Super Born: Seduction of Being Page 5

  There was a crashing sound and a female voice from the other room. Jones glanced at the bedroom door and then turned nervously back to me. “Well, research calls, my friend…just checking to see if that’s her, you see.”

  “And how’s that going for ya? Was she born January eighteenth?” I joked.

  “No, no, no, my friend, I don’t believe so. But if you will excuse me,” said Jones seeming embarrassed and made edgy by my discovery of the ‘research’ he was doing in his bedroom. He turned away and then turned back to me. “You will be needing some funding by now, I am guessing.” He opened a drawer, pulled out a stack of bills with a wrapper that read $5,000, and tossed it to me.

  I caught it and felt its comforting crunch in my hand. Just what the doctor ordered, I thought, trying to contain the smile I felt inside.

  Then it hit me. All these strong, beautiful women want him? What am I, chopped bologna?

  “You can let yourself out.” Jones walked toward the bedroom mumbling, “Research, lots of research.”

  Again, I beat feet. It was beginning to become a habit.

  * * *

  The next day, I halfheartedly began work on the assignment Jones had given me. After all, there was nothing for me to do until she surfaced again, so I might as well keep busy with this. As it ended up, the information was mostly online, so assembling the list of births was easy. Of the nine thousand and some births that year in Scranton, only thirty-two were on January 18. Surprisingly, thirty-one of them were female, and twenty-seven of them were born during the Super Bowl. Those percentages defied all statistical logic; there should have been one or two more boys than girls born, and they should have been more spread out throughout the day. It all struck me as stange.

  Where the work became difficult was following what happened to these thirty-one women after that. With name changes from marriage, divorce, remarriage, death, movement around the country, unlisted phones, and phones in others’ names, it became hard to follow, and I often lost the trail. With only pizza and beer as my assistants, I continued diligently all day and into the night (not really, but you get the idea).

  Little did I know that while I toiled that night over a hot laptop, events were already in motion elsewhere in Scranton.

  When I reached Jones’s place, I soon found out why he hadn’t been concerned about my meeting with Lowe. He was a wreck, obviously not having cleaned up or changed his clothes in days.

  As I joined him at his desk, Jones quickly folded up some blueprints and circuitry drawings, slipped them in his desk. Chapter 4

  Miracle of Flight 118 (My Ass)

  When I first saw the jet climbing up to join me in the sky, it felt like a friend come to join my fun in the frigid night air. I closed in, thinking that maybe we could race into the clouds together. It was pretty to watch, with its flashing lights, but too slow to keep up with me. I stopped and watched it pass. As I watched its lights drift away in the night, I could sense the one hundred hearts beating inside and it made me feel connected to them.

  As I later learned from watching the news reports, at the very instant I watched it glide by, there was trouble in the left engine of the two-engine jet, when dozens of turbine blades approached two thousand degrees after eighty-seven seconds of full throttle flight. One shattered from the strain and a domino effect broke blade after blade, until the engine exploded, sending thousands of daggers of two thousand-degree alloy through the engine cowling and into the wing and fuselage, cutting through flight controls and electrical circuits, shredding the tail. With the sudden drop of power on the left and the continuance of full power on the right, the plane twisted, and the right wing rose. The turbulence made the right engine stall and flame out, causing the plane to nose down to the left.

  That was when I saw the orange ball engulf the left engine and the poor thing almost rolled over on its side.

  My heart stopped for a second when I thought of all those people on board, imagining what they must be feeling as they began to fall. Imagine was all I could do while watching it actually happen from the outside. It wasn’t until later when I read the flight transcripts and watched the news reports that I developed a full picture of what really happened inside the plane.

  Inside the cockpit, the alarm bells sounded as the pilots feverishly tried to figure out what had happened. With no power and some of the flight surface controls not responding, they had little control over the plane. They contacted the tower, declaring an emergency, and fought to restart the right engine. There were routines they had learned during their training for the loss of one engine, two engines, or flight controls, but with none working, they had few options. They needed to restart the right engine; the left was obviously gone.

  Flight attendants told of what they saw and said as their training clicked on and they instructed the passengers to assume a “safe” crash position, while one tried to reach the captain for instructions.

  Most telling for me were the stories of the passengers themselves. Their stories moved me to tears. In the back of the plane, a young mother sat between her seven-year-old daughter and six year-old son. She pulled her children to her, unable to answer their repeated pleas: “What’s going on, Mommy?”

  A young college student and his girlfriend sat in the front right of the plane. The girl clutched the young man’s arm and sobbed. When interviewed, the young man talked about his sense of the “immortality of youth” beginning to fall away at that moment; how his sense of life changed forever.

  A stewardess told how she struggled to hang on to the overhead and angle her body against the tilt in the plane while she tried to help a young mother strap her newborn into the car seat carrier beside her. “What’s going on?” the mother asked, without answer.

  Meanwhile, in the cabin, the captain fought the controls, while the copilot went through the restart sequence on the right engine. Ahead of them in the darkness, darker than the sky around it, loomed the peak of North Mountain.

