Flash Fiction
A crash-test dummy wakes mid-flight with no memory of the destination, no sign of the crew, and a cabin full of identical passengers.
He could breathe, which is strange when he considered that he had no lungs. And despite not having a brain, he was aware of the curious state of being he had sprung into, hearing the steady drone of engines, feeling the plush cushion beneath him. He examined his vinyl arms and legs, jointed and flexible? He wiggled his fully articulated, biofidelic fingers and would have smiled if the dark hyphen that was his mouth had been capable of such a feat. Turning his stiff neck, he saw the passenger beside him also stretching and looking around, taking in the interior of the airplane cabin.
“Hello!” he said to the plastic man.
“Hello!” was the reply.
He turned to look in the other direction, finding beside him a window overlooking a dreamscape of cloud towers and vaporous mountains blinding in the bright sunshine.
“We’re quite high up,” he said, turning back to his seat mate. His companion’s torso, he saw, was labeled with a series of numbers ending in 770. Looking down at his own chest, he saw that his number ended in 492. “I’m 492,” he decided aloud and shook hands.
“Forgive me,” 492 continued, “but I can’t seem to recall where this flight is heading.”
770 scratched his synthesized rubber head, which he then shook. “I’m sorry, fellow. I couldn’t say.”
“Hmm.” He leaned forward to address the individual sitting in the seat in front of him. “Excuse me, but can you tell me where we’re headed?”
A face identical to his seat mate’s (and his own), appeared over the back of the seat, neither grinning nor frowning.
“I’m sorry to say I can’t.”
“How strange,” 492 thought aloud, resting back in his seat. “Ahh! I know.” He reached up and pressed the flight attendant assistance button, then sat back and waited.
A minute passed, then another, but no one came. 492 stood up as best he could given the cramped head room and peered around the cabin. There were two hundred or so heads identical to his own with only slight variations in size, all of them chatting amiably with each other, enjoying the view, or humming to themselves. He saw, too, from the number of glowing buttons overhead that a couple of others had summoned flight attendants, and yet he saw no sign of anyone patrolling the main aisle.
“Pardon me. I’m going to go do some snooping around,” he said, as he scooted by his seat mate.
He headed first towards the tail section of the plane, where he expected to find the attendants preparing a meal or a drink cart, but the aft galley was completely empty. So, he turned and strolled back up the aisle, nodding to his fellow passengers. Everyone looked very pleasant, thoroughly enjoying themselves. They were flying, after all. Through business and first classes he proceeded—where the simulacra were reclining, none of them with drinks, none watching movies, none with any personal effects to speak of—at last passing through the door to the fore galley.
It was empty, the jump seats folded up, out of the way.
“How peculiar.”
He knocked on the door to the cockpit, but there came no response. Then he noticed nearby the intercom mouthpiece, picked it up, and addressed the pilots.
“Hello, this is the passenger from 33A. All of the flight attendants appear to have vanished. Please advise.”
He waited for a response. The seconds dragged by. The plane jolted, and he barely managed to keep his feet. Glancing out the window, he noticed that they had plunged into the clouds. Perhaps there were making their final descent? But there had been no announcement. He repeated his question to the pilots, then knocked on the door again.
Other passengers had approached the front of the plane, crowding around the aisle.
492 turned to them. “I can’t get in touch with the pilots.”
The cabin jolted again, and 492 saw that they had sunk below the cloud cover. Below them stretched a great expanse of desert pocked with sagebrush and saguaro, rushing towards them at an alarming rate.
Growing more and more concerned, he tried the door latch—and it swung inward.
Inside, the cockpit was strangely peaceful, clinical in its way, all the panels and buttons glowing, the yoke turning gently on its own accord, for not a soul inhabited the pilot or copilot chairs. The desert filled the view through the windshield, not a chink of sky to be found.
He turned to the others. “We’re headed right for the ground. We’re going to—”
***
The remote-controlled crash went as planned in the Sonoran Desert. Experts from Boeing analyzed the data from the crash test dummies, determining that the rear of the plane was the safest to be sitting under these specific crash circumstances. For the most part anyway. A number of the dummies had somehow managed to be flung all the way to the fore galley. One dummy in particular, whose safety belt hadn’t been securely fastened, managed to propel through the entire length of the cabin, crashing through the door and into the cockpit. Experts were still scratching their heads over that one.
On flash fiction
The strongest flash pieces often turn on a single pressure: a body, a room, a system, a sentence that knows more than the character does. View upcoming masterclasses .
