4:50 a.m. — Carmen arrives at the airport for her 6:15 a.m. flight.
4:53 a.m. — Carmen heads to security early, because she doesn’t have TSA PreCheck, CLEAR, or the subscription service where a man in a suit carries you, piggyback, to the front of the line.
5:03 a.m. — Carmen fills a plastic tray with her laptop, beeper, wallet, trench coat, and part of an ancient tombstone she stole back from England and is supposed to deliver to [REDACTED] before getting found by the kids on the show.
5:05 a.m. — Carmen’s luggage is flagged, and she has to go to the manual inspection table in only her leggings and the Backstreet Boys T-shirt she’s wearing under her trench coat, while a security team member inspects her belongings.
5:10 a.m. — Carmen skims the terminal signboards, which seem to be written by Samuel Beckett. An arrow pointing left has Gates A31–C42 written beneath it. An arrow pointing right has Gates B15–C25 written beneath it. They both lead to the same place: a Hudson News.
5:35 a.m. — The sign at Carmen’s gate says, DEMOCRATS WANT THIS PLANE TO CRASH—EXPECT DELAYS.
5:52:01 a.m. — Carmen emails herself a reminder to buy dinner at O’Hare, which is where her connecting flight to [REDACTED] departs from. She receives her own automatic vacation response, which she realizes sounds obnoxious. She deletes that away message and writes a different one.
5:52:35 a.m. — In the time between when she cancels her original away message and puts up her new one, she gets an email from an old coworker saying, “YOU HAVEN’T POSTED PICS FROM MAR DEL PLATA YET!!”
5:53 a.m. — Carmen quickly copies and pastes her new automatic reply and sends it back to her old coworker. She got a fedora-burn in Mar del Plata that makes her look like the Phantom of the Opera in all the photos.
6:10 a.m. — The gate agent turns on his microphone and reads from a federally provided text. “Your flight will be delayed by 8.5 hours due to the execution of two hundred air traffic control workers by the Democratic Party. Your new estimated departure time is the sad hour of 2:36 p.m. Have a good day.”
6:12 a.m. — Carmen goes to the bathroom.
6:16 a.m. — When she gets back, the gate agent is talking to people who have places to be.
6:33 a.m. — Carmen pulls up later flights from Chicago to [REDACTED] on her phone.
6:38 a.m. — She emails her producer to say she might miss her connecting flight.
6:45 a.m. — Her producer emails her back to say that she needs to find an alternate route if this one isn’t going to work.
6:57 a.m. — Carmen approaches the gate agent, which she feels bad about, and asks about alternative connecting flights. The agent looks into it and comes up with three alternative flights, one of which has been canceled and two of which he refers to as a “two-for-one tandem situation,” created to allow the same amount of air traffic controllers to handle twice the air traffic.
6:58 a.m. — Carmen cries into the collar of her trench coat. Apologetically, the gate agent consults a piece of paper and says, “If it’s any consolation, tandem flying, as well as anything else, is safer than Chicago.”
7:01 a.m. — Carmen emails her producer.
7:06 a.m. — Her producer writes back, “If you have to go to another airport, do it.” No other airports have flights that connect to [REDACTED] in time, Carmen has checked.
8:15 a.m. — Carmen’s flight’s departure status is now “Around five, if your local Democrat congressmember doesn’t kill the pilot.”
9:05 a.m. — Carmen books the two-for-one tandem flights. She stops at the bathroom on her way to the new gate. It’s possible she has a UTI.
9:15 a.m. — Carmen writes her producer to update them and gets an email back from HR saying, “LOL, aren’t you supposed to be, like, elusive? Everyone knows you’re in El Paso.”
10:30 a.m. — The tandem flights’ gate starts to get crowded, because there are two planes’ worth of passengers, plus the people trying to switch. The flights have been delayed two and a half hours each, for a total of five hours. Carmen’s trench coat is drenched.
1:16 p.m. — Carmen finds a bar and orders a vodka martini. She removes her compression socks. She places the ancient tombstone faceup on the bar, so that its hieroglyphs don’t get scuffed. She secretly hopes people think she got it from the Louvre.
2:25 p.m. — More travelers from her original flight pour into the tandem-flight gate because their flight has been further delayed, because, per the federal government, the Democrats are filling aircraft engines with health care.
2:40 p.m. — Carmen’s situationship texts her, “U up?” Carmen writes, “I have been up for eleven hours.” He texts back “k.”
2:54 p.m. — The pilot and copilot are arguing about who gets to fly the left plane, which is easier to land, because [REDACTED]’s runway requires a full view of the left side.
2:54 p.m. — Someone asks, “Is this safe?”
2:55 p.m. — An announcement from somewhere, it’s unclear where, says, “Why are you all obsessed with classroom sizes?” Carmen regrets her red fedora.
3:23 p.m. — The pilot and copilot get into a physical altercation.
4:00 p.m. — Carmen gets an email from her producer. Rockapella is singing a version of the theme song where they change the lyrics from “Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?” to “Carmen Sandiego is at El Paso International Airport.”
4:26 p.m. — Carmen tries to approach the new gate agent for an update, since the information board now just shows a picture of a skull and bones. The gate agent is busy talking to a woman who wants to be moved to left plane, because she gets nauseous on right plane.
4:32 p.m. — Carmen sits down in a chair near the gate agent’s desk. A man in a red baseball cap looks at the hieroglyphs on the ancient tombstone and says, “Speak English.”
4:38 p.m. — Carmen’s producer sends her an audio clip of Rockapella’s new version of the song. The baritone sings the words “El Paso International Airport.” The kid contestants on the show and her producer are cracking up.
6:16 p.m. — On the information board, the skull and bones morph into the image of a donkey with a dialogue cloud that says, “I just canceled your flight(s), because I’m an ass.”
6:48 p.m. — Her producer emails to say they’re re-airing the episode where an audience member charged the stage, grabbed the World Band Radio, and called Carmen a gold-digging narcissist.
7:30 p.m. —Carmen finds a carpeted space by a window, lies down, cancels her Airbnb in [REDACTED], and closes her eyes to avoid the desperately zipping light sticks a single air traffic controller uses outside to direct three pairs of tandem flights.
