[?do clear_text(); ?] Everyone else is focused on the front of the plane, where the scream came from. But because you are smart as hell, you know that they keep the parachutes in the back. You aren't going down like a chump. As you pass a pair of flight attendants, one turns to the other and says: "I hear the weather in Santa Monica is rainy today. RAINY." You know this is some sort of flight attendant code, because they both go white as a text .doc and zoom on ahead of you to the back. You race after them. You burst through a door that says "PARACHUTE ROOM," only to find all of the flight attendants jumping out of a hatch in a mass panic. They completely ignore you. The cabin is rapidly depressurizing, since you opened the door to the "PARACHUTE ROOM" and since they left the hatch open. There are no parachutes left. You search the shelves, finding an umbrella and duct tape. DO YOU: Close hatch Construct a crude parachute using duct tape and the umbrella Run to the cockpit Buy "Autopilot," by Andrew Smart, direct from OR Books

[?do clear_text(); ?] You start to leave the parachute room, but because you left the hatch open, you are sucked out of the plane and then sucked into the jet engine. Right before you die, you suddenly understand ALL OF MATH and have a brilliant, life-changing insight about interstellar travel, the reflexive property, and wormholes. But this insight also gets sucked into the jet engine. THE END Try again? OR: Buy "Autopilot," by Andrew Smart, direct from OR Books

[?do clear_text(); ?] Thinking quickly, you manufacture a crude (but sturdy) air-catching device out of the umbrella and duct tape. You use up almost the whole roll. You hang on with both hands as you jump from the hatch. Obviously, this doesn't work and you plummet, screaming, to your ignominious death. You pass the flight attendants as you fall. They wave at you sadly. They will tell your story for decades. THE END Try again? OR: Buy "Autopilot," by Andrew Smart, direct from OR Books

[?do clear_text(); ?] You scream: "THE PILOT IS DEAD! NO ONE IS FLYING THE PLANE! WE ARE ALL DOOMED!" The copilot grabs a fire extinguisher and beats you in the head with it until you collapse at his feet. He seems to think you are some kind of rattlensake. He is sobbing and blubbering as he batters you again and again. The plane erupts in total panic. People are screaming, tearing out their hair, and praying out loud. You try to fight back, but you are bleeding and dizzy. The copilot presses a button labeled "DO NOT EVER PRESS," and the airplane fills with medicated gas, knocking everyone out. You slip into a coma because of your head trauma, and though everyone else survives for reasons you will never know, and though the copilot is eventually given a Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery in quelling a passenger uprising, you die fifty years later in a hospital bed, your only company a janitor who hates you and who has secretly been selling your hair to a wig manufacturer. THE END Try again? OR: Buy "Autopilot," by Andrew Smart, direct from OR Books

[?do clear_text(); ?] "AUTOPILOT DISENGAGED," says a soothing female voice. The plane immediately goes into a nose-dive, causing you to smash the back of your head against the wall. You have a "front row" seat for watching the plane plummet into the ground at thousands of miles per hour. You mash the autopilot button over and over again, but it is too late, the plane can't correct itself. You press all the buttons. Nothing good happens. You hold the instruction manual over your face, cowering as the plane smashes headfirst into a field. You will never taste champagne again. Never again, will you run, laughing, down a beach with a dog or loved one. THE END Try again? OR: Buy "Autopilot," by Andrew Smart, direct from OR Books

[?do clear_text(); ?] The ice bucket is only about half-full of ice. You pour six bottles of beer into the ice bucket, along with a bottle of Bloody Mary mix. You use one of the empty beer bottles to stir the cold, frothing alcoholic concoction. The ice bucket is heavy, but you know how to make it lighter. You tip the gross michelada into your mouth, sucking it down as fast as you can. You drink until you start to feel queasy, then you take a break, and drink the rest. Why are you doing this? What do you hope to achieve? KEEP DRINKING HAVE SOME PEANUTS WHY NOT Buy "Autopilot," by Andrew Smart, direct from OR Books

[?do clear_text(); ?] Woo! You feel great! If the plane crashed right now, you would be the only survivor. How come? Because you feel so great. You would hit the ground and bounce a thousand feet and then maybe go take a nap on a cloud. You look around for more Bloody Mary mix, but there isn't any. There is some tequila, though. You mix the beer with tequila, and then squat over the prone body of the copilot, drinking from the ice bucket with both hands, drenching your hair. You start to feel dizzy. You pass out. You wake up days later, floating in the ocean, all alone, flat on your back on what appears to be somebody's steamer trunk. "WHERE AM I..." you start to say, but you lose your balance and fall into the sea. You hold onto the trunk, trying to fight back wave after wave of nausea, trying to scramble back on top, but then you are eaten by a shark. The shark actually gets drunk on all of the alcohol in your blood, and it engages in amusing shark-antics that it later regrets when taunted by its peers. THE END Try again? OR: Buy "Autopilot," by Andrew Smart, direct from OR Books

[?do clear_text(); ?] You sit down in the middle of the floor and begin eating bag after bag of peanuts. You enter into something like a fugue state, the way champion marathon runners talk about winning races. Patterns start to emerge in the steady hum and flow of the engine noise. Is the airplane talking to you? Is it trying to tell you something about mathematics? DO YOU: FINISH THE PEANUTS!!! Return to your seat to daydream about math Buy "Autopilot," by Andrew Smart, direct from OR Books

[?do clear_text(); ?] YOU EAT EVERY SINGLE PEANUT ON THE PLANE. YOU GO INTO SEPTIC SHOCK. YOU CRUMPLE TO THE GROUND BESIDE THE CO-PILOT AND THEN YOU KNOW NO MORE. "Homo es: resiste et tumulum contempla meum. iuenis tetendi ut haberem quod uterer. iniuriam feci nulli, officia feci pluribus. bene vive, propera, hoc est veniundum tibi." THE END. Try again? OR: Buy "Autopilot," by Andrew Smart, direct from OR Books <

[?do clear_text(); ?] Nuts to everything! You clear your mind and try not to think about anything at all. You just kind of space out and let your mind wander. You think about: rainbows, clouds, the Fibonnacci sequence, prime numbers, antelopes, cheeseburgers, Renaissance martial arts, crossbows, elbow macaroni, babies, tennis, rent control, spider monkeys, the reflexive property, wormholes, peanuts, Finland, carrots, the surveillance state, geometry, astrophysics, raisins, and post-it notes. There is another scream from the front of the plane. DO YOU: Go check out the cockpit Keep doing nothing Buy "Autopilot," by Andrew Smart, direct from OR Books

[?do clear_text(); ?] What if we could manufacture black holes in a contained space and use their power to travel to other planets without even having to leave lower Earth orbit? Could we jump around the universe using nothing but math? What would the math look like for that? Wait. Hold on, you are getting something. There is something tickling at the corner of your mind. Two people are strangling each other to death in the aisle beside you. One woman is trying to elbow her way through the window, shrieking that she "ain't gonna have no airplane for a coffin" DO YOU: Keep daydreaming. OH MY GOD YOU ARE JUST GOING TO SIT HERE THINKING ABOUT MATH WHILE THE PLANE CRASHES??? Buy "Autopilot," by Andrew Smart, direct from OR Books