The Marauding Bubbles of Vacuum

One day it was discovered that bubbles of vacuum were spontaneously arising in the Earth's atmosphere, traveling around on chaotic courses, and eventually dissipating. They tended to stay in the upper atmosphere, never got near the ground, never came close to suffocating birds or other animals. But they made air travel much less pleasant. You would be flying along, when all of a sudden, you were shooting through vacuum. Without the air pressure differential to maintain the plane's altitude, you start to plummet like a rock. Man that hits the stomach hard. Then you hit the edge of the bubble, the plane's wings grip the air, and you rise back to your course. Now, you are not allowed out of your seat during the entire duration of the flight. Can't go to the bathroom. You are required to store all loose items in overhead bins. Gone are the days when you can store some stuff under the seat in front of you. Man it sucks.

They've tried tracking these bubbles in an effort to steer aircraft around them, but, like tornadoes, the bubbles are small enough, and capricious enough, to defy prediction. Nobody really knows what causes them either. Some have suggested that our solar system is approaching a corner of our galactic neighborhood where strange physical laws begin to hold. It may be, these people say, that the constants in physical formulae are not constant at all, but actually functions of our spacetime coordinates. Perhaps the charge of an electron varies as we move around the universe. It sounds to me like the physicists have no idea what they're talking about, but rather than admit it, invent a fancy type of obfuscation. But maybe I'm just cynical. I am especially sensitive to motion sickness, and these new atmospheric phenomena have made flying an absolute miserable hell. I feel as though God has singled me out for special retribution. I realize that this is nonsense. How can I be singled out when this phenonemon is widespread, affecting millions of air travelers?

I just keep going back to my past. Retribution is surely deserved. When I killed that vacuum cleaner salesman, I wasn't in my right mind. I barely remember doing it. It's like trying to see things in a fog. I remember there was a smell of puke, of beer cans. But let's not talk about that stuff. I didn't really kill the guy. You could tell I was joking, couldn't you? But you see the connection? Vacuum cleaner salesman and now vacuum bubbles. Perhaps it's a cosmic joke.