Clearly, Some Are Different

There is only one long line Clears accept, and that is the line to vote.

Clears come in all ages, but they get more Clear the closer they get to 40. (And less Clear after 60. You can always tell an old Clear by his polite resignation: Go ahead, all of you, he or she says, as the plane is disembarking. I'm just slowing you down.)

So far, the people who run Clear have only learned the obvious about their customer base: He is a he, a business traveler, and he's generally between 35 and 45 years old, Rosenthal says -- adding that the profile may change as Clear lanes open in other airports. He is affluent and may have a second home. He isn't merely antsy-pantsy. He just flies a lot and is sick of the lines. Clear gets him through airport security in about four minutes. In high-tourist travel markets -- such as Orlando or Denver -- he never knows if the security lines are going to be a matter of a few minutes or an hour, which makes him bonkers with Clear worry. One Clear customer, Rosenthal says, forgot important papers in his car and was able to cross back out into the terminal, retrieve the papers from his secretary, and go back through security in a matter of minutes. This is held up as the definitive Clear success story: zip, zip, zip.

Life, meanwhile, is not as zippy as all that. A Clear finds himself standing in line at a 7-Eleven, with a Big Gulp in one hand and a couple of dollar bills in the other, and realizes that he's going to have to wait for six Un-Clears in front of him to buy lottery tickets and the exact pack of cigarettes that the Un-Clear clerk cannot seem to locate. Shouldn't a Clear's Clear card work in this situation? Shouldn't a Clear be able to go to the front of the line at Starbucks when all the Clear ever orders ( ever!) is a simple grande coffee? If a Clear knows exactly what he wants in the Au Bon Pain or the Taco Bell, can he not flash his Clear card and grab-n-go, git-n-gone?

Not in America. Not yet. The Clear gets his airport privileges (and so far, he gets them only in airports like Albany or Indianapolis -- but also Newark and JFK at certain hours and certain gates), and he gets the nasty looks, too. Clears are sometimes troubled by this. They aren't so self-absorbed as to not feel true remorse and class consciousness. It's not like a country club or a gated neighborhood or first class. Clears encourage clarity in all people.

Here's the rub: The world is ending. Things are getting tight, desperate, short. Clearness is coming to airport security lines just in time for chaos to wipe out everything. Clears are good at things like mass evacuation, but not so great in soup lines. (Just listen to how loudly and repeatedly a Clear sighs when the express lane at Giant is too long.)

In the apocalypse, it's a good idea to stick close to your favorite Clear, but you should also fully expect to be left behind.