by Toby Weston
HNL -> IAH:IAH -> CUN Flight AN767 21:40
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Keith was ready instantly to bin the message, wondering how this blatant spam had blasted through the industrial-strength filters he had put up to block the recent barrage of media and fanboy attention, but something snagged in his mind. Info screens, wrapping a three-metre-tall replica of Big Ben, were cycling through lewd marketing, passenger information, and departure times. He was looking as the flight times appeared again, and it was there: Honolulu to George Bush International, nine-forty. The gate would be announced in twenty minutes.
A holiday would be nice, he allowed himself to think. It would give him time to get his head together and decide what to do next. Yet, simultaneously, he was asking himself how hopeless his life had become that junk mail might hold the answer. He spawned his own MiniSage and allocated it a few fractions of a Coin before sending it off to check the certificates and do basic forensics.
Two empty glasses still sat on the table in front of him, with a screwed-up napkin and a shredded cardboard beer mat. He had ‘left’ the hospital sixteen days ago, wearing nothing but military asylum pyjamas. His worldly goods were utterly meagre and mostly in his backpack. At the hotel were some clothes and snorkelling gear; everything else was with him. Anyway, apart from his passport and some money, his only real possession of any value was attached securely to his ankle stump.
The Sage came back, green and smiling. Keith evaluated his options. The board flicked to the flights again. Still eighteen minutes. The waitress was busy, so he conjured up one of the restaurant’s avatars with his Spex. A ridiculous parody of a busty barmaid appeared from some fictional back room and bounced over. In a grotesque approximation of a cockney accent, she greeted him and dropped into a scripted sales patter. Keith couldn’t be bothered to listen; he only had seventeen minutes, so he interrupted and brusquely ordered a Chicken Kiev and another drink.
The Bloody Mary arrived, carried by a surly youth, who made a vague pretence at tidying away the crap that covered Keith’s table. Preoccupied, Keith pulled out the little umbrella from his drink and flicked it away across the debris-strewn table. The kid watched the drops of drink spray across the surface and the umbrella tumble onto the floor. He then shrugged, put the glasses back down, and dropped the handful of napkins and mat fragments. He also dropped his cloth and pointedly didn’t wipe up the new tomato splatter. Keith reminded himself to try and treat humans better.
Ignoring the finger actually squashing one of his French fries, he attempted a smile when the kid returned with his blackened orange lozenge a few minutes later. The gate was now up. The plane was boarding. Keith flicked the maimed chip off his plate. It landed in the little pool of red liquid.
A smartly dressed woman apologised and squeezed behind Keith’s chair, aiming for the free table next to him. She hesitated as she took in the mess of spilt drinks and miscellaneous detritus piled up in front of Keith. She looked around for an alternative, but the restaurant was full. Displaying unambiguous signs of revulsion, the lady slid into the seat and pulled out her Companion. Keith let his eyes linger. There was no danger of making eye contact. Her body language made it clear that he didn’t exist in her universe.
He cut into his Kiev, fork pressing into the crust and beginning to penetrate the chicken pressure hull. Inside, the cavity was filled with a mix of superheated molten garlic butter and compressed steam. In slow motion, the fork’s metal spikes broke the integrity of the Kiev capsule. Pressure dropped explosively as gas and liquid rushed out of the puncture. With the pressure drop, the remaining fluid was free to boil and generate more of the scolding pyroclastic aerosol of garlic butter.
Some small sound caused her to turn. The scruffy man was momentarily obscured by a mini explosion. He yelped and rocked back on his chair, attempting to escape the apparently very hot stream of something vile that issued from his nasty burnt tube of processed grease. A few small drops of garlic fat landed on her Companion, solidifying instantly on contact with the cool glass. She wiped the grease off with a tissue and went back to ignoring him, while she waited for her salad and tea.
“Fuck! Fuck! Shit!” then “Whoa, arrgg, FUCK!” shouted Keith as the butter, like the venom spat from a furious snake, penetrated his still closing eyes. The pain subsided momentarily and Keith found that, with his spasm of recoil, he had tipped his chair onto the cusp of a topple. He briefly made eye contact with the woman. Then, gravity seemed to cough politely and, despite a good attempt at a flailing recovery, the chair continued its arc and slow motion crash to the ground.
Swearing constantly, Keith disentangled himself from the chair and wiped with his hands at his greasy, burning face. The surly teenage waiter and half of the restaurant looked on with either horror or mirth. Many had devices pointed at him. He was probably already trending.
The Kiev was gone. At some point, during the previous few seconds of excitement, it must have rolled from the plate and joined him on the floor. He wanted to continue shouting obscenities, or at least berate the staff for their ridiculous lethal food, but he had already provided enough of a spectacle. He grabbed his stuff, slapped a five hundred note on the table, and turned to stride stoically out of shot—
Passengers streamed by on their way to the gates. They waved their Companions or virtual cards at him as they passed. The gate steward inspected each, his Spex adding metadata, giving him a second for each to reach his own conclusions, before passing on its expert system evaluation. It had been a long day. He let a small queue form as he allowed himself to be distracted by the hilarious slapstick routine playing out in the Big Ben bar.
