“I,” says the man who stands by the pilot, “am unlucky in love”.

They nod and mumble in appreciation: they are all holding now-empty glasses. The bottle they left on the ground, and it is growing steadily far in its carafe, swimming in a bed of ice water. Just the thought of it growing so far away — a meter a minute — is enough to give you motion sickness. Above them the engine roars a muffled roar in the thin, windy air.

“And I am unlucky,” says an obese man, well-dressed in his wheelchair, “in health”.

“I’m unlucky all around on Mondays and on Thursday nights,” says another man. The airship sails, up, up, up; the men all whisked away in its shaky embrace.

“I am unlucky in my sciences,” says the man who invited them all. He wears a white suite and a monocle, the staple of a scientist. “Yet I am positive we shall succeed. I know not all of you have faith. But the best researchers are all united in agreeing in the theraputic effect of high altitudes on the Fortune gland beneath the cortex…”

Somewhere on the ship, a man in his shirtsleeves says, “I am unlucky with my children.” The man he talks to says his investments all started to falter the year previous, after he had fallen from an apricot tree. Then there’s a sudden wind that blows hard and rocks the airship, sending wine glasses overboard, and it exhausts all conversation — the confessions, the stories, the science lectures.

“I,” whispers the pilot, but they all hear anyway, “am unlucky in sailing”.