizing wipes in
Speaker 1: their plastic cradle. Even a boarding pass stub placed at
Speaker 1: the desk with no name or airline. Someone attends to
Speaker 1: this gait with care, but always before or after my shift,
Speaker 1: as if we're weaving opposite threads of attention. During her circuit,
Speaker 1: Arna never lingers long at Gate twelve to night. As
Speaker 1: she passes. I try to sound off handed, keeping my
Speaker 1: voice low so it blends with the hush of late night.
Speaker 1: Hey Anna, have you ever seen anyone actually use this gate?
Speaker 1: You know, bored a plane to Bilisara? She blows a
Speaker 1: stray blonde wisp from her face, shrugs in that way.
Speaker 1: Seasoned security officers have learned is less likely to attract blame.
Speaker 1: It's just the Bilisara run. Must be some airline contract thing.
Speaker 1: There's always something weird on the night's schedule. They roll
Speaker 1: out some test flights. Maybe I don't bother with quiet
Speaker 1: gaits unless the alarms go off. You cleaning up or sleuthing?
Speaker 1: I grin little of both. She laughs, clamps the radio
Speaker 1: back in place, and walks on. I want to catch
Speaker 1: her and press further demand an answer more concrete than
Speaker 1: bureaucracy or routine. But I stop. In airports, as in life,
Speaker 1: people accept the practical thing, the answer that lets them
Speaker 1: move along smoothly. A few minutes later, Marcus ambles down
Speaker 1: from the far desk, shaking his head at a crosswood clue.
Speaker 1: I call out, you ever see any passengers for Bilisara?
Speaker 1: He doesn't break strike. Ah, that be the day. Some
Speaker 1: kind of bug in the system, if you ask me,
Speaker 1: I mean no airline actually services that route. He waves
Speaker 1: his hand around, as if dismissing a mosquito. But the
Speaker 1: city names in these systems sometimes they're like vestigial organs,
Speaker 1: stuff nobody's cleaned out since the eighties. Another grin, this
Speaker 1: time rueful, as if he's half remembered every joke about
Speaker 1: lost time and bureaucracy. It still doesn't add up. Not
Speaker 1: one of us, not Arna, not Marcus, not me, not
Speaker 1: even missus. Gillan recalled ever seeing a Bilisara passenger in person,
Speaker 1: or any one leaving or arriving through Gate twelve. Yet
Speaker 1: the process ticks forward, unfailingly maintained. I dump the last
Speaker 1: of the trash mop once more for luck, and walk
Speaker 1: back down the silent concourse as the gleaming plane of
Speaker 1: the floor behind me cools. I try to shake the
Speaker 1: feeling that there's something happening just out of view, something
Speaker 1: not quite explainable by system glitches or letsft over contracts.
Speaker 1: Some people chase anomalies for the thrill. I approach them
Speaker 1: with a mix of caution and skepticism. But the mystery
Speaker 1: of Gate twelve lingers with a quality that isn't flashy
Speaker 1: or dramatic, just gently abrasive on my sense of how
Speaker 1: things are meant to fit together. I decide to pay
Speaker 1: closer attention to see if by focusing I can catch
Speaker 1: an edge of clarity among the reflections and routines. The
Speaker 1: next night, I arrive a little earlier, finishing my rounds quicker,
Speaker 1: so I can hover inconspicuously at a vending machine across
Speaker 1: from Gate twelve. I linger, pretending to choose between trail
Speaker 1: mix and a stale sandwich, watching the sign closely. As
Speaker 1: the minutes pass, the boarding cycle triggers exactly at twelve
Speaker 1: zero four a m. This time, the PA delivers the
Speaker 1: announcement with a soft, oddly formal cadence. Boarding for flight
Speaker 1: six hundred seven to Bilisara is now beginning at Gate twelve.
Speaker 1: Passengers holding boarding group numbers x A through CEA, please proceed.
Speaker 1: The tone is distinct from the usual clipped announcements, a
Speaker 1: touch of theater or perhaps old fashioned protocol. It's almost soothing,
Speaker 1: automatic in its rhythm, as if meant to comfort only
Speaker 1: those who hear. In the margins of wakefulness, nobody moves,
Speaker 1: Not a single head lifts from their doze, not a
Speaker 1: bag is hefted. The gate remains unpeopled, dignified in its readiness.
Speaker 1: Twenty two minutes later, with no fanfare, final call glows
Speaker 1: on the sign then departed. A gentle blue light pulses
Speaker 1: behind the boarding counter, the only movement in the frame.
Speaker 1: What's more, Gate twelve seats and charging ports remain powered,
Speaker 1: humming with subtle voltage, while the rest of the concourse
Speaker 1: slips into dormancy. I walk past Gates ten and eleven,
Speaker 1: watching as their lights fade out, signs winking into nothing,
Speaker 1: leaving only the hum of distant cleaning machines to animate
Speaker 1: the spaces. A return to Gate twelve, searching for evidence
Speaker 1: of human intervention. On the desk, a single white napkin
Speaker 1: bears an unfamiliar emblem, a stylized s B with a
Speaker 1: wing not matching any carrier I know. A gentle scuff
Speaker 1: on the carpet by the gangway seems fresher than the rest,
Speaker 1: almost as though someone s walked through, perhaps dragging a
Speaker 1: wheeled bag. I trace the mark with my finger, dust
Speaker 1: stirring the corporate blue fading to reveal the old, patented
Speaker 1: carpet underneath. Shifts intertwine in the airport, and there's always
Speaker 1: a chance I've missed a passenger, or that my timing's
Speaker 1: simply off. But the evidence is both subtle and stubborn.
