A few terrifying moments later Mark (having the aisle seat) and I (having a window seat) had untangled ourselves and stood up. The woman gestured down the aisle with her gun, and I was struck by a terrifying fear that Mark was going to sit back down and leave me to my fate, but he looked at me and gave me a small nod before walking up the aisle in front of me. He was just as scared as I was, but he wasn’t going to abandon me.
We walked in front of the terrorist, both of us larger than him but neither of us even thought of trying to fight back. I'm a good Engineer, a great friend, and I'm pretty good at video games; but I am certainly not a hero. At least, I didn't think I was. Sure, I had taken some martial arts as a teenager, and even been in a few brief scuffles, but I'd never swung first in my life. Attacking people just wasn’t in my nature.
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We entered another compartment where we were met with three more terrorists, all male. They spoke briefly in a language I didn’t know, and then we were handed off to the new group as we made our way past the First Class section, and ever closer to the front of the Airplane... where we saw a sight which, again, almost made me void my bladder, and definitely made me stumble. If Mark wasn’t with me, I think I might have passed out.
The cockpit was open, burn marks around the metal door, and there were three dead bodies on the ground around us: What I assume was either the pilot or the first mate (I couldn’t tell the difference) and two of the terrorists.
We were ushered through a tight hatch and then a tighter passageway, down into the bowels of the airplane, claustrophobia suddenly fighting a battle with the fear of being shot: the latter won. There was another armed terrorist in the tight space along with something big and metal, kind of dirty looking and painted primarily green, with wires and several read-outs on it. We weren’t told what it was, but we were given a professional-looking printed manual that solved the mystery for us: What we had in front of us was a Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM).
Oh.
My.
Lord.
I still hadn’t wet my pants. At this point, I guess I just wasn't a pant-wetting person. Is that a silver lining? No, I don’t think so.
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The manual was in English with a bunch of foreign language scribbles on it. We were told in very broken English to set the timer to detonate in 6 hours, which was about the same time as we were supposed to arrive in New York. And oh boy did that sound like a bad idea, without even having to think about it. Our translator then left us alone with the armed watchdog who was already there when we arrived. Oh, but before he left he told us we had 1 hour to figure it out, or we would be executed. Great.
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Mark and I looked at each other, then at the bomb, our minds numb. Why the HELL would they get us to arm the damn thing? Then we looked and saw that a bunch of wires were messed up, and the timer was set to 21 hours from now. Ah… I guess they got on the wrong flight? I had no idea, and I wasn’t about to ask. Years later Mark and I discussed it and decided one of the two terrorists killed upstairs must have been their Bomb guy. Lucky us…
I won’t go into agonizing detail, but we quickly figured out that our guard either didn’t speak English, or just didn’t care enough to listen. After that, we had what was probably the most important conversation of our lives.
“What the hell.” Said, Mark.
“What are we gonna do, man?” I replied.
“I dunno Alex. Should we rush the guard?”
I looked over at him. The guard hadn't reacted to anything we had said so far, but shortly after I looked at him he snapped his rifle back in my direction and yelled out something in another language. I looked at his finger just to be sure, and he already had it on the trigger - this guy meant business.
“Ummm, I don’t think that’s gonna work,” I replied, looking away from the guard and pretending to look at the instruction manual.
“Well, not like it matters, we are dead anyway.” Said, Mark. At this point, I was getting worried he was going to do something impulsive. I love the guy dearly, but sometimes he is just chaos incarnate. The decisions this man makes can range between genius and absolute insanity.
We discussed it back and forth for about 10 minutes. This might not seem like very long, but we only had another 45 or so until our ‘Execution’ if we failed this task. Eventually, we became calmer and calmer as we came to a decision together, but our hands were still shaking as we read through the manual. 20 minutes later we had what was to be the final conversation we had on Earth.
“Ok, so one last time. We should be over the ocean right now. In another 5 hours, we will be over a major city.”
“Yep.”
“Alright. So we are sure we wanna do this?”
“Let's dance.”
“Ok. Screw these guys.” I let out a semi-hysterical laugh, again drawing the attention of our guard, who yelled at us. But at this point we didn't really care about him anymore.
We went through the schematics for a final time, fixed up the wiring, set the timer, and looked at each other.
10 seconds.
9 seconds.
8 seconds.
We went in for a hug, and I felt a huge relief. Like a skydiver who has already jumped, the choice was made, no going back. Just hang on and enjoy the ride.
0 seconds.
Sense of pressure, mild pinch, white light, elevator music.
Wait…
Elevator music? I opened my eyes and found myself staring up at the ceiling of a very sparsely furnished white room. I was lying on top of a neatly made bed, with the sheets and cover folded perfectly into the corners and the pillows neatly placed at the top - one under my head, and two more on either side of me.
I sat up, looked around the room, and saw a small colorful pamphlet lying on a white bedside table beside me, next to a white bedside lamp. Reaching down, I picked up the pamphlet and looked at the cover, reading the title out loud to myself.
“Welcome to the Cycle of Reincarnation!”
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The WHAT?!