Chapter 15

“Piper four six echo hotel, Turn left heading two six five, descend to eight thousand. Maintain speed at one six five.”

“SoCal center, down to eight, left to two six five, and one sixty five knots for four six echo hotel.”

Guess they getting me down and away from that river of big iron. I’m sure as shit not gonna accept anything much lower, with the sun setting in my face I can’t see the mountains.

“Piper four six echo hotel, contact Fullerton tower one one nine point one.”

“Socal approach, six echo hotel to nineteen one, have a good day.”

“Fullerton tower, This is Piper four six echo hotel, seven northeast, at eight thousand, with delta. I have the runway in sight, for a visual.”

“Four Six Echo Hotel, wind 195 at three, cleared for visual. You will be number two behind the Cessna turning short final, cleared to land two four.”

“Cleared number two, for two four, six echo hotel.”

Damn, I’m still five out and I crawling up this guys ass. What is this guy doing? Get off of the active, asshole ... Why the fuck is the tower not saying anything? I’m almost on top of this idiot. Fuck this shit...

“Four six echo hotel is going around. Tower, give me a number. I wanna talk to the supervisor.”

“Roger, four six echo hotel. Our number is seven one four, eight seven zero, one three two two. Enter right downwind, cleared to land two four.”

“Right downwind, four six echo hotel is cleared to land two four.”

Dickheads. The controllers would’ve reamed my ass if I had done something like that.”

“This is the pilot of Piper Malibu four six echo hotel. Your controller failed to provide separation. And then he didn’t request him to expedite off of the active. That Cessna was turning base to final when I was over six miles out. Not acceptable. How do I file?”

“I understand, sir. Perhaps we can resolve this at the local level.”

“I want the contact info. I’m gonna file.”

“I understand. I will need your full name, pilot certificate number, and telephone number. Your reference for this is...”

What is she doing here? I don’t remember updating my schedule. I’ll bet Janice has an interesting story for me. Standby for incoming bullshit...

“Hello, Janice. Don’t have time for this. I had problems with the controllers and need to file a report.”

That’s a lie. I may be a rationalizing ass-hat, but if she can bullshit, so can I.

“Why? Because I’m fucking hungry. I’ve been in the air for almost six hours.”

“In-n-out is not an appropriate place to talk.”

“Good as any. Let’s sit here ... So let’s hear it.”

“I will admit that I made a mistake; but this is not a major issue. It is really not about anything...”

“A mistake? How ‘bout a major error in judgment? How ‘bout you throwing the thing that you and me had going into the shitcan? How ‘bout you fucking my mind up while I’m out on the job and away from the hacienda? How ‘bout you fucking up an otherwise good employee?”

Damn, should have ordered a double-double ... Is she gonna say anything? Fuck it.

“What are you gonna do ‘bout her?”

“Do about her? Why would we do anything?”

“Shit, woman. You fuckin pimped me out. I’m not some free-wheeling hippy like you and Dave. Ya think I go around randomly fucking any willing woman? This shit freaks me out. And what bullshit did you tell Suzy?”

“I only told her that you would be willing because you had been away from me for a while, and that I would not be jealous.”

“So what about me? Why would you think I’d wanna fuck the girl? Just because I’d fuck you any day of the week doesn’t mean I wanna go around fucking every bitch on the block. What the fuck am I missing here?”

“I think that ... I don’t know, Mark ... Maybe I’m the one missing something. I’m sorry. She wanted to experience sex with someone that she liked, and I knew that you would be quite capable of ringing her bell. And God knows, you have always been able to ring my bell.”

Need some more frys. Fuck it, gonna order another, gonna make it a double-double, animal-style. Fuckin-A. What did she say? Ring her bell? She only likes me because I can get her off?

“Go home, woman. You need to make sure that Suzy is not fucked up because of your weird-ass shit. I’m gonna get some more chow...”

Yeah, fuck that light-weight pansy shit, gonna get a triple-triple. Animal style, super fry. Damn, left my shit in the airplane, gotta get my shit. No way, Jose. Chow comes first.

Damn, almost 2300. Fuck this. I’ll sleep in my bird. Where are those blankets?

Who the fuck is this suit? And who is that model-looking skinny bitch with him?

“Mark Watson?”

“Yep.”

“I’m John Hornsby, Deputy Regional Administrator and Flight Safety Director.”

I’m not impressed, asshole. And the woman is severely lacking any useful hooter coefficient.

