00:04:59: The PA announcement turns off and multiple things happen at once. Most of these, you miss. You are staring out of the window of the plane and watching the clouds pass by. This is your first time in the sky rather than under it and you can’t stop yourself from taking it all in. Also, your small fingers cannot seem to manage the bright oxygen mask that has dropped from the ceiling. The rest of the plane all seem to have theirs on already. You see people talking to themselves and others. You see your mother coming towards you to help you put on the mask. You feel hypnotized by the window. You remember learning about condensation and wonder if the water on your window was once air. You remember learning about evaporation and wonder if they have to make the air inside planes warmer so the plane rises. You’re not sure how planes work, if they work at all. You wonder if it could be magnets; if there were magnets inside the Earth, if a plane could push off the ground like the magnets you play with when you put the red ends together. You wonder if there are really strong wires installed in the sky that planes could run on, like the streetcars back in San Francisco. You wonder if it could be God, with a big hand reaching out of the sky. Your mother is helping you with the oxygen mask now. She’s fumbling with the straps too.
00:04:38: Alexa, look up, ‘how to survive a plane crash’. No, look up, ‘plane crash survival chances’. Cancel that, look up, ‘plane crash survival chances commercial flight’. Wait, sorry, back to the first one. That was, ‘how to survive a plane crash’. It won’t load? Oh, take off Airplane Mode.
00:03:20: 34C could have predicted this all along. This had to be his punishment for flying with this cheap airline. He promised himself he would bring the company down if he survived the crash. At least if he didn’t survive, he figured, having a plane crash on record would tank the airline’s reputation regardless. This was the hope. Throughout his life, 34C had felt his trust in even the most steadfast institutions peel back like layers of paint on rotting wood. He had lost his faith in human decency. Nowadays, there was no guarantee that his unfair and untimely death would be met with anything more than a shrug. The best he could hope for was the accident to turn into a scandal and wreck the company – if he believed in anything in this cruel, lonely world, it was the power of public humiliation. Unfettered, yes. Misguided, often. Informed, meh. Powerful, however, absolutely. 34C fantasized about the dramatic reports on the crash. He wouldn’t be surprised if they found indications of engine malfunction or other structural instability due to cheap materials. What a disappointment that would be, what a cherry on top, to have his life literally ended by corporate cheapskates and corruption that had been only figuratively draining society. Or maybe, it was the pilot’s fault. There was a miscommunication with ground control and the plane had accidentally left without the right amount of fuel, or they loaded up the wrong plane and this plane was actually about to be decommissioned. Or maybe, the navigational system that had led the plane astray. The entire situation could have been avoided by holding out against this reliance on technology that seemed to be gripping the developed world at its core. It just didn’t make sense to assume that a system built by flawed creators could ever be flawless. It just didn’t make sense to be promised such a big future if it was only ever going to fail. It just wasn’t right that society could come so far, from bloodletting to modern medicine, from dictatorship to democracy, and still die from cancers within. It wasn’t fair that humans could take to the skies and just as easily fall from them.
00:03:01: Miraculously, the plane was still in the air. 25A kept her head up to peer over the seats around her, claustrophobically fiddling with her collar. There was a growing energy twisting through her fellow passengers like a swarm of bees following the initial outcry, but 25A could barely muster a shriek. She sat still with her chin jutting out. She felt her stomach trying to claw its way up her throat, and imagined it blocking her airway. She swallowed reflectively and massaged her throat. She pressed the pads of her fingers into the hollows of her neck. The plane shuddered again and the noise peaked once more. She moved up to rub her temples. She was not hearing the noise anymore, but the noise was inside her. She wrapped her hands around her arms and moved them up and down on her prickled skin, giving herself a small hug. She ran her fingers through her hair and relished the sensation of smooth filament parting under her hand. She gripped her hair and pulled, then she wrung her hands. She pulled hard on each of her fingers, popping her knuckles one by one. Then it was her feet – she took off one shoe and pushed hard into the calloused flesh of her feet, allowing herself to close her eyes and trace the ministrations of her fingers over her own body. When she rolled her knuckles into the arch of her foot she felt the plane drop another five, ten feet, and the hard lump in her throat began to loosen. As her hair began to float around her head, she continued to press into that sensitive bundle muscle and tendon, and finally, from deep in her chest, taking all her air with it, the scream escaped.
