He heard the woman in one of the seats in First Class say, “Really, there’s nothing I can think of that’s more ridiculous than a trilobite. I mean, just who do they think they’re dealing with?”

That being more than enough of that, he crammed his earbuds firmly back in place.

At fifty-two, the man – who, for reference, was seated in the middle aisle, one row in front of the bomb — could afford to sit in First Class but loathed the people in First Class. He remembered stories of Paul Neumann buying all the seats around his, for privacy. This man didn’t have the adoring fans problem, but he sympathized.

His son kept getting little cancers.

The man spent several minutes familiarizing himself with the touchscreen, deciding what rate the coffee should be coming. And the food. He’d been lucky to get a spot with an empty seat on each side, so he could use his elbows the way natural selection had intended.

His wife, whose family had been three generations in the plutonium works and research reactors at the Hanford site, blamed him.

He brought up the touchpad’s chess program, set it to the Isle of Lewis pieces, and started a game, at middle difficulty. The program didn’t understand the first thing about the Evans Gambit. Win in 21. At top level, Dutch Defense, win in 31.

This was a flattery program, for bored passengers. His phone was ten times better.

True, he had smoked cigars for a year and a half, long before they met, but she kept bringing it up. A filthy habit, she said. One of his many filthy habits. Men, he had learned in his marriage, were filthy, repulsive, and stupid.

His phone told him he was stupid, too. In grade school, there hadn’t been a computer in the world that could seriously challenge him at chess. He had built his self-image on his chess play. Now his phone could beat him easily, consistently, and while doing ten other things at the same time.

In addition to being responsible for his son’s cancers, he was reliably informed that his failure to pray properly kept his son from being cured. His son’s cancers tended to retreat and disappear almost as inexplicably as they appeared, but that was due to correct prayer by others, and had nothing to do with the father.

It certainly had nothing to do with his prayer habits, for he had none.

He had never, ever, understood how the human race could spend so much time, so much money, so much spilled blood on such complete bullshit.

Not understanding this left him mostly alone in the world.

And his son kept getting little cancers.

– Timons Esaias

Author’s Note: This story is one of a series of character sketches that I’ve been playing with, each of which mentions a threat that isn’t really a part of their story. In reality, we are always part of more than one story, whether we know it or not. In fiction, understandably, that often gets lost.