Speaker 1: Gate twelve presents all the trappings of careful use, yet
Speaker 1: is never animated by the mess and bustle of actual people. Later,
Speaker 1: as I empty the bins, I catch markers at the
Speaker 1: ticket desk. Squinting at a terminal, I ask again about
Speaker 1: Gate twelve, pressing gently. He smiles a weary sort of smile.
Speaker 1: We think it's a system bug. It's not like they'd
Speaker 1: let a gate function for years with a route that
Speaker 1: didn't exist, unless I suppose someone gets paid to keep
Speaker 1: it running. Passenger manifest always stays blank, no tickets, no
Speaker 1: staff assigned. If there were maintenance issues. I'd see a
Speaker 1: work order, but nothing's ever filed. He pauses, as if
Speaker 1: weighing his next thought. If I'm honest, after a while,
Speaker 1: you stop noticing. There are odder entries in the database,
Speaker 1: flights that cross out the Atlantic and back in a
Speaker 1: circle from the seventies roots to nowhere. Aviations built on rules,
Speaker 1: but it's also built on amendments. Nobody ever bothered to
Speaker 1: arraise that at least gives me a new angle. I
Speaker 1: decide on a whim to search the airport's online resources
Speaker 1: for Bilisara. The returns are disappointingly thin. A handful of
Speaker 1: old flight logs reference the city, mostly several decades old.
Speaker 1: Some message boards murmur about an unmapped city used as
Speaker 1: a code word in certain airline training materials, but nothing official.
Speaker 1: When I pull up the public access terminal map, the
Speaker 1: layout ends cleanly at Gate eleven, a neat digital omission.
Speaker 1: But I can feel the angle of the floor, the
Speaker 1: curve of the wall, telling me that Gate twelve is
Speaker 1: right where my feet will find it. Later that night,
Speaker 1: after missus Gillan re stocks the drink's machine, I ask
Speaker 1: her about it as she drops coins into the register.
Speaker 1: She frowns, pursing her lips as if tasting something sour.
Speaker 1: Gate twelve, You mean, oh, I always assumed people went somewhere?
Speaker 1: Is that the point of airports? She stops, gaze, softening
Speaker 1: into something far off. When my son was small, he
Speaker 1: loved watching people. Board said every gate led somewhere different.
Speaker 1: Even if the signs all said Detroit, her words linger
Speaker 1: an echo of simpler certainty. Though she's the oldest among us,
Speaker 1: even her memory is clouded by the routines of the place.
Speaker 1: If she once saw people leaving for Bilisara, the details
Speaker 1: have receded to a place as vague as the city's name.
Speaker 1: After she leaves, I allow myself one more minor breach
Speaker 1: of protocol. I step through the automatic doors and on
Speaker 1: to the empty jet bridge At Gate twelve. The air
Speaker 1: is slightly colder, filled with the recycled trace of decades.
Speaker 1: I take three slow steps forward, hand grazing the metal rail.
Speaker 1: The dejavous is sharp, not familiarity, but the six sweet
Speaker 1: drop of a memory that cannot belong to me. For
Speaker 1: one vertiginous moment, space seems to fold around me, A
Speaker 1: brief static in my senses, the rush of jet engines
Speaker 1: heard but not present, a fleeting certainty that I have
Speaker 1: traveled and returned all within a breath. The sensation passes.
Speaker 1: I blink, clutching my cleaning caddy, and nothing at all
Speaker 1: has changed. When I re emerge into the terminal, some
Speaker 1: one has left a new print out at the desk,
Speaker 1: blank but with the Bilisara flight number in the corner.
Speaker 1: I return to my path, wondering if the city is real,
Speaker 1: or if belief, repeated night after night can create its
Speaker 1: own geography. The next day, over black coffee in the
Speaker 1: thin sunlight of my kitchen, I think through what I've learned.
Speaker 1: If the flight isn't real, why the endless process. If
Speaker 1: it is, why the secrecy Each fragment only serves to
Speaker 1: deepen the contradiction. That night, I walk my roots slower,
Speaker 1: lingering by the windows, as storms flicker over the runway
Speaker 1: in the distance. I start to feel the faint outlines
Speaker 1: of a possibility, an old hoax, a forgotten tradition, or
Speaker 1: is the answer simmering somewhere deeper, woven into the bones
Speaker 1: of the terminal itself. Suddenly my search is not about
Speaker 1: a missing city, but about the power and persistence of
Speaker 1: routine hour process can continue long after its purpose is lost,
Speaker 1: maintained only by habit and the steady momentum of people
Speaker 1: who never stop to question it. I sweep near Gate twelve,
Speaker 1: slow and attentive. I look for evidence on my cleaning log,
Speaker 1: checking old schedules back as far as the terminal binder
Speaker 1: goes sure enough, every week, as far back as the
Speaker 1: records span years. In this binder, Gate twelve is included,
Speaker 1: never missed, never reassigned, even on nights when part of
Speaker 1: the terminal was closed for renovation. There's no note, no exception.
