The Flight to LA - Two's Company and Trees a Crowd

Life Among the Three Dimensionals -Chapter 13

[Life Among the Three Dimensionals is a serialized sci-fi novel. Are you feeling lost? Have you forgotten what happened before? Checking in for the first time? Too little time and too much to do? For earlier chapters click HERE.]

At the end of Chapter 12, Hugo Nash and Szofia, having purloined the identities (and the first class airline tickets) of two other travelers - the elderly Mr. and Mrs. Trevor McPfeffor - were now traveling ‘double incognito’ to Los Angeles. While waiting in the airport concourse to board their flight, they encountered two Gaseous Unstable tourists from the 5th Dimension. The "Big Burp," the closure of the gaseous intelligents' universities and the violent suppression of on-campus student protests against the genocide in Gasa, had turned Hugo Nash's five dimensional universe upside down and inside out (just like his own upside down, inside out hands). Chapter 13 of "Life Among the Three Dimensionals"...

We were airborne on our "red eye" overnight flight. I had just calibrated my gas pressures to account for the altitude when Szofia began ordering drinks.

“Mr. Trevor McPfeffor will take a glass of vodka, a glass of Cabernet and a couple of Jack Daniels, neat,” she told the skeptical stewardess while pointing at me. “And I will take any kind of meat you have in the galley; no bread, no vegetables, no ketchup or toppings, no froufrou, just meat. Don't even microwave it, thank you. Oh, and one headphone for the movie.”

The drinks arrived - four little bottles and a plastic glass, and later two cold hot dogs, no bun or condiments. Szofia poured all four drinks into the cup at one time and left it on my folding table. Then, when no one was looking, she reached across, dunked her tattooed fingers in as deep as her third knuckles and twirled them around. Then she ordered two additional bottles of tequila and two of rum (for me, Mr. Trevor McPfeffer, of course) and tipped them into the glass with the wine the vodka and the whiskey.

When the scowling stewardess had left, Szofia surreptitiously mashed the two (cold) hot dogs into the soles of her shoes and pointed the reading lights for my seat and hers straight at the top of her own head.

Szofia reclined back in her seat. “Hugh,” she said, “just close your eyes and compost awhile. You need to chill out and take your mind off that interminable study of the local earth-worms.”

Szofia began to look a little rosy as she composted the hot dogs through her foot-roots and swirled her green fingernails inside the plastic wine glass. In fact, her ears were more than rosy... there were literally tiny red flowers starting to blossom inside her ear canal. If you didn't look carefully, they merely appeared to be a string of tiny earrings. She placed the earphones onto her head, taking care not to crush the flowers, leaned back and began to vegetate. By the time the movie began, Szofia was in the third dimension in body only.

The movie interested me, but only as an academic matter. It was the standard three dimensional Hollywood production. Distilled to its essence: Bad Guy chases Good Guy in a visually spectacular display of violence, followed by a spectacular display of death and additional violence directed at "extras" and at Good Guy's improbably attractive Female Companion. This was followed by unexpected and improbable turns of event, followed by sexually provocative scenes involving Good Guy's improbably attractive Female Companion, itself followed by a "cliff hanger" scene of life or planet-threatening nature. This, in turn, was followed by a visually spectacular "rescue" and the usual lesson that Western Civilization Triumphs over Evil Non-Western Barbarians and/or Capitalism Prevails over Socialism.

All of it was accompanied by dramatic background music, noise, explosions and subliminal messages to buy certain types of beverages and automobiles, followed by catharsis, an episode of brief "comic relief," and the hint of a "sequel."

In the sequel, Bad Guy, Good Guy and Good Guy's new, but also improbably attractive, Female companion will do it all over again in a slightly different venue. In the sequel there will be slightly different unexpected and improbable turns of event accompanied by similar dramatic music, noise, explosions and subliminal messages to buy certain types of beverages and automobiles, followed by the same catharsis, a similar episode of brief "comic relief," and premonitions of yet another "sequel" where Bad Guy, Good Guy and yet another improbably attractive Female companion will do it all over again. In between sequels, the movie industry will award prizes to those who it believes sold the most movie tickets and facilitated the highest sales of drinks, automobiles, clothing and movie sequels.

