There is a piercing scream from the front of the plane. You look up from your book about math, craning your neck around your seatmate who is visibly panicking. You remove the headphones from your ears, cutting off the soothing strains of Vivaldi.
DO YOU:
Run to the cockpit to see what is happening
Run to the back of the plane to search for parachutes
Pop a handful of Vicodin from your pocket
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You take a bunch of Vicodin. Seems like a good first step.
DO YOU:
Run to the cockpit to see what is happening
Run to the back of the plane to search for parachutes
FINISH OFF THE BOTTLE OF VICODIN
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You finish off the bottle of Vicodin. You aren't going anywhere, buddy. You feel great.
YOUR ONLY OPTION FOR A WHILE IS TO:
OR:
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Everyone else is focused on the front of the plane, where the scream came from. But because you are smart as hell, you know that they keep the parachutes in the back. You aren't going down like a chump.
As you pass a pair of flight attendants, one turns to the other and says: "I hear the weather in Santa Monica is rainy today. RAINY."
You know this is some sort of flight attendant code, because they both go white as a text .doc and zoom on ahead of you to the back.
You race after them. You burst through a door that says "PARACHUTE ROOM," only to find all of the flight attendants jumping out of a hatch in a mass panic. They completely ignore you.
The cabin is rapidly depressurizing, since you opened the door to the "PARACHUTE ROOM" and since they left the hatch open. There are no parachutes left. You search the shelves, finding an umbrella and duct tape.
DO YOU:
Construct a crude parachute using duct tape and the umbrella
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Smart. The wind dies down and the cabin stops depressurizing. Now you can think.
DO YOU:
Construct a crude parachute using duct tape and the umbrella and then jump out of the hatch
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You start to leave the parachute room, but because you left the hatch open, you are sucked out of the plane and then sucked into the jet engine. Right before you die, you suddenly understand ALL OF MATH and have a brilliant, life-changing insight about interstellar travel, the reflexive property, and wormholes. But this insight also gets sucked into the jet engine.
THE END
OR:
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Thinking quickly, you manufacture a crude (but sturdy) air-catching device out of the umbrella and duct tape. You use up almost the whole roll. You hang on with both hands as you jump from the hatch.
Obviously, this doesn't work and you plummet, screaming, to your ignominious death. You pass the flight attendants as you fall. They wave at you sadly. They will tell your story for decades.
THE END
OR:
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You unbuckle your seatbelt and jostle your way into the aisle.
You move past terrified looking tourists, crying babies, and beefy red-faced business-class travelers self-importantly shouting for help, for answers, for a lawyer, for the sky police.
There is a red curtain separating the cockpit and the rest of the plane. You push it aside, only to find yourself confronted with a jittery-looking man in a pilot's uniform. He is shaking so hard that his teeth are chattering. He grabs you by the lapels.
"SHE'S DEAD. THE PILOT IS DEAD. I AM IN A BAD BAD SPIRAL HERE. DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT FLYING PLANES? I HAVE BEEN UP FOR FOUR DAYS STRAIGHT. I AM TRYING TO KILL THE ACID IN MY SYSTEM WITH GIN, BUT IT ISN'T WORKING. WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO? WHY AM I EVEN ASKING YOU? YOU ARE A SNAKE, NOT A PERSON."
You can smell the gin on his breath and in his clothes. He is gripping you so tightly that you can't move past him.DO YOU:
Scream "THE PILOT IS DEAD! NO ONE IS FLYING THE PLANE! WE ARE ALL DOOMED!"
Run to the back of the plane to search for parachutes
Sweep his legs like a goddamn ninja and then knock him out with a totally badass sleeper hold
Quietly return to your seat in order to do nothing at all
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You move past terrified looking tourists, crying babies, and beefy red-faced business-class travelers self-importantly shouting for help, for answers, for a lawyer, for the sky police.
There is a red curtain separating the cockpit and the rest of the plane. You push it aside, only to find yourself confronted with a jittery-looking man in a pilot's uniform. He is shaking so hard that his teeth are chattering. He grabs you by the lapels.
"SHE'S DEAD. THE PILOT IS DEAD. I AM IN A BAD BAD SPIRAL HERE. DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT FLYING PLANES? I HAVE BEEN UP FOR FOUR DAYS STRAIGHT. I AM TRYING TO KILL THE ACID IN MY SYSTEM WITH GIN, BUT IT ISN'T WORKING. WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO? WHY AM I EVEN ASKING YOU? YOU AREN'T A PERSON. YOU ARE A SNAKE!"
You can smell the gin on his breath and in his clothes. He is gripping you so tightly that you can't move past him.DO YOU:
Scream "THE PILOT IS DEAD! NO ONE IS FLYING THE PLANE! WE ARE ALL DOOMED!"
Sweep his legs like a goddamn ninja and then knock him out with a totally badass sleeper hold
Quietly return to your seat in order to do nothing at all
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You scream: "THE PILOT IS DEAD! NO ONE IS FLYING THE PLANE! WE ARE ALL DOOMED!"
