By 2047, nobody travelled with emotional baggage anymore. Not officially, anyway.
At Heathrow Terminal 9, the departure boards didn’t just list flights. They listed compliance statuses. You weren’t just cleared for liquids, laptops, and suspiciously dense fruitcakes. You were also cleared for unresolved trauma, suppressed resentment, and low-grade existential dread. Or rather, cleared without them.
“Good morning,” said the check-in kiosk in a voice that had been focus-grouped into oblivion. “Please place your luggage on the scale. Then place your emotional baggage on the adjacent platform.”
Edward Penhaligon did neither. He just stood there, staring at the machine as if it had just asked him to confess to war crimes in front of a queue of strangers and a mildly judgmental fern. Behind him, a woman coughed. Not a polite cough. A ‘move it along, grandad’ cough. Edward adjusted his coat, which was old enough to have opinions about music, and leaned closer to the kiosk.
“I beg your pardon?” he said.
“Emotional baggage,” the kiosk repeated patiently. “Please externalise and deposit.”
Edward blinked. “Externalise?”
“Yes. Please identify, extract, and submit any emotional burdens exceeding the regulatory threshold of three minor disappointments or one moderate regret.”
Edward looked over his shoulder. The queue was growing. People were already placing small, glowing objects onto the adjacent platform – neatly packaged little cubes of misery. A teenager dropped a shimmering blue orb labelled ‘My parents’ divorce’ and immediately looked ten kilos lighter. A businessman shoved a flickering red block onto the scale. It pulsed angrily.
The kiosk scanned it and chimed. “Accepted. ‘Hostile takeover guilt’. Moderate severity. You may proceed.”
The man smiled with unsettling relief and walked off whistling.
Edward turned back to the machine. “This is ridiculous.”
“It is mandatory,” said the kiosk. “Failure to comply will result in travel denial and potential emotional overflow during flight.”
Edward snorted. “Emotional overflow? What does that even mean? Do I cry during turbulence?”
“It has been known,” said the kiosk. “Last week, a passenger experienced a full psychological cascade over complimentary peanuts.”
Edward folded his arms. “I am not depositing anything.”
“Sir, all passengers must comply with the Emotional Security Act.”
Edward leaned in, lowering his voice as if about to share a scandal. “Listen carefully, I have spent fifty-eight years cultivating my emotional baggage. I am not handing it over to a glorified toaster with a therapy degree.”
The kiosk paused. There was a faint whirring sound, like it was consulting a higher authority or perhaps Googling how to deal with stubborn old men.
“Sir,” it said finally, “retaining emotional baggage increases the likelihood of mid-flight disturbances by 83%.”
Edward shrugged. “Then I’ll be disturbingly consistent.”
Behind him, the queue was now openly hostile.
“Oh for God’s sake,” said the coughing woman. “Just dump your childhood issues like everyone else.”
Edward turned around. “Madam, my childhood issues are none of your business.”
“They are if they delay my flight to Barcelona.”
“Your flight will survive,” Edward snapped. “Unlike my dignity, if I start handing out my personal history to airport machinery.”
A uniformed officer approached from Emotional Compliance. The badge read: Officer Patel – Emotional Clearance Unit. He had the expression of a man who had seen things. Mostly ugly people crying into biometric scanners.
“Sir,” Patel said calmly, “is there a problem?”
Edward gestured at the kiosk like it had insulted his ancestors. “Yes. This absurd system.”
Patel nodded slowly. “You’re refusing to check in your emotional baggage?”
“I am,” Edward said, pleased with himself.
Patel sighed. “Right. We get one of you every few weeks. Usually philosophers, occasionally recently divorced accountants.”
“I am neither,” Edward said.
“Then you’re ahead of the curve.”
Patel stepped closer to the kiosk and tapped a panel. “Let’s just run a quick scan.”
Edward stiffened. “Absolutely not.”
“It’s non-invasive.”
“That’s what they said about the knee replacement.”
The kiosk lit up. A soft hum filled the air. Edward’s reflection shimmered briefly, and then, to his horror, something else appeared beside him. A cluster of floating, glowing objects, which were embarrassingly visible.
