Stranger Than Fiction

In such a climate of disbelief, everything that went before seems prescient. A hip-hop group announce magnanimously that they‘ll replace their upcoming CD’s cover art, which depicted two generic towers in flames. Microsoft‘s Flight Simulator, in which players of mediocre ability crash into any number of world monuments, becomes a suspected terrorist-training aid. But speculation in the aftermath is simply no match for reality: Two pairs of hands bound in the airline’s own flexible handcuffs are found in the debris of the twin towers. A blind man is led to safety by his dog. An Irishman named Ronnie Clifford escapes from the South Tower, only to learn that his sister, Ruth Clifford McCourt, and niece, Juliana, died on United Flight 175 when it plowed into the same building. (McCourt‘s best friend had perished moments before on the first flight to crash into the towers.) A man may or may not have surfed the wreckage from the 81st or 70th or 44th floor to safety, sustaining only a broken limb.

When the FBI finds a flight-instruction video and a copy of the Koran in luggage left behind at Logan airport, the evidence seems so thuddingly obvious it momentarily bolsters the case of conspiracy guru David Icke. “Am I in fairyland or what?” he wrote to his readers. “I am surprised they did not claim to have discovered a letter from bin Laden in the car wishing the occupants the best of luck with their task.” Icke, who believes “a global secret society called the Illuminati have been holding the reigns [sic] of power in the world since ancient times,” disposes of his credibility almost immediately when he claims George W. Bush may have to be sacrificed to serve the final aims of the mysterious Illuminati. But it’s a strange world indeed when he makes any sense at all.