Augie Denton hated three things: science fiction novels, disco, and plane crashes. But don’t read too much into that; it probably won’t come up.
It was the fall of 1977, both seasonally and emotionally. He sat in the luxurious, yet inevitably uncomfortable vinyl airplane seat staring out the window. As he watched the mountain range of clouds roll in and out of view beneath him, he couldn’t seem to focus on anything in particular. He had the exhaustion and the dry sensation in his mouth that would suggest he was hungover, but he hadn’t had a drop to drink until he settled in his seat 2 hours ago. No, this was a combination of stress, lack of sleep, and general dehydration.
The stress couldn’t be helped. At least not until the album was finished and sent out to the masses. Then he would have a different variety of stress. The kind of stress that comes along with promotion, marketing, and praying to any god that will listen that the album actually sells. But at least it’s a different stage of stress. Stress that’s closer to the finish line. That’s all life seemed to be recently; just moving from one anxiety-inducing situation to another, each time getting closer to the promise of relief.
Augie intended on remedying the lack of sleep during this flight; but so far no such luck. As the small private plane got closed in on its destination, he was losing hope that he would be getting anything more than a solid couple hours of incoherent disassociation. He wasn’t the most capable sleeper in the best of circumstances, but as he sat vaguely reclined in his not-so-breathable leisure suit with a cotton horseshoe wedged around his neck it seemed like a lost cause. If I really need sleep that bad, it would’ve happened, he thought to himself. It was only another hour and a half or so until Nassau, so he didn’t like his chances.
Dehydration was one problem he could be proactive about. In fact, he specifically ordered his whiskey with ice when he prefers it neat. Yet here he was, on his third drink of the flight and still feeling like his tongue was twice its size and the skin on his face was stretched to its limit across his cheekbones.
So there he sat. Feeling more akin to a discarded, sun-dried husk of corn than a human person, hoping to get to his next available shower and proper bed relatively unscathed. His only comfort was that he could use this time to be alone with his thoughts. The last thing he would want to do right now is interaction with someone; especially a someone that was putting the conversation onto some kind of publicized record.
“And Augie; I have some questions for you, too.”
Fuck
Augie spun around from his window-gazing position in a confused panic. It felt like being shaken awake from a deep sleep, and that just reminded him how badly he wished that were true. “Wha— Sorry, what was that?” He croaked. It came out much louder and more strained than he intended; the result of talking for the first time after a long trip outside of reality.
“Well, you were the one who discovered New York Panic, right? How did that happen, exactly? You went to one of their shows at CBGB and heard the sound of the future. Something like that?” Sonny asked with stars in his eyes, clearly already writing the romantic narrative in his head. He had a tape recorder resting on the small table beside him with his notepad in his lap. Both he and Augie sat on opposite sides of the plane facing forward. The band had taken up a bit more space in the leisurely area of the cabin with their backs to the cockpit. The whole layout tried to encourage conversation with one another; something Augie wanted nothing to do with.
Augie cleared his throat, not to be betrayed by his own vocal cords again. “Yeah, something like that,” he said. Augie knew what kind of excitable journalist Sonny was as soon as he laid eyes on him. The light in the cabin was low, but Sonny hadn’t taken off his rose coloured sunglasses since they left from New York. His curly hair was barely contained under a plaid driving cap that fit perfectly with the rest of his ensemble. His stylish tan vest and white shirt were stylishly tucked into his stylish pleated tan pants so everyone knew he had style. The whole outfit looked like something straight out of the late 70s, because it was. Augie had dealt with this exact kind of writer before. Sonny may have acted excited about this new sound, and it landed him a free trip to Bahamas to see the band work, but Augie knew he didn’t really get it. Augie didn’t really even care for the band’s music if he was being honest, but at least he got it. “Fiction Pop has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to new sounds,” he added on. One out of the handful of meaningless stock answers he kept up his sleeve. Anything to end the line of questioning and make the label sound good.
Sonny persisted, “Yeah, of course, but what was the moment like? What part of the performance made know you had to get them on the label?”
Augie groaned internally. Their most talented ability was being in the right place at the right time, he thought. “Well it was their whole ‘punk goes to art school’ thing, right? They had the attitude of doing their own thing because it’s what they wanted to hear but couldn’t find anywhere. It was weird, but in a unique way that only New York Panic could pull off.” He could feel himself ramping up into a ramble and hoped against hope that none of this would end up in print. He thought of something to tie it up and put an end to this interrogation. “I think the magic these guys have will be pretty evident on the record”.
Sonny stopped writing anything down after ‘punk goes to art school’, but that last line made his eyes light up in recognition. “Oh right! Before I forget,” he shifted over to the band, evidently having forgotten or simply ignored everything Augie had said. “Where does the name ‘The Last Thirty-Eight Years’ come from? A lot of bands might just go with self titled for a debut, but this seems almost cryptic.”
