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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Survival / Healing / Renewal
- Published: 09/17/2025
"Practical Citizens"
Born 1970, M, from Lincoln, Nebraska, United States.jpeg)
“Practical Citizens,” by Joseth Moore. Copyright @ 2025
What does it take for a cluster of Humans for that nodule to be considered a Citizenry?
Atlanta looked like a flattened Christmas tree at night to Ava as she looked out the plane's tiny window as it approached a landing at Atlanta's international airport… the multi-colors of city streets and boxy structures was coming up fast from her line of sight!
“Huh,” Michael, Ava's husband, shared from the seat next to hers. “Why are the lights out at Hartsfield-Jackson?”
Ava's eyes slid to where the sprawling complex and giant planes were. “Yeah, Mike, you're right! I don't remember hearing the pilot mentioning this over the intercom…Do you?”
“Of course not…”
Ava and Michael, now, started to hear other passengers on the plane discussing the very same situation.
The mother of a family behind Ava and Michael had an extended question and answer session about why the lights were out, and if it might cause any delay of her family's next flight out of Atlanta's Airport…
Her question to a stewardess was met with a frown. "Ladies and gentlemen," the pilot's voice crackled over the intercom, "we've been advised that Atlanta is experiencing a temporary power outage in sections of the airport. Please remain seated as we approach our designated terminal."
"That's odd. The whole airport?"
“And why are the lights to all other businesses still working, “ a male passenger put to the middle-aged stewardess.
“Sir, this is a developing situation and the captain will update us as soon as he can.” She continued down the plane's isle, leaving an unsatisfactory taste in that male passenger's mouth!
Michael gave Ava a playful, scrunched face at the conversation they heard behind them…Ava laughed!
About 30 minutes had lapsed by the time Ava and Michael's plane was fully disembarked. It was the same story for about three other jet-liners.
Inside Hartsfield-Jackson was a darkened cacophony of hundreds of passengers trying to make their way through the airport with only the aid of backup emergency lights. Truth was, many of the airport employees were also at a loss in navigating through the sprawling dark!
The family from Ava and Michael's flight frantically asked airport personnel how to get to their connecting flight, while others searched for answers about the outage. Murmurs about terrorism or a massive grid failure spread through the crowd. "Jeez, talk about mass confusion," Michael whispered to Ava, gripping her hand tightly as they navigated through the throng of anxious travelers.
“What the hell,” someone from another boarding gate, separate from Ava and Michael's, exclaimed!
Everyone within 10 yards went silent. It was the destination-boards—all of them! Not a single Arrival nor Departure name was listed!
It was not that the computers running the electronic boards were not working—the backup generators controlled those. Indeed, other working telemetry were spotted on all the electronic boards throughout Hartsfield-Jackson: the time, date, weather icons…
There simply were *no* cities listed for Arrivals nor Departures!
The noise level throughout the airport was, now, panic!
“How am I supposed to make it back to Dubai?”
“I'm waiting for my kids to come back from their Summer camp-trip in Europe…”
“What am I supposed to do, now?”
Michael looked around their immediate area of the airport and slowly shook his head. “Maybe a cybernetic attack,” he speculated in Ava's earshot.
She was shaking her head. “Don't think so. Why would a cyber-terrorist go through the trouble of blinding the airport's destination boards? There's no politics associated with that…”
Michael shrugged in admitting to his wife's point.
By this time, the chief of operations, the head of maintenance, and several of their respective teams, had announced that they were all taking care of the situation and that everyone should just sit tight while the COO and Maintenance worked on the problem…
LATER …
Like scores of others within the many hundreds-to-over a thousand passengers, Ava and Michael decided to isolate themselves as much as possible from the confused and angry crowds! It was, now, well-past One in the next morning and *they* and several hundred others had not yet left Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport!
Ava had overheard a conversation about *why* were so many people—about the size of a thriving village! —self-imprisonig themselves in an airport?
