The Hard Call Is the Whole Job · A cancelled flight, three confident machines, and the woman on the Hilton Diamond line who refused to stop.

Toronto to Detroit to Norfolk. Two nights of Goose at the Dome, Monday and Tuesday, and I was flying in the night before. I have made this trip, or one shaped like it, more times than I can count. On Sunday night my connection to Norfolk slipped an hour, then another, then another. At 11:30 PM Delta cancelled it along with hundreds of other flights, said the next seat out was Tuesday, and told us to sleep in the airport. Whatever happened next, night one was already gone. Everything near the terminal was full. So I called outward. The hotel that knew the date Sunday night, 12:41 AM. The hotel’s AI knew the date better than I did. That is how it tried to book me the wrong night. I did not know it was an AI. It sounded like a person. It paused before answering, the way you pause when you are reading something off a screen. I had been in the Detroit airport for nine hours, and for eight minutes I believed I was talking to someone having a hard night too. “Sunday night through Tuesday.”…