Charlie, the band’s lead singer and main lyricist took this one. “Well, the world ended back in ’39, right?” She explained gazing out the window “So it’s about how we’ve gotten on since then,” she finished. To Augie, she was listening but wanted to give the illusion of a cool and detached apathy. He took this as his cue to turn his attention back to his drink.
“Oh, right. Yeah, okay,” Sonny stumbled out. He initially accepted this as the obvious answer and then held a look of confused calculation on his face for a moment. Augie too had inquired about this when he first heard the name, but it only led him down an irritating and stubborn road he wish he had avoided. “But…” He paused for another second, weighing the pros and cons of questioning the artist. Finally curiosity got the better of him. “What do you mean exactly that the world—”
A shake in the cabin cut off his words. Speakers chimed and a small sign featuring a seatbelt was illuminated above each seat. The universal indicator to remain seated and strap in; a warning Augie needn’t take any action upon seeing as he hadn’t removed the belt in the entire flight. A moment later the flight attendant, Marlo, emerged from her cramped quarters in the front. She took careful steps, using the seat headrests as support to steady herself. She looked over to the band. Charlie, Ben, Tina, and Syd were already shifting back into a more regulatory position and buckling up. When she reached a still untethered Sonny she paused to give him a look and a chance to act without her speaking. When he offered her nothing more than a vacant smile, she said “We’re experiencing a bit of turbulence. The pilot has put on the fasten seatbelt sign, we need you to buckle up and remain seated until it has settled down.”
“Thanks, but I’ve dealt with turbulence before; I know it’s not a big deal,” he casually explained to the experienced flight attendant. Even though he was seated and she standing, his words managed to talk down to her. “I’ll stay seated, but—” He tried to continue but was stopped as Marlo, without losing her composure or service industry smile, bent down and fastened the belt around his waist in a quick, smooth action. She took hold of the belt length running out of the buckle and gave it a firm tug; tightening just past the point of actual safety for the sake of punitive discomfort.
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Marlo stood upright and still smiling, said “Great, thank you.” She used the seats to help her turn around and head back towards the front of the plane. As she walked away, she craned her neck to get a view of Augie’s belt situation. Seeing him securely buckled in, she gave him a single nod. He returned in kind, silently applauding how she dealt with the situation. When she maneuvered out of view, Augie threw a glance to Sonny. Not to be so thoroughly emasculated, Sonny undid the buckle and used his newfound spatial freedom to spread his legs and shift his butt forward in the seat. He gave Augie a wink to communicate that he was, in fact, an asshole. The moment only lasted a second before he took a panicked look over his shoulder to check that he wasn’t caught pulling that little demonstration of defiance. This communicated something else to Augie; he wasn’t just an asshole, he was a cowardly asshole. Augie rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the window, trying to ignore the growing turbulence reverberating throughout the cabin.
As if to challenge Augie’s attempt at ignorance, the shaking reached its climax and the cabin lurched forward. The gravity in the room shifted, dragging everything not tied down toward the cockpit of the plane.
The short list of unsecured objects in the cabin is as follows: Augie’s plastic tumbler containing ice and a half ounce of rye, Sonny’s tape recorder and notepad, Sonny, a half-full can of Coca-Cola, and Tina’s copy of the novel A Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea. Now, gravity is an apathetic creature with no regards to storytelling; so in the dramatic jerk forward, all these objects leapt from their place with reckless abandon roughly within the same instant and made a mad dash for the flight attendant’s quarters. Fortunately, as spectators we are able to slow down time and observe each individual journey as they became airborne and came crashing on the front wall and cockpit door.
Sonny was ripped from his seat and tossed headfirst toward the wall that became the newly designated ground. His body flipped forward, sending his notepad flying elsewhere. By the end of his brief trip, Sonny was upside down, pressed against the front wall of the cabin. He sustained two head injuries; one from the impact of said wall, and another when his own tape recorder flew into his face a fraction of a second after the first injury took place. Neither caused any serious damage, but they weren’t all that pleasant, either.
After leaving Sonny’s person, the notepad received the most irrecoverable harm. It spun through the air for only just a moment until it landed and skittered across the carpeted floor. Once it lost its momentum and halted on the ground in front of the cockpit door, it was confronted by the Coca-Cola can and, even worse, the Coca-Cola. In the end, its pages were soaked beyond legibility as the can lay unapologetically beside it.
Tina’s Yukio Mishima novel left her hands and made a high arc through the air. The parabola was cut short as it hit the cockpit door, creating a distinct knock that would usually ask permission to enter the pilot’s quarters. This prompted a distressed “Not a good time!” from the co-pilot Lionel Garber. The book hit the floor and laid against the cockpit door, staring mockingly at the (now useless) notepad, as if brag about the resilience of real literature.
