A key fob mystery to solve.
 

So I had a rental car on a business trip, and the rental car was doing well. It was a newish Chevrolet Malibu. At some point a few days ago, I pulled into a hotel parking lot. I'm not sure if it's relevant, but the hotel was on a Native American reservation.

Boom.

The turnoff was weird, and I got a message on the instrument panel that the car did not detect a key fob. This is problematic for a variety of reasons.

The logical conclusion is that the battery died. I'm not a handy guy, but with the help of youtube I figured out how to change it. I was lucky that the hotel was next door to a grocery store that carried that type of battery.

I went up to my hotel room, switched the battery out, and went downstairs to test it. As I was walking toward the car, the car alarm started going off on the vehicle next to mine, which was a newish Nissan SUV.

A guy got out of the Nissan. "Sorry about the noise," he said. "I pulled in here and parked, and my key fob died, and I can't figure out how to fix it."

At that point I tested mine and it didn't work, either. I was able to pilot it back to the rental car agency by using a secret trick that I learned on youtube. It involved removing a piece of trim from the door and putting the dead fob in a specific spot in the car, and it was black magic.

The rental car woman seemed like a longtime rental veteran, and she was friendly. She noticed that the car had 2,000 miles on it and said there's no way that the battery should have died. I told her about the Nissan next to mine, and we puzzled over what happened, and if the two failures were related. It seems really odd that two key fobs on two adjacent cars would fail as they were both parking.

What are your theories?

Both of you parked on an Indian burial ground.

That's a poll option!

Oh, I just watched these episodes.

https://64.media.tumblr.com/b02ff584...x52o4_500.gifv

ARE YOU GAY?

WAS THE NISSAN DRIVER GAY?!

Two Indians put their ears to the ground........

The first Indian says: "Buffalo come".

The second Indian says: "Buffalo no come".

The first Indian places his ear back on the ground and repeats "Buffalo come".

The second Indian places his ear back on the ground and says "I no hear anything, why you think buffalo come?"

The first Indian replies "Ear sticky".

Did the fob work after you left the hotel or was it completely dead the rest of the trip?

Also, you had to remove door trim to manually connect it? Any car I've ever used that had push button start had a slot in the dash or a place in the armrest to use a fob with a dead battery.

I was once on a flight to Vegas with several legitimate, from a reservation 'Native Americans'. We drank several of those little airplane 1 ounce hard liquor bottles and became friendly. I asked them in confidence what they prefer to be called - Native American is the US thing but in Canada it is First Nations, and of course Indians is a term too. They laughed at me and said dont overthink it. We call ourselves Indians, we always have in our lifetimes, so Indians is fine.

Until an actual Indian corrects me on that, and not white people with big hearts, I'm gonna keep on callin em Indians.

Did you program the key fob? Pair it with the car?

Black helicopters?

Tell me about the black helicopters...

I took my best guess in the poll, but not many are voting, because this is indeed a mystery.

If you were traveling for work, and were using an Amex, I would call their traveler assistance number right away and raise hell. They are pros.

I cant believe you fixed the battery yourself by taking part of the door off. You Macguyver?

I would have gone through Amex. Other corporate credit cards have similar programs.

It was dead from the moment it failed, even with a new battery.

The weird thing was that the fob had a manual key that pulled out of the fob. The manual key worked on the door, but only if you took part of the door handle off. The place to put the key was underneath a trim piece on the handle. There was even a little slot under the trim piece where you could insert the key to help wedge the piece off.

Since there was a manual key, I figured there would be a place to insert the key to start the car. But oddly enough, that was not the case. It turned out that there was a sensor inside the storage area of the console. There was a tiny plastic piece where, if you put the fob into it, the car would recognize the circuitry even though the fob was dead. I would've never found that on my own in a million years, and it's very strange that it worked. The plastic fence didn't seem to fit the fob at all - it's not like it snapped in or had a snug fit. It was just a little raised plastic wall that you'd drop the fob into.

This I believe may be the problem.

Or it could just be aliens.

My theory was that the fob de-paired with the car when I pulled the battery out, though neither youtube nor the Avis woman indicated that that was likely. The big mystery to me, though, is two parts: was there a connection between two adjacent new cars killing their fobs in an identical manner, and why did neither of them work when the battery was replaced.

I think something murdered the fobs.

Were you near Roswell New Mexico??