Flight of the Airbag

The sun was sneering.

The AP report was scant and so, becausely, nary a detail but then the gist of it being not just yet another fatality as a result of unintended airbag deployment, it was the accumulative 17 incidents of the same having been reported just since Tuesday afternoon that was breaking news. 
             From Boston to Seattle an additional 23 non-fatality incidences by Wednesday morning, 12 of which were reported as life threatening with the non-threatened majority, as you now would have to think or classify them, suffering injuries accusatory at the most. 
Saturation coverage ensued.

   Press conferences began to overlap from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, NHTSA, AAA, etc. 
There were, of course, bogus incidents of unintended air-bag deployment that didn’t make the news but were passionately reported to Employers, Dentists, Parents of Primary Custody, among others.

Local news channels offered their own “In depth look at the airbag crises” along with snide commentary from the chin-strapped elite militant bicyclists that included some fairly humorous quips and off color remarks.

There were video snippets of car owners carefully sliding into their cars from the passenger side and inserting the key with an ‘It’s-gonna-blow’ look on their turned away faces (4 of the minor injury UAD’s having occurring upon ignition).

Weber remained unconscious and upside down in his Carbon Black Aston Martin V12 Vantage secured to his seat by the Vantage’s six-point safety harness. 
The inverted status symbol near the bottom of a wooded slope just west of Aspen’s skeletal  Independence, the ghost town along Aspen’s winding mountain pass. 
The left rear wheel spinning freely but for the faint lathing of a pine branch caught up in the crimped underside of the wheel well and of course, the malfunctioned airbag partially deflated.

It stands to reason, everyone suddenly aware of the reasoning as it stood had said, that these things are going to happen, eventually things need to be replaced, things break, wear out and so on. 


A full ten day non-stop media driven freak out. 
In all there were 1,704 incidents and 381 fatalities, the number of deaths having dropped sharply after the 4^th day of "Airbagolypse".
 It (the drop in fatalities) having been theorized by the medias talking heads that because of the media attention (specifically you might or otherwise be nudged to conclude, the invaluable aforementioned talking heads) causing vigilance among consumers that most likely many, many – you’d want to say “untold” lives were saved.

             Said vigilance typified with a reared-back approach to driving around town with the backs of heads pressed firmly against the seatbacks and to the extreme right with arms stiffened straight grasping tightly to the wheel in anticipation of sudden UAD.


There was also a noticeable lack of the usual loud music emanating from certain vehicles in traffic.

The upsides were rapidly taking over the human interest aspect and jumping headlong into the consumer benefit and the corporate profit margins, e.g., a congressional inquiry to mandate tougher consumer safety laws, and, as it happens, a much needed economic shot in the arm.

One example being a spike in sales of remote-start equipment that resulted from the reported four, at-point-of-ignition Unintended Airbag Deployments. 
The jump in sales causing there to be a shortage of such systems and of course rapid inflation per unit – entrepreneurial speculators who’d immediately foreseen the demand and consequent spike in price of such equipment had bought up much of the available stock of auto-start systems which were previously widely available for under $200.00, now selling for $1200 – 2k on e-bay and other such online markets. The used car starting systems market also exploded as profiteers ripped their own equipment out to reap the huge investment turnaround - another obvious result being that systems were stolen, serial numbers ground off and sold on Craigslist.

Some anxious motorists had  placed a brick on their gas pedals and, usually hanging on to a friend or relative or volunteer, kicked their car’s gear shifter from the neutral position to D, the vehicles facing directly 10-12 ft away from a large tree or sometimes the rear-facing concrete block of their local shopping centers (as one of the many online how-to videos had instructed, showing that usually only minor cosmetic damage to the front bumper would result - less if pillows were tied to the bumper) in order to preemptively explode the deadly airbags as the wait list to get a car into the dealership or local mechanic just to have an airbag disabled was then at about three weeks. 


Backyard mechanics of dubious qualifications were making money as they’d say, “hand over fist” by offering to disable airbags for a small (cash) fee. Which usually meant driving to a park with an abundance of large-trunk trees – arborists on NPR and standing outside park entrances armed with informational  poster boards and inspirational coffee cups pleading to these people to stop the practice after numerous trees were designated to be cut down after so many pre-emp concussions had turned dozens of tree’s trunks into wobbly mushy pulp. 


Brake-Park interlock having no agreement or overriding authority on the letter 'N'.


Billboards were pasted and hotlines set up for those who were desperate to relieve themselves of the anxiety of driving around with a fickle bomb in front of their face advertising low cost resources to get their AB’s disconnected or "pre-empted". 

