The Jaunt has been bugging me

I can't put an exact finger on it but Stephen King's The Jaunt has stuck a finger in my conscious and has stuck in there for the past week. I've read the story a couple of times and something about it doesn't sit right with me. Set in the twenty fourth century, a man named Mark Oates explains how the Jaunt came to be to his two kids. As they wait for the next trip to Mars, Mark details how the Jaunt was discovered and selectively skips the horrible experiments that were done to perfect the travel system. The Jaunt is a teleport system, like a jump from point A to point B through a doorway. The jump is preformed by sedating the passengers so they don't experience the long jump through eternity from one door to another. Of course, it wouldn't be Stephen King without a horrifying ending. After the tale, the family takes the jump only for Mark to discover that his son has held his breath causing him to experience the full Jaunt. 

It's not a bad story, in fact it's a breath of fresh air for King who usually focuses on the current timeline rather than scifi. So, what is it about this story that feels off? I think it might be the fact that Mark is telling the story. He's a buisnessman, not an engineer. As I was reading this story, I might have missed something but I kept thinking "how does Mark know all this stuff?" I've flown before and I know next to nothing about flying. Mark's knowledge seems out of place and more fit for a historian or a pilot. I'm not the only one who's had a problem with this story. I remember reading an exerpt by King recalling the scifi magazine he tried to get this story published in. The magazine rejected it which didn't seem to surprise him. I'm not sure if Mark's knowledge is the weak link in the story. In fact, if the story is written well enough, the plot holes don't seem to matter. This is true for any story. But this work in particular feels like an undercooked story that's missing something that I can't put my finger on. It might not be Mark's knowledge that is the Achille's heel of the story but it stands out as one of those stories that I can't put my finger on why it doesn't quite click. As for the adaptation of the story, just like most of King's works it has been put on the que by a few directors. I don't know how you extend a short story of this size but people seem eager to make this movie or TV series a reality. Maybe the story will click more on the screen than it will on the page.

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