Evacuation via emergency chute. Buck is the first off the plane, injures his head, then runs off to the Pan Continental lounge to hook up his computer's modem and receive instructions from Steve Plank. Buses are provided for elderly, infirm and flight crews. Captain Steele and Hattie decline on principle. Flight Officer Chris has no such compunctions, displaying a terminal lack of character.
The action
Buck gives Hattie his card, "just in case I get through to your people before you do." Televised mayhem in the terminal, including a christian youth league soccer match suicide and a disturbing delivery room video (involves point of birth rapturing, and that's probably more information than good taste should permit). Rayford phones home -- no news of son Ray Jr., Wife Irene -- but hears voice mail message from daughter Chloe. Who is an undergrad at Stanford. Helicopter ride to the Chicago suburbs for Hattie and Rayford which provides Ray with an opportunity for multipoint full contact Hattie touching as space restrictions compel her to sit on his lap. "He wrapped his arms around her waist and clasped his wrists together. He thought how ironic it was that he had been dreaming of this for weeks, and now there was no joy, no excitement in it, nothing sensual whatever. He was miserable. Glad to be able to help her out, but miserable."
The one flight crew suicide is gossiped about on the helicopter ride. "Chris Smith, you know him? .... the rumor is he found out his boys had disappeared and his wife was killed in a wreck!" (Important to note that had he walked to the terminal, he probably would have had the composure to handle this news with dignity and grace.)
Buck manages to retrieve emails from Global Weekly in the Pan Continental Lounge. Instructed by Steve Plank to "[g]et to New York as soon as you can at any expense."
Dramatis Personae, novae:
Chloe: Captain Rayford Steele's unraptured daughter, student at Stanford. Presumably steeped in secular humanism and teetering on the brink of rug munching adventurism when the Rapture intervenes.
Nicolae Carpathia: (as per Steve Plank, Executive Editor with the Global Weekly) "guy from Romania who so impressed your friend Rosenzweig ... his international popularity reminds me a lot of Walesa or even Gorbachev."
These things are probably not coincidental
Big things for Buck to report on in New York, as per Steve Plank's confidential email:
"Political editor wants to cover a Jewish Nationalist conference in Manhattan that has something to do with a new world order government."
"Religion editor has something ... about a conference of Orthodox Jews also coming for a meeting .... editor thinks they're looking for help in rebuilding the temple .... other religious conference in town ... among leaders of all the major religions, from the standard ones to the New Agers, also talking about a one-world religious order."
"[T]he United Nations has that international monetarist confab coming up, trying to gauge how we're all doing with the three-currency thing ... I'm a little skittish about going to one currency...."
"[T]his Carpathia guy from Romania .... [has] been invited to speak at the U.N. in a couple weeks."
This also is probably not coincidental
My copy of "Left Behind," purchased for the reasonable price of a $2 donation to Washington D.C.'s Martin Luther King Library has no bar code on it.
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