Trip to Arizona

   I don't notice anything strange when we land in DFW--but then again, it's DFW. With 150,000 travelers per day running to meet people, avoid meeting people, pick up luggage, or catch another plane, strange things are normal. When we get on the plane, though, it's hard not to notice the monster-sized guy in urban camo. He's so broad he has to turn sideways and shuffle back to our row, so tall that if he had hair, it would be brushing the ceiling. Over his shoulder is a duffel bag that's big enough to hold a couple of teenage girls, but when he stuffs it into the overhead compartment, I see gun muzzles. I don't recognize then at first, because this gun is not some dinky little pistol; we're talking about a weapon that would be suitable for knocking over a rabid tyrannosaurus,  and then polishing off a horde of zombies as an afterthought. The main barrel has a bore suitable for firing hypervelocity golf balls, with a 40mm grenade barrel above and a dinky twelve-gauge barrel slung below, where it can nurse an inferiority complex.
  Once he gets settled in across the aisle, I catch his eye. "Mind if I ask what you do?"
  "I'm an accountant."

 

Trip to Arizona

    I board the plane and get row 24 seat B. The girl next to the window is wearing a black tee shirt, black camisole, black jacket, black culottes, and pink high top tennis shoes. She has piercings in eyebrow, nose, lip, and four in her ear. Her hair is probably genuine ash blonde, with stripes dyed black. I'd say she looks like a goth, except her attitude is more of a particularly fearful mouse. When I say "Hello," she bobs her head but doesn't look up, doesn't make eye contact, doesn't say anything in reply. She spends the entire flight staring at the lower edge of the seatback tray.
    The man to my right has a cafe au lait complexion, dreads halfway down his back, sunglasses, pinstriped suit pants and a tangerine business shirt with French cuffs. He looks interesting, but he's asleep before the stewardess gets up for the safety briefing. It's the standard briefing, no humor, no razzle dazzle, which is understandable because it's 5:42am. I ignore it.
    The plane lumbers to the runway, thinks longingly about coffee or whatever planes think about, and then rolls forward and lifts off. We--including my irradiated and ionized self--go up into the four dimensional curved space matrix maze of interlocking flight paths. When we come down, it may be that I'm not on quite the same world line that I started on.

Trip to Arizona

  I'm the first one to go through the line this morning, and the Irradiator hasn't warmed up yet. I step through the gate, and my eyes flash violet, my teeth buzz, the hairs on my left forearm stand up, my prostate tingles, and my toenails flex. Aside from that, everything appears normal.
   The TSA supervisor mutters something to his minion about adjusting the machine. The minion sighs heavily, in a dramatic manner intended to convey, without quite crossing into insubordination, that he is the most underpaid, over-supervised, under-appreciated minion of all time. Given that the supervisor has not said "And this is the price of failure", nor cackled evilly, nor torn the minion's heart out, I'm not believing it. Although it is, admittedly, early in the morning; perhaps the evil supervisor just needs to get warmed up. The minion jabs at the control panel and beckons at the next person in the queue. I sit down where I'll have a view of the gate, as I put my shoes, belt, wallet, keys, pen, phone, laptop, coins, and other artifacts back into place.
   The next one is a weightlifter with an artificially blond mullet and Fu Manchu mustache, yellow muscle shirt and purple-and-black leopard spotted pants. He glowers sullenly at the minion, and steps into the gate. He doesn't step out; rather, after a brief indigo flash and a crackle of static electricity he, or his remaining soot, drift gently to the floor. I envision the dozen people coming through and getting soot on the soles of their pantyhose, socks, and feet, leaving trails of sooty footprints which lead to the jetway gates before fading out.