  The events in the cockpit were amazing to read about and the interviews with the pilots brought home the terror happening inside the plane. The pilot said he knew that if he had enough power, he could do just about anything with a jet. He spoke of having flown at the speed of sound down desert canyons when he was in the Air Force and never breaking a sweat. He was also confident they could start the right engine, if they had the time.

  “Nick! I need that engine, now!” he shouted to the copilot. But looking at the switches he had set and those that were yet to go before he could try the engine, the pilot said he knew that they didn’t have the time. He looked at North Mountain’s rapid approach and settled back in his seat. “Nick!”

  “Just a minute, Skipper, I’m almost ready,” answered the copilot, committed to his work.

  The captain said that he glanced up to see North Mountain’s approach and it triggered his thoughts. Although his hands and feet never faltered or left the controls, he said his mind began to race. He spoke of having lost both his parents in rapid succession two years before—the only family he had left was his wife and their two sons, who were already young men. His thoughts turned to them in the best of times: his wife’s smiling, laughing face, his sons as young boys, and their faces full of joy upon the arrival of “Max,” the family dog.

  Then he took another look at the face of North Mountain—it filled his windshield, only seconds away—and then felt himself reaching for his parents’ welcoming arms.

  I remember approaching the plane, not knowing if I could handle it. Not knowing if I would be helping the people inside or merely end up being a useless, close-up witness to their deaths. But when the plane responded to my will…it was amazing.

  It was at that moment that the pilot said he felt the nose of the plane rise as North Mountain disappeared beneath him. Then he felt the plane bank gently to the left, circling back to the airport, its airspeed increasing. The two pilots both said they looked at each other in disbelief. Both engines showed zero thrust, zero rp
ms. The alarms still rang. Their steering yokes turned by themselves. They both agreed that for those used to being in control of tons of metal and hundreds of lives, it was a baffling, disconcerting experience.

  The copilot tried to turn the wheel, only to find it violently push back. He continued to try to restart the engine, even as the plane flew under my control. He explained that their training was based on science, and he knew of no other way to function.

  The passengers cared not about the how or why. All they knew was that the jet was level and seemingly back in control. They all remembered cheering, crying, or hugging one another.

  The woman in the back with two children said she pulled them close and sobbed uncontrollably. Her daughter asked, “Why are you crying, Mommy?”

  The young college student remembered his girlfriend burying her head in his chest while he sat upright, staring forward, with tears watering in his eyes.

  In the cockpit, the captain said he was the first to let go of the controls, becoming aware that something out of the ordinary was at work. The radio crackled in his ear. The voice of the controller remained calm and professional, but in the background, the pilot could hear cheers. “Way to go 118, we copy you level and on return course vector. We have you cleared for landing on runway one-niner west. Over.”

  “Copy that, one-niner, over.” The pilot answered without knowing how he could comply. He didn’t know right then how to tell them the truth of what was happening.

  “Whole lotta people down here are waiting to buy you a beer, 118. Over.”

  “Take you up on that, control. Over.”

  By then, the copilot was unable to control himself. “Jim, what the hell is going on? How do we land this thing?”

  The pilot said he just shook his head slowly. “You tell me. All I know is that we’re not in pieces on that mountain; we’re slowly losing altitude on a perfect approach to the airport. I’m not flying. You’re not flying. We have no engines, yet we’re still here. What controls do we have that are working? If I try to turn the controls to bank right and level out the plane, it fights you back to keep banking left and go where it wants.”

  “It?” said the copilot perplexed.

  “Look at our airspeed. In theory, this plane can’t be still in the air at this slow speed, but we are!”

  It was then the radio crackled again. “One eighteen, we track you now off approach vector for one-niner. Are you able to make one-niner, over?” asked the tower.

  “One moment, control,” was all the pilot could think to answer.

  I continued carrying the plane through a slow, controlled descent, but now was passing over the runway toward the terminal. The pilots were clearly trying to make heads or tails of their situation—I knocked on the pilot’s side window, then my head appeared. It was the head of a woman wearing a black mask, with a rat’s nest of blond hair blowing and tangling in the winds outside the cabin. If the pilot had not been belted in, I’ll bet he would have jumped into the copilot’s lap with surprise.

  I tried to mouth a request to the pilot. The pilot’s confused look told me that he could not understand what I wanted, and feared me more than he was trying to understand me. The copilot had a blank, first-year-of-calculus look on his face and was still trying to cling to logic.

  “Is that a passenger?” he asked, before short-circuiting. He was reduced to SSS, slurred single syllables, for the rest of the flight.

  I gestured, with my fingers starting out horizontal and then tipping down slowly to vertical. I did it over and over again, but he didn’t understand me. What did he think, I could hold on to his heavy jet with two fingers forever?

  “She wants me to drop the landing gear! Christ, what kind of pilots are we? Drop the gear! Prepare for landing!” And then finally he gave me an okay gesture and a smile. I responded with thumbs up, and labored to climb back down the fuselage.

  The radio crackled frantically. “One eighteen, apply power and climb immediately! One eighteen, do you copy? Pull up! Pull up!”

