The machine people noticed it first; the satellite people, the radar people. They saw it coming from miles of miles away with their pings and ms and humidity percentages and fractional chances of precipitations. And from them word spread on down to the personnel – flight staff, ground crew; maintenance; cleaners; that guy in a kiosk selling you discount toblerones at ruinous rates – and then at last the word came down into the terminal from on high in soothing tones over crackly speaker.
“All flights will be delayed presently; please see the boards for estimated times of departure. The sky isn’t right.”
And that was all.
***
The sky not being right was a clear issue. Its cause was somewhat less discernable. Processes of elimination had to be followed; hypotheses had to be tested.
First the airport phoned more machine people and sent them emails, in hopes that maybe theirs were fibbing or somehow silly. Maybe the sky was actually right after all and this was just a big misunderstanding that they could all look back on and laugh.
But they received nothing but polite confirmations and condolences. The sky was indeed not right. The easiest way out of the problem had been shot down.
Second came the obvious solution: they went down into the big metal shed next to the control tower and opened sixteen different locks of increasingly angry sizes until they found The Plug, which was twelve feet tall and weighed six tons. It was eased out of its socket on the strainer backs of dozens of baggage handlers, held awkwardly, then reinserted.
But despite being unplugged and replugged, the sky still wasn’t right.
The third solution was even simpler in its elegance. A little truck went a little ways out onto the tarmac, carrying a little lad of little people wearing little safety vests and holding little glowing paddles. They were unloaded and began making waving their tools in the air, staring upwards with contorted brows and half-bared teeth.
“There, there!” they shouted over their mouthpieces and into their headsets. “Move, move! There, there! Farther, farther! Keep going, keep going!”
But no matter how hard they shouted and waved and directed the problem did not correct itself, and so the idea that the sky wasn’t right because it was too far left was discarded.
For the fourth solution they went up the chain of command. A great complimentary gift of duty-free alcohol and twenty-dollar hamburgers was piled high in the center of the lobby and burned with the fuel from dozens of novelty souvenir lighters. Polite complaints to the sky were uttered in every tongue available at hand to every entity that might have dwelt within it or controlled it or fought it or slept with it.
But the sky neither affirmed nor denied nor made any comment in the slightest, and so there was nothing left to do but call for the janitors and custodians and mopfolk – who had, of course, expected this and were already standing on hand with extremely careful and sober expressions.
At the fifth, serious material resources were being tapped. The security checkpoints were packed up and wheeled outside; the sky’s shoes were removed and its pockets emptied; its backpack and purse were placed in little plastic tubs and the whole lot were examined with every kind of radiation and the other ones too; its documentation was ruthlessly scrutinized and it was taken aside for a polite, professional and detached conversation on the nature of its business (being above the seas and the earth) and its planned destination (the same).
But the sky refused to say anything without a lawyer and none qualified to practice in its field could be found. The entire process became entangled in red tape and so ensconced, proceeded to return to the warmth of the inner terminal, where it slipped into a dreamy hibernation.
By the sixth, unorthodox solutions were being entertained. Every ladder across all four terminals was found, wrangled, and fastened together to permit the ascension of a single staff member – chosen by lot – to the sky, who could adjust it manually until it was no longer right and instead was correct.
But the winning lottery ticket went to Jess, who had a bad leg; and the runner-up went to Paul, who didn’t want to; and the runner-up-runner-up went missing, and finally the runner-up-runner-up-runner-up was Doreen, who refused to climb any ladder she hadn’t given a good kick to, and it transpired that Doreen’s kick was more good than the ladder.
By the seventh ultradisunorthodox solutions were on the deck, which was why the combining of every available 787 on the airfield into a single ‘man-plane’ to destroy the sky and thereby render its nonrightfulness moot got as far as the blueprinting phase before the individual responsible was exposed, chased down, and fished out of the air vents with a long-armed squeegee pole before being imprisoned in the baggage carousel.
The eighth solution was to shout angrily at the sky. It did not help.
The ninth solution was under proposal and involved the key placement of four refreshment carts, three especially athletic and ruthless flight attendants, and a strategically overfilled water bottle, but it was interrupted immediately before its execution by the tenth solution, which occurred when an anonymous traveler tried to hit the lights in the washroom, flicked a likely-looking switch, and turned the sky back on, immediately rendering it right.
“Someone must’ve hit it with their shoulder by mistake,” was the verdict. And so, with admirable speed and precision, the schedules were adjusted one last time and service resumed with nothing but the greatest of caution, care, and professional courtesy.
***
Everyone involved was gifted a voucher.
Except the sky. It had been very unhelpful.