Patrick McLean - How To Succeed in Evil

To the East of Flight 209 the laws of physics are under serious assault. The surface of the ocean parts in a perfectly straight line. Superheated seawater explodes into the air. An impossibility is headed West.

This impossibility is a man flying many times faster than the speed of sound. This man never had a chance to study physics. He doesn’t know what he’s doing is impossible. He just does it. He is called Excelsior. In Latin the name means “ever higher” This impossible man does not know this. To be fair, there are a lot of words he doesn’t know.

But what good are words in moments of disaster? The endless stretching instant as the car begins to skid. That high speed memory that the survivors play over and over again, looking for the meaning of it all. What words are equal to these moments? What words are of use? No? Please? Stop? Don’t?

When the wheels lose traction and you look over at the innocent eyes in the car seat next to you, there are no words.

And this is where he is asked to go, this Excelsior. This is where he lives. Do we expect eloquence from the avalanche? From a mighty rocket? From the forces that shift the continents? No. We expect action. Power, undeniable. And this is what his powers have made him. A force of nature with the will of a man.

To be sure, there are other heroes. Other people with exceptional powers who have been called to help their fellow and (it must be admitted) lesser men and women. Some are more colorful. Some are more eloquent. But Excelsior has always been the most powerful.

In a perfect world, Excelsior would race towards flight 209 with a full heart. With humility. With fear. With angry tears in his eyes at the injustice of it all. He would be fully aware that each life on that plane was woven into the fabric of mankind. They might be sons, brothers, mothers, daughters, friends or enemies, but in his heart he would recognize that each was part of the mass. Each one another’s hope of redemption, of love, of care. And that when even one soul is cut from the cloth of humanity, the entire garment is weaker. Unravelled in pain and loss.

In the perfect world, Excelsior would recognize that there are no explanations for tragedy, just excuses that masquerade as facts. But then, if it was a perfect world, planes would not crash.

Excelsior is ignorant of all of this. Perhaps he is desensitized. But he flies towards this disaster (as he flies towards all disasters) not because people are at risk. He goes because he has been told to go. For him, Heroism has ceased to be right thing to do. Doing what he is told is the right thing to do.

And today he’s also going because he needs a win. He’s been taking it on the chin lately. Not feeling like a hero. But what else could he be? He’s the most heroic hero there has ever been. He’s the first. The best. The strongest. Like as not, there will never be another like him.

But for all his power, he is, like anyone else, held captive to his own feelings. And right now, he’s excited about a plane crash. Mostly because the last one was so good.

It seems like a dream now, but it had been 1944. A different age altogether. A bomber’s controls had failed and it dropped over New York City. He caught the B-29 and layed it down right in the middle of Broadway. Everyone had cheered. He drank with the bomber crew. He had found a pretty girl, flew her around the island of Manhattan, made love to her in a cloud and went home to sleep it off. It was a pure win.

And a pure win was what he needed. To feel like himself again. To feel that it all made sense. Now, if he had sex with a girl in a cloud she would get pregnant and sue him for paternity. How had it all gone so wrong?

But not today. He knows he will save this day. He imagines the cheering crowds. Some of them will have video cameras. The footage of his rescue will play over and over again on television and computer screens. He will not just be a hero again, he will feel like a hero again. He will watch himself on TV.

When he intercepts the plane it is at 6,000 feet, spinning and yawing and pitching out of control. Excelsior’s stomach churns just to think about being trapped inside the metal frame. He thinks to himself that he has been through worse. But has he? He has never faced certain death. The beach, he thinks. Set the plane down on the beach. That will look good.

As the plane continues to fall, he imagines girls in Bikinis. The sun glinting off aircraft aluminum. Survivors wandering through a volleyball game, trying to figure out why the afterlife looks like Southern California.

Before he dives towards the plane, he fills his lungs and cries, “EXCELSIOR!” He doesn’t want there to be any doubt about who’s actually saving this plane. But everything goes wrong. He can’t throw a jaunty salute to the pilot or the passengers. The windows are rolling so fast, they are just a blur. And he can’t get a hold of the damn thing. As he darts in towards the fuselage, the spinning plane slaps him away with its one good wing. He’s glad no one sees it.

Excelsior gets mad and knocks the wing off. The plane falls like a stone. Behind Excelsior the remaining fuel in the wing explodes in a bright fireball. It’s now or never. No more time for battle cries or salutes.

Excelsior dives hard and gets under the plane. His fingers dig into the aluminum. The plane slows, but not fast enough. He strains. The ocean rushes closer. At this rate, he’ll never make it.

Rivets pop out of the plane as he presses harder. It is a physical impossibility to lift something without a place to stand. But he does. The plane slows. But then, with the shriek of rending metal the fuselage rips in the middle. The tail and the nose slam sharply together, trapping Excelsior in an aluminum sandwich of disaster. He is exempt from the laws of physics, but the plane is not.

The fuselage disintegrates. Pieces of bodies and pieces of the aircraft are everywhere. Excelsior can think of nothing. Dread and failure overcome him. Somehow, he spies a man in a uniform falling beneath him. He seems whole. Perhaps he is alive. But the water is so close.

He dives again. Perhaps he can still save one. One would be something. It wouldn’t be victory, but it wouldn’t be failure. He snatches for the pilot mere feet above the ocean. The grab is good. His fingers close around the man’s wrist, and Excelsior launches himself skyward.

It is a feeling he wishes he could forget. Through the skin he can feel the muscles stretch. He feels the vibrating strings of the tendons give way. He feels, more than hears, the pop as the shoulder comes free from the socket. The body hits the water at over a hundred miles an hour.

For a moment, Excelsior is silhouetted against the setting sun clutching the arm he has managed to saved.

No one will say it is his fault. And the few who will know the truth of it will say that he did all he could. But Excelsior knows differently. He is the child of an age that knew right and wrong. And even though he is surrounded by relativists, he remembers that a loss is a loss.

He stares down at the slick of blood and oil. Watches the aluminum sink beneath the waves. He won’t go to the beach. Maybe he’ll head west for a while. Find an unmapped atoll and hide himself away in shame. It’s the only thing he can think to do.

But he knows, the next time there is a call, the next time there is another chance to be a hero again, he will go.

Like a junkie, he cannot refuse.

Edwin Windsor leans back in his chair. His long form is all angles and ease. Well over seven feet of him stretches from immaculately polished wingtip to slightly loosened tie. At the end of this day, he displays the rumpled elegance of a man who is perfectly at ease in a suit. Examining his face, one might mistake him for a serene mystic of the East. Except for a wrinkle that surfaces between his eyebrows.