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So currently, the Langoliers are listed as being Subsonic for moving 'slower than a passenger plane'. I'd like to start off by saying that yes, the protagonists of The Langoliers managed to escape the eponymous creatures by flying a passenger plane away from them. This happened. There's no denying that.
That said, it occured to me that there are numerous reasons for why it isn't that simple, and why the Langoliers are in-fact much, much faster than Subsonic.
For starters, this happened in 'the past' of the reality the story takes place in. (Presumably the Keystone Reality due to time travel being impossible beyond a certain point, but I don't know if that was ever confirmed or not) The thing about this particular portion of Stephen King's mythos is, the world of the past is frozen in time and completely devoid of life. Smells, tastes and other sensations are almost nonexistent due to the world's complete lack of motion on a beyond-molecular level. Sounds are unable to echo, machines don't operate due to electricity being unable to flow, and even bullets fired from a gun fail to penetrate a person's skin at point-blank range due to said bullets carrying no force upon exiting the barrel. The past is, quite literally, a world that has stopped in its tracks.
The second thing I want to bring up is, both the protagonists themselves and the aforementioned passenger plane are exceptions to this whole 'frozen in time' thing. It's eventually explained in both the novel and the miniseries that, upon travelling through the time-rip that sent them into the past in the first place, the plane and its passengers had essentially 'brought their time with them' into the past. Because of this, the protagonists, the plane and the objects/substances brought into the plane were the only things that could move within the world of the past, as their own personal time was still in motion despite the surrounding time being frozen. (Yes, I know this is getting complicated, but bear with me here.)
The only other beings capable of moving within that frozen world are the Langoliers. In fact, the Langoliers not only move within this frozen past without need of the confusing time bullshit I mentioned above, but are also able to do so at 'speeds' far exceeding that of what a typical human is capable of.
Now for the last bit. Some people who haven't read or seen The Langoliers might think to themselves 'Well, what exactly gets left behind after the Langoliers eat the past?' The answer to that is: Literally nothing. No physical world, no time, no space, no reality whatsoever, and nothing that falls in-between. By the time they are done, every second of reality in the past has been eaten. This is notable because, even after leaving their surroundings as nothing but a timeless, spaceless, everything-less void, the Langoliers are still capable of going wherever they want.
So in conclusion, I'm proposing this:
"Speed: Infinite (Capable of moving within a past that has been frozen in time, as well as travelling within the void of nothingness left behind by their own consumption of time, space and reality within the past)"
What say everyone else?
That said, it occured to me that there are numerous reasons for why it isn't that simple, and why the Langoliers are in-fact much, much faster than Subsonic.
For starters, this happened in 'the past' of the reality the story takes place in. (Presumably the Keystone Reality due to time travel being impossible beyond a certain point, but I don't know if that was ever confirmed or not) The thing about this particular portion of Stephen King's mythos is, the world of the past is frozen in time and completely devoid of life. Smells, tastes and other sensations are almost nonexistent due to the world's complete lack of motion on a beyond-molecular level. Sounds are unable to echo, machines don't operate due to electricity being unable to flow, and even bullets fired from a gun fail to penetrate a person's skin at point-blank range due to said bullets carrying no force upon exiting the barrel. The past is, quite literally, a world that has stopped in its tracks.
The second thing I want to bring up is, both the protagonists themselves and the aforementioned passenger plane are exceptions to this whole 'frozen in time' thing. It's eventually explained in both the novel and the miniseries that, upon travelling through the time-rip that sent them into the past in the first place, the plane and its passengers had essentially 'brought their time with them' into the past. Because of this, the protagonists, the plane and the objects/substances brought into the plane were the only things that could move within the world of the past, as their own personal time was still in motion despite the surrounding time being frozen. (Yes, I know this is getting complicated, but bear with me here.)
The only other beings capable of moving within that frozen world are the Langoliers. In fact, the Langoliers not only move within this frozen past without need of the confusing time bullshit I mentioned above, but are also able to do so at 'speeds' far exceeding that of what a typical human is capable of.
Now for the last bit. Some people who haven't read or seen The Langoliers might think to themselves 'Well, what exactly gets left behind after the Langoliers eat the past?' The answer to that is: Literally nothing. No physical world, no time, no space, no reality whatsoever, and nothing that falls in-between. By the time they are done, every second of reality in the past has been eaten. This is notable because, even after leaving their surroundings as nothing but a timeless, spaceless, everything-less void, the Langoliers are still capable of going wherever they want.
So in conclusion, I'm proposing this:
"Speed: Infinite (Capable of moving within a past that has been frozen in time, as well as travelling within the void of nothingness left behind by their own consumption of time, space and reality within the past)"
What say everyone else?
