The Man Who Ate the 747 Read Online Free PDF

Gastronomical feats had always been the most popular in The Book until the ban, and J.J. had inventoried plenty of them. 6
    The blank gray face of the computer stared at him. He slid his mouse over the pad, tapped his password on the keys. In a moment, he logged on to the Internet. There were a few easy traps to run. If a man was eating a 747 in America, no matter where, someone, somewhere must have written about it. He entered key words to form a search request, but nothing came up.
    Hope faded and the bleakness of the meeting with Peasley descended over him. In the gloom, he inspected the letter again.
Superior, Nebraska.
He clicked the map finder on his computer. There were 23 towns and cities in America named Superior, not including two South Superiors and one North Superior. It was hardly notable. Midway held the U.S. record with 212, followed by Fairview with 202.
    With a few more mouse clicks, he located Superior smack in the middle of the country, right on the border with Kansas. The town was exactly 1,499 miles from New York and 1,519 miles from Los Angeles. It called itself the Victorian Capital of Nebraska, whatever that meant. Then he found the town newspaper,
The Superior Express.
He rummaged through its archives. There were articles galore on grain prices, the Future Farmers of America, and high school football, but nothing, not a mention of a man eating a 747.
    As he turned the idea around, it seemed more and more impossible. The problem really wasn’t consuming an airplane. God knows, people ingested all sorts of things. In fact, J.J. verified the record for the worst compulsive swallowing. A woman with “slight ab-dominalpain” turned out to have 2,533 objects in her stomach, including 947 bent pins.
    Gobbling a grocery cart, golf clubs—no sweat. Even an airplane was feasible. The biggest obstacle would be getting your hands on a jumbo jet. It certainly didn’t come cheap, and they weren’t exactly giving airplanes away on the Great Plains.
    An idea. He turned to a database of newspaper and magazine articles. He entered a new combination of words and waited while the computer chewed on the request. Then, a flashing light on the screen. One hit. He tapped a key and scanned the story.
    SUPERIOR, NEBRASKA (AP) —(July, 1990) A Boeing 747 cargo jet crash-landed today in a cornfield.
    Eyewitnesses said the plane was forced down in a lightning storm. The pilots abandoned the jet and were seen hitchhiking north on Route 14.
    There were no passengers on the plane and no reported injuries. The aircraft survived the impact largely intact.
    According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the plane was en route from Chicago to an aviation junkyard in Arizona.
    The plane is owned by PLF, Inc., an air freight company that recently filed for protection under Chapter 11 bankruptcy regulations.
    Bingo. A 747 had crash-landed in a farmer’s field. Abandoned there as junk. J.J. fell back into his chair. It was conceivable—albeit preposterous—that someone actually had a jet in his backyard and was trying to eat it. Perhaps the whole idea was the product of an overly active imagination, the cruel invention of a young letter writer. Or maybe, the record of all records. J.J. knew what he had to do. If it turned out to be bunk, he could certainly stir something up. Somewhere out there in Nebraska, there was a farmer with the biggest ear of corn or a schoolboy with 13 toes.
    He booked the next Dollar Jet to Omaha.
    4 In point of fact, both hunters were wrong. The blue whale’s tongue is the world’s longest, measuring up to 25 feet, weighing as much as a full-grown elephant, with enough space for 50 humans to stand.
    5 One small exception should be noted. The world’s most valuable privates officially belong to Napoleon. Removed during his autopsy and put up for auction, the one-inch-long specimen was described in the catalog as a “small dried-up object.” It was later purchased by an American urologist for