The copilot grabs a fire extinguisher and beats you in the head with it until you collapse at his feet. He seems to think you are some kind of rattlensake. He is sobbing and blubbering as he batters you again and again.
The plane erupts in total panic. People are screaming, tearing out their hair, and praying out loud.
You try to fight back, but you are bleeding and dizzy. The copilot presses a button labeled "DO NOT EVER PRESS," and the airplane fills with medicated gas, knocking everyone out. You slip into a coma because of your head trauma, and though everyone else survives for reasons you will never know, and though the copilot is eventually given a Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery in quelling a passenger uprising, you die fifty years later in a hospital bed, your only company a janitor who hates you and who has secretly been selling your hair to a wig manufacturer.
THE END
OR:
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You fall to the ground, completely surprising the copilot who is so fried out of his mind on acid and gin that he seems to think you have turned into a rattlesnake.
You sweep his legs out from under him, a little bit parkour-style, a little bit Sean Connery-era James Bond. As he falls, you spin around behind him to put him in a BADASS sleeper hold. He struggles, but his chest is like a bunch of coathangers wrapped around some bubble wrap. He falls asleep, muttering something about "...the autopilot."
You now have unimpeded access to the cockpit, and, incidentally, the food service cart.
DO YOU:
Eat as many bags of peanuts as you can
Pour beer and Bloody Mary mix into an ice bucket and drink it like you are some kind of Viking
Stealthily move into the cockpit in order to meet your destiny
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You step over the unconscious body of the copilot and go into the cockpit.
The real pilot is dead. She looks like she died peacefully. Maybe a heart attack?
You stare out into the abyss, watching the clouds shoot past the nose of the plane. The plane is flying along smoothly, and the controls seem to be correcting themselves.
"Wow, this is neat," you say.
There is an instructional manual that says "SO YOU THINK YOU CAN FLY A BOEING 747" on the empty copilot's seat.
There are buttons and levers and controls everywhere. There is an array of tiny buttons on the left, and there are larger buttons on the right that are unlabeled. One of them is blinking. There is a big yellow button front and center that says "Autopilot"
DO YOU:
Press a random button on the left of the control panel.
Press the blinking button on the right.
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You pick up the book titled "SO YOU THINK YOU CAN FLY A BOEING 747" and open to a page at random
The page is all about pitch vs. yaw. You don't understand any of it. There aren't any daigrams of what the buttons might do, such as what you would find in the most basic car manual.
"Fuck this instruction manual," you say.
You try to tear it in half, but it is too thick. Instead, you put it back where you found it, but in a really hostile way.
DO YOU:
Press a random button on the left of the control panel.
Press the blinking button on the right.
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"AUTOPILOT DISENGAGED," says a soothing female voice.
The plane immediately goes into a nose-dive, causing you to smash the back of your head against the wall.
You have a "front row" seat for watching the plane plummet into the ground at thousands of miles per hour. You mash the autopilot button over and over again, but it is too late, the plane can't correct itself.
You press all the buttons. Nothing good happens. You hold the instruction manual over your face, cowering as the plane smashes headfirst into a field. You will never taste champagne again. Never again, will you run, laughing, down a beach with a dog or loved one.
THE END
OR:
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This does nothing, except the light stops blinking. You press the button again. The light starts blinking. You do this ten times in a row, for some reason.
Press a random button on the left of the control panel.
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This button makes the landing gear go up and down.
"Intriguing," you say.
Press a different random button on the left of the control panel.
Press the blinking button on the right.
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This button makes the lights in the cockpit go on and off.
"Now things are more dramatic," you say.
Press a different random button on the left of the control panel.
Press the blinking button on the right.
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This button tells you the altitude.
"Maybe if I press them all, I will slowly learn how to fly a plane," you say.
Press a different random button on the left of the control panel.
Press the blinking button on the right.
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This button makes the window wipers come on.
"That button is bullshit," you say.
Press a different random button on the left of the control panel.
Press the blinking button on the right.
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You keep pressing random buttons, but none of them seem to help.
You can't even figure out how to work the radio or anything. You give up. You are bad at this.
Press the blinking button on the right.
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You eat like ten bags of peanuts. Nothing happens. You sort of start to feel guilty that the plane might be crashing and you are standing there eating more than your share of delicious honey-roasted treats.
DO YOU:
Continue eating peanuts. There are probaby three hundred bags of peanuts back here.
Pour beer and Bloody Mary mix into an ice bucket and drink it like you are some kind of Viking
Stealthily move into the cockpit in order to meet your destiny
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The ice bucket is only about half-full of ice. You pour six bottles of beer into the ice bucket, along with a bottle of Bloody Mary mix. You use one of the empty beer bottles to stir the cold, frothing alcoholic concoction.
The ice bucket is heavy, but you know how to make it lighter. You tip the gross michelada into your mouth, sucking it down as fast as you can.
You drink until you start to feel queasy, then you take a break, and drink the rest. Why are you doing this? What do you hope to achieve?
