Back in 1990 I had started a story entitled Flightpath. It was a story in part inspired by the novel Return to Mars, by W. E. Johns the paperback novel, the one with the men in green uniforms outside a UFO type spaceship, being attacked by giant red mosquitoes. That image alone from that book cover, stayed in my head for a very, very long time and that sparked the idea for a story about a whole hive of giant red mosquitoes that actually live inside and control an insect like shaped spacecraft with a sphere at the end of it that has on it oceans and islands (Earth Like) with the hull being completely made up of checked steel plates and right across the middle of the segmented hull are large bold red letters that reads: *Flightpath 1*
The main protagonist of this story was a 20-year-old man called James Sephens, who buys up a plot of land with an airstrip on it with an old control tower too and just a few feet away from it, is a house that he had built to occupy the plot of land. The airstrip fascinated him immensely, as well as the old control tower. One lone night, he’s woken up by the sound of an aeroplane flying low, he looks outside and sees a red aeroplane and it’s coming down fast, it looks like it’s going to crash.
Quickly, James gets out of his bed, runs downstairs and out of his house in his PJ’s. He starts to run the entire length of the airstrip, which seems to oddly stretch on and on, with no end in sight. He wakes up one morning, still on the airstrip, but the sky suddenly looks all wrong. It looks like it’s made of metal plating. Some one finds him and tell him that he has got get away from there before *They* Get him, but the man who is trying to convince him to leave, simply will not say who *They* are, until the sky suddenly turns red, a red mist appears in the sky and a massive swarm is now coming their way.
James and the lone man stand no chance to outrun the swarm. Soon, they are completely surrounded by very large red mosquitoes they talk in clicks, which are then somehow translated into words.
“You are our prisoner Mr James Stephens.”
They say in unison.
“You are aboard our crat, Flightpath One. You shall stay here and be our prisoner for the rest of your life.”
James learns that the environment that he’s in is an artificial one, made to simulate planet earth. His strange lone companion has no idea where the giant red mosquitoes come from and that he is just as much a prisoner as what James is. James spends then the rest of his life on Flightpath 1. With no way back to Earth, he does not even know how he even got aboard the mosquitoes spacecraft.
The mosquitoes spacecraft is an unusual one at that, as in my mind, I saw what I can only describe as an insect type body, (3 Honeybee shaped like hulls interconnected with one another) void black with lit windows and a sphere at the end that had oceans and islands on it (Earth Like), but the entire thing was made up of checked metal plates and right across the middle of the segmented hulls were the words in bold red lettering that read: Flightpath 1.
As James gets older, he simply wants his life to end. He’s 80 years old and feels like he’s never lived properly. He feels sad, very sad. While out in the artificial environment that’s been made to look exactly like his airstrip, for reasons not even he knows why. A lone red mosquito visits him, and she asks him why he is sad. James tells the female mosquito how he feels, like his very life has been robbed from him and he has nothing to show for it.
Much to his shock and surprise, the female mosquito offers him eternal youth, a life without dying. James takes her up on her offer. But he soon learns that the price for this eternal youth is to be completely transformed into one of them, to become an actual mosquito. James at first refuses to undergo such a radical transmutation and transformation, in one. But as time goes on, he finally gives in and accepts to be turned into one of *Them*
However, much to his shock, he gets transformed into a female mosquito human hybrid, which means that she is able to take on human form at will. And so, James in her human form takes on the name of Sheila, but she keeps the surname, as a means that she will never forget who and what she once used to be. Her human form of course is a woman, a forever 20-year-old woman with long blonde hair and blue eyes and a curvaceous figure. She becomes a very important member among the hive of the mosquitoes, and she becomes the bridge between them and their human prisoners, helping them to settle into their lives as prisoners under the rule of the mosquitoes.
But Sheila soon learns that the mosquitoes are nothing but tyrants and she sets out to free the human prisoners, she’s soon on the run that leads her right to the artificial copy of the airstrip, a red mist is on her tail, she runs the length of the airstrip, which suddenly seem to stretch endlessly, that she passes out. She wakes up on the airstrip, but she notices that she’s not on-board Flightpath 1 anymore, in fact she’s back on earth. Not knowing how she got there, the only problem is the fact that she is still a human mosquito hybrid that she must keep anyone form ever finding out.
Much to her relief, no medical scans can detect the mosquito part of her. She does not question it. She’s just glad that, that part of her cannot be detected. One night, when she is asleep, she hears an aeroplane flying low, she looks out of her window and sees a red aeroplane, that looks like it is going to crash. She gets up, puts on her night gown and goes outside. She runs across the length of the airstrip trying to reach the aeroplane, but the airstrip seems to wind on endlessly until she passes out, when she wakes up, it is to find that she’s back again onboard Flightpath 1 and that is where the story ends.
I was writing on A5 lined ruled paper, at the time, as that was cheaper than buying A4 and money was a bit tight back then. So, I settled with what I could afford back then. I wrote an entire trilogy and circumstances changed that meant I could afford A4 sized lined ruled paper, and I ended writing two sets of trilogies. Flightpath II was entitled The Return. Sadly, however, I can no longer remember the titles of the other stories. But I ended up with a total of 9 stories in 3 sets of trilogies under the main name of my main story. So, the titles went something like this:
Flightpath
Flightpath II: The Return
Flightpath III
Flightpath IV
Flightpath V
Flightpath VI
Flightpath VII
Flightpath VIII
Flightpath IX
There was one huge problem though, every other story was a copy of the first story the only real difference, was that Sheila ended up one day getting pregnant, that was somehow possible, she gave birth to a son that she named Stephen, who ends up getting turned into a female human mosquito hybrid, just like her mother. Several generations of the Stephen’s family that always end up as males somehow each undergo the same transformation from human male to human female mosquito hybrid, in a never-ending repeating pattern.
But like I said, stories 1-9 were essentially exactly the same as each other, 9 versions of the same exact story. I soon realised the errors of my ways, and I got rid of all 9 stories, in a fit of defeat and despair, with never being able to write another story. Ideas seem to simply refuse to come to me until I met him… To Be continued.