Speaker 1: The pattern is as clean as the floor on a
Speaker 1: good night. It's when I notice a flash of movement,
Speaker 1: an unfamiliar silhouette near the edge of the concourse that
Speaker 1: I hesitate. The figure is dressed in uniform, not airport blue,
Speaker 1: nor the red and silver of our main carrier, but
Speaker 1: a dark, nondescript cut with an old fashioned cap and
Speaker 1: a badge that bears no logo I recognize. The gate
Speaker 1: is precise, brisk, and self contained. As the figure nears,
Speaker 1: I reach for my radio, but they pass by with
Speaker 1: a curt nod, purposeful but silent, and disappear down the
Speaker 1: jet bridge. At Gate twelve. No one else reacts. Arna
Speaker 1: can't have missed them yet, she busies herself at the
Speaker 1: coffee station, idly stirring cream into a styrofoam cup. I
Speaker 1: consider following the figure, but my steps stall routine, perhaps,
Speaker 1: or the social script that tells janitors to leave the
Speaker 1: work of the living and the ghosts to others. I
Speaker 1: glance again at the cleaning records for every other shift, night, swing,
Speaker 1: and early morning. The log repeats Gate twelve, attended, signed, checked,
Speaker 1: even when the concourse was gutted for renovations, sealed with
Speaker 1: yellow tape and breathing plastic. Gate twelve required extra attention, notes,
Speaker 1: mention access for cleaning must be maintained, a process preserved
Speaker 1: without question. When my shift ends, I drive home through
Speaker 1: the wet quiet, the riddle of Gate twelve looping in
Speaker 1: my mind like a restless broadcast, an unresolved cord withheld
Speaker 1: just before the resolve. The following night, I set myself
Speaker 1: a new goal. I want to know if the pattern
Speaker 1: go goes deeper, if Gate twelve is an artifact, a
Speaker 1: place where error and intention have grown tangled. On my
Speaker 1: lunch break, I ask Marcus tentatively whether he's ever looked
Speaker 1: up old logs. He narrows his eyes, typing into his terminal,
Speaker 1: as if the very act of inquiry might wake something
Speaker 1: slumbering in the code. We keep the paper logs. Hell,
Speaker 1: I've seen old flight sheets from the eighties filed away
Speaker 1: in triplicate land back in storage sea. But for anything digital,
Speaker 1: let's just say the system gets sluggish about long term memory.
Speaker 1: You want to see paper, you'll need a coffee and
Speaker 1: a tetanus shot. With nothing else pressing. I ask if
Speaker 1: he'll help me dig sometime. He grins, eager for a distraction,
Speaker 1: I think, and promises to see what he can find
Speaker 1: on the next shift. I finish my chore rotation and
Speaker 1: drift through the staff lounge, catching Missus Gillen as she
Speaker 1: arranges her red hand cart. The memories from earlier return.
Speaker 1: So I press her again, softer this time. You've worked
Speaker 1: here longer than any one ever hear of a flight
Speaker 1: actually leaving for Bilisara. She stops her hands, hovering over
Speaker 1: a can of ginger ale, as if it weighs more
Speaker 1: than she can lift. Oh, I don't believe. So used
Speaker 1: to be that the nightgates stayed busy with military charters,
Speaker 1: training flights Bilisara that was always on the rotation. I'd
Speaker 1: see the signs, but never the people. She lets the cansettle,
Speaker 1: then looks at me with a slow, earnest smile. Somehow,
Speaker 1: I suppose people go somewhere, or they'd stop sending them.
Speaker 1: I want to press further, to insist on logic, but
Speaker 1: she packs up and rolls away, humming a low tune
Speaker 1: that's both familiar and impossible to place. The memory sticks
Speaker 1: her words, the cadence, and the fact that no one
Speaker 1: can quite say who leaves, only that departures must continue.
Speaker 1: I find myself drawn back to Gate twelve for my
Speaker 1: final round before clocking out. I polish the counter till
Speaker 1: it gleams. For a moment, I find myself tempted to
Speaker 1: simply wait, wait until someone arrives, or the routine breaks,
Speaker 1: or the loop stutters. Instead, I write the date and
Speaker 1: time in the margin of my cleaning log a private
Speaker 1: mark of observation. A few nights later, Marcus waves me
Speaker 1: down in the corridor between E and D. He's carrying
Speaker 1: a battered brown folder bulging with thin time yellowed paper.
Speaker 1: Thought i'd show you what I found, he says, lips
Speaker 1: twitching in amusement or anticipation. He props the folder on
Speaker 1: the counter at the deserted end of the concourse, away
Speaker 1: from the hum of vending machines. Inside memos, pocket logs,
Speaker 1: and most strangely, a series of dated internal communication slips
Speaker 1: and flight logs, all referencing Bilisara, dated as far back
Speaker 1: as nineteen seventy eight Bilisara flight six hundred seven daily.
Speaker 1: The stamps are uniform boxing, the kind that imprint a
Speaker 1: heavy click into the air. Most logs are signed by
Speaker 1: names neither of us recognize elfhex W Tadley. These are
Speaker 1: not legacy employees nor family names that reappear in the
Speaker 1: local town. It's a bureaucratic morass. Pages with precise, obsessive
Speaker 1: documentation that absent any detail about activity. Each line is complete.
Speaker 1: Departure yes, delays none, security incidents none, crew blank, passenger
Speaker 1: total blank. Week after week, these sheets accumulate with the
Speaker 1: same beautiful emptiness. Marcus shakes his head, squinting into the pile.
