lost baggage

Shruti and I were in Mumbai, and had to fly back to Belfast. However there was some sort of major airline disruption and the airline was refusing to let us take the flight. We told them we were willing to pay for an upgrade as we really had to fly back urgently, but they said an upgrade won't help as the flight itself was not operating, and neither were other airlines.

I started checking options on reddit, facebook etc, and found someone with a chartered flight (a private jet) looking for 2 passengers to come on their flight. I contacted them and they were happy to take us along. They (of their own accord) said there was plenty of room on the plane for luggage as well so they wouldn't mind an extra bag or two. So at the last minute, I purchased a cheap suitcase (it looked identical to the extra suitcase I purchased in 2017 for Ajith to take my records to the UK for me, BTW!) and filled it up with random stuff that we were not planning to initially take along. Some books and snacks, mostly. The great thing about a chartered flight is that you don't have to worry about baggage handlers tossing your bags and crushing your stuff!

We showed up at Mumbai's airport, met the guys and got to the private jet area - a new experience for us! The rest of the passengers were British, and the person flying was not a commerical pilot - he was flying his own jet, as a private pilot. He looked at our five bags and said (not sure if in jest or seriously) that we took the thing about plenty of luggage space quite seriously! I told him we had 4 suitcases packed for our original flight to begin with and packed another one after he told us. We loaded our stuff into the cargo hold of the private jet - I noticed we were the only people with suitcases. The other passengers were really travelling light, mostly just duffel bags and stuff!

I enjoyed observing preparing the jet, taxiing, and finally taking off! I was seated just behind and to the opposite of the pilot flying (for some reason he was seated on the right, shouldn't he have been on the left? guess there was another pilot seated on the left as well, since it was a long flight!). Once we were up in the clouds, I must have dozed off (no inflight entertainment, but plenty of leg room!).

The next thing I knew, I was startled as we were descending sharply! The pilot (still the guy on the right) told me there was a weird noise coming from the cargo compartment and we were losing pressure, so could I please access it (there was a hatch at the back) and have a check.

I hurried to the back and unlocked the hatch. What I saw seemed like out of a sci-fi movie: there was a weird robot (not humanoid, more like a thing with 4 mechanized "arms") in the cargo hold, armed with some sort of metal cutting tool (like an angle grinder) that was cutting a hole into the bottom of the hold! It had started at the tapered end and not got to where the suitcases and other bags were but it was probably going to get there soon.

I rushed forward and told the pilot this. He was visibly nervous and said we need to make an emergency landing. He said we'll fly low anad slow so that there's a chance we could locate our bags later if they dropped out before we landed. He found a nearby airfield and was preparing to land. I asked him where we were. He said we were in north Africa - which seemend a little out of our route but I didn't ask why at the time. He said we were lucky as our bags had dropped about 5 miles away from the airfield, so there was a good chance we could get them. We were flying low above a forested area close to the sea, and there was no sign of civilization at all.

The next thing I remembered, Shruti and I were walking inland from a beach. It was a little past sunset - not quite dark yet. There were a few more people, all looking like tourists, dressed in swimwear, walking in the same direction - probably heading inland from an evening swim. A man struck up a conversation. He asked us if we had just arrived. I said we'd just landed and were going to call it a night. I told myself I will need plenty of rest as tomorrow is going to be a long day, looking for our baggage and trying to find a way to fly back.

And that's when Shruti woke me up.

I told her I had a very weird dream about being in a plane that had to be landed in an emergency and had to go find our bags as they had fallen out along the way.

As I went back to sleep I wondered how the robot found its way into the plane, and if those duffel bags were the target of the robot - and most importantly, if there was something illegal going on! I had vague thoughts about how such a robot could be built as well. It seemed quite cool and would have been interesting to take apart, although the cutting wheel probably make it quite dangerous!