In our movie, Something Bad happens. Then the Veteran Reporter, using only his brilliant Reporter’s Instinct, puzzles out that the Bad Thing happened as the result of a plot between a Government Official and an Evil Contractor working for the Military-Industrial Complex. The remainder of the movie involves the Veteran Reporter simultaneously attempting to Expose the Plot while avoiding death at the hands of agents of the Evil Contractor.

The Veteran Reporter is assisted by a smart-mouthed Female Colleague, played by a rising young starlet who, after winning the Golden Globe but not the Oscar, will reveal to the world that she is a lesbian. At the beginning of the movie, the Veteran Reporter and his Female Colleague do not respect each other. They engage in sarcastically witty repartee, and call each other by their last names. But in the third reel, after Narrowly Avoiding Death, the Veteran Reporter and his Female Colleague jump into bed and engage in the Best Sex of their lives. The next morning, as the Veteran Reporter is standing beside the bed getting dressed, his Female Colleague sees a round scar on his back, the result of a gunshot wound the Veteran Reporter received years earlier while Covering a Story in Africa. His Female Colleague, realizing the depth of the Veteran Reporter’s commitment to journalism, falls deeply in love with the Veteran Reporter.

I am about to tell you, based only on my brilliant Reporter’s Instinct, what really happened to MH370…

MH370 was transporting something that was not listed on the cargo manifest. In our movie, the mysterious cargo will be a load of weapons bound for Guerilla Mercenaries hired by the Evil Contractor to drive the Noble Natives from remote oil-rich areas coveted by Big Oil. In reality, the undocumented cargo was something innocuous: a load of cell phone parts or a load of parts used in laptop AC/DC adaptors. The parts were manufactured in Malaysia and were being shipped to China for final assembly into some consumer-bound electronic product. They were not listed on the manifest for the simple reason that the manufacturer, whose main investor has a brother-in-law or cousin in the upper reaches of the Malaysian government, wanted to save a couple of ringgint by avoiding customs tariffs. A few minor favors and “facilitating payments” passed around here and there, and his company is able to slip the parts into the cargo hold of MH370.

A short time after the plane left Malaysian airspace, a flash fire broke out in the cargo hold. The fire’s origin may have been related to the illicit shipment, or the presence of the electronics parts may have been an unfortunate coincidence. And any rate, combustion of the parts released poisonous gases that incapacitated the crew almost instantaneously. The fire then extinguished itself through lack of oxygen.

Realizing he was losing consciousness, either the pilot or copilot attempted to program the plane’s autopilot for a return to KL or diversion to another airport. There was not time to send an emergency call, and many of the plane’s vital communication systems may have been destroyed or disabled by the fire. The pilot or copilot knew that sending a pilotless plane in the direction of an airport was a futile gesture, but it was the best he could manage under the circumstances. He was able to enter and program only a couple of waypoints before passing out.

At some point after passing the final programmed waypoint, the plane’s flight path began oscillating in a huge sine wave of ever-increasing amplitude. The oscillation was due to a combination of natural and mechanical forces that this Veteran Reporter does not fully understand. But at higher altitudes, the plane would lose airspeed and begin to descend. At lower altitudes, the airspeed would increase and the plane would climb. The oscillations magnified over time until the plane’s descent path brought it into contact with the Indian Ocean.

And this is why the plane has not been found: authorities are working on the assumption that the plane flew on until it ran out of fuel. They have not correctly compensated for the oscillating flight path. The plane actually hit the water well before it ran out of fuel. It is significantly north of the targeted search area.

And that is what really happened to MH370.

When these events, and my role in solving the mystery, are made into a movie (working title: “The Raccoon”), I want the Veteran Reporter to be played by Jared Leto, who my ex-girlfriend, based on her Twitter feed, seems to think is pretty hot. I don’t care who plays his Female Colleague as long as she Takes Her Top Off long enough to get the film an R-Rating.