That's great about your job dude! The best part about making up your own job is that no one can give you the shitty excuse of "That's just how we've always done it!"

What awesome critique!

Here's background on the story. http://www.25af.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123350435

I mixed two stories of mine. The first was that I had the prophetic dream, felt stupid bringing it up, but watched it nearly come true. I don't believe in metaphysics, but I know what happened that day and it is close. There is a pre-briefing safety checklist out there with my dream written on it, and I watched everyone try not to freak out when I said it. No one wants to believe it, but they know better than to dismiss it. I literally came to grips with my death that day, and when things from my dream started happening as we landed, I was very calm in a way that I haven't been since.

The second story is the inspiration for Remains #10. Too Busy to Cry and what that article refers to. Julian Scholten was flying a mission in Djibouti on the same aircraft that I flew on a hundred (literally) times in Afghanistan. I was in Afghanistan at the time and I remember getting woken up in the middle of the night by the Intel commander because I was in charge of my intel squad down there. She told me to come with her to the SCIF (the top secret closet) because there had been an accident, and I thought it was going to be one of my guys. When I got there I watched the feeds coming in from the overhead aircraft in Africa. It was night when they crashed and there were dozens of infrared glow sticks all over the ground. One of the new guys asked what all of them were, and we all looked at him hatefully, because he should have known that's how they mark remains in a combat zone at night.