00:02:02: Blackbird singing in the dead of night. Your mother is singing to you now. You’re both wearing the oxygen masks, so her voice sounds a little wonky. You know all the lyrics. Take these broken wings and learn to fly. This is a song you both know. She would sing this song in the car when she would drive you back and forth from school. Or it was playing on the radio. You’re not sure, the memory has faded into so many others. The voice on the radio is your mother’s now. All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise.
00:01:52: Hands clasped in prayer to God oh God good God clasped the way you learned to do it just the way you have always done it You have to have faith You learned to look up when you pray the pastor said to grow closer to God to pray to the heavens to look forward to look up Blue sky green trees you would feed crumbs to the birds at the church potlucks behind the church Your mother had faith Your mother Your mother would notice she would give you bread she would take your hand and take you back home She is buried behind the church Your knees hit the floor of your bedroom of the plane She is blonde and she is leading you away from the birds She is gray haired and she is leading you towards the worms You have to have faith You look up You look up You look up
00:01:30: And the first thing you do is think about your children. Rather, you think about the fact that you don’t have any children. It’s something you had tossed back and forth in the back of your mind, having children, but for so long adulthood was such a novelty in of itself that the idea of heaping more responsibility over the responsibilities of job, housing, health, and food was daunting. You weren’t opposed to it one day though – right time, right place, right person to have them with, and you figure you would have been a good mother. You’d cherish your children, if you had any. If you had children, you would compose a message to them now – and maybe you should, just to have something to leave behind. You immediately feel guilty for wasting precious time you could be spending trying to get a message to any of your friends or family who aren’t figments of your imagination. You imagine what your mother will think. You realize you can’t send a text to anyone you know, because you have no service on the plane, and the plane is crashing. You think about writing a physical letter, but you’re not sure a paper would survive the crash in your stead, and besides your hands are shaking too much to hold a pen. You figure a phone might, or at least if you write something digitally it might make it to the cloud – funnily enough, you’re hurtling through the clouds now, and you know you only have a few moments before you won’t be able to compose thoughts, let alone words. You open a new note on your phone and you’re immediately struck by how familiar the action is. You’ve written so many of your thoughts down this way when you were on the go and how you intended to come back to them some day. This note will be different though, it has to be. You can choose your last words, choose the lettering that they’ll be delivered with. You think about people reading your note, about people judging your last words – are they profound? Obvious? Authentic? Cliche? Do you have an addressee? Will your mother be offended if you don’t mention her? The more that you think about it, would it be rude to just not have a final message? Would people be disappointed if they found out you had the opportunity and used it to scream instead? If you’re not going to write some final words, shouldn’t you have spent this time making sure your fellow passengers’ masks were affixed properly, double checking where the emergency exits were? Will the survivors of the crash, if there are any, remember you as self obsessed? Would there be more survivors if you had spent the past few minutes helping the other passengers instead of holding yourself, crying? Would it be better if you were religious? Would you be better if you had children? Did you finish the thought?
00:01:15: The lyrics aren’t in order. The lyrics are not quite the lyrics. Your mother sings the song the way it repeats in her head, in your head. She’s holding you now. Take these broken wings and learn to fly. You were only waiting for this moment to arise. You were only waiting for this moment to arise. You were only waiting for this moment to be free.
00:00:59: There was never anything you could do. You needed to have done more when you had the chance. There’s nothing to do now. You’ve only ever done what you could. You don’t know anymore. You’ve always known what you were going to do.
00:00:18: You were only waiting for this moment to be free. You were only waiting-
00:00:15: Land spotted. Air ripping panels off the wings. Screeching metal, still in the sky. Blue sky. Blue water. Nosedive. Everything is one. Warmer, warmer. Hot. Goodbye.
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