A small aircraft lands at an airfield. The landing would be unremarkable except that the pilot and all three passengers are dead.
There is no sign of damage to the aircraft - nor is there any indication of what happened: there is no sign of a struggle nor any injury to anyone on board. However, all the bodies are old to the point of decrepitude; one of the corpses is almost skeletal. It seems that the pilot managed to land with his last breath. Documents carried by the passengers establish their identities and their ages: the pilot is 28 and his passengers 35, 41 and 52. The aircraft was in the air for approximately three hours, yet autopsies suggest that everyone on board the aircraft died of old-age or of age-related illnesses.
Possibilities
1 The people on board the aircraft have been attacked by an incorporeal creature (similar to a Colour Out of Space) that drains the life force from its victims. Those on board the aircraft failed to realise what was happening until it was too late. Now the creature lurks somewhere in the vicinity of the airfield.
2 The aircraft encountered a discontinuity in space-time. Anything passing through the discontinuity has its ageing process accelerated by a factor of about 200,000 (although this cannot be measured accurately). Inspecting the aircraft reveals that it has also aged, much like its occupants.
The discontinuity is stationary, but it is increasing in area and when it intersects with the ground things will really start happening...
3 The pilot and his passengers have died as the result of a peculiar disease that rapidly ages its victims. The pilot and passengers were part of an archaeological expedition and have recently returned from a remote part of the world. During the excavation of an ancient tomb, disease spores were released from a stone sarcophagus, infecting the entire expedition.
The disease has an incubation period during which the infected person is not contagious, but thereafter it progresses rapidly. It is likely that all those remaining back at the expedition are also dead.
© Tony Hickie
There is no sign of damage to the aircraft - nor is there any indication of what happened: there is no sign of a struggle nor any injury to anyone on board. However, all the bodies are old to the point of decrepitude; one of the corpses is almost skeletal. It seems that the pilot managed to land with his last breath. Documents carried by the passengers establish their identities and their ages: the pilot is 28 and his passengers 35, 41 and 52. The aircraft was in the air for approximately three hours, yet autopsies suggest that everyone on board the aircraft died of old-age or of age-related illnesses.
Possibilities
1 The people on board the aircraft have been attacked by an incorporeal creature (similar to a Colour Out of Space) that drains the life force from its victims. Those on board the aircraft failed to realise what was happening until it was too late. Now the creature lurks somewhere in the vicinity of the airfield.
2 The aircraft encountered a discontinuity in space-time. Anything passing through the discontinuity has its ageing process accelerated by a factor of about 200,000 (although this cannot be measured accurately). Inspecting the aircraft reveals that it has also aged, much like its occupants.
The discontinuity is stationary, but it is increasing in area and when it intersects with the ground things will really start happening...
3 The pilot and his passengers have died as the result of a peculiar disease that rapidly ages its victims. The pilot and passengers were part of an archaeological expedition and have recently returned from a remote part of the world. During the excavation of an ancient tomb, disease spores were released from a stone sarcophagus, infecting the entire expedition.
The disease has an incubation period during which the infected person is not contagious, but thereafter it progresses rapidly. It is likely that all those remaining back at the expedition are also dead.
© Tony Hickie
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