And I'm alone up here.
All four engines have flamed out, and I'm into my controlled descent, my nosedive into the ground. This is the terminal phaseof my descent, where I'm going thirty-two feet per second straight at Australia, my terminal velocity.
Testing, testing, one, two, three.
One more time, you're listening to the flight recorder of Flight 2039.
And at this altitude, listen, and at this speed, with the plane empty, this is my story. And my story won't get bashed into a zillion bloody shreds and then burned with a thousand tons of burning jet. And after the plane wrecks, people will hunt down the flight recorder. And my story will survive.
And I will live on, forever.
And if I could figure out what Fertility meant, I could save myself, but I can't. I'm stupid.
Testing, testing, one, two, three.
So here is my confession.
Here is my prayer.
My story. My incantation.
Hear me. See me. Remember me.
Beloved Fuck-up.
Botched Messiah.
Would-be Lover. Delivered to God.
I'm trapped here, in a nosedive, in my life, in the cockpit of a jetliner with the flat yellow of the Australian outback coming up fast.
And there's so many things I want to change but can't.
It's all done. It's all just a story now.
Here's the life and death of Tender Branson, and I can just walk away from it.
And the sky is blue and righteous in every direction.
The sun is total and burning and just right there, and today is a beautiful day.
Testing, testing, one, two–