The whole thing was quite a boon for some small towns with local chatter including: “A blessing in disguise” -  “Gods will” -  “One man’s potentially fatal air bag is another man’s new deer stand” and so on.

Of course there were the few quiet diner and dark tavern conversations that attempted to put things into the proper conspiratorial context i.e., Population control/Alien invisible force- type things/laser pointers/Mass-transit Illuminati/the fact that car computer software was now developed and produced primarily in countries with large percentages of  Muslim population followed by the qualifier, “I don’t need to tell you what that means..”  the kind of statement that begs for some tellin’ of what that may or may not exactly mean although not the case (desire or need for clarification) for those in attendance.

Adding to suspicion was the hyper-fact that Opel was the only manufacturer who’s vehicles did not have any UAD’s and the underlining fact that it was a German company and that GM  before the rise of Nazism had bought in at a historic 80% (wholly owning Opel and it’s Brandenburg and Russelsheim manufacturing plants by '31)and continued to profit(GM) with this acquisition throughout  WW2(except the year 1945 for obvious reasons ) though much of that profit was derived from taking a write-off after the Nazi’s took control of operations as shown in the upfront accounting -  all other underreported ‘intheback’ accountings were funneled and skirted and laundered through the ever present financial management of JP Morgan. Post –Hollis/pre-Chase Manhattan.

Fly-by-night used car lots were humming with business, one such questionable establishment advertising a ‘Bill$ for Bags’ trade-in deal, the exact terms and conditions of the ambiguous proposition  were not explained but judging by the live KGOTV helicopter shots - it was working.

It was shortly after Weber was found and extricated from his overturned Black Carbon V12 Vantage and a series of CAT scans and MRI’s under the guidance of the physicians at Aspen Valley hospital were administered– which concluded that Weber had suffered only a slight case of whiplash and a broken mid-finger – that Weber held a press  conference outside of the main non-emergency entrance amid a brewing windstorm. Weber declaring that he had had a near death experience of the type that brought about a startling series of epiphanies and that effective immediately the Genocide Channel was no longer and he would assemble a team of theologians and  various biblical scholars in the coming days in order to give the world The Genesis Channel- wholly dedicated to the Book of Genesis after which he would expand into an entire network  he would call TOT TV and dedicate an individual channel to each of the books of The Old Testament. 
Game shows, talk shows, cooking shows, perhaps (he thought in the wilds of his mind) situational comedies. All based on and promotion for the Holy Bible, TOT - most likely KJV.

 To Weber’s right and from a perch on the third floor of Alpine Valley Hospital a flock of pigeons suddenly dispersed from the ledge that Weber alone noticed and took as a sign from god her/him omnisexual self.

Unnoticed and occurring in simulcast with Weber’s press conference was the perilously hobbling helter-skelter, hemipelvectomized  osteosarcoma patient on the same corner of the same building but four floors aloft on a ledge who, had (and purposley we think) fallen to his death thus causing the sudden avian departure.

The terminal man’s hospital gown-muffled scream and subsequent cringe worthy crushing splat onto the freshly seal coated pavement below having been drowned out by the applause of those attending the press conference – mainly media-types and crew and any hospital employee taking the opportunity to sneak another smoke break.

TGC’s board of directors were en route to the W. Washington street's corporate offices in a panic, watching in-Town Car the snippets of Weber’s  press conference that had now begun to flash on all the major network news channels redundantly scrolling across the bottom of the screens as well. Of course the board members were in complete agreement as to their thoughts in regards to the situation at hand - what wasn’t agreed upon and thus the purpose for the emergency board meeting was what to do about it – more specifically, what to do about Weber.

Several of the board members were already in contact with lawyers and medical experts in preparation to have Weber removed, at least temporarily, as CEO ipso facto the press conference causing TGC stock to plummet.

The CSO, CRO, V.P. and CAO (Administrative, not Analytics) were all, as it were, on board. The next several hours being of most importance. Not low on the list of priorities was to contact all sponsors/partners to assure them that Weber’s announcement was a result of delirium obviously caused by the injuries sustained and that they would make sure that Weber got the best medical attention to bring him back to ‘normal’ and that in the mean time it was absolutely without a doubt business as usual.

Story line Notes- Weber returns to his penthouse and from there sets up control and command of the soon to be defunct GC – a series of maneuvers from the BofD’s fails to wrestle control of the company from Weber who then  ? –also the feds inquiry into allegations of Weber et al pitting ethnic militant groups against one another(by funding both sides and etc,) was closed w/ some outside speculators floating the notion that this was all part of Weber’s bogus miracle jesus transformation from the start-  amid all the glowing attention begins to write his online AutoBio which soon encompasses all of his time and leads to his demise as described in arc of Weber