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Woo! You feel great! If the plane crashed right now, you would be the only survivor. How come? Because you feel so great. You would hit the ground and bounce a thousand feet and then maybe go take a nap on a cloud. You look around for more Bloody Mary mix, but there isn't any. There is some tequila, though. You mix the beer with tequila, and then squat over the prone body of the copilot, drinking from the ice bucket with both hands, drenching your hair. You start to feel dizzy. You pass out.
You wake up days later, floating in the ocean, all alone, flat on your back on what appears to be somebody's steamer trunk.
"WHERE AM I..." you start to say, but you lose your balance and fall into the sea. You hold onto the trunk, trying to fight back wave after wave of nausea, trying to scramble back on top, but then you are eaten by a shark. The shark actually gets drunk on all of the alcohol in your blood, and it engages in amusing shark-antics that it later regrets when taunted by its peers.
THE END
OR:
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You sit down in the middle of the floor and begin eating bag after bag of peanuts. You enter into something like a fugue state, the way champion marathon runners talk about winning races. Patterns start to emerge in the steady hum and flow of the engine noise. Is the airplane talking to you? Is it trying to tell you something about mathematics?
DO YOU:
Return to your seat to daydream about math
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YOU EAT EVERY SINGLE PEANUT ON THE PLANE. YOU GO INTO SEPTIC SHOCK. YOU CRUMPLE TO THE GROUND BESIDE THE CO-PILOT AND THEN YOU KNOW NO MORE.
"Homo es: resiste et tumulum contempla meum.
iuenis tetendi ut haberem quod uterer.
iniuriam feci nulli, officia feci pluribus.
bene vive, propera, hoc est veniundum tibi."
THE END.
OR:
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<Nuts to everything! You clear your mind and try not to think about anything at all.
You just kind of space out and let your mind wander. You think about: rainbows, clouds, the Fibonnacci sequence, prime numbers, antelopes, cheeseburgers, Renaissance martial arts, crossbows, elbow macaroni, babies, tennis, rent control, spider monkeys, the reflexive property, wormholes, peanuts, Finland, carrots, the surveillance state, geometry, astrophysics, raisins, and post-it notes.
There is another scream from the front of the plane.
DO YOU:
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Is that smoke you smell? All around you, people are panicking and praying.
So what? Who cares? You think about math, because math is totally rad. You think about how much a black hole would weigh, mathematically. You think about luggage and how many black holes you could fit in carry-on. You think about the band "Gogol Bordello," and how they are extremely good. You think about interstellar travel.
"NO ONE IS FLYING THE PLANE!" somebody shouts. "ALL THE PARACHUTES ARE GONE. WE ARE ALL DOOMED."
DO YOU:
Keep doing nothing. It is the only sensible path.
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What if we could manufacture black holes in a contained space and use their power to travel to other planets without even having to leave lower Earth orbit?
Could we jump around the universe using nothing but math? What would the math look like for that?
Wait. Hold on, you are getting something. There is something tickling at the corner of your mind.
Two people are strangling each other to death in the aisle beside you. One woman is trying to elbow her way through the window, shrieking that she "ain't gonna have no airplane for a coffin"
DO YOU:
OH MY GOD YOU ARE JUST GOING TO SIT HERE THINKING ABOUT MATH WHILE THE PLANE CRASHES???
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Suddenly you realize exactly how to manufacture a time-bending engine that will allow human beings to travel through space to other galaxies!
With one exceptionally elegant mathematical equation, you solve the problem of energy scarcity!
You scribble the equation down on the back of "Jetstream," the in-flight style magazine. Your hands tremble. There is chaos everywhere.
The autopilot kicks in and lands the plane quite easily. You are the only person who remembers the entire experience fondly.
You tell the story at your Nobel Prize Acceptance speech, and then you tell the story again over and over as you travel the stars, encountering new alien lifeforms and teaching them all about what it means to be human.
"These human daydreams are quite powerful and extraordinary," says a four-mouthed Arcturan arthropod that breathes cyanide gas and communicates through psychic waves that curl your belly like riding a rollercoaster. You are attending a science conference about human neuroscience light-years away from the solar system where you were born.
"Yes," you say humbly. "It is as if we do our best work when we aren't trying to do anything at all. And yet, for millennia, there was no worse transgression than being lazy."
"What does lazy mean?" says the Arcturan anthropologist. "This is a human concept?"
"It means you aren't doing what you're told," you say.
"So this is something a master would call a slave? Surely a genius like you has never been called lazy?"
"I am no genius," you say. "I just let myself get away with doing nothing from time to time. Human brains are very powerful instruments, and they work best when they are treated with respect, and not crammed full of useless worries and stresses."
You sip nectar from an Arcturan crab-fruit and stare out over the fourteen suns that light up this beautiful planet. You are daydreaming again. The aliens attending this conference on the human brain are studying you, making notes and whispering to each other that you are hard at work.
CONGRATULATIONS! NOW GO BUY "AUTOPILOT," BY ANDREW SMART AND LEARN ALL ABOUT THE LATEST DEVELOPMENTS IN NEUROSCIENCE AND WHAT WE ARE REALLY DOING WHEN WE THINK WE ARE DOING NOTHING.
