Clouds cast greenish shadows onto the red, misty desert; silvery threads of rivers branch out like the capillary network of the whites of eyes.

The sky at the horizon line is the most flawless shade of blue, while directly overhead it transitions into a twilight-blue, surprisingly pure color. Even one's gaze sinks into it and through it, like a needle through butter. Space.

Darkness shines through the delicate flesh of the sky. We are flying, almost tickling the boundary and the final limit of light with our steel nape. The heavy, dense sound of stoner rock hums in the headphones at maximum volume, burning away all mental debris from the inner walls of the head with acid.

Clouds creep in from the horizon ahead, like a white arctic plain, misty and smooth in the distance, and blossoming into myriads of gentle mushroom-like hydrogen explosions or scoops of ice cream at the edges.

On the folding plastic trays is a meeting of cardboard cups with ice, cooling coffee, a tin of cola, an iPod, and crumpled napkins.

...what kind of surgical intervention do our souls undergo, for instance, when only two thick porthole panes and the fragile metal skin of the plane separate us from the indifferent, frozen vacuum.