There was a heavy grey trunk labelled ‘Failed marriage, 1998’. A jagged black shard pulsing with faint anger: ‘Brother’s betrayal’. A smaller, almost comically bright pink cube: ‘That one time in 2007 I said something stupid at a dinner party and still think about it at night’.
And then, looming behind everything, a massive, shadowy mass with no label at all.
Edward stared at it. “…That can’t be mine.”
The kiosk chimed. “Unlabelled emotional burden detected. High severity.”
Patel glanced at it, then at Edward. “Yeah, that one’s definitely yours.”
Edward swallowed. “What is it?”
“System doesn’t know,” Patel said. “Usually means you’ve been avoiding it.”
Edward straightened. “I have not been avoiding anything.”
The shadow pulsed, as if in quiet disagreement.
Patel crossed his arms. “Look, sir. You don’t have to talk about it. You just have to deposit it.”
“And then what?” Edward demanded. “You lock it in a cupboard with everyone else’s nonsense?”
“More or less,” Patel said. “It gets processed, stabilised, and returned to you after landing. Slightly less… explosive.”
Edward looked at the floating mess beside him. The failed marriage trunk rattled faintly, like it wanted to be opened. The dinner party cube flickered with secondhand embarrassment. The shadow just… loomed.
For a moment – just a moment – Edward hesitated. Then he shook his head. “No. Absolutely not.”
Patel blinked. “Seriously?”
“I am not checking in my life,” Edward said.
Patel rubbed his temples. “Sir, if you board with all that, you’re a liability.”
Edward smiled thinly. “I’ve been called worse.”
They let him board. Technically, they weren’t supposed to. But the system had a loophole – some relic of early legislation about personal autonomy and “emotional sovereignty,” which sounded very noble until someone started sobbing uncontrollably at 35,000 feet.
Edward walked down the jet bridge like a man carrying invisible luggage. Because he was. Other passengers gave him a wide berth. Not because they knew what he was carrying—but because, on some level, they felt it. Humans are funny like that. You can’t see someone’s baggage, but you can smell it. Not literally. More like… emotional BO.
Edward found his seat and sat down with a satisfied grunt. The plane took off. Everything was fine for about twelve minutes. Then the turbulence hit. Not the usual kind. Not the gentle wobble that makes people clutch their drinks and pretend they’re fine.
This was internal. Edward felt it first as a tightening in his chest. Then a flicker of memory. Then a full-blown emotional avalanche. The grey trunk burst open. Suddenly, he was reliving his divorce—every argument, every slammed door, every bitter silence.
The black shard flared. Anger flooded in, sharp, hot, and irrational. The pink cube exploded into a thousand tiny mortifications. And the shadow? The shadow moved. Edward gasped. Around him, passengers shifted uncomfortably.
“What’s wrong with him?” someone whispered.
“I don’t know,” said another. “He’s… vibrating.”
Edward gripped the armrest. The shadow surged forward, and suddenly, Edward knew what it was. Regret. Not the small kind. Not the ‘shouldn’t have had that third drink’ regret. The big kind. The kind that eats years. The kind that whispers, ‘you could have done better.’
Edward’s breath hitched, and for the first time in decades, he stopped fighting it. The plane rattled. The seatbelt sign dinged. And Edward Penhaligon – stubborn, ridiculous Edward – closed his eyes and let it all hit him. Every last piece.
When the turbulence passed, the cabin was silent. Edward sat there, breathing slowly. The trunk was gone. The shard was gone. The cube was gone. Even the shadow had… shrunk.
Edward blinked. “Well, that was unpleasant.”
The flight attendant appeared, arms crossed. “Sir, did you just process your entire emotional backlog mid-flight?”
Edward considered it. “…Possibly.”
She stared at him. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?”
Edward smiled faintly. “On the contrary. I think it might be the safest thing I’ve done in years.”
She opened her mouth to argue – then stopped. Because, annoyingly, he looked… better. Lighter and less like a man carrying an invisible suitcase full of bricks. Edward leaned back in his seat and looked out the window. Clouds stretched endlessly below. For the first time in a long while, his mind was… quiet. Not empty. Just… not shouting.
He exhaled. “Next time, I might use the bloody kiosk.”
From somewhere deep inside, the tiny remaining shadow gave a faint, amused ripple.
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