But these thoughts proved that Szofia was correct. I had been cocooned to be a Pioneer and I simply could not take my mind off that interminable earth-worm study, as Szofia called it. There might not be anyone back in 5D who cared, or even a Ahr-fǿrt Gassy University in the central Looo Nebula anymore. But I was still a scholar and a field investigator with a job to do: investigate and report on the quasi-intelligents of this very peculiar 3D planetoid. I emerged from the cocoon as a philosopher and the inbred love and acquisition of pure knowledge – exactly what Szophia claimed made me so “boring” - drove me forward.

I looked around me - everyone in the airplane cabin was now watching the movie. Indeed, they were utterly transfixed by it, almost absorbed into the alternate reality depicted on the screen. Meanwhile, Szofia vegetated. She absorbed her very mixed alcoholic beverages through her fingertips, composted her cold hot dogs, and photosynthesized beneath the overhead reading lights.

What was I doing here on a flight to Los Angeles? So much had happened so quickly that I needed time to clear my thoughts. I got up and walked slowly down the airplane center aisle.

As I exited the first class section and entered "business class," I was struck by the stratified nature of the humanoids' 3D society and its extraordinary social distinctions. I passed through "business class" and entered the tightly cramped narrow aisle of the "economy class" section of the airplane where humans were stacked up on top of one another. Here, too, they were transfixed by a movie projected onto a screen. The seats in "economy class" were very narrow, very hard and very upright. Some people sat with the backrest of the seat in front pressed into their own laps. The seats were so narrow that some of the heavier passengers' bodies extruded from their own into adjacent seats, almost like my own four and five dimensional backpacks - except that they could not sense anything in the fourth and fifth dimensions, but a human could certainly feel a human body overflowing into one's own seat.

The seating in the "economy class" section of the airplane seemed extremely unpleasant, like rowing slaves sitting on planks in an old Greek or Roman trireme galley.

I saw and heard colic babies who were crying and screaming.

I saw people trying to nap with their heads leaning against the fuselage of the airplane or their heads falling against the shoulders of adjacent travelers.

I saw too many people waiting to use too few restrooms.

I saw a couple of passengers wearing dark sunglasses, fedoras and trench coats and who had dark green, thorny hands.

I noticed many people who were coughing and sneezing, like on the bus I had ridden to get to my substitute teaching assignment months earlier. The air on the plane contained an aerosol of viruses and bacteria that were recirculating around the cabin. The cabin air was very warm and dry.

I saw...

… I saw...

Wait! Scroll back a minute... !!!

I saw passengers with dark green thorny hands...?!?!

What...?!?!

I walked back through the aisle! What row were they in? I quickly repeated my steps frantically staring at every passenger's hands. Not him. No, not her. Not her. No...

No...

No...

No...

Yes! I found them!

Or, rather... they found me! Green-tinged fingers pulled off my oven mittens and clamped powerfully onto my backward, upside down hands. The green fingers drew me down. Another pair of thorny green hands clamped my mouth shut. Their grip was strong as ironwood roots. I was pulled toward the seat, toward the face of THE BRANCH! Or, rather, the face of TWO BRANCHERS, for there were indeed, two of them wearing brown trench coats and sun glasses!

I tried to break free but I could not! The two Branchers immediately siphoned themselves into the 4th -- I could see them, of course, but to all of the 3D passengers on the plane, they had simply disappeared. And nobody noticed, anyway, because they were completely absorbed in the movie.

