by FREDERICA VON McTOAST-HYPHEN, Alternate Reality News Service People Writer
Fascism is not just about the leaders who make policies and explain to the masses how they benefit from those policies even when they don't. Especially when they don't. It takes thousands and thousands of lower level functionaries the masses are never likely to have heard of to make fascism function. In its dysfunctional way. It's kind of in the job title. This is one of their stories.
Gilligan Eilandcastawhey wanted to be an airplane pilot from the age of four, when he was thrown off the roof of his house and landed in the family pool. It was a blow-up pool, and he cracked three ribs, but he never forgot the freedom of flight that preceded the months of recovery.
"Flying is like...eating ice cream, listening to the Beatles and having sex all at the same time," Gilligan explained. "Messy, but one of life's peak experiences."
What about the fact that he is afraid of heights?
"Everything is done through instruments," Gilligan told me. "I just have to wear dark glasses on takeoff and landing and not look through the window of the cockpit for too long, and I'm fine. I did have a rough patch where I had to take sedatives - mostly bourbon - before each flight, but the passengers hardly noticed and my copilots have been real sports about not reporting me, so the bumps were chalked up to turbulence. Otherwise, really, it's been no problem..."
For the last decade and a half, Gilligan has flown for Mutavis, a discount airline that flies mostly between small, underserved cities. His favourite route was Boise, Idahoma to Taos, New Mexakota. "It's a very calming route," he said. "Once you're over the clouds and can't see the ground below..."
Seven months ago, he was assigned a plane that had been outfitted with chains and leg irons. "I thought maybe it had been booked by a group of bondage fetishists," Gilligan stated. "For the right price, Mutavis will do theme flights. I'm paid to be discrete, so I usually wear my dark glasses throughout those kinds of flights."
He stuck to this thought even as he saw men in Immigration Corralling and Expulsing Service (ICES) uniforms bring people in prison fatigues onto the plane and shackle them to the seats. "I thought, Kinky," Gilligan said. "Not the sort of sex play that turns me on, but, hey, it's not my place to judge."
Gilligan claims that he had been increasingly suspicious of the idea that this was sex play when, during a flight to Little River, Texaware, he heard he wailing of a child. "I thought, If this is sex play, it's going into some Eppinefrinstein level shit!" Gilligan said. "I didn't want to believe that, so I asked around the next time we were on the ground and discovered that the people in uniform were ICES agents and that I was flying a plane transporting them to prisons across the country."
At first, Gilligan didn't have a problem with this. Problems would interfere with his ability to fly, and that was unthinkable; he didn't want to believe that he had been thrown off that roof all those years ago for nothing. However, pained and angry shouting could increasingly be heard from the interior of the plane, and passengers sometimes had to be taken off on stretchers.
"I. Really. Love. Flying!" he told me. I interviewed him at O'Malleyable's, a bar in Gator's Breath, Florucky, between flights. I couldn't help but notice that he was chugging enough sedatives to calm an elephant. His hands were shaking, so he drank his sedatives through a straw; he used a wide straw usually reserved for bubble tea to make the chugging smoother.
Two months ago, protesters started showing up at airports holding up signs like, "ICES doesn't play nICES" and "nobody is illegal (but I'm starting to wonder about Stephen Siewnottmillertyme)," and chanting slogans like, "Ho ho, hey hey, for transporting kidnap victims across state lines how much does Mutavis Airlines pay?"
They never claimed it was a great chant.
Gilligan dismissed the protesters with a wave of his hand (although he may have been signalling to the bartender that he was ready for another round of sedatives). "Landlubbers!" he stated. Sensing that the context wasn't with him, he added, "They don't understand the freedom you get when you're sitting in a tin can flying at 500 miles per hour through the air!"
When I suggested that perhaps his passengers wanted to get the same joy out of flying that he does, Gilligan sourly responded, "Why am I talking to you? This interview is over." Raising a glass, he added: "Doctor's orders!"