“Yeah? What you want, uh, Mister Hornsby is it?”

“In reference to your request to file for an incident number, do you understand the legal ramifications?”

“Mister Hornsby, I am not a lawyer, so I don’t understand the full legal mumbo-jumbo. I’ll tell ya what I understand. I understand that if I had continued, as per the controller instructions, I would have violated minimum separation, and would have created an unsafe situation. And dollars to donuts, your controllers would have filed a violation.”

“Understood, Mister Watson. Please know that, because you were exercising the privileges of a commercial pilot license, the NTSB may send an investigator. That would not be desirable.”

“I tell ya what is not desirable. It’s controllers that do not maintain separation. Did you look at the IFR flight plan I filed? Dude, read the FARs. You aren’t required to vector me once I declare that the airport is in sight, but ya do have to provide positive control over spacing. And this sure as fuck ain’t LAX or SNA, so your people in the Fullerton tower aren’t over-burdened with traffic. They fucked up. Are you trying to cover up for them?”

“I don’t think that ... Most certainly not. There is no ‘cover-up’. This is a courtesy call.”

“So I have an FAA official trying to influence the outcome of a potential NTSB investigation?”

Why the fuck did the guy bring up the NTSB? There was no fucking accident. This is weird. Shit, lookin like more of my money out the door to lawyers.

“What!? Certainly not, Mister Watson. Thank you for your time.”

Yeah, stomp off like a little kid. What an asshole. Go eat a bag of dicks. Why the fuck is this no-tits model lady hanging around? Go away.

“Mister Watson, I am Sarah Jackson. I am a principal with the Office of Accident Investigation and Prevention. Your serialized complaint will take a while to reach Washington, then be assigned to the local office.”

“Local office. Don’t you guys operate outa LAX?”

“We do. But the Deputy Regional Administrator and myself were on site during the incident that you reported. So we were being proactive.”

Take your little pro-active tits outa here woman. I wanna go to the hacienda. Damn she must be a runner or something. With an athletic body like that she could be a sierra-hotel surfer.

“Mister Watson?”

“Huh?”

“Would you like to enter a statement?”

“No.”

Not only no, but fuck no. Not gonna do shit, lady. At least not without a legal beagle.

“Very well. Have you eaten breakfast?”

“Nope.”

“There is a Dennys less than four clicks down the road.”

This woman sounds ex-mil. Interesting. Dennys? It’s a can of spam, but why not?

“Okay, let me get my shit into my truck, and I’ll follow you.”

“I’m Sarah.”

Yeah, ya already said that. Whatever. You can be ‘George’ for all I care.

“Damn, that’s fucked up when the fairy force kicks you to the curb. No chance of you getting you getting your medical back in the future?”

“Don’t know. It will almost a year until the VA will be able to give me an exam. And my government medical insurance won’t cover eye surgery.”

“Did ya do anything other than TRACON?”

“Did short stints as a center enroute, and a few weeks in a tower at Nellis during a Red Flag op-ex.”

“Interesting. So you’re pushing paper for the FAA now?

“Actually, my boss is an NTSB investigator; don’t belong to the FAA.”

“So, my complaint will go to the NTSB?”

“Probably not. It will be analyzed in a few weeks, because that type of incident is low priority.”

“So you don’t consider it to be a ‘near miss’?”

“Maybe. You won’t know until the FAA puts it into the ASRS.”

“Which nobody outside the government has access to...”

“It’s coming, Mark. All of the weird stuff that the FAA has swept under the rug since the nineteen fiftys will soon be for all to see. It’s going to be ugly.”

“How?”

“The internet. You are an engineer. I’m certain that you recognize what CERN has demonstrated with the newest hypertext protocols.”

“Yeah. We’ve been watching that. I’m guessing it may be a monster if industry ever puts some money into infrastructure. Otherwise is just gonna be lipstick on a pig, because the current packet-switched networks ain’t gonna support that shit, which I’ve been playing with for over ten years. Dial-up services ain’t going away anytime soon.”

“Give it another year. It will become a huge business accelerant.”

“Yeah? You sound like my business manager. So what do you know about hypertext on this web?”

“The Defense Department already has the infrastructure, and is trying to build expertise. I have been, on the side, playing with it for about two years. while hypertext itself is not a programming language, the code that serves hypertext is not difficult to write.”

This woman is doing some major shit. Fucking impressive. Now all she needs is some tits to store that knowledge and skills.

