Free Cosmic Hotel by Russ Franklin Page A

nosedive and pulling up at the last second?
    A passenger, an elementary school teacher from Duluth, Georgia, said that she had nightmares that they were going to pipe “strong odors” through the ventilation just to see how passengers would react to five hours of torture. Others speculated on a simulated hijacking. Torture was a big part of the forecasts. What was the airline testing?
    Shenandoah said that the captain and copilot would have the same information as the passengers. Ursula was selected because of her experience in the 737 and because you looked at Ursula in her uniform and immediately wanted to know everything about her, including if she was married. At first she told me she was doing it for the small bundle of money the network was paying the flight crew as well as the lifetime pass, but then on a late-night phone call before Flight 000, she told me that the real reason she was doing it was that she would die if she didn’t know what had happened on the flight. “I have to know, Sandy. I couldn’t stand around and see these people who knew and I didn’t. I have to know what happened. I have dreams at night that the flight takes off without me and I’ll never know.”
    â€œBut you’ll tell me, right?”
    â€œFuck off.”
    Elizabeth watched a few episodes of Flight 000 , and she told me that this program proved that the world was so big they could find crazy people to do anything. Her opinion of the publicity for the airlines was right on: “The strange thing is that you wouldn’t think people want mystery and quirkiness with an airline, but there’s something about it that will work. Trust me. The world goes through periods of reverse in logic. The world is crazy.”
    Ursula didn’t sleep for days before the flight, going over every emergency procedure, stealing time on the ground school’s 737 simulator (she called it “the stimulator”).
    On a national network, the world watched as Flight 000 taxied into position for takeoff at LAX, the spotlights shining on the fuselage and the giant black letters painted on the aluminum body: FLIGHT 000. It gained speed and lifted off, wheels up, and disappeared into the night just like any other jet. Viewers could go to the network’s website and track the aircraft across the country, but that was all we got: the icon of a 737 as big as the state of Delaware flying a curving path across the country.
    The kicker was that Ursula made a smooth Kennedy Airport landing at dawn, and the media immediately approached passengers trying to find any clues to what had happened. Passengers looked sleepy but normal, deboarding and waving to the cameras and the crowd, most smiling and shaking their heads, some ducking and avoiding, some giving interviews that said nothing, but there was no comment from anyone about what had occurred during the flight.
    Elizabeth predicted the network never expected them to remain silent. The big story was what happened to the people after the flight.
    The network had regular updates with Flight 000 participants, showed them walking up to the airline counter and getting issued their ticket, smiling and waving as they disappeared, five minutes later, into the security line, and if the question was sneaked into the conversation, the standard response: “I have a lifetime pass to the world. Everyone depends on me, and I depend on everyone else. I will not comment.”
    Amazingly, it took six days for the first person to break from that pat answer. This man was clearly frazzled and was being interviewed in a booth at a bar, a sales representative from Pittsburgh, and he deviated by saying this simple statement: “Maybe nothing at all happened. Maybe everything was normal.” Then more passengers began coming forward, and they all said the same thing— nothing happened . The flight had gone completely normal , they claimed, cocktails wereserved by the two flight