"I don't mean to
alarm you," you calmly explain to Cruise, "but there's a MiG off
the port bow, skipper."
"What, where? I can't see it!" You use the opportunity to try and
move to a less precarious position. "Keep looking," you shout.
"Oh, there it is," Cruise he exclaims. Not good. You turn to
follow his eyes and see a black spot on the horizon. "Oh my god,"
Cruise hams, "this is awesome! Time to show that world that Tom
Cruise is for real!"
Cruise leans on the steering column and sends the 747 into a sluggish
dive. You scramble to find a handhold on the rapidly descending jet and
just barely manage to dig your fingernails into the rubber seal along
the edge of the windshield. You turn once more and see that the other
plane is now much closer. You yell at Cruise that you were just kidding,
but he's too busy bobbing his head and humming "Danger Zone".
Your groan of frustration quickly turns to a groan of falling to your
death as you lose your grip on the plane tumble off toward the
fast-approaching ground below.
In a monumental stroke of luck, your fall, and likely a couple of ribs,
is broken by that very same passing jet. You quickly fasten your arms
and legs around the thin nose of the plane and start counting your lucky
stars. You stop at twenty to take a look at your savior.
Uh oh.
He's probably just with
the Japanese Historical Society. You ask for a ride home, but the pilot
lifts up his flight visor and says something angry-sounding to you in
Japanese. You have no idea what he's saying, but I, having written my
graduate thesis on Japanese dialects and having spent years watching
untranslated episodes of Astroboy, can translate. He says that he hates
Tom Cruise, and that this is going to be the last Tom Cruise Day the
actor would ever enjoy. You pick up on none of this, and smile dumbly,
assuming that he's saying something like, "get off my jet, you stupid
gaijin!" The jet circles around and bears down on the 747, which is
struggling to escape from a poorly-executed Immelmann turn. You start to
suspect that something is wrong when the nose of the jet pierces the
747's windshield, and you really get the feeling that something's up as
your flaming corpse plummets back to the earth.