In the 4th dimension, the Branchers appeared to be huge, kudzu-like, gnarly and pyramidal beings with large glowing eyes and vine-like upper tendrils reaching far outside the plane, blowing in the jet-stream. They were much, much bigger than Szofia and very muscular. Their faces were diabolical, and their branches were full of long, sharp spikes. There appeared to be thousands of four dimensional hornets buzzing around their bark.

The Branchers got up together and formed a solid grove. The one that had first grabbed me pushed me down into a now empty seat, gagged and tied me up with four dimensional duct tape. The other one reached toward my life support podule for my flutes and disconnected them! Transuranic methane began to leak out of me and into the compartment! The Branchers then tied a strip of 4D bird tape to my life support podule equilibralators and wrapped them around my backwards upside down hands that they then tied, in the fourth dimension, to the armrests in the third dimension.

“We have a little espalier work to do,” wheezed the Brancher who had snagged me, “and we do not want you to interfere.” He snickered asthmatically like I had heard a Snidely Whiplash character snicker on an old humanoid educational television show about a flying squirrel. Oh, where was Dudley Do-right when I needed him? Where were the guardians of human civilization - Paladin, Pa Cartwright, Batman, Matt Dillon, Spiderman, Popeye, Bullwinkle, Superman, Tonto and the Lone Ranger - where were these heroes of the Third Dimension when I really needed them?

I was helplessly bound to the chair, frizzing transuranic methane from my disconnected flutestacks! I was venting ignoble gases into the passenger cabin!

One of the Branchers took out a pair of 4D heavy duty shears from a bag in the overhead compartment. The other one took out a 4D pruning saw, bird netting, a weed-whacker, a cultivating knife, a scythe, a bottle of herbicide, a hammer and a sackful of copper nails. Carrying their horticultural instruments the two Branchers lumbered off toward the first class section chanting in unison “Hi ho, Hi ho, it's off to weed we go...”

I was utterly helpless! Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei! Oiyoyoyei!

I had to do something because Szofia was obviously their target and she was totally vegged out composting her cold hot dogs and absorbing through her fingertips a cocktail of tequila, rum, whiskey, vodka and wine. I could expulsifor, but to what end? The Branchers, like Szofia, were photosynthetics, very different from the bio-electric human beings. They would not be affected any more by me expulsifying than Szofia would have been.

I tried to wriggle free from my seat, but the loss of gas through my disconnected flutestacks was starting to enfeeble me. The Branchers were now entering business class, heading for first class! I pulled as hard as I could. Nothing. I pulled and wriggled and squirmed, all the while ignoble gases were fizzing out of me. Someone seated behind me yelled at me: "Stop rocking the seat back, asshole!"

I failed to untie the bird tape! Oiyoyoyei! I could hear the hissing of escaping transuranic methane and ignoble gasses - it was like a cut vein and I was bleeding away! The audible signals in my support podule began ringing emergency, emergency, emergency... the bells rang only in the 5th, of course... but the gas was spilling out in the first, second, third, fourth and fifth dimensions. My telemetry boards in my 5D backpack were preprogrammed to flip out an SOS zippledisk in the event of a major gas leak or disaster decoherence within the matrix, but to whom would it be sent if Pioneer Central and the Ahr-fǿrt Gassy University no longer existed?

The strong smell of transuranic methane gas spread quickly. It was sucked up and distributed by the airplane cabin recirculation system along with the usual broth of bacteria and viruses. Transuranic methane is both extremely volatile and extremely odoriferous, especially to the unrefined olfactory senses of humanoids. The powerful smell of transuranic methane even broke through the stupor of the in-flight movie. The passengers were ripped from their trances by the "stink." They put pillows over their noses, rang call lights throughout the aircraft for the stewardesses to help, pulled blankets over their heads and generally accused one another of having done most unpleasant things.

Then, triggered by the change in the cabin's atmosphere and the volatility of transuranic methane, automatic sensors caused the oxygen masks to drop down from the ceiling of the plane. Alarmed, the attendants ordered everyone back to their seats, stopped the in-flight movie and turned on the fasten seat belt sign.

