I was hoping someone would interpret the prompt as a bolo or ai-tank. Good job.

Just lovely.

So post better prompts.

> iPhone auto-correct

proves the absence of god. It exists to remind us we're in hell.

>that Death wasn't omnipresent and didn't know the "barista",

Omniscient? Omnipresent is all-places, omniscient is all-knowing.

You could have posted that as a top level comment. (Rule is 100 word min, you well exceed that.)

As a rule, comments about the prompt should go under the first comment (the auto-moderator's note). Only story-replies should go as top-level replies.

I have no idea if I got all the pronouns right. Holy crap that sucked.

​

[edit: Just read the prompt again and realised I'd missed the "in another country" part. The first to show up didn't even leave the city. Oops.]

The four year old girl stalked up to the locked double doors and turned back to the security guard following meekly behind her.

"Open it," she snapped. At his blank look, she added, "Card, on your belt."

"I don't think I'm supposed to..." he started even as he reached for the key card.

"Listen, asshole, are you actually a security guard?" She demanded.

He shook his head. "I'm an accountant, I..."

"Bet you weren't accounting on tonight," she snarled, "Now open the fucking door. Right now there's 27 million people in passenger aircraft above the continental United States and if this body-swapping bullshit is widespread, god knows where their pilots ended up."

"Oh god, they're all going to die!"

"Not on my watch," the little girl replied.

The guard fumbled the card against the lock and the little girl stormed through the ready room and on to the main ATC floor. A dozen people were standing around like morons, faces she recognised but whose expressions told her what she already feared. Every board around them flashed red.

"God dammit," she muttered. "Any of you assholes in your original bodies." They all shook their heads no, or stared in confusion. "Dammit I picked the wrong week to quit smoking. My name's O'Johnson, this is where I work. And that," she pointed to a gaunt 40ish looking man who looked like he'd been crying, "Is my real body...

"You Jennifer?" She asked the man, whose eyes went big as he nodded back. "You're gonna be okay, but I need you be be very brave for awhile."

The man nodded, "I'wl twy."

"Good, there's a kitchenette down that way, go make coffee."

"But I'm only widdle!" He squeaked.

"You're big now," the toddler answered, "You'll figure it out."

Rounding on the others, she said, "Rest of you assholes, looks like it's a straight-swap deal. So wherever you came from, there's a bunch of air traffic controllers wondering what the fuck is going on. There's phones in the back, ring your homes, starting with whoever's from New York, tell them whatever they need to know to get to their nearest ATC. What city they're in, where your cars are parked, door codes, whatever. And tell 'em... we're all counting on them." They hesitated. "Move!"

"You," she snapped at the accountant-cum-security-guard, "Go down to the main terminal, there's thousands of people. You're looking for anyone with air traffic or aviation experience. Send them up here." The guard turned to move, then hesitated. The little girl sighed. "Elevators, BL1, long tunnel, next elevators up to main floor, through the security doors. Your card opens everything. Go!"

As he ran off, a teenage girl wearing sleepwear shoved past him and into the control room. "Who the fuck are you?" the little girl demanded.

"O'Donnell, you?" the teen replied.

"O'Johnson," the little girl nodded. Opposite shifts, but they knew each other. "Grab a board and as many sectors as you can handle, there's about 20 thousand aircraft ready to pancake all around us."

"Not on my watch," said the teenager, as she grabbed a headset and pulled up to a console. The first few channels she listened to were crowded by panicking assholes shouting uselessly for help. "I picked a bad week to quit amphetamines," she mused. With a thought, she switched to Guard, anyone who knew how to switch to emergency would be useful, "Seelonce, seelonce, seelonce. All flights, all flights, all flights, this is LaGuardia control..."

O'Johnson turned as the doors slammed open again. A tiny, elderly, withered-looking black man shouting into a phone and a large black middle-aged woman rushed in. "Who are you assholes," the elderly man yelled at them, covering the phone briefly.

"O'Johnson," the little girl replied. "And O'Donnell," she added, pointing at the teen.

"O'Leary," the old man said, already studying the main board. The chief! Thank god, thought both girls. "And this guy's one of us," he added, pointing to his companion, "from India, she or he or whatever ended up in the same apartment building as me."

"O'Chandra," the black woman introduced herself, in a strong Hindi accent, "I work Mumbai central."

The little girl scowled at the realisation, "Dammit, this crap must be global. Okay, friend, grab a board, we're about to lose a lot of planes."

"Not on my watch," the black woman announced.

"Chief?" the little girl asked, looking at the phone in the old man's hand.

"Conference call with the Joint Chiefs, the FAA, and whichever agency heads have been able to call in and prove their identities," the old man answered, "They're trying to find POTUS, wherever or whoever he ended up, or anyone from the senior Cabinet who knows the right proof-of-ID code words and the authority to issue a state of emergency. Until then, we're all pulling our dicks and making this shit up as we go along."

Just then O'Johnson, or at least his original body, pottered awkwardly back into the control room trying not to spill a pot of coffee. It was cold, and he'd basically just mixed all the coffee and sugar he could find, but dammit, it was strong and black and it was coffee.

And he'd picked the wrong week to quit wearing diapers.

Imagine waking up on a passenger jet.

[Edit: Eh, fuck it. I just wrote it.]