Speaker 1: Airlines love paperwork, but this, it's like someone stamp these
Speaker 1: just to make a record of a record. I search
Speaker 1: for anomalies every log, for every other flight contains a trail,
Speaker 1: a scribbled note about a crying child, a diverted meal,
Speaker 1: a mechanical issue, a name or two. Even the failures
Speaker 1: are real. But the stack for Bilisara is perfect blank
Speaker 1: where detail might betray life. Not one delayed flight, not
Speaker 1: one extra bus passenger, not one weather hold, even stranger.
Speaker 1: The digital system contains nothing for these records. I run
Speaker 1: every variant of Billissara and flight six hundred seven through
Speaker 1: the terminal, but the fields all return error messages or blanks,
Speaker 1: as if the code refuses to resolve a missing city.
Speaker 1: Marcus rolls his chair back, size its paper only, as
Speaker 1: if some one wanted to keep the memory in hand
Speaker 1: but never let it into the system. I think back
Speaker 1: to the blueprint I walked every week while learning the
Speaker 1: terminals ins and outs. I still have a scan of
Speaker 1: an old layout on my phone. Terminal d Gates one
Speaker 1: through eleven, with the adjacent maintenance room and the cleaning closet,
Speaker 1: no mention of Gate twelve. I double check with Marcus.
Speaker 1: We compare it with the real walk. We even pace
Speaker 1: it out together from the stub of Gate eleven across
Speaker 1: the corridor to the area we both know as Gate twelve.
Speaker 1: The physical space exists, precise and measured, yet its counterpart
Speaker 1: on the blueprint is an unmarked void. Maybe it got
Speaker 1: added after the fact, Marcus says, but his tone is unconvincing.
Speaker 1: Or maybe hell, I don't know, Maybe there's some ghost
Speaker 1: terminal where all the plans go to die. We return
Speaker 1: to Gate twelve and lean against the counter, watching as
Speaker 1: the endless blue loop pulses, boarding final call departed. The
Speaker 1: air is thick with unanswered possibilities, and for the first
Speaker 1: time I feel something close to excitement, not dread, not fear,
Speaker 1: but the thrill of a question finally unmistakably confirmed as real.
Speaker 1: I'm no closer to believing in invisible flights, but I
Speaker 1: am certain the airport is maintaining something stranger, a gateway
Speaker 1: to a city, preserved by routine and documentation, not necessity
Speaker 1: or destination. Gate twelve, visible official, yet absent from every plan,
Speaker 1: stands as both a presence and absence. I sensed that
Speaker 1: the answer is not in the flights or the city,
Speaker 1: but in the tireless, unthinking process institution made into architecture,
Speaker 1: routine into reality. It's as if the airport has wedged
Speaker 1: open a door to somewhere that must remain possible, even
Speaker 1: if nobody ever passes through. We stood beside Gate twelve,
Speaker 1: both of us looking and for a rare moment, both
Speaker 1: understanding that looking itself was insufficient. There was a sense
Speaker 1: that some perimeter, a neat painted border of custom, had
Speaker 1: buckled just enough for us to feel a drift. The
Speaker 1: digital sign scrolled its pattern. I felt as though the
Speaker 1: gait was baiting us, or coaxing us into partnership, with
Speaker 1: its ritual, less a breach or secret, more a whispered invitation,
Speaker 1: keep watch and see if anything at all will change
Speaker 1: beneath your gaze. Marcus rested his elbows on the counter
Speaker 1: and thumbed through the old flight logs again. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: all an inside joke, he said, too quietly for mockery
Speaker 1: to carry. Maybe airports are just old theaters, and some
Speaker 1: scenes have to be played out, no matter if the
Speaker 1: audience left decades ago. His statement flickered in my mind
Speaker 1: as I drifted through the rest of my shift. The
Speaker 1: floor was particularly slick from the new brand of wax,
Speaker 1: and I watched the midnight reflection of Gate twelve signs,
Speaker 1: stretching and shrinking with every step. I took Dawn threatened
Speaker 1: on the other side of the windows, graying the curve
Speaker 1: of the parking lot, But within the concourse it was
Speaker 1: still the hour of ghosts, and possibility felt elastic. The
Speaker 1: next few nights brought little rest curiosity. Sometimes a slow
Speaker 1: burning irritant grew jagged. I'd look up from my crossword
Speaker 1: at home and see the words billissara drum against the
Speaker 1: edge of my vision. The gate's existence gnawed at the
Speaker 1: soothing logic I depended on. Obvious explanations failed. No route
Speaker 1: was profitable if nobody used it, No station was maintained
Speaker 1: without a purpose. Bureaucracy I was seeing for the first
Speaker 1: time could outlive the intended object, sometimes by decades. So
Speaker 1: I began, almost covertly to question people I ordinarily would not,
Speaker 1: the overnight sandwich vendor, the uniformed baggage runner, a substitute
Speaker 1: cleaning supervisor, drafted from another terminal. My approach was gentle,
Speaker 1: almost bashful, no sense in broadcasting that I was hunting
Speaker 1: a mystery beneath the crust of knightly habit. Every answer
Speaker 1: I got was different. Some shrugged, some made jokes, but
Speaker 1: no one produced detail. The food vendor said she'd serviced
Speaker 1: snacks to a few weird overnight shifts in that wing,
Speaker 1: but when pressed, couldn't recall the faces or even the
Speaker 1: particular brand of potato chips. The baggage handler, a wiry
Speaker 1: man with remarkable tattoos, said, sometimes special flights come in.
