Super Born: Seduction of Being by kkornell Page B

of North
Mountain—it filled his windshield, only seconds away—and then felt
himself reaching for his parents’ welcoming arms.
    I remember approaching the plane, not knowing
if I could handle it. Not knowing if I would be helping the people
inside or merely end up being a useless, close-up witness to their
deaths. But when the plane responded to my will…it was
amazing.
    It was at that moment that the pilot said he
felt the nose of the plane rise as North Mountain disappeared
beneath him. Then he felt the plane bank gently to the left,
circling back to the airport, its airspeed increasing. The two
pilots both said they looked at each other in disbelief. Both
engines showed zero thrust, zero rpms. The alarms still rang. Their
steering yokes turned by themselves. They both agreed that for
those used to being in control of tons of metal and hundreds of
lives, it was a baffling, disconcerting experience.
    The copilot tried to turn the wheel, only to
find it violently push back. He continued to try to restart the
engine, even as the plane flew under my control. He explained that
their training was based on science, and he knew of no other way to
function.
    The passengers cared not about the how or why.
All they knew was that the jet was level and seemingly back in
control. They all remembered cheering, crying, or hugging one
another.
    The woman in the back with two children said
she pulled them close and sobbed uncontrollably. Her daughter
asked, “Why are you crying, Mommy?”
    The young college student remembered his
girlfriend burying her head in his chest while he sat upright,
staring forward, with tears watering in his eyes.
    In the cockpit, the captain said he was the
first to let go of the controls, becoming aware that something out
of the ordinary was at work. The radio crackled in his ear. The
voice of the controller remained calm and professional, but in the
background, the pilot could hear cheers. “Way to go 118, we copy
you level and on return course vector. We have you cleared for
landing on runway one-niner west. Over.”
    “ Copy that, one-niner, over.” The
pilot answered without knowing how he could comply. He didn’t know
right then how to tell them the truth of what was
happening.
    “ Whole lotta people down here are
waiting to buy you a beer, 118. Over.”
    “ Take you up on that, control.
Over.”
    By then, the copilot was unable to control
himself. “Jim, what the hell is going on? How do we land this
thing?”
    The pilot said he just shook his head slowly.
“You tell me. All I know is that we’re not in pieces on that
mountain; we’re slowly losing altitude on a perfect approach to the
airport. I’m not flying. You’re not flying. We have no engines, yet
we’re still here. What controls do we have that are working? If I
try to turn the controls to bank right and level out the plane, it
fights you back to keep banking left and go where it
wants.”
    “ It?” said the copilot
perplexed.
    “ Look at our airspeed. In theory,
this plane can’t be still in the air at this slow speed, but we
are!”
    It was then the radio crackled again. “One
eighteen, we track you now off approach vector for one-niner. Are
you able to make one-niner, over?” asked the tower.
    “ One moment, control,” was all the
pilot could think to answer.
    I continued carrying the plane through a slow,
controlled descent, but now was passing over the runway toward the
terminal. The pilots were clearly trying to make heads or tails of
their situation—I knocked on the pilot’s side window, then my head
appeared. It was the head of a woman wearing a black mask, with a
rat’s nest of blond hair blowing and tangling in the winds outside
the cabin. If the pilot had not been belted in, I’ll bet he would
have jumped into the copilot’s lap with surprise.
    I tried to mouth a request to the pilot. The
pilot’s confused look told me that he could not understand what I
wanted, and feared me more than he was trying to