She met Yuto by chance and was quickly drawn to his philosophy of life as he was to hers. They tormented their parents when they split from their families to escape them. On top of everything, they told their parents they had married just to plunge the final dagger of hate into their hearts because they both had been told all their lives never to marry outside their ethnic walls. This one action made them love each other more and more, and they both told each other they would rather die than be separated.
They both left their pasts behind them, flew to America to see the sights they had only seen on videos and movies, and, as a surprise, Yuto arranged a trip to Argentina for both of them on Air USA Flight 2222.
~~ ~~ ~~
Irving Kaplan was indeed in the Israeli army and was a member of the Special Forces, Shayetet 13; however, his life before joining was nothing like the other eight passengers. His childhood was happy, comfortable, and surrounded by a loving mother and father and multiple siblings. They all spent time together, each loving every minute of it. Even when the children became teenagers, ready to explore life and rebel a little against authority, they didn’t. They were not afraid to do so, but the happiness of their lives and the satisfying wellness they all felt was the adhesive that bonded them.
Nothing personified his family more than his thirteenth year of life and his Bar Mitzvah. As a Jew, a boy becomes a man at this age. He is ethically and morally responsible for his actions and decisions. Most people think the bar mitzvah is the celebration after his ceremony, and it has become such, but, in actuality, at the age of thirteen, the boy becomes a bar mitzvah. Irving often remembered this time reverently and how proud his parents and entire family were that day.
At the age of eighteen, it had been decreed by the Israeli Defense Service Law that all Israelis were conscripted into the army at this age through to their twenty-sixth year, for thirty-six months, except women, who are required to do so for twenty-four months. Irving felt a great patriotic duty to join despite the mandate; however, his training caused him to change from a loving boy with family and friends to a man who was preoccupied with being the best of the best. He threw himself into his training programs much more than the average soldier and succeeded in everything he did.
Unfortunately, his obsession became derailed slowly to the point where strategizing to attack, defend, maim, and kill were consuming his attention daily. When, finally, he was in combat, he found the actions of shooting to kill or hand-to-hand fighting were primary instinctive actions, and his superior officers were watching. His decision-making was poor. He never disregarded orders or avoided doing what he was told, but his commanders often overlooked his promotions based on his being a ‘loose cannon’ at times.
As a result, his desire to become the best and exceed the expectations of his superiors were deflated, and he became more secluded as an individual, a comrade, and a soldier. Despite his absolute unbelievable physical abilities, he was discharged honorably before his thirty-six-month tour. This left him mentally and physically drained, and he grew even more withdrawn. His family knew something was wrong immediately and sought help for him, but he refused at first. His defiance was expected, but the family continued to slowly but surely support him and create avenues of employment that gave him better chances to select roads to recovery.
His family even paid for him to go to America where there were relatives Irving knew. They thought leaving Israel would be good for him, although they were, at times, despondent in their decision. As a result, he improved, but always, in the back of his mind, he longed for his military life with a free rein to kill and add misery to others who defied him.
Although Irving had been dropped from the Israeli army, he still had some people who thought he had been poorly treated and did not deserve his discharge. As it would be, he had kept in communication with some of them for several years after his release and while in the USA. He was contacted by one of them who had been approached secretly by some leaders of another country’s Special Forces. They specifically needed a hard-nosed, well-trained, experienced and patriotic individual who could take charge of a new specialized unit of their special forces. They were looking for someone with a capacity to quickly prepare and execute complex, tactical, commando operations. His contact gave them his name, and soon he was in communication with the Argentinian Commando Company of their Special Operations Forces Group.
Irving spent some time preparing for this opportunity to regain his life of excitement, killing others, a place where he felt he belonged. Although he felt a bit rushed, he made reservations on Air USA Flight 2222.
~~ ~~ ~~
Helen’s life has been pretty well laid out for you, but Helen had a secret, too. Sure, she was mean to her mother-in-law and her husband. What you don’t know is Helen meant to be mean. She always knew Maria was sick. It wasn’t a surprise. She always felt she was an outcast even when dating Rick. In actuality, she was somewhat liked by his family at first, but her paranoia made her believe she was an outcast.
You see, Helen was bipolar, on medications, in therapy, and her doctors could never find the right dosages to keep her thoughts and actions under control. What they didn’t understand was that she liked the fact that she had these ups and downs. They excited her beyond what anyone could imagine, and she never ever told anyone, medical professional or her family, how much of a thrill she had being out of control.
