Fear Of Flying is a short story by Jack Rusher, published here Tuesday, January 13, 2004. It is part of Stories.
The irresistible pull of failure.
I looked up from a moment of quiet revery and someone said, “You’re a great man, sir. It takes courage to accept a mission this dangerous.” He was talking to me. I am neither great nor courageous, so naturally this seemed quite peculiar.
He was wearing an antique British military uniform, as were the many other young men bustling around what I now realized was a mock-up of the war room from Doctor Strangelove. I looked down and noticed that I too was wearing an antique British military uniform.
When these things happen I find it’s best to play along and fake it.
“Just doing my job, soldier.”
“Follow me, sir.”
He took me outside to a platform with a big Buck Rogers rocket-ship mounted on top. It was garishly painted with a Chicano flame job and many slogans like "Kilroy Was Here" and "Die, Nazi Scum."
There were rows of men standing at attention for a kilometer in any direction. They were saluting me, saluting the aircraft, and I was waving back like a politician. It was then that I realized, in a moment of panic, that they expected me to pilot this contraption.
I have never piloted any sort of flying vehicle. Skateboards, bicycles, cars, motorboats, kayaks, motorcycles, surf boards, sure, but an airplane? Least of all what appeared to be some kind of experimental prototype? No. Never.
So, of course, I climbed into the cockpit, waving, smiling and gritting my teeth as I went.
The controls were very simple, as if this were a cartoon airplane or I was inside a video game. I experimented with the controls a bit and hoped for the best as they ignited the burners on the back of the rocket (again, cartoonishly similar to something the Warner Brothers’ Coyote might have piloted).
I was off like a shot. The controls were more responsive than I expected, leading me to career madly around the field, frightening the soldiers and myself. After I stabilized the craft, the radio in the cockpit informed me that I was to deliver a massive payload of explosives to the German troops on the front and eject from the plane before it ran out of fuel and crashed to the Earth.
“Of course. I’m on my way.”
I went down in the English Channel in a burst of enemy flak. It took them days to collect the pieces in little baggies and ship them home to my family.
Happily, I had awoken from the dream by then.