Wheels up, position flat

A position you cannot watch is a position you do not have. It has you.

There is a version of travel where you keep the risk on and check at every stopover, and it works right up until the one time it does not, which is the time you remember for a year. The cost of going flat is the move you miss. The cost of staying on is the move that finds you at thirty-eight thousand feet with a captive audience of one.

I have paid for both. The flat version is cheaper, and it is cheaper in the specific way that matters: it does not compound into a decision made badly under time pressure.

So: flat before wheels up, thesis written down, alerts off. If the setup is real, it will still be there when the wifi is.