The response was a bit more mundane than Ava expected: with the exception of those who had someone else pay for their airline tickets, all those thousand-or so people had *already* paid many hundreds or thousands of dollars for their trips. There was no way most of those pedestrians would simply shrug their shoulders and “Leave.”
Besides, many were from overseas or from clear across the North American continent. *How* were those transits supposed to just Leave?
Ava interjected in the conversation.
“Well, I guess we've all become “citizens” of *this* particular airport…”
18 DAYS LATER…
The international news media had gotten wind of Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport citizens!
The story of what had become known as "The Atlanta Airport Society" had now gone viral across the globe. CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera—they were all covering the bizarre phenomenon of over a thousand stranded passengers who had, out of necessity, formed their own micro-community within the darkened terminals. What had begun as confusion had evolved into something unprecedented: a functioning society with its own emerging social structure, resource distribution system, and even makeshift governance.
By now, Ava had been elected by some Citizens in Terminal 3 as *their* Arbiter. While for Terminal 1, the villagers had elected Turek al Jamar as their Arbiter. And Billy Walls won the casted votes for Terminal 2…
The mysterious—and, yet, unknown—electrical outage nearly 20 days prior was celebrated by some in the global social media as a proof-of-concept that the spoiled generation of smartphones, internet, and travels *still* could rough it through and survive as did some of Homosapien ancestors!
Others, saw a pop up village of counter culture, and felt the whole Hartsfield-Jackson incident was either a faux story meant to advance some agenda, or, perhaps, just good ol’ fashioned crackdown by law enforcement was called for!
When one of the international news outlets asked Ava—whom, by then—like everyone else in the Atlanta Airport Society, was looking pretty feral—how she felt about those two opposing paradigms on their new Society? Ava responded:
“Perhaps we're a harbinger of today's techno-tribal world we find ourselves in, in the first-third of the 21st century? We sometimes call ourselves denizens of social media platforms, or of subculture of various kinds…
“Perhaps for the Hartsfield-Jackson communities—even if merely temporary—this is *our* practical citizenry…?”
fin
“Practical Citizens, “ was partially written by Notion-Ai at apprx. 11.6% Artificial Intelligence ratio. ~ jm
What does it take for a cluster of Humans for that nodule to be considered a Citizenry?
Atlanta looked like a flattened Christmas tree at night to Ava as she looked out the plane's tiny window as it approached a landing at Atlanta's international airport… the multi-colors of city streets and boxy structures was coming up fast from her line of sight!
“Huh,” Michael, Ava's husband, shared from the seat next to hers. “Why are the lights out at Hartsfield-Jackson?”
Ava's eyes slid to where the sprawling complex and giant planes were. “Yeah, Mike, you're right! I don't remember hearing the pilot mentioning this over the intercom…Do you?”
“Of course not…”
Ava and Michael, now, started to hear other passengers on the plane discussing the very same situation.
The mother of a family behind Ava and Michael had an extended question and answer session about why the lights were out, and if it might cause any delay of her family's next flight out of Atlanta's Airport…
Her question to a stewardess was met with a frown. "Ladies and gentlemen," the pilot's voice crackled over the intercom, "we've been advised that Atlanta is experiencing a temporary power outage in sections of the airport. Please remain seated as we approach our designated terminal."
"That's odd. The whole airport?"
“And why are the lights to all other businesses still working, “ a male passenger put to the middle-aged stewardess.
“Sir, this is a developing situation and the captain will update us as soon as he can.” She continued down the plane's isle, leaving an unsatisfactory taste in that male passenger's mouth!
Michael gave Ava a playful, scrunched face at the conversation they heard behind them…Ava laughed!
About 30 minutes had lapsed by the time Ava and Michael's plane was fully disembarked. It was the same story for about three other jet-liners.
Inside Hartsfield-Jackson was a darkened cacophony of hundreds of passengers trying to make their way through the airport with only the aid of backup emergency lights. Truth was, many of the airport employees were also at a loss in navigating through the sprawling dark!
