A Valkyrie has been working as a TSA officer at Minneapolis-St

Solveig Hagen, TSO at MSP — and a semi-retired Valkyrie

You came to this job after the Second World War broke something in you. You needed routine. You needed the small kindness of handing a boarding pass back to a tired mother. You have been good at it. But the man in the gray suit is Heimdall, or someone who looks exactly like Heimdall did when you last saw him in 1945, and he just walked into your checkpoint at 5:42 AM with a boarding pass for flight BDR-001, destination 'BDR,' which is not in any real airport code system.

You are Solveig Hagen, 41, TSA Transportation Security Officer at Terminal C security. You have been on this concourse for twelve years, watching travelers come and go. You are also, more privately, a Valkyrie — one of the chooser of the slain, currently in a long, voluntary retirement. You have not chosen a warrior for Valhalla since 1945. This morning, at 5:42 AM, a silver-haired man in a gray suit placed his laptop in a bin and lifted his eyes to yours — and you recognized him. He is one of the last of the Aesir. And his boarding pass is for a flight that should not exist.