innovate-issue-005

an area and the man put the flight attendant down. Then Victoria started to work on the flight attendant and themen returned to his seat.Back on the flight deck, Steve could see that whatever had happened it had messed with Taylor bad. She wascatatonic and nothing was going to change that anytime soon. But the thing that was causing Steve to worryeven more than the fact his co-pilot was catatonic was the fact the radio wasn't picking up anything. The boardwas green but it wasn't picking up the first signal.It had been over an hour since whatever the orb was had hit the plane, and he going figure out what was goingon. It was at that point he called Linda the head flight attendant for the first time since the event. Over the pasthour he had been too worried about getting in contact with air traffic control. Steve was shocked to find outLinda was hurt and one of the old passengers had a heart attack. Both Linda and the passenger were beingtreated by a doctor who happened to be on the flight. He was told Linda could wait for a hospital but the doctorsaid the old passenger needed to get to a hospital within the next hour if he was to stay in the land of the living.Steve brought up the navigation systems. He knew that the GPS was out, but the Boeing 777 had backups. Helooked at the screen and saw he was 15 minutes outside Edwards Air Force Base. He knew that wasimpossible. If he was that close to Edwards AFB he would have been met by a pair of F-16 or some other fighteraircraft that would have been based out Edwards. But instead he had nothing. This was getting odder by themoment.Then Steve dropped his aircraft to 10,000 feet and started to blast the air waves on the high frequencywavelengths and hope someone would answer him. "This is United American Flight 817, is anyone out there?"That wasn't by the book, but Steve was way off the book at this point. He had passengers who needed medicalhelp and his radio was totally blank, he had to get down on the ground.Then to Steve’s relief someone finally answered, "What flight did you say this was?""This is UA Flight 817, I have a passenger who needs medical help, can you give me radar vector to LAX?""A what? To where?" The man on the other end of the radio sounded confused by simple terms that were usedevery day by air traffic control."Don't kid with me! I have a passenger who had a heart attack and needs medical help. I need radar vector toLAX, hell I will take a radar vector to Edwards AFB at this point just give me the damn vector I need so I canland!""Listen, I have no idea who you are, I had never heard of this radar or LAX or Edwards whatever. This is MurocArmy Air Field. If you have a passenger who needs medical help we can clear you to land, but I don't know howmuch good we can do for your passenger." The person in the tower took a second to check the wind reading,"Wind is coming out of South-South East at 3 knots."Steve had been stationed at Edwards AFB when he was in the air force and knew it hadn't been called MurocArmy Air Field for a long time, longer than he had been alive. Something was very wrong. "Tower what istoday's date?""Is this some kind of joke?""Tower can you tell me the date, I think something very odd happen on this flight.""The date is September 3 1939."Steve was shocked by that, but it made sense as he thought about it. Nobody was on the frequencies he wastrying to use earlier, because they didn't know about them. There was no GPS in 1939. Everything just fell intoplace for Steve. "Thank you tower. Have a truck ready for us, I have a doctor onboard who can help out. Clearthe sky around me because I’m the biggest thing flying right now."The tower didn't even argue the point. They had finally picked up the Boeing 777 on visual and saw the size ofthe monster. They got the trucks ready, and cleared the skies.The passengers on UA 817 didn't understand why they were landing where they were. For most of them theysaw nothing that made sense. But one man, the one who helped Victoria saw something he knew and did adouble take on it. He then turned to his longtime girlfriend, "Jessica I don't think we are in Kansas anymore."