Sunday, March 2, 2014

Solution Airplane

Samantha sat in Row 33, Seat F. Transatlantic flights are a modern marvel, but they are also one of the most tedious experiences known to woman. Samantha could deal with rude flight attendants and even more rude passengers. But waiting in line for a lavatory is unacceptable. She had never flown in first class or business class, but she had heard that they get their own toilets. Standing in a queue in a three-foot aisle at 30,000 feet and needing desperately to pee is a ridiculous fact of life given the modern technology humans enjoy.
Sam calculates that each passenger in the queue takes approximately four  minutes each in the lavatory. There are two lavatories at the middle of the plane where she is. Each has a queue of four and six people, respectively. The queue for the lavatories has remained stable for the last several hours that Samantha looked back to check. Thus, she applies Little's Law which says that the number of customers in a stable system (L) equals the rate of arrival (λ) times the average service time (W). Since she knows the number of customers and the average service time, she computes:
L= λW
λ = L/W
λ = (10+2) customers / 4 minutes
λ = 3 customers per minute = 1 customer every 20 seconds.
Sure enough, another person has queued up for the lavatories as Sam stands there thinking and calculating. And just as surely, a person exits the lavatory and holds the door open for the next customer to enter to keep the number of customers stable.
The man says "Excuse me, excuse me. _Bitter, bitter_. Excuse me. _Danke_. Coming through," as he squeezes past the queue in the narrow aisle. Samantha wants let out a scream.
Approximately 4*2 minutes = 8 minutes later, she is able to enter the toilet and do her business. She is still wearing the same clothing from the day before, but they have been laundered overnight by the hotel staff. She is still wearing the boy's briefs however, and that could be the cause of the extra trips to the restroom. She presses the button on the toilet to flush down the contents. She realises too late she has left the cover up and witnesses a violent rush of dark blue liquid and feels the sharp tug of vacuum pressure on her ear drums. This, combined with the roar of the air filtration systems and the violent noise of her flushing, make waves of nausea reappear somewhere in the back of her head and throat.
She lowers the lid and steps into the aisle. There are ten eager faces staring back at her as she exits. She gropes through the aisle and steps on several toes asking people to please excuse her. Back at her seat which is mercifully on the aisle she tries to sleep. This has been impossible for her, though she usually is able to sleep on airplanes. She hates the inane pop culture that is fed to captive sheep via the back headrests of the chairs in front of them. She tries to do some work on her tablet but is unable to focus and feels a queasy floating that has been following her since takeoff. She determines she is probably going to be sick and will need to take a few days off when she gets home. She needs time to prepare some evidence for her bosses to present at the congressional hearings.
A mild shaking of the cabin reminds her to check her seat belt. It is on safely. She notices the passenger next to her is asleep and so is the man on the other side. Samantha estimates half the flight is asleep, including the airline stewardesses. She had seen them toward the back in a special section of the plane. They had retreated back to their seats around the four hour mark of the flight. The seats back there had small curtains that pulled around to give some privacy to the seats. They were just normal economy seats, however, and Sam could see these professional fliers crunched up like contortionists eyes closed and snoring like peaceful children. She was briefly ashamed for peering through the curtains and hurried past the aisle where they slept whenever she took a lap walking around the plane.
Sam checked her tablet and saw they were approaching the nine hour mark. The plane should be near the eastern coast of America by her calculation. She turned on the tiny screen in the back of the seat in front of her. She switched the remote over to the live flight path. An icon of the airplane showed where the airplane thought it was based on the GPS coordinates. It showed a location about 1/2 inch (on the screen) off the coast of New Jersey, just south of Long Island.
A violent jolt of turbulence causes Sam to drop her tablet on the floor. She turns off the display in front of her and reaches down to find her tablet. The plane shakes more, but more mildly this time. A ding-dong C note plays and the "Fasten Seat Belts" sign lights up. A few people from the queue at the lavatory wander back to their seats.
As Samantha continues to reach for her tablet blindly, she decides to look at her feet and sees two sets of feet like hers. One is a ghostly image laid on top of hers. She glances at her hand reaching for the tablet and sees two tablets, one a ghost and shimmering on top of the other. She looks to her left and sees two copies of the airplane row with a ghostly image wavering up and down on top of the real one. She can see a ghostly head of herself asleep, leaning on the wavering version of a headrest to the left of her ear.
Another violent shaking occurs as the two images overlap in her mind. Pain racks her arm and neck as she is snapped down, then up. She gapes in confusion as the ghostly image of the other plane, herself, and other passengers firm up and pull apart as the planes rips in half.
Then it is all noise and screaming and cold whipping wind as she falls through the air.

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