This post was first published by Esquire, ten days after the disappearance of MH370 in March, 2014

The longer MH370 remains missing -- no wreckage (not yet, at least), no motive, nobody to blame, no Yellow King -- I find myself in the strange, morally compromising position of advocating for what we might as well call The Implausibly Talented (or Very Lucky) Hijacker Theory.

This is not my theory. This is not even a new theory. It's one among a glut. You could probably build an NCAA bracket seeded entirely with calamities. Right now, The Implausibly Talented (or Very Lucky) Hijacker Theory is my number one seed.

The hijacker theory is my number one seed because I want the passengers to be alive.

Which means I'm rooting for the villain.

And in the logic of this eerie, modern day Earhart Event, rooting for the villain is somehow a good thing.

Don't misinterpret what I'm arguing — I realize the hijacker(s), should he / they even exist, very probably murdered 239 passengers and crew. There's nothing good about that. I don't advocate that. That is nothing good.

But if you want the passengers to be alive, at this point, you have to accept that a hijacking is their only hope.

And once you consider that scenario, you're obliged to consider a whole cargo bay of uncomfortable possibilities.

Here's a tacit rhetorical assumption: Before ten days ago, few of us had ever heard of ACARS, even fewer of us primary or secondary radar, or Rolls Royce Trent 895 engines — all technical aspects of modern day travel, all humming in the ether of our airborne jauntings.

Nor had we heard of more complex concepts like VAMPI, or IGREX, or whatever the hell ADS-B is, unless you're a pilot, an anorak-level fan of piloting, or an acolyte of Chris Goodfellow's Google+ account and any number of the super niche airline blogs that've attracted the blinking mole eyes of our attention.

But you're invited to imagine a man who's intimately familiar with all those complexities.

A man (two men? A group?) who is not only fluent in the mechanics of flight and who flies 35,000 feet above the planet in a Boeing 777 200ER, but who can also disable ACARS. Power down transponders. Navigate waypoints. Shadow airplanes. Evade satellites. Silence smartphones. Manipulate an airline. Confuse governments.

You can try to imagine all that, but it's incredulity after incredulity. It's incredulities all the way down.

Then you're invited to wonder where in, I don't know, China's remote Ngari region maybe, this skyjacker may have landed, and whether he had something diabolical to do there besides apply sunscreen and count wild Bactrian camels.

Imagine all of that. The Implausibly Talented (or Very Lucky) Hijacker did something quite impressive, in the technical (not moral) sense of the term. He conned us. And he apparently did this complex and technical thing with what a con man has by appellative definition. He did it with confidence.

If you're given to further conjecture — because if you're hoping for the passengers to be alive, you've gotta conject — then you're led into further out-on-a-limb, fill-the-airtime cable news musings about who this terrorist could possibly be, and what his motives are.

And here's where it gets really weird: Because now, if you're proceeding from the good-hearted wish that you want the passengers to be alive, you've got to separate your respect for the hijacker's orienteering skills with your suspicion that he's a Very Bad Man. You've gotta hope (weirdly!) that The Implausibly Talented (or Very Lucky) Hijacker is actually a Misunderstood Man. Some kind of Bernoullian Boy Scout, forced into his actions by a corrupt government or a steeple-fingered terrorist.

What we want to believe, against all reason and decency, is that this hijacker has non-evil motives. The same way we wanted to believe in, say, John Cusack in The Grifters or Sawyer in Lost. Maybe this guy wanted to, what, like a white hat hacker, reveal the holes in our security infrastructure?

This is, of course, a very dangerous line of thinking. This is not a film by Stephen Frears. This is not, despite sharing an unsatisfying conclusion, an episode of J.J. Abrams' tropical misadventure. But because of the unreality of the situation, because of the paucity of facts, we're left with our own magical thinking. Our fictions are always more powerful than the reality. Our minds fill the void. Somewhere in Hollywood, a script is being green lit.

Meanwhile, in real life, I'm rooting for The Implausibly Talented (or Very Lucky) Hijacker. I want to believe there's a flying magician who, like David Copperfield disappearing the Statue of Liberty, has made a 777 vanish before our satellites' unblinking eyes.

I want to believe he's a mastermind, and I want the passengers to be found alive.