Speaker 1: They don't tell us much. If you see luggage out,
Speaker 1: you're just supposed to stack it for later. I tried
Speaker 1: to pinpoint whether he'd ever rolled anything to baggage claim
Speaker 1: from Gate twelve, but his attention snagged on a loose
Speaker 1: cart wheel, and the conversation dissolved in the clatter of routine.
Speaker 1: One inky morning, at three a m. After the last
Speaker 1: legitimate red eye lumbered away and my buffer's wine dwindled
Speaker 1: into the background, I circled back to Gate twelve to
Speaker 1: collect a stray coffee cup. The luggage carts waited sentinel,
Speaker 1: as always, but this time a single suit case was
Speaker 1: tagged in a way that startled. The name on the
Speaker 1: slip read B Sarrel. The B and the S seemed
Speaker 1: to echo an invert like halves of blissara split apart.
Speaker 1: My first thought was that it was a prank, a
Speaker 1: joke played years back by a board handler, but the
Speaker 1: ink was dull, the sticker slightly yellowed. I studdied the letters,
Speaker 1: feeling a pulse of frustration at the half glimpsed significance.
Speaker 1: I brought the tag to the lost and found a
Speaker 1: squat office carefully tucked beside the rental car kiosks. The
Speaker 1: box marked no owner. Gate twelve was fuller than I expected.
Speaker 1: Broken headphones, three, the identical umbrellas, a smooth pebble, the
Speaker 1: size of my palm ticket stubs that began with t
Speaker 1: R twelve and ended with nothing. The log book beside
Speaker 1: it referenced retrieved items for other flights, missed items forded
Speaker 1: to real destinations, for Gate twelve simply unclaimed, Yet the
Speaker 1: bins were always emptied. The process continued as if the
Speaker 1: act of moving things from lost to found was the
Speaker 1: only outcome required. I returned that night with a new theory.
Speaker 1: Bilisara was never a city, but a code, a stand
Speaker 1: in for flights once expected, emergencies rehearsed, or perhaps a
Speaker 1: legacy system stuck in an unbreakable loop. I pressed Anna,
Speaker 1: catching her near the sliding doors as she checked a
Speaker 1: censer glitch. Do you ever deal with security for flight
Speaker 1: six hundred seven, I asked, trying to keep it off hand.
Speaker 1: She offered a smile as brittle as airport mints. No,
Speaker 1: but seriously, ain't that the point of airports departures without arrivals?
Speaker 1: Then softer, somebody must be making the call, though the
Speaker 1: process owns us more than the passengers. Due some nights,
Speaker 1: the ambiguity clung to me. Wanting context, I flagged down
Speaker 1: the newest baggage supervisor during a lull. He'd worked at
Speaker 1: other airports. Fresh Faced, optimistic, I asked him whether he'd
Speaker 1: ever transferred luggage from or to a flight for Billisara.
Speaker 1: He laughed, shook his head, and said, sometimes airports run
Speaker 1: training ops, fake flights, drill runs. They tell you not
Speaker 1: to overthink it, But why would the training outlive the trainer?
Speaker 1: Why would the airport grind that wheel year after year
Speaker 1: after year. I grew bolder. Armed with Marcus's sympathy and boredom,
Speaker 1: we organized a friendly stake out, one slow shift, each
Speaker 1: of us cleaning at opposite ends of the empty concourse
Speaker 1: in the small hours. By silent agreement. We watched the
Speaker 1: boarding sign, checked the carts, scrutinized every whisper of practical activity.
Speaker 1: We heard nothing, saw no one, But at precisely twelve
Speaker 1: fifty nine a m. Both our phones vibrated, each received
Speaker 1: with no sender listed. A brief calendar notification. Gate twelve
Speaker 1: cleaning rotation confirmed the notification auto dismissed. When I went
Speaker 1: to open it. Marcus stared at his phone for a
Speaker 1: long moment, then looked up at me. I never signed
Speaker 1: up for a reminder app you. I shook my head.
Speaker 1: We didn't laugh. We simply returned to work. But there
Speaker 1: was a new charge in the silence, a shared sense
Speaker 1: that whatever was happening here obeyed its own logic, much
Speaker 1: as water follows the grooves in concrete long after the
Speaker 1: rain has stopped. More determined, I tried pushing boundaries physically.
Speaker 1: Cleaners possess modest authority in the night hours. With a
Speaker 1: badge and a vest, you can slip nearly anywhere. One night,
Speaker 1: half an hour before the boarding announcement, I unplugged the
Speaker 1: sign at Gate twelve, ostensibly to dust beneath it. The
Speaker 1: led went dark for only a breath, then flicked back
Speaker 1: on unaffected, never blipping the sequence. Later, after a departed announcement,
Speaker 1: I wheeled all the luggage carts to the brake room,
Speaker 1: far from their usual place. Thirty minutes on, having circled back,
Speaker 1: they were lined up at Gate twelve perfectly as before,
Speaker 1: not a corner out of place. If Arna Marcus or
Speaker 1: Missus Gillen noticed, no one mentioned it. That settled one thing.
