Lost in Space. Joaquim Augusto Ferreira Barbosa de Melo
a Secondary School teacher and married to a wealthy merchant named Antunes. The Antunes family had regular vacations in Algarve, where they had acquired an apartment for this purpose. This time, Antunes was attracted to an important international fair in New York, at the suggestion of a regular frequenter friend of those events, thereby changing his quiet holiday town for the city that never sleeps.
Cristina and Mário find out the plane had a higher floor. At first, they tiptoed carefully, taking risks climbing, step by step, not realizing that access was forbidden to them. With a little luck, they managed to reach the top of the stairs, without the attendant personnel finding them. Once they got there, they decided to keep going. A little ahead, in a space that appeared to them to be a great living room, two gentlemen sitting in armchairs were cheerfully chatting, looking occasionally at some papers they held in their hands. One of those gentlemen noticed that there was someone nearby, looked at Mário and Cristina with a displeasured expression, pushing a button without telling them a single word. Coincidentally or not, moments later appeared in the hallway a flight attendant in an accelerated pace, saying:
- Where do you think you’re going?! Come on, give me your hands! I have to take you to your parents.
The two, caught in their trickery, simply obeyed without resistance, returning with the flight attendant to the staircase, which they had just climbed up. On the lower floor they came across Felisbela, which Cristina had previously met. The flight attendants exchanged brief words with each other and in the end, Felisbela, winked at Cristina - that gesture left her a little calmer. When they arrived at Mário’s parents’ seats, the hostess, with a smile, added:
-You’re going to keep your parents’ company, all right?
Mário, displeased, obeyed, doing a farewell nod to his friend Cristina. He kept looking at her as she walked away, by the hand of the flight attendant, to meet her parents. Cristina’s mother, realizing her daughter’s arrival commented:
-Is there something wrong?
The flight attendant, in a gesture of sympathy, gave the understanding that everything remained in the best of the worlds.
No more than a few moments had gone by when Nuno arranged an exit to the toilet. From a young age he realized that his mother, despite austere and disciplined, was permissive to certain arguments, particularly those of a physiological nature. Thus, over the years, he was collecting arguments that allowed him to obtain from his mother authorization for a desired freedom, using them according to his conveniences and circumstances. Whenever he travelled by plane those arguments worked perfectly. Thanks to this expedient, Nuno not only managed to get close to the kids, but, in a short time, to stand out as a mentor of strategies to the group. Thus, the pesky ones: Nuno, Cristina and Mário, made the corridors of the airplane a new playground, for great embarrassment of the flight attendants who at cost sought to maintain calm, serenity and smiles, desirable to the function.
The movement of the three did not go unnoticed to another girl, Iris, nine years old, third daughter of Pedro and Ana, university professors in their forties. Since their youth, they visit New York regularly, their favourite city, perhaps because they met there, still as PhD students. Pedro is today an expert in nuclear physics and Ana a researcher linked to the chemistry of hydrocarbons. They devote many hours to their professional careers, in multiple tasks, and they have very little time for the family. Iris and her siblings have been accustomed to the absence of their parents, although these seek to compensate them in other ways. This time the elder sons stayed with their cousins, while Iris, for the first time, had to part with her brothers for a few days. That would bring her a little more dissatisfaction and restlessness than usual. Witnessing the three kids, on the corridor, handed over to their games, Iris, became even more anxious. She looked at her mother with insistence, as if asking for permission to leave her seat and join them, however, all this went unnoticed to her mother. After several attempts, Iris ended up deciding to leave the seat, winning against any resistance from her parents. Better done than said. Taking advantage of a moment of greater attention from her mother in reading a book she had in her hands, she slowly forced her out of the seat, sneaking out shortly after (she was able to achieve the bold feat before her mother’s passivity and her father’s drowsiness). A few minutes later, Iris broke free from that almost prison. As soon as she saw herself in the hallway, she ran to join the other kids. These, surprised by the intrusion, momentarily stopped their play to meet the newcomer. Iris, feeling she owed a presentation, said a little hastily:
-Hi, my name is Iris! Can I play with you?
-Hello! – The others answered in unison.
After the initial silence and resistance had been overcome, Cristina took the initiative.
-Come on!
Shortly thereafter, the three of them took off down the hall in a rampant rush in the company of Iris. They had walked no more than twenty metres when they stopped in front of the staircase that Mário and Cristina knew well.
Cristina sat down on the first step, followed, in her gesture, by Mário who whispered something into her ear. She answered with an affirmative nod. Moments after the two arose and began to ascend the staircase, with the care of who wants to keep silent at all costs. Nuno and Iris, without understanding what was going on, decided to follow them too. At the top of the stairs, Mário and Cristina suddenly stopped, looking at the room that was in front of them, this time empty, so they decided to investigate. As they approached, they heard voices on the other side becoming sharper. When Mário was preparing to enter the room, a voice, already known to him, blocked his way.
-Hello! Where do you think you’re going?! - Said the flight attendant, Florbela.
Surprised by that slim and smiling figure, the kids fell silent, awaiting the outcome of a sentence.
-Once again, we will have to return to your parents (this time the flight attendant sought to soften the reasons for the forced return). Soon a meal will be served, we can’t be late! - The hostess justified, taking the hands of Iris and Cristina and giving Mário and Nuno a signal to follow her.
In the face of the flight attendant’s initiative, the pesky kids had no choice but to return to their relatives once again.
Not far away, in the cockpit, the Commander and his companions went through moments of great perplexity and anguish! Without the crew realizing it, the plane had ceased to be controlled by the flight personnel for a good ten minutes. Communications with land were the first to fall, to the Commander’s great embarrassment who, at the time, was on the plane’s command. And, thinking it to be a terrorist act, he immediately blocked the access door for security reasons.
The aircraft of that flight 367 was a giant of the air, not only by the wingspan, number of passengers, and autonomy, but mainly for its high technology. It had very sophisticated navigation and security systems, having undergone tight performance and quality tests.
When the airplane was left without communications, the Commander performed the procedures associated with the reestablishment of the connections, trying to ascertain the origin causes. In the first tests, with malfunctions research, the results were confusing «operational equipment». When moments later were repeated tests, the results were even more disappointing «not available in the selected option». They had not solved that problem, and another one fell on them. When they operated any command of the plane, whatever the command, the plane did not respond to the instructions given. These findings, first by the Commander and then by the Immediate, produced an increased tension. When they tried in other ways to get the plane to respond to the given instructions, they could not get more than a caption in their screens «operating equipment». The possibility of admitting that it was a terrorist act further confused the situation.
The Commander, an experienced pilot and with many hours of flight, had associated characteristics that made him the most empowered of the company: he was a systems engineer; he had a PhD in aeronautics; he worked for twelve years with the manufacturer in the production of planes and was one of the people responsible for the Development Office of the aircraft that he now flew. He knew, like no one else, the device inside and out. He was present in the main tests carried out throughout the production of that prototype and from which a series