Fly by Wire

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The room was cool and dark by design. Three dozen computer workstations sat ready, the hum of ventilation fans a constant backdrop. Most of the large circular screens were in a standby mode, vacant and black, but those in action glowed with flecks of green, tiny winged crosses that were accompanied by multicolored data tags. A handful of men and women sat watching, each hunched in a God s eye view of their respective domain. The air traffic control center, Marseille High Sector, was coming to the end of its night shift.

Dimly lit and without windows, the bunker had no natural circadian rhythm, no guidance from sunlight or darkness to govern the day s cycle. These customary markers were replaced by instruments of far greater precision — digital clocks. Mounted on walls and support columns, there were more than a dozen scattered throughout the room, glowing red numbers presented in twenty-four-hour format and synchronized to a painstaking accuracy. The clocks were situated, without fail, in pairs — one registering Zulu time, the universal standard of aviation, and the other, in a blatant act of Gallic defiance, Central European time. In France, it was 5:56 in the morning.

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