—but the epic battle was not over. The wounded Kiev, still oozing its green speckled pus, lodged itself under Keith’s heel. Amply lubricated, the crusty pad slid across the ersatz wood and carried Keith to the ground once more.
To the surprise of the young couple pushing their sleeping infant and attempting to get his attention, the gate steward let out a spluttering chortle. He continued to ignore them while watching the limping, buttery bloke as he shambled forwards. The guy was a complete fuck-up, his face a dangerous crimson, as he staggered closer. He was making very poor progress. The man was clearly drunk. Then, in horror, the steward realised there was something else—the man’s foot was pointing the wrong way! The gate steward now contemplated the possibility that he was dealing with an outbreak of shambling zombiism. Whatever was up, this was way outside normal passenger behaviour. As the man approached, the steward reached his hand to his lapel to call additional security. The thing that was realistically, probably not a zombie, crossed the remaining ground and arrived emitting a garlicky smog. It fumbled with its Companion and looked desperately at the steward.
Keith was aware that people were stopping and watching his painful progress toward the departures arch, where a man in a flight attendant’s uniform stood prepping himself for what looked to be an inevitable showdown. Rubber foot flapping, they drew level. Keith waved what he hoped was a boarding pass and not a spam Trojan phishing lure. The certificate and encrypted data jumped visibly across to the steward’s Spex in the form of a black domino, surrounded by a swarm of churning metadata.
Blank confusion, followed by a slack-jawed stare of incredulity, registered on the steward’s face. He then took half a step backward.
“Enjoy your flight, Sir. And Sir, sorry, the other way. It’s the left-hand arch for First Class.”
Keith continued his shamble in slightly better spirits, promising himself that he would use the two weeks in Mexico to sort out his life.
Chapter 11 – Plane Sailing
Having taken time to twist his foot, so it is pointing in the right direction, Keith is hustling to the plane. His name had been called privately and politely via his Spex, then publicly and impatiently over the airport PA. The gate corridor is empty; everybody must already be on board. He curses and breaks into a jog. The corridor twists, and he sees the aircraft door is open, which is
a good sign. The stewardess is also still smiling as he boards. He apologises to her profusely.
“Not a problem at all, Mr Wilson. This way, please.”
He is shown to his First Class capsule cabin. On the way, Keith glances down the fuselage, past the curtain that separates the First Class Roomettes from rows of bulky Business Class seats. Further back, beyond a second curtain, more seats are packed even closer—knee room a cruel memory. Over the last few years, Keith has flown thousands of kilometres on a shaking roaring tiltrotor, so he has little pity for travellers in coach class. The flight seems to have a lot of empty seats.
The pod door is a feather membrane that he pushes through like a bead curtain. It seals itself after him; the beads seeking partners and magnetically binding. Discontinuities and flaws from the chaotic annealing process work themselves to the edges, or seek complementary pairs to cancel out. It is so fascinating to watch that Keith pushes his hand roughly through the curtain again, just to watch the process a second time.
He settles into his ‘seat’, which is a complicated piece of machinery so responsive and eager to please that, as it adjusts to his rump and moves beneath his trapezius, he drops momentarily into an unpleasant flashback of being back in his battlesuit.
Another stewardess arrives with drinks. The feather membrane parts automatically to let her lean through with a tray. Keith leaves the champagne and takes an orange juice.
‘Time to get straight,’ he thinks, looking out of the oversized window. He settles back and the plane begins to taxi.
A big, illuminated sign slides by on the airport terminal roof.
“Aloha,” he mumbles back to it. “What a week!”
Time to relax and get things sorted out in his head. On the plus side, he has earned significant reputation-credit with the Silicium Clan, and the anonymous Coins transferred to his wallet will keep him in medium-quality accommodation for a couple of months, at least. He is also famous. He winces and lets his Spex run the trending video of him flapping around on the restaurant floor like a wounded pigeon. Spam filters are straining as he is offered dozens of product placements and marketing gigs. The Mesh is loving his disarming combination of action hero and buffoon.
The plane picks up speed. Keith lets his eyes close and allows the rumbling acceleration to carry him back into the padding of his seat.
When he wakes, it is dark outside. Looking backwards out of the window, he watches the wing tip light blinking to itself. Distant thunderheads are illuminated from beneath with moonlight. As he surfaces back to wakefulness, he becomes aware that his bladder is signalling urgently that it requires relief.
Corridor lights are dimmed, but in the gloom he notices the many empty seats stepping off into the darkness. There don’t seem to be any stewardesses around, either. It’s all a bit spooky, dark and still against the dull roar of the engines. Way down at the back of the plane, there is light and movement. Keith ignores another toilet—curiosity beating the outraged petitions of his bladder—and continues towards the signs of life. He passes a stewardess coming the other way, pushing a trolley in the parallel lane. She is apparently serving oddly sized portions of something to the empty seats.