The two Branchers intending to 'weed' Szofia, however, were unsure what to do. They froze in the aisle, still in the 4th dimension.

The flight attendants, meanwhile, were getting frantic - where were the sunglass-wearing trench-coated passengers who had been sitting where I now sat alone?

The passenger manifest described a Ms. May N. Branch and her traveling companion Mr. Rip Thorn who should be seated where, for some imperceptible reason, I appeared to be thrashing. "Mr. Trevor McPfeffor" (that is I, Hugo Nash!) belonged in the First Class Cabin but, for some unfathomable reason "Mr. McPfeffor" (that is, I) seemed to be unable to rise from where he sat while rocking back and forth, grimacing and shriveling up. He (that is, I) was occupying the otherwise two empty seats in economy class where Ms. May N. Branch and Mr. Rip Thorn should have been seated.

Fluting psziproots through my ventilation orifices is hazardous. But it also was depressurizing my exterior body sack such that Hugo Nash, aka "Mr. Trevor McPfeffor" was both losing mindfulness and becoming wrinkled like an under-inflated balloon. Even my chŭpaжthx hair fibers were turning white.

At this point, the sudden increase in cabin pressure caused by the exflow of my own transuranic methane caused one of the Boeing jet's mid-fuselage "plug doors" to pop out! The consequential sudden depressurization caused my four dimensional duct tape to tear free. I reached back and reconnected at least some of my life support hoses.

The air rushed out of the passenger cabin through the open plug door that had fallen out. All of the passengers, firmly seat-belted in, stayed where they were although their drinks and dinners (dinner in the economy section consisting of aluminum foil bags of salted peanuts ) were sucked out the open door.

The two Branchers who had frozen in the aisle, however, panicked. They siphoned themselves back into three dimensions. As they did so, standing up in the aisle, "Ms. May N. Branch" and her traveling companion "Mr. Rip Thorn" were also sucked through the open plug door out into the wild blue yonder along with an assortment of plastic cups, cell phones, diapers and bags of peanuts.

Plasmoidic five dimensional life forms are well known for their intelligence, but less so for their grace under pressure. Indeed, I was both literally and figuratively under-pressure with my warning signals blaring and my meters whirring in reverse with every passing of ignoble gas and my SOS zippledisk poised to skip out into the unistacks of the multiverse, so I was hardly feeling full of grace. When in doubt, therefore, an intelligent gassey can only do what is logical; and what is logical, when one does not know what to do, is to freak out and do everything at once.

I did: I simultaneously and involuntarily im- and expulsifored, which is a contradiction in terms except as a highly improbable quantum possibility and, consequently, extremely appropriate under the circumstances. In sum, I unwittingly created the five dimensional equivalent of a giant solar flare.

Of course, neither im- nor expulsiforing had any effect whatsoever on Szofia... but it did have an immediate effect on the 3D humanoid passengers, the pilots, the crew and the jet engines, too, because they all shut down instantly. The plane began to dive and to plummet earthward.

Objectively, this was very bad - the pilot and crew unconscious, the plane diving rapidly toward the ground, myself fluting highly combustible psziproots through my ventilation orifices.

Objectively, I could have taken this unique opportunity to study the psychology of impending death.

Objectively, there was nothing to be concerned about because, after all, one way or another, we all, sooner or later, would become part of the Complete Immersion, Disintegration and Recycling.

Objectively, I might have relaxed and seen five ways at once.

Subjectively, however, I was so terrified that I couldn't even see one way let alone five!

I was terrified! This was like the roller-coaster ride of a lifetime - and, perhaps, the last roller-coaster ride of my life!

The bright side, however - to the extent there could be any bright side to the situation - was that the two Branchers were no longer "on the plane."

