He reached the unknown cabinet and whistled to himself. The size of it was larger than he’d remembered. Almost eight feet in length, about five feet high, and spanning perhaps three feet laterally, the side made out of what looked suspiciously like a weight-wasting stainless steel. But despite his best effort, he couldn’t locate even a hint of a hatch or service door.
At the forward end, he could see a cascade of cables entering the cabinet, but without pulling up the floor panels it was unclear where they were coming from. The sheer size of the cable harness, however, looked formidable—as if every circuit in the airplane was routed through the big box.
Gotta get inside this thing! No warnings, no labels, no nothing. This makes no sense! You don’t put a major component in an airplane and weld the whole thing shut. There’s got to be a hatch on here somewhere.
He moved carefully towards the aft end of the cabinet, examining every square inch he could reach by running his fingers along the smooth, unpainted metallic surface.
Okay, logically, if there are no openable panels, then the entire side has to come off or swing open.
He ran his fingers over the top of the right side from aft to forward, realizing at last that there was a ridge where the sheet metal was bent from the vertical to horizontal, overlapping the edge by perhaps two inches, the overlap unseen on the top. He examined the entire front-to-back breadth of the seam, feeling for a latch or screws or some sort of fastener.
On the third pass, he found what felt like a round depression, just the size for an index finger to push in on some type of button.
The space between the top of the cabinet and the roof of the electronics bay was only two inches, not enough to see over, but he could feel the button give a little when he pushed it, and spreading his legs to get a steady stance while holding the edge of the metal rack to his right, Dan shoved his index finger down with as much force as he dared.
He felt the lock begin to move as an earsplitting “CRACK” coursed through him. Just as quickly, the memory of the noise faded as he sank to the floor of the electronic bay.
How much time had passed he couldn’t tell, but regaining consciousness felt like swimming up from the bottom of a giant bowl of soup. It wasn’t immediately clear to Dan whether he was coming in or out of a dream, anesthesia, or a nightmare. He opened his eyes to a sideways, floor level view of a strange compartment that ever so slowly began to look familiar again. He lay there afraid to move for a moment, wondering if he still had arms and legs and whether they would respond if he tried to move.
There was sound all around him now, and he recognized it as a slipstream, which would mean he was in flight somewhere. He struggled to put the pieces of the puzzle together, and the thunderclap realization of where he was and what had happened caused him to sit bolt upright, ignoring the dizzying pain in his head.
There was a burning sensation on his right index finger, and something wet, warm, and sticky was on the back of his head and when he probed it, his hand came back covered in blood. The steel-faced cabinet was still in front of him, looking all the more impregnable and intimidating. Obviously it was booby-trapped, and he’d walked right into it.
There was a voice in the distance… a female voice, Dan judged… and he knew he should look to the right and see if there was a woman attached to it. Or maybe he was still dreaming. It would be so much better to just close his eyes and rest a few minutes.
Or a few hours.
But the voice was insistent, irritatingly calling his name, and he struggled to look to the right, spotting a disembodied Carol, only her head visible as she stuck it below floor level looking for him.
He tried to reply, but his voice sounded too weak for even him to hear.
“DAN! WHAT HAPPENED? DAN, ARE YOU OKAY?”
Carol pulled her head up and out of sight, but it was replaced instantly by the rest of her descending the ladder and coming to him, some sort of towel in her hand.
“Good Lord, what happened?” she asked, as Dan struggled to answer that question himself. There had been a button and he had punched the button, and… and…
“That… thing… shocked me.”
“Shocked you?”
He started to nod, but she was holding the cloth to the back of his head.
“Ow!”
“You’re hurt! Stay still!”
“Voltage… I think it’s got a protection… ah… circuit… shock thing…” Dan could hear his voice trail off as if it belonged to someone else, but slowly his conscious thoughts were coalescing. He had been electrically zapped by something when he tried to open the cabinet. That meant that whoever had put it here did not want it opened, at least not in flight. He could feel his heart racing and wondered in passing if it could have killed him.
“That cabinet… holds the key,” Dan said, but she didn’t hear.
“Can you walk, Dan? I need to get you upstairs to attend to this cut.”
“I’ve… I’ve gotta get into that thing.”
“Not until I get this bleeding stopped.”
With Carol guiding him, he reached the ladder and propelled himself up to the cockpit with her behind, aware that Jerry was watching him emerge with an incredulous expression.
The process of bandaging the gash on the back of his head took several minutes while Dan explained what he could remember to Jerry, who was looking quite feral.
“You say it’s booby-trapped?” Jerry asked.
“Yeah. In a phrase. I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Can we… can we maybe use gloves and get past it?”
“Dunno. Could be it has other security safeguards as well, but that’s got to be the key. There are huge wire bundles running into it from the front side under the floor. I’ve never seen anything like that in an A330, although… to tell you the truth… I’ve only been down in two other hellholes. But those two had nothing like that, just an open bay of electronic racks where that thing is situated.”
“I’ve never been down there at all,” Jerry said.
“Any luck getting through on any of those other phones?” Dan asked.
“No. They’re still trying.”
“I was hoping to find a way to restore the radios, but it’s hopeless to trace wires. Millions of them. Wait, Jerry… did anything change up here when that thing zapped me?”
The captain shook his head no.
“I was hoping it had. That might mean it’s just a short. But… I think this thing intends to defend itself. God knows how many volts of electricity it hit me with, but I don’t think its intent was to kill.”
Jerry’s eyebrows were up as high as they could go, the alarm in his voice visceral.
“What are you talking about, Dan?” Bill Breem interjected. “You make the damned thing sound sentient.”
“It may be. God, that stunned me! But it’s the key. You don’t build a defense system for routine electronics on a plane. Has to be something someone doesn’t want us screwing with, and since we’re not in control, the box that IS in control doesn’t want us taking over. So, that fits.”
“What fits?” Jerry asked. “I’m not following you.”
“I’m not either,” Bill Breem added, a genuinely engaged look on his face.
Dan took a deep breath as Carol nodded her okay to turn forward in the copilot’s seat. “I mean, we’ve been relieved of control thanks to something electronic, and it’s more than likely that whatever that is, is in that cabinet, and the cabinet is protecting itself because it doesn’t want us taking control back.”
“Who is ‘IT’?” Jerry asked. “I mean, I know you’re referring to the cabinet, but who’s controlling the cabinet?”