Eleven Twenty-Three by Jason Hornsby

were
in grid patterns, in fact. This was going on everyday. And then,
around the beginning of November, everyone in town started getting
sick every morning and every night, as if there was something being
dumped into the air.”
    “You’re high,” I laugh. “ Chemtrails ,
Hajime? Really?”
    “I am in fact high,” he admits. “However,
that’s inconsequential unless we’re discussing how disappointed my
father would be with my current Americanized lifestyle. The point
is that our government— your government, Mr. Prescott, that
same government who allowed you to be martyred like you were at
Kennedy and the same government that assassinates presidents and
then names schools after them—dumps tons of god-knows-what on our
town every day for a month, and then everyone gets sick. My dad,
who’s never been in bed past nine in the morning his entire life , is laid up for days because of some bug he catches in
the six hours he spends in Lilly’s End with Mitsuko and me. The
townsfolk are coughing. People are calling out of work. The
medicine aisles in Publix have been ransacked. Everyone’s wandering
around in a doped up fever dream. If you think about it, the
chemtrail theory’s really not that far-fetched.”
    I know what Hajime is talking about; I always
do. I’ve heard it before, many times, usually over a table littered
with half-smoked joints and empty Blue Moon bottles. This is one of
a hundred conspiracy theories that my best friend has ascribed to
over the years.
    Since the autumn of 1997, there have been
hundreds of reports of mysterious airplanes flying at very high
altitudes over bustling cities and sleepy townships alike
throughout North America, Korea, Japan, and Europe. These planes
emit thick plumes of smoke as they fly overhead, often in X-shaped
or grid patterns. The trails left behind are, apparently, unlike
the normal contrail left in the wake of more mundane flights. In
these cases, the smoke is incredibly concentrated, taking several
hours to dissipate and often spreading in the wind like
far-reaching cirrus clouds. As opposed to typical flights’ trails
of exhaust, these “chemical trails” are far more sinister in
nature.
    And they have been appearing over our
heads—without warrant or explanation—for the last ten years.
    “Well, what is the theory on these ‘chemical
trails?’” I asked Hajime once, very drunk and only slightly
interested.
    “Chemtrails, Layne,” he said. “Well, there’re
a few theories, as there typically is with things like this…”
    There have been various independent studies
to figure out just what comprises chemtrails, what their purpose is
in our skies, and to determine what it is that separates these
plumes of thick, potentially harmful man-made clouds from
contrails. It seems that with each new finding, there are three
times as many USAF debunking sessions and half a dozen articles in Skeptic .
    Some vague “scientists” who purportedly
worked to solve the mystery of the chemtrails determined that they
were made up of gases and tiny elements that were poisonous to
humans, though the specific toxins involved remained largely
unspecified when I pursued the topic. One of my bored planning
period Google searches at school produced a list consisting of
aluminum, ammonia, and red blood cells, but this didn’t mean much
to me beyond being kind of gross. One theory, though, was that
these gases spread in the atmosphere and slowly made their way down
onto the populace below, creating sickness and slow, untraceable
death. Populations are controlled. The next phase begins. Hajime’s
favorite pariah of the Apocalypse, the New World Order, strengthens
its grip and furthers plans for global domination. Dark-suited men
crack crooked smiles as individualism slowly dies and an
all-powerful satanic police state assumes control.
    Another theory suggests that the government
is somehow using the gases in chemtrails to further Cold War-era
mind control tactics and