What’s really driving me nuts about this whole thing is my particular role in it: I have none, except to be the donor of a lousy pint of A-positive blood.

If only I were five years older, I think, or if I had gotten one of my dream jobs straight out of Honeywell instead of diddling away my days in graduate school. I need to be on the ground in New York. I need to be combing through piles of cement and sifting out scraps of aluminum to put in my specimen bag, labelled “SH14/Sector3/Grid-A4″ or something. Maybe if I were a few years older I’d already be Dr. Highsmith, already working for the FBI Materials Lab or the NTSB (who would certainly not be looking to solve an accident but might be on the scene since they’re really good at finding plane parts).

But no, here I am, in the lab.

Pretty much every man in my family has had their opportunity to stare down hell in service of their country. I flirted with Navy ROTC for about a year before deciding that “just flying” wasn’t my calling and submarines were an even worse idea. I hope that a fruitful career of saving future lives in the NTSB or FBI do something to satisfy my “hero complex,” but right, I’m just…useless.

Damn it all. Our darkest moment, and I can’t help. To sound petulant, I’m missing all the good stuff [sic].



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