Oddly enough, Augie’s tumbler filled with rye and ice made its journey through the air and landed securely in Syd’s cupholder without losing a drop.
It was all quite dramatic, and the drama only seemed to build. The droning of the engine grew in intensity; getting louder, harsher, impenetrable, and then… silence. Not the silence of the engine petering out or a calmness reassuring the situation, but the kind of silence from which no noise can escape. Even the sound of Augie’s own internal monologue was shaken out of his head from the quaking of the airplane seat. The world had gone mute, but in every other sense was still very much committing to this disaster.
Augie looked around the cabin but could not take in the scene in full. His body was fully tensed. Every muscle flexed to the point of paralyzation, but his mind was far from it; floating lazily in a state of shock. Stupefied, he turned his attention again to the window in attempt to regain some touch of reality. The instant he made visual contact with the outside world, he was blinded by a bright, golden light that washed out the entirety of the plane’s interior. And with this light, sound returned in full effect. However, it wasn’t the roaring of the flailing engine, or the screams of the passengers that filled the cabin; it was the grating static of an incoming transmission through the speakers. Usually reserved for safety introductions or immensely informative notes on the current cruising altitude, this message sounded more like something intercepted. Not meant for their ears. A radiological eavesdropping. Even as it cut the silence and fell unto his ears, Augie couldn’t tell if the sound was actually traveling through the air or rather transmitted directly into his brain.
“…telling you, it is over. We tried, we failed. We can tinker as much as we want, but the problem stems from its origins” a baritone voice explained, defeated. It took a pause and then continued, “We can start again from the beginning but this version of the project is…” Static overtook the words, stopping the sentence short.
A new voice responded, cutting through the white noise. “Then let it be so. Shall we begin putting together a termination process?”
“No, no. Just let it play out. Shut it all down from our end but let them go on; it can’t last much longer now anyhow. Start with disabling Stage Two and working back from there. And cut the transmiss—” a harsh hiss abruptly took over, silencing the overheard conversation.
The sound that matched reality returned, replacing white noise with the drone of an engine in distress. The grinding wail and shuddering continued, filling the passengers’ ears and vibrating them to their core. And then all at once, it stopped. The blinding golden light began to retract out of the cabin, allowing it to come back into view. Augie looked around and saw the whole of the plane’s interior begin to settle. Gravity straightened out and the floor became the floor again. The roaring of the overworked mechanical gear relaxed back its usual low frequency hum.
There was a collective sign from all onboard. Augie looked down at himself and saw how tensely his body had been held. He tentatively released his grip from the armrests, noticing how he had nearly ripped off the vinyl. He brought his attention upward, making eye contact with Charlie and Tina. They all gave a shaky laugh and a smile to communicate their relief. The whole commotion only lasted about 17 seconds, but packed enough trauma for a lifetime of therapy.
Augie looked to Sonny next. His body was contorted in a way that would demand some kid of physical therapy, and his face definitely looked better as he boarded the plane, but the quick rise and fall of his chest told Augie that he’d probably make it off this plane alive.
He let out a breath, closed his eyes, and rested his head back onto his seat. He let a smile spread across his face. The bright light, the intercepted transmission, both had been forgotten as he thought about the fact that he was still alive. He wasn’t one to treasure moments, but he forced himself to be present for this. And he was. He basked in the moment right up until heard a scream.
Augie tore open his eyes and brought his head up. Marlo was standing in the doorway of the cockpit, one hand over mouth, the other gripping the doorframe to keep her upright. Augie sat up the couple inches his seatbelt would allow to get a better look at what she was seeing.
Now, in this moment, there were three separate, but related, things that worked in conjunction to cause Marlo to scream. The first was the pilot, Captain Simon Webster, dead and sprawled across the control board in front of him. This is what Augie saw, and what he assumed was the sole reason for the scream.
The second sight that brought Marlo to let out a piercing cry was the co-pilot, Lionel Garber, also dead and lying back in his seat. On its own, a sight such as this would warrant an alarmed shriek, but coupled with the death of the only other person who could land the plane, it is not just warranted but rightfully deserved.
However, it is likely the third, and most devastating sight that involuntarily turned Marlo into an alarm bell. It really is remarkable how Augie missed the sight of this; it was the most visually accessible to him through the agape cockpit door. You see, the most petrifying visual in the pilot’s quarters was splayed across the large panoramic front window.
Focused mainly on the unmoving pilot in the captain’s chair for too many agonizing seconds, Augie had only just enough time to notice what was outside the window before it was too late.
Then the plane hit the mountain.