Speaker 1: The routine was self correcting, intimately wedded to the shape
Speaker 1: of the terminal. Once emboldened, I let myself linger on
Speaker 1: the jet bridge during a boarding now commencing chime ducking
Speaker 1: out of sight as a phantom announcement asked phantom travelers
Speaker 1: to step forward. The air on the bridge felt charged, metallic,
Speaker 1: new dizzy. I moved further, but the space elongated unnaturally,
Speaker 1: a trick of anxiety, I'm sure, but it felt as
Speaker 1: if I had slipped partially outside myself. For a moment.
Speaker 1: City lights shimmered in my mind, ali in the sense
Speaker 1: that they were familiar but not mapped. I had the
Speaker 1: sensation of both departing and arriving at once, like one
Speaker 1: step would send me outward into nothing. My watch lagged
Speaker 1: behind the wall clock by five minutes. When I returned,
Speaker 1: I checked the CCTV afterward. The footage played as if
Speaker 1: I had never left my cleaning card. In those days,
Speaker 1: my conviction wavered between the wildness of the unexplained and
Speaker 1: the cynicism of bureaucracy. Some nights I muttered under my
Speaker 1: breath that it was nothing, an institutional hiccup. Nobody had
Speaker 1: the courage or bandwidth to excise from the system. Other nights,
Speaker 1: the compulsion to understand swelled until my finger tips felt
Speaker 1: raw from the urge to turn over every stone. The
Speaker 1: PA system's intonation for Bilisara haunted me, gentle but unmistakably exotic,
Speaker 1: a syllabic lilt, formal and RESTful, distinct from the neutral
Speaker 1: locals only drawl used on every other announcement. It was
Speaker 1: the see same cadence mister Willis, the retired gait agent
Speaker 1: used when he told me people always seemed to be leaving,
Speaker 1: but I don't remember seeing them go or come back.
Speaker 1: I found mister Willis sitting over breakfast at the twenty
Speaker 1: four hour Diner outside Arrivals, his hands trembling so slightly
Speaker 1: that milk pooled at the edges of his coffee. He
Speaker 1: welcomed questions. Retirement had softened the edge of discretion. I
Speaker 1: pressed for detail. Did you ever check a ticket, see
Speaker 1: a face, Remember a single person who left for Bilisara,
Speaker 1: He pondered, truly pondered, squinting into his mug, as if
Speaker 1: the coffee itself would yield a memory. Every night boarding
Speaker 1: passes went through the scanner, at least the routine said
Speaker 1: they did. My hands stamped them. Sometimes I thought I
Speaker 1: heard families murmuring, maybe a cough, but faces, no, they
Speaker 1: were always just on the edge of the crowd, never
Speaker 1: at the counter. I asked if he remembered any specifics,
Speaker 1: a name, a voice, luggage with a distinct sticker. He smiled, sadly.
Speaker 1: It was always movement, never rival, like the city kept pulling,
Speaker 1: but the line never got any closer. That conversation deepened,
Speaker 1: rather than solved the mystery. The more detail I pursued,
Speaker 1: the more the specifics ran to ground. Everyone remembered something routine, motion,
Speaker 1: a sense of obligation to the process, but no one
Speaker 1: could anchor it to people, time, or purpose. I expanded
Speaker 1: my hunt to physical history. I visited the archival room
Speaker 1: tucked near HR, a dim, chilly cave where old phone directories,
Speaker 1: flight manifest books, and yellowed maps lay crammed into file cabinets,
Speaker 1: there between instructive booklets on bomb threats and the now
Speaker 1: bands smoking lounge policies, I found a battered, coffee stained
Speaker 1: directory from the mid nineteen eighties. There it was sandwiched
Speaker 1: incongruously between ground transportation and Lost Pets Bilisara information desk.
Speaker 1: The phone number was out of service, the extension overwritten
Speaker 1: by bullprint pen But when I walked to the physical spot,
Speaker 1: I found the seam of where a desk had once
Speaker 1: been fused into plywood and converted into a vending alcove.
Speaker 1: The wall had a ripple, almost invisible, but under my
Speaker 1: palm the difference in the paint was unmistakable. Missus Gillan
Speaker 1: restocking grape soda two feet away noticed my interest. That
Speaker 1: used to be my favorite post. I sat in the
Speaker 1: corner there back in eighty four during a thunder storm
Speaker 1: read the in flight magazine had a Bilisara add in it.
Speaker 1: I think bright gold and green, very cheerful. Or maybe
Speaker 1: I just remember the picture. She blinked, lost in thought. Funny.