  The pilot sat smiling, and then turned off all the alarms and began the checklist for landing. The copilot was still frantically trying to restart the engine when the pilot reached over and pulled his hands away from the controls. “It’s okay, Nick, just let go. Prepare for landing.” Nick gave the pilot a wary look from short-circuited eyes, then began preparing to shut the plane down.

  Within thirty seconds, the plane had stopped its forward motion and begun a short descent, as if it were a helicopter. I set it down gently just outside the gate.

  I read that the captain then unbuckled and leapt to the window where I had been. The copilot sat SSS-ing. Half of the passenger cabin leapt to their collective feet and began cheering. The other half remained in shock.

  An RFD with two flash wands stood for twenty minutes waving the plane into the gate before realizing that the plane wasn’t moving. Several other RFDs claimed to have seen a flash in black run out from under the plane after it landed, but who believes them?

  * * *

  I hid in the shadows on the concourse roof overlooking the jet way where I had landed Flight 118, all the while rubbing and stretching my sore arms and shoulders. They had been in an awkward position to keep that seventy-thousand-pound jet stable, and the idiots in the cockpit constantly trying to change course and start the second engine hadn’t been any help. It burned especially between my shoulder blades, where the fuselage had rested.

  I watched until all the passengers had left the plane—no one required assistance and no one was injured. I smiled with satisfaction when, finally, the flight crew walked out. Everyone looked good except the copilot, who didn’t look like he was ready to party any time soon.

  The airline and Federal Aviation Administration people began inspecting the mangled wing, engine, and tail section, which was shredded with holes. I let out a small laugh as I watched the officials rush onto the plane to retrieve the black box recorders. I could imagine the readings and cockpit voice recordings they would find.

  With my job done, I got ready to leave. I caught the image of my reflection in a window and saw the tangled mess of my hair. “Crap.” Then I was gone.

  * * *

  When I got home to my apartment, the adrenaline from the high-speed challenge of saving flight 118 was coursing through my veins. The sheer joy of what I had done—saving all of those lives, seeing the passengers walking, smiling, breathing, seeing children safe in their mothers’ arms—made me want to laugh and dance, spin mindlessly.

  What a high I was feeling. Maybe all that was just a day’s work for a superhero, but I was new at this, and for me, this was a remarkable feeling. I just wanted to share it with the world, let everyone know there was hope. No one was alone anymore. They didn’t need to fear the random acts of man. I could even help them defy fate itself.

  I was still giddy and gleeful when I ditched my mask and cape in my car and headed through the front door. But there Paige awaited me, not smiling.

  “Mom,” she said. “I know you weren’t at work. I called there, like, a dozen times and they said you left at five!”

  Immediately, glee was a faded memory. I crashed into reality, the way Flight 118 would have hit North Mountain if I hadn’t intervened. There was no way to share my triumph with her, and it hurt. I stopped and pointed my palm at Paige. “Honey, I don’t wanna hear this right now,” I said.

  “Where were you? Did you even think about answering your calls or texts? What if something happened and I needed to get in touch with you? Who’d have saved me from some creepy dude attacking me and Kelly at the mall or something?” she said.

  The thought hit me like a suker punch. I hadn’t been there for her because I was there for the 137 people on flight 118. Who was my priority and who was my real responsibility? For years, protecting Paige had been my only purpose. The image of some mob hit man finding her sent me into a mind-warping panic. I could feel it happening and sensed the sick, frantic guilt I would experience.
I turned away and took some deep breaths to calm down and remind myself that it hadn’t happened.

  “What, some creepy dude like your boyfriend, Dylan? You two have another fight or something?”

  “Noooo, we didn’t have another fight!” she mocked right back at me. Then she stopped, suddenly calm and concerned. “Where were you, Mom?”

  “I did leave the office at five. But I had to deliver some papers to Mr. O’Brien, the office manager…The battery on my phone was dead. That’s all. I never got your calls.”

  “That was hours ago, mom.”

  “I went for a walk in the park. I had a rough day.”

  That’s when she surveyed my ratty hair, torn clothes, and the smell of jet fuel that surrounded me. Her face changed. “The Park at night?...I warned you not to go back to The Banshee! The guys at that bar are losers!”

  I had had enough. I walked away down the hall toward my bedroom, “All the guys in this town are losers! And I wasn’t at The Banshee, that’s Thursday. They have Thirsty Thursdays, half-price drinks.”

  “Not funny! You never care what I have to say!”

  I stopped in the hallway and quieted Paige with a frosty glare. Would she ever understand how torn she made me feel? She had always been the most important thing in my life, but now there was something else that was also important to me. True, I wanted to protect her, but I was also feeling the seduction of a new life as a powerful person. I opened my mouth without a clue how to make that clear to her, but wishing I could. Instead I turned and continued down the hall.

  “And what’s with the black clothes all the time? Makes you look like a goth or something…not attractive!” she shouted after me.

  I slammed the door, making the hinges rattle, then leaned back against it. Sometimes, being mom was a bitch.