The flight attendant sat in the first-class lounge on the flight from JFK to Dubai. All was quiet.
She could take a few moments to herself and relax. Looking around, she could see that all the passengers were sleeping. With no turbulent weather, the majority were likely to stay that way for the duration of the flight.
She watched as the duty barman ducked into one of the two toilets behind the bar. He shouldn’t be using them. They were off-limits to the crew. From the moment the passengers had boarded, he’d been working almost non-stop. The New Year’s Eve/Day flights were always busy for the bar staff. The start of this year had been no different.
Raising her arm, she activated the display on her smart watch. It was 1:17 am; the journey seemed to be taking longer than normal.
Shifting in her seat, she turned to face one of the many monitors built into the bulkhead walls. The screen showed an infomercial encouraging passengers to make purchases from the on-board duty-free shop. She’d watched it so many times she knew it off by heart. Pressing a button with a green map icon, she selected the location channel. The screen flickered as the image changed to show a small yellow plane positioned in the centre of a dark blue background. The plane was on a thin dotted white line showing the route the flight was taking. Towards the bottom of the screen, a small irregularly shaped area of green denoted a land mass.
We should be over the United Kingdom by now.
That meant the area of green must be somewhere north of the mainland, most likely the northernmost part of the Shetland Isles. If everything went well, she should land in just over six hours.
Halfway down the lounge on the right side, a red light appeared above one of the window seats. At first, she took no notice. She’d done enough flights over the last fifteen years to know that passengers carried a varied assortment of electronic devices. Most of them produced light in some manner. It took several seconds for her to realise the light couldn’t be the glow from a mobile phone or tablet screen. Normally, there would be a glow as the light from a screen hit the particles in the air and reflected off them. That wasn’t the case here. This light was different. Her curiosity piqued, she twisted in her seat in order to get a clearer look at the light.
Hanging still in the air was a red letter T. It looked to be almost twelve inches tall, eight inches wide at the top, and possibly had some depth, though she couldn’t be certain. She sat staring at it for several seconds, unable to understand what she was looking at.
As she studied it, the light that first caught her eye drew her attention again. Despite dimming the lounge lights to help its occupants sleep, a warm red light still bathed it. Objects closest to the T were being illuminated far stronger than those farther away. There were even shadows pointing away from it. It was as if the T was the source of the light, but how could that be possible?
Over the years, she witnessed many strange items brought onto flights, but this was different. The passenger sitting beneath the T must have some sort of device that allowed them to project images, like a 3D hologram. It was most likely a recent development from the likes of Google or Apple; the next big thing in home entertainment. She wondered why the passenger had turned it on now, and not when the plane acknowledged the New Year. Perhaps it was a pre-release model and only capable of projecting the one thing? Maybe it was being developed in secret, so competitors didn’t beat them to market. The passenger must have waited for others in the lounge to be sleeping before turning it on. Whatever the reason, she would need to ask them to turn it off. The light might disturb the other passengers and put an end to the quiet moments she was enjoying.
As she stood, she took extra care to prevent the chair from making any noise as it flattened back into the wall. She’d only taken a few steps when the T disappeared. They must have heard her coming, but she still needed to ask them not to turn it back on.
The seat below where the T had been was in its reclined position. A middle-aged man with blonde unkempt hair occupied it. The man’s occasional snorts hinted at his imminent snoring. Years of experience kicked in as she leaned forward, looking around the seat, noticing everything. There was no sign of any electronic device in his lap or in the surrounding area. At the man’s feet sat an open travel bag, though it didn’t look as if it contained any form of device. She straightened herself and shifted her attention to the rest of the lounge. It was possible that another passenger was projecting the letter. She looked around, expecting to see someone pointing a device at her or hiding something, but all the other passengers looked to be sleeping.
She took the long way back to her seat. With an experienced eye, she checked each passenger as if she was ensuring their seat belts were fastened and their tray table folded. She turned left on reaching the bar and continued walking across the lounge. Turning left at the end of the row, she walked back towards the rear of the lounge. When she arrived back at her seat, she had seen nothing that might have projected the T in the air.
Taking a last look around the lounge, she hoped to find the origin of the light, but found nothing. With the seat pulled back down, she glanced towards the monitor. The yellow plane was still sat on the dotted line, but there was no longer a green area at the bottom. She checked her watch again. Only five minutes had passed since the last time she looked. Settling back in her seat, she waited to be relieved
Whatever the T was, it didn’t reappear for the rest of the flight.