“Feel free to move about the cabin.”
Take note: The cockpit door is locked from the inside, for your protection.
Cruising for hours at 38,000 feet, your butt is numb, your mouth and eyes dry, and peanut dust litters your Levis.
The sign is off so you unstrap to stretch legs and empty a overstretched bladder. On your way forward you notice the cabin crew huddled near the forward galley in whispered fellowship.
They notice you moving toward them. Eyes avert and the whispering stops. The hiss of turbines and overhead air vents fills the void.
You step over 7C’s long, protruding leg and note his gentle snoring. He is young and unaware. Student? Basketball player?
As you reach the vacant lavatory, the cabin crew transitions to service mode in a choreography of carts and trays and coffee urns.
And more peanuts.
Business done, you step out of the head and into the aisle, pausing for a discrete zipper audit (good to go).
You glance back toward your seat and notice 7C, leg still sprawled across the aisle, still asleep, still snoring.
The cabin crew have disappeared.
You turn your gaze forward and immediately notice: The door to the plane’s flight deck is ajar, moving ever so slightly in response to gentle turbulence.
More turbine noise and air jets. But no cabin crew in sight.
Curiosity gets the best of you and—9/11 notwithstanding—you creep forward for a peek. You reach the cockpit threshold undetected and nudge the door open another inch.
Alarmed and unselfconscious, you fling the door open, stagger into the inner sanctum and stop, paralyzed with fear.
The cockpit is empty!
In less than a New York minute you fly back down the aisle and into the main cabin. 7C awakens mid snore, startled, his shin aching.
“ANY QUALIFIED PILOTS ONBOARD?” you scream.
Looking wildly at a sea of frozen faces, you’re met with the unqualified stares of the totally screwed.
At that moment—as if to signal your corporate doom—the oxygen masks above each seat drop unexpectedly. Within seconds the plane lurches into a steep dive.
As you tumble into the aisle you finally realize just how screwed you are.
The next day, news of the tragic demise of American flight 248 is overshadowed by an emerging story with eerie parallels.
One headline blares:
AMERICA WITHOUT A PRESIDENT!
Hardly news, but certainly underreported.
One third of the trilateral governmental apparatus of the United States of America is missing in action (inaction?).
The Republic for which we stood no longer stands. The oxygen masks have dropped and Lady Liberty is in a downward spiral, completely helpless.
In her final fleeting moments, as the ground races up to meet her, Liberty closes her eyes.
In the days ahead, the screaming starts.