“Negative, Albuquerque,” the pilot said. “All systems A-OK. But we’ve lost the ability to control any of them. Seems like the only thing we can operate is this com system.”

CNN’s aviation expert Pete Sawyer was on the phone with Anderson Cooper. “Obviously we don’t know for sure, Anderson, but this appears to be the scenario that a lot of people have been concerned about for a long time. It looks like, and believe me I’m just speculating here, we certainly don’t know with any certainty, but it looks like someone has hacked into the flight computer and taken control of this airplane.”

Cooper handled it well. “Are you saying a hacker is flying this airplane?”

“I don’t know. But that appears to be one of the possible scenarios.”

Cooper paused to regain his composure. He coughed the tension out of his voice. “Can the pilots regain control?”

Sawyer hesitated, then answered as sensitively as he could, “There is no procedure for this.” He was silent for several seconds, then said almost as an afterthought, “I’m sure that’s what they’re trying to figure out right now.”

It was as if we had walked right into the middle of a horror film. “This can’t be real,” Jenny said, laying her hand on mine. “It can’t be.”

I began channel surfing. It was real, terrifuckingly real. Someone, somewhere, was playing with the lives of more than three hundred people. On Fox, Bill Hemmer asked their aviation expert, I didn’t hear his name, “So who is flying this airplane?”

In a soft and respectful voice, the expert responded, “God.” After letting that thought hang in the air for a few seconds, the expert caught himself, cleared his throat, and said, “Or hackers.”

One of the flight attendants, ignoring protocol, had begun texting her husband. He in turn was passing her texts along to CNN. The pilot, Captain Sanchez, had briefed the flight crew. He had laid out the situation. Then the first officer, Stein, had told them, and she quoted him, “This is really fucked up. We’re doing everything humanly possible to regain control. But what happens aboard this aircraft is up to you. You want to start a panic, go ahead, but that isn’t going to help anybody. Just do your best.”

Sanchez had then alerted his passengers, waking them to explain the aircraft was experiencing “unexpected navigational difficulties.” He had assured them this was not a serious problem and asked them to remain calm, to stay in their seats with their seat belts fastened and follow whatever instructions they were given. He promised to keep them updated but warned them they probably would be late getting into Los Angeles.

Jenny and I listened silently, doing the same thing everyone else watching was doing, fighting with our imagination, which was trying really hard to put us on that airplane.

My mind clicked into journalism. I tried to reassure her. “Look, if whoever is doing this wanted to kill those people, they could have done it already. Whatever is going on, that’s not it.”