“So you write code. What ya using?”

“Mostly C. Been trying to learn C++, but the execs are way too big and a bit slower than C. It’s a much more complex language.”

“I used to think that. I did a subset of C++ to fix that shit; removed the generics and dumped the string lib. A shit-ton more capable without the overhead.”

“I would really like to see that.”

“No can do, lady. NDA and all of that bullshit. Our company licensed it to National Instruments.”

“The NI parser and compiler is yours? I have used those tools.”

“Yep. Got another year on the support contract. They’re developing something new within National that will probably make our shit look stupid.”

“Wow, so your employer is a major player?”

“Nah. Only five of us. We’re small peanuts; just four techies and a business manager. Tell me more about where you think this web shit is going.”

“It is much bigger than what people can see, and it’s more than the usenet and the NSF net. I’m on AOL, Genie, AltaVista and some local providers. Not all use the graphical approach, but all offer various levels of access to their computers that do nothing but monitor and scan across the web. But the most interesting...”

“I’m telling ya Janice, we need to hire this woman. I’ve been playing with arpanet and usenet for years, yet I missed some really big stuff, that probably represents the next gen. Maybe it’s just because I’m a moron, but I didn’t see half the shit she sees.”

“If EDS buys us, it’s a moot point.”

“Why’s that?”

“EDS only allows closed communications systems for project access. They are not interested in this web stuff, and they would not allow us to deviate from our core services.”

“What if we do this on our own. Sorta like a side job?”

“That’s possible. But Mark, why would we? What would be the product?”

“It would be ... Fuck ... I don’t know. I don’t think like a consumer, and I don’t know shit ‘bout marketing. That’s why I want you to talk to her.”

“Okay, we will talk. But we need to talk about Suzy. She really feels bad about this.”

“Nothing to discuss. That’s on you.”

“Mark, I am really sorry, but I thought that...”

“Don’t worry ‘bout it ... Shit ... Ya know, I really do like you. You’re smart. You’re a kick-butt business manager. You’re totally hot. But I don’t understand why you think that pimping me out would be cool with me. That shit freaks me out, so I’m gonna move out and in with Bob. I’ll be next door if ya need me, but I’m just really confused about shit. You okay?”

“I’m okay, Mark ... No, I am not okay. Mark, please. Let me explain.”

Yeah, right. This should be good. Rock-n-roll.

“Many people in my age group, such as Dave and myself, while only ten years older, may as well be a different generation than your age group. We truly thought that the world could end any time. We never knew when the nukes would come raining down. We lived for the day. The sixties and early seventies were not a true ‘sexual revolution’ or a period of revolt by the youth. Civil rights notwithstanding, our generation changed nothing. Yes, there were some that were politicolly and socially active, but most of us pushed away from society not as part of any revolt, but because we had resigned ourselves to our fate. We learned to cope with our impending destruction by living for that day, and that day only. We were never certain that the next day would come. So we stoned our minds into oblivion, and screwed ourselves silly.”

“Yeah, my brother sorta explained that to me, he was almost seven years older than me. But so what? That’s not the world we live in now. The commies are toast. The Berlin wall came down a few months ago. This ‘free love’ shit is just an excuse for fucking with, and over, other people. An excuse for being dishonest ... At least that’s what I think ... I’m gonna move out.”

Damn, already missing those tits.

“He’s a poser, man. What a loser.”

“Yep, total kook. All gear and no performance. Look at that, the local boys look like they’re gonna go tribal on him.”

“What the heck are you talking about, boss?”

“The guy with the fancy board and wets. See how he took the wave and caused the other guys to kick?”

“Yeah, so you are saying he’s an asshole.”

“Pretty much.”

“We gonna invite the ladies over for our burrito-fest, boss.”

“If you and Bob want their tits in the way, it’s okay with me, dude.”

“Dark, boss. Real dark. You hear What Janice told Suzy? They calling your house The Monastery.”

“Whatever. Any reason we should care?”

“Uh, guess not.”

“Bob, it’s okay if you want ‘em over tonight.”

“Yo no say, Mark. Why don’t we just burn dinner in the back yard. They’ll come over if they want. That way we avoid the drama of extending an invitation.”

“Damn good idea, Sir Bob of Engineering.

“Roger, I need to get anything?”

“Nada, boss. We’re good.”

“Mark, did you see what they did to The Shack?”

“I saw it last week, they were re-building shit. So did they finally sell it?”