Jason looked down at his boarding pass. The blackletter outline said “C41”

“Fuck.” he rolled his eyes at himself. How could he forget to check in on time, again. After getting stuck in the chair that couldnt’ lean back on the flight from DC to Vancouver, he swore it would never happen again. Whoops.

Trudging up the aisle behidn all the other check-in slackers, all the already-seated passengers avoiding eye contact with the late boarding shame of tyring ot find the last middle seat… anywhere, and any place to stow his overhead bag. At least the couple in front of him was in worse shape — they’d never find two together at this point. Oh well, not his problem. There. he spotted an empty seat between a bearded guy in a baseball cap in the window seat, and a middle aged lady in business attire a few rows further on. The bin above their seat had a single open slot.

Jason made eye contact with the hat guy, and nodded by way of inquiry about the seat. The guy nodded, and scrambled to move a backpack out of the middle seat, stowing it below him. Jason siddled past the business woman, who barely looked up from her phone, and turned her knees sideways to let him squeeze past. Adjusting his wallet, headphones and backpack, Jason twisted to get the seatbelt parts out from underneath him. With a click, the parts fit together.

As the crowd in the middle row began thinning, the guy in Jason’s window seat flagged down the flight attendant.

“Coors Light?” he asked when the uniformed woman craned her head down the row. She nodded, and briefly returned with a can she handed to Jason to pass along. “Tap the Rockies” the metal tube suggested. “Thanks” he follwed up, as he passed his card out to the flight attendant to ring it up. The man got out an ipad, and with the screen slung across his lap, and the beer in one hand, he set about the task of obliterating pigs and their meticulously crafted structures by catapulting birds at them. The birds for unknown reasons, were dressed in the garb of Star Wars characters. Jason tried to steal a glance out of the corner of his eye, but got confused when it seemed that the pig’s outfits ought to have been on the same team as the birds…?

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