Speaker 1: I can't recall a single thing it said, but I
Speaker 1: remember the colors. I realized with a sudden clarity that
Speaker 1: nearly every one's memory of Bilisara was equivocal. They remembered
Speaker 1: only fragments, textures of routine, never the fact itself. When
Speaker 1: I told Marcus, he shrugged, more tired than convinced. There's
Speaker 1: always a backgrowne noise. You don't chase every echo. Some
Speaker 1: parts of the airport run on autopilot, and a best
Speaker 1: left there. But I couldn't let it alone. To me,
Speaker 1: the fragments suggested not neglect, nor even mischief, but an
Speaker 1: inadvertent creation, a geography real only to those who lived
Speaker 1: so long in its shadow that its phantom presence became
Speaker 1: preferable to absence. On my day off, I went to
Speaker 1: the city library, a dim wing all but claimed by
Speaker 1: genealogy purists and teenagers avoiding supervision. One reference librarian, a
Speaker 1: man with marvelous patience, listened with apparent interest as I
Speaker 1: explained what I needed. He recalled a local history monograph
Speaker 1: composed shortly after the airport opened. Written in that boosteroish
Speaker 1: civic optimism of the nineteen seventies. The pamphlet was slim
Speaker 1: and foxed, with mildew cover a lurid approximation of a
Speaker 1: jet climbing into impossible blue. In one section, a ribbon
Speaker 1: of text described initial foreign partnerships with anticipated expansion for
Speaker 1: direct routes east and South Bilisaria and beyond Bilisaria, not Bilisara,
Speaker 1: but the difference felt trivial. Yet the following decades records
Speaker 1: made no further mention of the expansion. The south terminal
Speaker 1: was never built budgetary sleight of hand maybe, or a
Speaker 1: failed negotiation. This was echoed years later in a government
Speaker 1: memo scanned into the state's digital archives another librarian favour.
Speaker 1: The scan showed typewritten pages from nineteen seventy six with
Speaker 1: hasty margin notes proposal controlled test bed for future international connections,
Speaker 1: use fictional target Bilisara for simulation purposes. It was clear
Speaker 1: that Bilisara had begun as a placeholder, an imaginary city
Speaker 1: used to calibrate the rhythm of institutional behavior. But something
Speaker 1: had happened, some crossing of wires or soft institutional inertia
Speaker 1: that let the simulation persist unchecked after its necessity vanished.
Speaker 1: What made the contradiction irreducible was this, after a certain
Speaker 1: date somewhere in the late nineteen seventies, every log, schedule
Speaker 1: and memo treated the Bilisara route as an ongoing reality.
Speaker 1: There was never a notation to mark the shift from
Speaker 1: fictional to standard operation. I met Marcus back in the
Speaker 1: break room, documents in hand, heart jittering from what felt
Speaker 1: at last like real understanding. I explained Gate twelve was
Speaker 1: built on a training gap, a test run for international reach.
Speaker 1: But the expansion never came, and nobody cleaned out the
Speaker 1: placeholder somehow. By the time anyone thought to question it,
Speaker 1: Bilisara's departure had become real, at least on paper, not
Speaker 1: because any one needed to go or come back, just
Speaker 1: because the pattern itself refused to break. He grew quiet
Speaker 1: sorting through the pages. So the map lies, but the
Speaker 1: building persists. People were trained for a journey that never started,
Speaker 1: and the act of preparing, of being ready was enough
Speaker 1: to keep the idea alive, a muscle flexed long after
Speaker 1: the limb was lost. I let the words sit. That week,
Speaker 1: I decided on a true vigil. I planned to stay
Speaker 1: disguised in the fast shadow beyond Gate twelves counter through
Speaker 1: the full midnight cycle, determined to observe the routine's absolute limits.
Speaker 1: I stashed my cart near by, explaining to Arna that
Speaker 1: a wax spill needed time to dry and arranged with
Speaker 1: markers to cover my log entries. The airport is different
Speaker 1: when you hide within it. The logic of movement dilates
Speaker 1: and contracts, people visible only by fragments. A suit case's
Speaker 1: wheels here, the edge of a sleeve there, the background
Speaker 1: hum of life breaking through lulls. Some time after two
Speaker 1: a m, when the only movement was the drift of
Speaker 1: air conditioning and the rumble of distant wheels, I settled
Speaker 1: with my knees hugged to my chest behind the check
Speaker 1: in desk. My eyelids grew heavy, brains slip streaming into
Speaker 1: the humming, dark comfort of routine itself. I watched as
Speaker 1: the sign scrolled through its rights, boarding final call departed.
Speaker 1: The pattern was unshaken. Then, just after four a m.
Speaker 1: The strangest thing yet happened. For a breath, between two
Speaker 1: heart beats, both the sign and the overhead lights flickered off,
Speaker 1: plunging Gate twelve into truer darkness than I had thought possible.
Speaker 1: In that always lit whirled, a hush tensed the air,
Speaker 1: a pressure transient and exhilarating, like existing outside the chain
Speaker 1: of maintenance, outside the place's pulse of ritual. Then, as
Speaker 1: if A silent hand restored the world. The glow resumed,
Speaker 1: announcement replayed, carts returned, the fabric of activity unfurled seamlessly again.
Speaker 1: I caught, or thought I caught a dim movement just
Speaker 1: beyond the glass doors to the jet bridge, the briefest
Speaker 1: shimmer of uniforms old airline livery odd in cut and color,
Speaker 1: swirling and dissolving. As I blinked against the half light,
Speaker 1: my watch ticked oddly, the second hand jittering, then falling
Speaker 1: back in line with the wall clock as the PA
Speaker 1: system rebooted into another bland welcome Afterward, As I prepared
Speaker 1: to leave, I caught the chief of night operations at
Speaker 1: shift change, a thin, sharp cheeked man I'd never known
Speaker 1: to be poetic. Gate twelve, I prompted, you ever wonder
Speaker 1: why it runs without interruption? He yawned, rubbing his jaw.
Speaker 1: I figure, if the gate's there, it must be because
Speaker 1: it always was. Airports are built on schedules more than concrete.
Speaker 1: He looked at me, as if challenging me to disagree.
