Stigma - Chapter 1

Angela Patterson looked out over her domain and sighed contentedly, all was quiet, she could finally take a few moments for herself and relax, at least for a little while.

Her domain, for the next several hours, was the first class lounge of an AirBus A380 flying from JFK Airport New York to Dubai International Airport. Although she had been kept busy attending to the passengers so far it had been a quiet uneventful flight for which she was eternally grateful, she wasn’t supposed to be working this flight. When the outbound flight from Dubai into New York landed a little over eight hours ago she had been looking forward to enjoying a few relaxing days and doing a little shopping in the Big Apple before her next duty. Shortly after touching down she had received a frantic call from her husband informing her that their six year old daughter Rose had been rushed to hospital for what was suspected to be appendicitis. After a bit of persuading she had managed to call in a favour from an old friend and swapped flights with him in order that she could be at her daughters’ side when she woke up after the surgery.

Sitting down at the back of the lounge on one of the fold-a-way stewards chairs’ that were built into several of the internal walls she noticed Jim Banks, the duty barman for the flight, taking advantage of the lull in business to make a comfort run into one of the two toilets situated just behind the bar area. He shouldn’t really have been using those toilets they were for passengers only, but at that time of night no-one was going to know, and she certainly wasn’t going to report him. Since the moment the passengers had started to board the plane Jim had been working almost none stop, New Year’s Eve/Day flights where always busy on the bar staff, and the start of 2016 hadn’t been any different.

Raising her arm she checked the time on her Apple Watch, 1:17am it displayed over a picture of a young fair haired girls’ face, the journey seemed to be taking longer than normal, or did it just feel that way as she wanted to be with he daughter? She turned to look at one of the many monitors built into the bulkhead walls, it was showing one of a number of infomercials that encouraged the passengers to make purchases from the on board duty free shop as well as one of the many other shops when they arrived at their destination. She pressed the blue map icon on the screen to select the location channel. The picture changed to show a small yellow plane positioned in the centre of the screen against a dark blue background, it sat on a thin dotted white line that indicated the path the plane was travelling. Towards the bottom of the screen was a small irregular shaped area of green that indicated a landmass, “they must be somewhere over the United Kingdom by now” she thought, that meant the area of green was most likely to be somewhere north of the mainland probably the most northern part of the Shetland Isles.

Ahead of her half way down the lounge on the right side a red glowing letter appeared suddenly above one of the window seats. At first she took no notice of it, she’d done enough flights over the last 15 years to know that passengers in this day and age carried all sorts of electronic devices. The relaxation last July in the restrictions imposed after the terrorist attack back in 2001 meant that the passengers were now free to use them again whilst inflight. It took her a couple of seconds to realise that the light wasn’t simply the glow from a mobile phone or tablet screen, this was something completely different.

Floating in the air above one of the seats was a red T, it was a fairly plain letter T, no serifs or brackets to speak of, nothing that would make it stand out if it was part of a written sentence. To find it floating in the air above a first class seat in a plane flying at around 33,000 feet, that however did make it stand out.

The T was approximately 18 inches tall, 6 inches wide across the top, and seemed to have some depth, but there was something not quite right about how it looked, it looked odd, as if it were a 3D optical illusion that was being observed from slightly the wrong angle. It struck her that the light didn’t feel right either, if it was being projected by some device, such as a torch or laser, then she would have expected there to be more light on the bulkhead behind it, or even dark patches of shadow on the sides of the plane where the projected light had been blocked by chairs and other objects within the cabin. The lights in the lounge had been dimmed to help the passengers sleep during the flight and yet almost everything in all directions around the seat where the letter floated, almost spanning the full length and width of the First Class lounge was bathed in a warm red light, objects closest to the T where illuminated far stronger than those farther away. It was as if the T was the source of the light.

“Well, this is new”, she said to herself, the passenger must have some sort of device that allows them to project images much like a 3D hologram, probably a new development from the likes of Google or Apple, the next big thing in home entertainment no doubt. Strange she thought why the passenger hadn’t got it out when the clocks had struck midnight, maybe it was still secretly being developed and the passenger had waited until the rest of the lounge was asleep before they decided to have a play, or maybe it was an early prototype and was only capable of projecting the letter T. Whatever it was she would have to ask them to turn it off, the glow from it might disturb the other passengers and she wasn’t in the mood for complaints.

As she rose and moved towards the seat where the T hung in the air it disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared, the passenger must have heard her coming but she’d still have to ask them not to turn it back on again. She walked over to the seat and was about to speak when she noticed that the man lying there, possibly of Middle Eastern origin she thought judging by the colour of his skin and his shoulder length pitch black hair and beard, was sleeping heavily on the verge of snoring. Years of experience kicked in as she leaned forward slightly and looked around the seat noticing everything. There was no sign of any electronic device in his lap, or in the area around him, there was a travel bag beside him but that was zipped closed and with the stillness of the lounge she would have heard if he had placed something in it and then closed the zip. Confused she straighten and turned to look around the rest of the lounge, maybe it was another passenger that was projecting the letter, she fully expected to see someone else pointing a device in her direction or quickly trying to hide something, but all the other passengers looked to be sleeping as well.

She decided to take the long way back to her seat and walked down towards the bar looking from side to side checking each passenger as if she were checking their safety belts had been fastened and their seat tray was in the upright position in accordance to an announcement. She turned to the left in front of the empty bar, Jim was evidently still in the toilet, and walked slowly and softly across the front row of seats before turning again and walking back towards rear of the lounge. When she got back to her seat she had seen nothing that might have projected a red letter T in the air. She folded down her seat again and looked at the monitor, the yellow plane was still in the centre of the screen sat on the dotted line against the blue background, but now there was no patch of green.

“Angela pull yourself together” she said quietly to herself so as not to be overheard, “it’s been a long 48hrs and you need to get some sleep, your mind is playing tricks on you.”

Whatever the T was it didn’t appear again for the rest of the journey.