This was the reason why her medications wouldn’t work. She purposely would not take them in order to obtain that overwhelming and indescribable sensation she got when off them. She hated the lows, but they were not as frequent as her highs. The insomnia, loss of energy and concentration were awful, but she was thankful they were not very often. Her highs were more euphoric with plenty of energy. Her impulsive sexual relationships led her to risky places and some despicable people. She had to learn to deal with them by elevating her mood to include combativeness and physical abuse.
Unlike others with bipolar disorder, she could control some of her actions, and she brought herself down using her medications. She was so adroit at hiding this ability, no one was ever aware of it, even her therapist or friends. When on her high, she harassed anyone, but Maria was her favorite target. It was as if she wanted her to become sick because of her, not her disease. She really was devilish to the point of evil and manipulated people so well, they thought her to be just a stronger, slightly overbearing woman.
During her treatment programs, she met other bipolar people and took those times to learn how they acted and what they did to make other people miserable. She incorporated these into her thoughts, modified them, and created ingenious ways to design her own schemes. For instance, being unaffected by poison ivy, she deliberately rubbed it over her breasts and between her legs before one of her sex sessions, just to torment her partner and enjoy his misery the next day. This was what she did for pleasure; however, she never admitted to herself that she was a purposely hateful human being. She always denied this and chalked it all up to her illness.
After her divorce, she wallowed in self-pity and couldn’t wait for something in her life to occur so she could gloat over her mother-in-law and her family. Maria’s death was just the moment. She let everyone know she was going to Argentina to reveal her ‘remorse’, hoping Rick’s family would hear about it and be ready for her repentant arrival, but she wasn’t going to do this at all. She was purposely going to stop her medications while there and become the best witch she could be and hopefully ruin the entire funeral and reception afterward. Revenge would be sweet for her, at last.
Hence, Helen was chosen to be a passenger on Air USA Flight 2222.
~~ ~~ ~~
Last, and certainly not least, is Frank Mason. He wasn’t the total man portrayed in this story. Yes, everything about him, his life, his wife, and his profession are true, but his past was full of malignant behavior. He was obsessed with success. He longed for enormous achievements in everything he did, and he went to great lengths to get them. He
was highly intelligent, for sure, but used it all to implement deceitful methods to get what he wanted. It made no difference how badly the lives he destroyed or the methods he used, just as long as his superiors never found out and those affected never knew he was their nemesis.
This was an acquired characteristic. He had done so as a child, a teenager, and a young adult in college. Whether it was being the elementary school’s best in class, an officer of the student council, or the president of his college class, he manipulated people and pitted them one against another, causing argumentative meetings over the smallest of issues or clandestinely initiating fisticuffs between participants in club activities. He had devised some malicious plans to disrupt someone or groups of people from succeeding at something he felt would benefit his desired aim in life.
Even Kate had no idea of his purposeful improprieties. She was completely unaware of how deceitful he could be. There was a very good reason for this. He was never that way around her. He had succeeded in diverting his mean disposition from those who gave him comfort from his personal wretchedness. He found it difficult in the beginning, but as he grew up, it became easier and easier to the point when it had become second nature to him.
So, you can now see why he was the one chosen to go to Argentina for his company. He had succeeded in destroying his opposition—even if they were a better choice for the job—and pulled the wool over the eyes of the partners. By all accounts, Frank Mason spent his entire life as a fake.
It is on these grounds that Frank was the number one passenger conscripted to be on Air USA Flight 2222.
Afterword
One of the many morals of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone was always live a good life because if you don’t or won’t, you will end up regretting it and paying dearly for it. Nine characters, either through their past experiences or because they were left to their own devices earlier in life, have now found themselves forever regretting and paying for the deeds of their pasts.
The punishment, if you will, was chosen by all of the people whose lives they purposely destroyed. Those trashed desires and dreams have created the nine survivors’ repetitive nightmare: the crash signifying the destruction of those lives; the raft as their chosen inner isolation in life; death as life’s ultimate finality; sharks conveying hunger for power and fearmongering; cannibalism as a primitive, unabashed aggression; the paucity of drinking water representing the little goodness in their lives; the flying fish proclaiming a brief respite from the ravages of despair; the pirates decimating their heightened hopes; the interminable time on the ocean representing the infinite period they will spend in their common dream; and the ultimate rescue covertly initiating the same recurring nightmare.
Nine people lived a life of deceit, manipulation, physical and mental abuse, or revenge, and, as a result, have earned the dire consequence of Sisyphus but much more deeply devastating, as each one repetitively survives a vortex of misery and false hope within the same dream while traveling to Hell and back with eight equally wicked people.
The Mystery of Flight 2222 Page 18