The provided text is an extended excerpt from the novel "Up in the Air" by Walter Kirn, offering a first-person perspective on the itinerant life of Ryan Bingham, a management consultant specializing in Career Transition Counseling (CTC), a euphemism for coaching recently fired employees. The narrative explores Ryan's detachment from his estranged family and his primary solace in the "Airworld" of airports and planes, a place he has optimized to his liking, obsessively accumulating frequent flyer miles through a Total Mileage System (TMS) to achieve a personal boundary. The story follows Ryan as he faces professional shifts, including his resignation from ISM and possible recruitment by the mysterious firm MythTech, all while navigating turbulent family issues, such as his sister Julie's troubled wedding and flight, and dealing with strange encounters with colleagues and clients who seem to be part of a larger, unsettling corporate conspiracy.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.