Speaker 1: I let my question hang, unanswered by reason, but deepened
Speaker 1: by the density of habit. What if my mind proposed
Speaker 1: the routine created its own justification, something so ingrained, so tenacious,
Speaker 1: that it unwittingly wove a new place into being, not
Speaker 1: through intention but repetition. Gate twelve's existence was both an
Speaker 1: error and its own correction, a loophole cemented not with
Speaker 1: reason but with relentless care, possibility itself made into a
Speaker 1: physical fixture. I looked for insight in the one thing
Speaker 1: most people ignored, the various policy binders and training documents
Speaker 1: stashed in the staff lounge, left untouched for years. The
Speaker 1: binder for airport procedures, heavy and cracked, had inserts from
Speaker 1: every decade. Near the back, sandwiched by pages of emergency
Speaker 1: protocols and lost child information. Sat an orange highlighted memo
Speaker 1: daily in sure readiness for departures at all gates, even
Speaker 1: those assigned for simulation or low use, always maintained schedules.
Speaker 1: Absence in process leads to behavioral drift in overall operation.
Speaker 1: It was bureaucratic speak, clinical, but it implied something profound.
Speaker 1: The pattern required no object. The readiness itself was the
Speaker 1: point where no departure exists, Make one where no city
Speaker 1: calls invent, just to keep the systems in handshake with
Speaker 1: an idea of movement. Suddenly I understood, no ghost flight,
Speaker 1: no secret government operation. What persisted at Gate twelve, what
Speaker 1: kept the rituals churning, was a need as deep as
Speaker 1: any in the nature of infrastructure. You can build a
Speaker 1: palace to possibility and leave it functioning long after its
Speaker 1: purpose has been erased. The process survived everything, the schedule,
Speaker 1: the caretaking, the sign, the carts, because that departure was
Speaker 1: a line that held the rest of the airport and
Speaker 1: perhaps our own sense of agency in careful tension. All airports,
Speaker 1: all institutions of movement, rely on fictions, sharp and smooth
Speaker 1: by time and repetition. The destination can be real or not.
Speaker 1: All that matters is that the network endures, that somewhere,
Speaker 1: always there is a gate, ready departure, announced, space kept
Speaker 1: open for movement that validates the entire architecture. Sifting through
Speaker 1: decades of log books, memos, and boiler plate, I saw
Speaker 1: the pattern. Every system has its placeholders, roots, teams, traditions,
Speaker 1: even cities that never quite wink out because to do
Speaker 1: so would risk collapsing more than just a line on
Speaker 1: a map. Gate twelve was paradox and promise. An empty
Speaker 1: vessel made sacred by the obligation to maintain, to keep
Speaker 1: possibility polished and the path open, even if no one crossed.
Speaker 1: I walked the terminal floor at sunrise, light, inching, cold
Speaker 1: and forgiving through the glass. As the morning shift stirred.
Speaker 1: Anna hummed as she exchanged nods with the arriving day crew.
Speaker 1: Marcus fought sleep at the arrival's kiosk, joking softly with
Speaker 1: an accountant, waiting for the only real six a m flight,
Speaker 1: passing gate twelve. I did not feel uneasy, only recognition.
Speaker 1: In maintaining readiness for a city, a departure, a possibility
Speaker 1: we could no longer name. We honored something essential, the
Speaker 1: stubborn life span of potential, the discipline of keeping doors
Speaker 1: unlocked for reasons lost to memory alone. My work felt
Speaker 1: different now. No longer did I clean for the faceless.
Speaker 1: Now each sweep and polish was a small act of
Speaker 1: respect for the architecture of routine and the vast, invisible
Speaker 1: work of possibility. In the club of night laborers, those
Speaker 1: who keep up the world's backstage chores. They grew for
Speaker 1: me a kinship born of shared vigilance. Not quite hope,
Speaker 1: not quite nostalgia, but the quiet stewardship of potential. We
Speaker 1: all kept our mysteries, we all polished the known and
Speaker 1: unknown with the same care. On my route, Gate twelve
Speaker 1: became less an anomaly and more a companion, a standing
Speaker 1: promise that not everything must be resolved, only preserved. I
Speaker 1: smiled each time I passed, running my palm along the
Speaker 1: cleaned edge of the counter, listening to the hum that
Speaker 1: never quite faded. One night, as the PA system cycled
Speaker 1: through another announcement, words half swallowed by the emptying terminal,
Speaker 1: I paused, letting the syllables stitch into the hush. Flight
Speaker 1: six hundred seven to Billissara, now boarding at Gate twelve.
Speaker 1: How many journeys, I wondered, keep happening after their end
Speaker 1: points are lost. How many gates still wait, kept open
Speaker 1: not for traffic, but because somewhere in the background, someone
Speaker 1: believes the world depends on a readiness to depart, even
Speaker 1: if no arrival lies ahead. Sometimes I think the true
Speaker 1: destination is the act of keeping open the door for
Speaker 1: its own sake. Possibility finds a home precisely where nothing
Speaker 1: is expected to occur. Perhaps that is why the world
Speaker 1: remains improbably whole, carried for a little longer by careful
Speaker 1: hands on the night's shift. I slid my log book
Speaker 1: back into its sleeve and turned for home, comforted by
Speaker 1: the persistence of depart that must be kept even if
Speaker 1: we forget what or where lies beyond. And that is
Speaker 1: the end. Thank you for listening, and I will see
Speaker 1: you in the next one.