The family from Ava and Michael's flight frantically asked airport personnel how to get to their connecting flight, while others searched for answers about the outage. Murmurs about terrorism or a massive grid failure spread through the crowd. "Jeez, talk about mass confusion," Michael whispered to Ava, gripping her hand tightly as they navigated through the throng of anxious travelers.
“What the hell,” someone from another boarding gate, separate from Ava and Michael's, exclaimed!
Everyone within 10 yards went silent. It was the destination-boards—all of them! Not a single Arrival nor Departure name was listed!
It was not that the computers running the electronic boards were not working—the backup generators controlled those. Indeed, other working telemetry were spotted on all the electronic boards throughout Hartsfield-Jackson: the time, date, weather icons…
There simply were *no* cities listed for Arrivals nor Departures!
The noise level throughout the airport was, now, panic!
“How am I supposed to make it back to Dubai?”
“I'm waiting for my kids to come back from their Summer camp-trip in Europe…”
“What am I supposed to do, now?”
Michael looked around their immediate area of the airport and slowly shook his head. “Maybe a cybernetic attack,” he speculated in Ava's earshot.
She was shaking her head. “Don't think so. Why would a cyber-terrorist go through the trouble of blinding the airport's destination boards? There's no politics associated with that…”
Michael shrugged in admitting to his wife's point.
By this time, the chief of operations, the head of maintenance, and several of their respective teams, had announced that they were all taking care of the situation and that everyone should just sit tight while the COO and Maintenance worked on the problem…
LATER …
Like scores of others within the many hundreds-to-over a thousand passengers, Ava and Michael decided to isolate themselves as much as possible from the confused and angry crowds! It was, now, well-past One in the next morning and *they* and several hundred others had not yet left Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport!
Ava had overheard a conversation about *why* were so many people—about the size of a thriving village! —self-imprisonig themselves in an airport?
The response was a bit more mundane than Ava expected: with the exception of those who had someone else pay for their airline tickets, all those thousand-or so people had *already* paid many hundreds or thousands of dollars for their trips. There was no way most of those pedestrians would simply shrug their shoulders and “Leave.”
Besides, many were from overseas or from clear across the North American continent. *How* were those transits supposed to just Leave?
Ava interjected in the conversation.
“Well, I guess we've all become “citizens” of *this* particular airport…”
18 DAYS LATER…
The international news media had gotten wind of Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport citizens!
The story of what had become known as "The Atlanta Airport Society" had now gone viral across the globe. CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera—they were all covering the bizarre phenomenon of over a thousand stranded passengers who had, out of necessity, formed their own micro-community within the darkened terminals. What had begun as confusion had evolved into something unprecedented: a functioning society with its own emerging social structure, resource distribution system, and even makeshift governance.
By now, Ava had been elected by some Citizens in Terminal 3 as *their* Arbiter. While for Terminal 1, the villagers had elected Turek al Jamar as their Arbiter. And Billy Walls won the casted votes for Terminal 2…
The mysterious—and, yet, unknown—electrical outage nearly 20 days prior was celebrated by some in the global social media as a proof-of-concept that the spoiled generation of smartphones, internet, and travels *still* could rough it through and survive as did some of Homosapien ancestors!
Others, saw a pop up village of counter culture, and felt the whole Hartsfield-Jackson incident was either a faux story meant to advance some agenda, or, perhaps, just good ol’ fashioned crackdown by law enforcement was called for!
When one of the international news outlets asked Ava—whom, by then—like everyone else in the Atlanta Airport Society, was looking pretty feral—how she felt about those two opposing paradigms on their new Society? Ava responded:
“Perhaps we're a harbinger of today's techno-tribal world we find ourselves in, in the first-third of the 21st century? We sometimes call ourselves denizens of social media platforms, or of subculture of various kinds…
“Perhaps for the Hartsfield-Jackson communities—even if merely temporary—this is *our* practical citizenry…?”
fin
“Practical Citizens, “ was partially written by Notion-Ai at apprx. 11.6% Artificial Intelligence ratio. ~ jm
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