047
salivation, both known to enhance food enjoyment.
The helmet became both restaurant and plate as she
unleashed a handful of Pop Rocks and boba pearls
and chased them in circles. Immediately, Coblentz
sneezed: Most of the popping candy appeared to have
gone straight up her nose. I set loose my contraband
pearls and promptly lost half of them; perhaps they
would reappear on a future flight. The few that man-
aged to connect with my mouth bounced around on my
tongue, a sensation that made me snort with laughter.
As we entered our final few parabolas, Coblentz
sucked miso paste from her silicone bones. I floated
the length of the cabin, marveling at an agility and grace
I’d never demonstrated on Earth. Behind me, two unfor-
tunate researchers were hunched, barf bags in hand,
stricken by space adjustment syndrome. For the rest of
us, weightlessness was over far too quickly.
Back at the airfield, Zero-G had laid out a sandwich
buffet for our “regravitation celebration.” I dragged
myself to it, heavy-limbed and slow. As I lifted my tur-
key club baguette to my mouth, I could hardly believe
I’d have to eat this way for the rest of my life. At least
for now, the psychological benefits of earthly terroir
seemed hardly worth the price of being permanently
rooted to the ground. I glanced at Coblentz. She was
draped over a chair, eyes closed, with a huge smile.
Slowly, her right arm floated up and she began gently
combing Pop Rocks from her hair.our blue onesies, complete with name badges, and
our boarding passes. Flight ZG491 was scheduled to
depart at 9 am.
As the passengers suited up and checked their exper-
imental equipment one last time, the preflight briefing
began. There would be no somersaults, no flipping, no
spinning without permission—seriously, no horsing
around of any kind.
“Don’t look down,” one staffer warned. “You’ll feel
like your eyeballs are falling out.”
“Don’t take off a ring and try to float it while you take
a picture,” said another. “There’s still a wedding ring
in there somewhere from the last guy that tried that.”
After the briefing, I tried on Maggie Coblentz’s food
helmet, a sort of giant plastic goldfish bowl with two
hand holes carved out. “It was injection-molded for
me by people who make aquariums,” she said. “When
you put it on, you’re in a world of your own—and it
catches crumbs. I’ve tried it in bed.” There was a
built-in lazy Susan on which she had mounted five
small containers. I spotted boba pearls in one and Pop
Rocks in another. The hardware was spray-painted an
Instagram-friendly rose gold.
We went through our own private TSA security line,
after which Coblentz handed me some contraband
boba pearls. As a potential hazard to the equipment
onboard, they were approved for flight only on the con-
dition that they remain contained within her helmet.
I didn’t have a helmet of my own, so I stashed them in
my breast pocket, sealed it with velcro, and boarded the
plane. Several rows of seats were installed at the back,
and we sat and listened to a modified safety spiel. If
the airplane lost pressure, we were told, oxygen masks
would not drop automatically; instead, we would have
to make our way over to the oxygen boxes mounted
along the center aisle and walls. After a perfectly nor-
mal takeoff, the seat-belt sign switched off and we all
moved forward to our appointed stations, next to the
bolted-down equipment.
On the first weightless parabola, my shoelaces came
undone. They remained that way for the duration. My
instinct was to swim, but that didn’t work. Moving gin-
gerly, I hovered to one side, trying not to get in the way
as Coblentz injected her spheres. (We wouldn’t be eating
them on the flight, mostly because there wasn’t time to
fish them out of the plexiglass box; still, the experiment
would serve as proof of concept.) She was struggling
too, her arms visibly shaking as she tried to control
the speed at which the liquid came out of the syringes.
Before either of us had any idea what was going on, it
was time to serve the tasting menu.
Coblentz put on her helmet and immediately relaxed.
She told me later that it functioned almost like noise-
canceling headphones, allowing her to focus on eating
amid the uproar. She piped in a soundtrack of frying
onions, then opened a canister that released a matching
scent—an attempt to increase her appetite and induce
SURF & TURF
Coblentz holds
a dish of algae-
based “caviar,”
designed to
remind space-
faring earthlings
of their faraway
home.