At the back of the plane, a number of passengers are incongruously getting changed in the aisle. They are standing around in sporty looking Lycra underwear, seemingly comfortable in their partial nudity. A big, muscular chap is handing out duty free bags from an overhead locker. The others take the bags and pull out the contents.
There is more action taking place in the aft galley. As the curtain twitches, Keith hears snippets of conversation as he approaches.
“…keep it tight and it won’t flap…”
“That should give you six minutes…”
When they notice him, they stop and turn, watching him silently as he closes the remaining few metres. They are all fit, in a lean functional way, but one particular rear profile strikes him as a fine model of a human being. She is familiar, but even as she turns towards him and their eyes meet, he can’t place her.
“Hi, Keith. I hope you are enjoying the flight.”
“Dee! Bloody hell, what are you doing here?”
“Same as you, I would imagine.”
“What?” Keith is befuddled. “You won a holiday? What, all of you?” He realises how implausible this sounds, even as he is suggesting it. “Why are you standing there in your pants?”
There is murmuring and chuckling from the others.
“A holiday, is that what you think? Then I probably have some bad news for you,” Dee says, looking genuinely troubled.
***
The stewardess has finished dealing out her packages and returns the trolley to the bulkhead. Various-sized bundles, wrapped in an eclectic mix of cloth napkins, now rest on many of the seats.
A pair of the black-clad figures are making their way towards the front of the plane. They are carrying multiple plastic spray bottles hung around their necks. Every couple of rows, one will stop, select a bottle, and spray a few squirts of the contents onto a seat or armrest. The fluid is a familiar dark red.
From the front of the plane, there is a shout and the others quickly sit down and strap themselves in. Keith looks at Dee, and she nods towards an empty seat across the aisle from her.
“What’s going on…” Keith starts to say, as two colossal concussions turn the tube of the plane into a massive, badly tuned musical instrument. For an indeterminate amount of time, they are shaken and tumbled. Keith is pulled around in his seat, straining against his seatbelt, while grabbing onto the headrest in front for dear life. The experience is similar to being in a violent and sadistic roller coaster, but without the intellectual assurance that it will all be okay.
The team had obviously been expecting something, because there is little unsecured debris flying around. Packages and ‘napkins’ have become separated. A severed arm is lying on Keith’s lap when the plane finally restores itself to level flight. He shrugs the arm away, and it slips to the floor, leaving a black shiny stain on his Kevlar and Lycra trousers. Although he has seen far worse over the years, he is still shaken by this sudden and intimate horror, also by the fact that the plane seems to be in a very steep dive and experiencing a worrying amount of turbulence. Some drastic and un-aerodynamic modification seems to have been brutally applied to the fuselage.
It is impossible to speak, so Dee takes Keith’s hand and leads him towards the front of the plane. She nudges him into a First Class pod. As the membrane curtain shuts behind them, the pod’s sonic insulation moderates some of the intolerable screech. They lounge awkwardly on the fully reclined bed/chair. The necessity of proximity forces Dee’s Lycra-coddled thigh to press against Keith’s suddenly hypersensitive leg. It is inappropriately intimate. Instincts and parasympathetic reflexes misjudge the situation and reroute circulation accordingly. A twinge against runkled fabric reminds Keith that he still badly needs to visit the lav.
Dee doesn’t seem to notice his discomfort; she seems to be counting off something in her head. She looks up a fraction of a second before another explosion arrives, with more horrific squealing of tortured metal. Keith’s ears pop uncomfortably, and the feather membrane bulges outward.
The King doesn’t believe in coincidences, Dee explains.
“He is also pretty serious about his Buddhism,” she continues.
Keith learnt that, to the King, the universe is a sea of karma, and it was inconceivable that Keith—a combat-hardened hero with real hands-on experience of WingSuit flying—arrived on the metaphorical radar at the same time the King was pulling the trigger on this mission years in the planning.
It was something more than chance; it was fate reaching down and touching their lives.
It was a sign.
The others get up and start doing lots of complicated things calmly and efficiently; there is no sense of panic. It is all quite surreal. Keith recognises the practised automatic movements that come from hours of training.
; The sound steps down through a succession of screaming harmonics; octaves of noise arrive, first as a screeching whine that makes the eyes hurt, before leaving the sensorium at the other end of the audio spectrum as a pounding felt through chest and feet, rather than heard with the ears.
Keith had protested to Dee. He didn’t like the idea of becoming a mascot and had refused to have anything to do with whatever it was they were suggesting. Dee had then apologetically informed Keith that options were limited. Unfortunately, the plane had recently flown through a flock of migrating birds. DNA analysis would later identify them as Canada Geese. She elaborated this fact as if there was any chance he was interested. The birds had passed through both port engines, doing terrible damage on the way. Unable to safely shut down the engines, one turbine would explode, piercing the cabin. The plane would descend in an attempt to survive the rapid depressurisation. It would limp on in a desperate attempt to land, but begin to lose integrity, eventually crashing into a nondescript concrete and glass building, somewhere in the under-populated Texas interior.