After having been sucked out of the plane, the Branchers had siphoned themselves back into the 4th dimension. I alone saw them outside the window as both they and we plummeted in parallel formation. The Branchers sought to place a three dimensional anchor point inside the airplane so that they could siphon themselves back inside the cabin in the third dimension. Fortunately, however, they couldn't place the anchor point. Their free-fall trajectory pointed toward to the desert below. I, and I alone, saw the Branchers pass by the cabin windows shaking their gnarled green fists at me as – without wings to meliorate their descent - they rushed down, down, down.

In that instant, I passed out from acute loss of gas pressure.

* * *

I survived, of course, because I am here writing this memorial of my life. When I came to again in first class, I saw Szofia. She told me that she had snapped out of her photosynthesis when the movie abruptly stopped. She had no idea that there had been Branchers on the plane preparing to espalier and prune her. She had no idea how close she had come to having her root ball literally dug out. She did know, however, that I was not in my seat, that the cabin of the plane reeked of stinky butt-gas (as she artfully put it), that every humanoid on board was stunned, that the lights and fans and (most importantly) THE MOVIE had stopped. Significantly, Szofia also noticed that we were all plummeting like a rock to a cataclysmic end... and that I must have had something to do with it.

To make a short story shorter, she looked for me and found me passed out in the economy class section of the plane. As an intelligent vegetable, Szofia could walk the steeply inclined cabin with her feet firmly planted on the floor. She reached into 4D to reattach my equilibralators and put bandages on my lacerations. She used the overhead oxygen masks and several bottles of seltzer water to partially reinflate me.

“See,” Szofia said after she had successfully resuscitated me, “my Green Thumb first aid training has paid off, you stinky old gasbag!”

Szofia helped me back into the first class cabin.

I spoke by Field Impulse with the plane's onboard computer and autopilot program. Like all smart digital systems, the machine could exchange electrical impulses with me about the situation. After some discussion with me about what to do and how to do it, the onboard computer and auto pilot regained control of the plane. It straightened itself out as no humanoid pilot ever could have done. After all, no digital instrument left to its own devices (even one approved by quasi-intelligent 3D financial planners at Boeing) would want to terminate its life cycle in such an ignominious way as crashing into a hot, dry desert.

The propulsion system came back on line. The aisle lights and ventilation system reactivated. The passengers revived and, of course, they had no recollection whatsoever of what had just transpired... other than the fact that a) there was a gaping hole in the side of the airplane and b) two passengers were missing, i.e. Ms. May N. Branch and her traveling companion Mr. Rip Thorn!

The air traffic controllers on the ground had noticed that something unusual had happened.

They called out the fire trucks along with a large number of corporate lawyers to meet us and persuade us to sign releases of liability when we landed at LAX airport. But no one on board - no one other than Szofia and myself, of course - had any idea what actually had happened. All the human passengers and the plane's transponders and black box recorder had completely disconnected during the time of their im-and-expolsifore induced knock-out.

The only clues anyone had were the clutter of magazines, handbags, diapers and eyeglasses littered all over the aisles, the lingering smell of ignoble gases, and the mysterious disappearance of the two passengers wearing sunglasses, fedoras and trench coats who seemed to have been sucked through the open plug door in the middle of the airplane's fuselage.

Away in the dry bad-lands of the desert, there had been a Richter Scale event, an inexplicable nighttime crash of two enormous gnarled kudzu-trees right in the middle of nowhere. They collided with the ground and instantly splintered into dozens of thorny shards and sprigs... from which sprouted a copse of similarly enormous gnarled kudzu-trees that, in the morning, began to slowly lumber toward Los Angeles.

Are you feeling outraged? Morally indignant? Dazed and confused? Do you want to have a strong word or two with Hugo Nash or with Szofia? Are you convinced that this novel isn’t a work of fiction at all but a chronicle of your own life? Have you met someone, some place, some where, who was exactly like Hugo Nash or Szofia? Are you yourself an intelligent vegetable from the 4th dimension or a gaseous intelligent from the 5th? Do you feel like having a cocktail of tequila, rum, whiskey, vodka and wine? [Highly un-recommended!]