Airport Escape Room
Based on a conversation with Poonmaster Flexxx
Good ideas are in short supply. Or at least it seems like it because when you have a bad idea, it sticks out because it ruins your life so comprehensively that it’s pretty hard to forget.
Today’s ruinous idea: Why not pay to enter an escape room in the airport terminal?
Okay, shit, nothing in this filing cabinet except files, and that’s boring, fuck that. I’m not going to read to get out of here.
Maybe I should retrace the steps that brought me here. Maybe I’ll find a clue.
Okay, I’m in the airport terminal. I can’t remember which one because they always name them like Terminal 1 or Terminal A instead of the way they should name them, like The Terminal With No Good Food In It or That One Terminal That Does Have The Good Food In It That You Never Go Into Because The Only Flight That Goes Out Of There Is Like Alaska Airlines Or Something.
I’m in the terminal and they announce my flight is delayed. Because of course it is. The weather is perfect, it’s early in the morning, but, you know, why not delay this flight? That way, when something goes wrong later, everything will already be delayed, and nobody but me will be disappointed. To be fair, I AM pretty good with disappointment, not because I handle it well, just because it’s a constant state for me.
So I pick up my bag and take another lap around the terminal. This is a thing I like to do to kill time in the airport. I delude myself into thinking that maybe I’ll tucker myself out with a casual stroll and then fall immediately asleep, sitting up ramrod straight in the center seat, a posture I have never slept in before and will never sleep in.
Once I clicked around some auctions sites to buy an old airline seat so I could get used to it and maybe flights would be more comfortable. But THEN I thought that if I did that, I’d just be uncomfortable all the time when I’m at home AND during the few hours of my life I’m on a plane, so maybe it wasn’t worth it. Plus, did you know those things cost like $400 bucks on eBay? I figured people would just chuck them out the back of a plane during takeoff or something, maybe over the ocean, but I guess there’s a secondhand market for fucking weirdos who want to be as uncomfortable as possible in their own homes.
Okay, focus.
The room looks like…you know those episodes of TNG where Picard was a detective on the holodeck, and it was always a problem because Moriarty became real or somehow the computer was trapping him in a time loop or whatever?
What was Picard’s problem? He’s a STARSHIP CAPTAIN, and he’s like, “Yeah, but what if I could be a hard-boiled detective!?” Is this man’s life not fantastical enough!?
Anyway, this escape room looks like that detective office set they had. All dark wood and crap like a coat rack. Hey, maybe that’s a clue! Who has a coat rack in Vegas? Who has a coat in Vegas?
Nothing. Maybe the desk? I guess I’ll try to take apart all these pens? Maybe there’s a secret message inside?
While I’m on my lap in the terminal, I see a storefront that says “Escape Room” and has like a private eye magnifying glass symbol thingy in the front. And at first I’m like, “That’s the worst idea ever.” Then I’m like, “Okay, there’s no way the airport would really let you miss your flight, right?” There has to be some regulation of what can be in an airport and what can’t. Like, you probably couldn’t open up a firing range in an airport. I mean, I wouldn’t think, but while I run around this room and open drawers crazily, nothing seems certain anymore.
So I go in, and the sullen teen working the desk asks how long until my flight. I tell her, and I tell her it’s delayed, and she kind of looks at me the way teens do sometimes, where she’s looking at me and through me at the same time, and she says, “I think you’d better do the easier room.”
Which I found deeply offensive. Sure, I’ve never done an escape room in my life, but how hard can it be? Plus, the easy room is Egypt-themed. Not ancient Egypt, just like a grocery store somewhere in Egypt in the modern day. Strange choice, but I guess that’s the punishment for going in the easy room, you get a crap theme.
I complain about the theme because I’m in an airport, and complaints are the only weapons you’re allowed to bring onboard an airline, and she says, “Fine, we’ll put you in the advanced room.”
Hey, maybe there’s something in my luggage! Something I could use to break the door down and get out of here! It’s not really solving the mystery…or is it? Maybe that’s the answer: You have to actually smash through the door?
Fuck, there’s nothing good in my luggage. I should’ve known. Pretty much all the things that would be good for destroying a door are the very things you’re not allowed to bring on a plane. I mean, you can’t bring a crowbar on a plane. I’ve never really understood why you’d bring a crowbar on a plane, or really why you’d bring most of the things from the clear box full of stuff in the security area with a sign on it that says, “Don’t bring these things!!!!” There’s a gas-powered weed whacker in that box. Why would anyone bring a weed whacker on a plane? Who travels with one of those? What kind of weed assassins are out there, jetsetting from one country to the next, terminating errant flora?
What must that first “no weed whackers” conversation have been like? How do you explain to someone, who thinks it’s perfectly reasonable to bring a weed whacker on a plane, that bringing a weed whacker on a plane is completely unreasonable?
Damn it, I don’t know exactly how long it’s been, the sullen teen confiscated my phone, which I was told is standard practice for escape rooms. But I’m pretty sure I missed my flight by now. It’s almost certain that the moment I came in here, my plane’s delay was resolved, or the pilot bringing it in hit the gas harder, and everyone is aboard now, and they’re announcing my name in the terminal. Or not. They never announce my name in the terminal. Sigh.
Maybe there’s an answer in this phone book on the desk? I am old enough to know how to work a phone book. Probably look up “solutions” in the yellow pages…