“If I were editing a magazine I would be seriously considering buying this story for publication—but I’m not, so I can’t. Sorry.”

— Bruce Bethke, author of “Cyberpunk” and Headcrash

We Don’t Plummet Out of the Sky Anymore

M. David Blake

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SMASHWORDS EDITION

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Copyright © 2010 M. David Blake

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work, in whole or in part, in any form.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organizations and products depicted herein are either a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

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We Don’t Plummet Out of the Sky Anymore

Stan wanted a flying car. No, that wasn’t quite an accurate assessment. Stan wanted a nice flying car. He still had his old Sewell Cormorant, which was a perfectly respectable vehicle for an actuary with no aspiration toward inter-personal advancement or societal bliss. Of those qualifications, Stan regretfully acknowledged “actuary” as applicable, but only just so.

The gaudy three-color brochure in his hands promised more. Much more. Quantities of bliss awaited those fortunate enough to obtain a customized Bertolait Shearwater, and Stan desired bliss.

“Oh, hello Stan,” said Bliss as he entered the apartment next to hers. “No trouble with the car today?”

“No, thankfully,” answered Stan. The Cormorant’s internal difficulties were the sort that any matron would proudly discuss with all the surgical particulars, were they her own. Stan wished only that the contraption would silence itself long enough to pull away from the rooming house each morning, rather than announcing its discomfort to all and sundry as it lurched and hiccoughed into an airborne personification of rickets, constipation and the gout.

“More brochures?” asked Bliss. “Can I see?”

“Sure,” responded Stan. “This might be the one, love—it’s a Shearwater. It’s not just fancy chrome, Bliss. The Shear has an internal converter that is more sophisticated than anything that’s come out of Detroit in seventy years, and the body can handle more flight stress than any other aeromobile currently on the market. Listen, “The skin of your Shearwater is fused to the chassis by a rivetless layered float process unique within the aeromotive industry, ensuring a seamless exterior and a cabin that is unimpaired by adverse atmospheric conditions. Your Shearwater is truly a space-worthy vehicle, certified as the only consumer-grade design capable of simultaneously attaining a low earth orbit and maintaining a breathable atmosphere. †”

“What’s that little squiggle thing at the end of the sentence?” asked Bliss.

Stan hunted through copious fine-print, comparing squiggles to the one Bliss had indicated. “Here we go,” he read. “Trans-atmospheric flight is not procedurally recommended, and may void your warranty.” No surprise, thought Stan, as there were also a few small matters of mass, inertia and thrust which he had worked out on his slide rule earlier. According to specs the Shearwater could make it up, but it would not be able to make it back down. “Don’t worry. All it means is that we couldn’t really take it up among the stars, Bliss. It’s a nice commercial, but they probably filmed that one on some soundstage in Burbank.”

“So no star-picnics, then?”

“Not in the car. It would cost a fortune to hover that long, even if we stayed atmospheric.”

Bliss’ face fell in mock disappointment, then she giggled and tugged on Stan’s sleeve. “But we could still have a regular old picnic tonight, couldn’t we Stan?”

“Yeah,” he scowled, “except I’ve still got to finish a whole revision of tables this weekend.”

“I made a pie.”

“And I work better on a full stomach. Are you sure you don’t mind riding in the Cormorant a little longer? All right then, let’s go!”

○

The walk to the Cormorant was brief, but visually illustrative. As they passed each aero in the landing lot, Stan noted the rippling fuselages, the chromed exhaust portals, and the enameled support ribbons. The last were particularly decorative, ranging from simple wire-and-laquered-frame ornaments to full cloisonné embellishments, in support of a whole range of causes. Support Our Off-World Veterans, Mothers Against Inebriate Dishevelment, Fathers Against Politically Empowered Mothers, and even Auto Workers Against Flying Cars were all represented with a regularity that spelled out the prevailing outlook of Stan’s neighborhood. The Cormorant had once sported an enameled ribbon of its own, since lost to either vandalism or the elements. In its place someone had helpfully scratched the words “Support Our Missing Ribbons,” which even Stan had to admit was an improvement over the “If You Can Read This, You Are Flying Too Darned Close” that originally adorned his vehicle.

“You know,” said Bliss, as they climbed into the bench, “another Cormorant wouldn’t be so bad. They aren’t as pretty or flashy as, well, as anything else, but if it gets us where we need to fly and we aren’t stuck making aero payments for a Shear...”

“Yeah,” continued Stan, “it would be good enough, but is that really good enough? I mean, just last year the best slogan they could come up with was ‘At least we don’t plummet out of the sky anymore.’ My pop always told me if I settled for what I could afford now, I’d just wind up having to buy it again in a year or two. If—”

If the Cormorant hadn’t hiccoughed and lurched midair, sending the needle skittering across the long-player on Stan’s aero-stereo, Stan might have finished his thought. As it was they managed the rest of the way to their picnic meadow in silence, Bliss resting her fingertips on Stan’s arm and Stan fuming unobtrusively, as only an actuary can.

○

The meadow was expansive, untrodden and remote. Bliss settled the picnic basket against the foot of “their” hill, where she imagined a cottage might one day settle itself with the familiarity everything else in the meadow seemed to so easily assume. She breathed deeply, and closed her eyes.

“Look Bliss,” Stan said, pointing out another color reproduction in the pamphlet as she laid out their picnic blanket, “the Shearwater even has a compensated anti-skate turntable, capable of maintaining skip-free playback at up to two full G’s of acceleration.”

Bliss blinked, and looked. “Is that another squiggle?” she asked.

It was. Stan consulted the legend, found the appropriate qualification, and quoted, “Skip-free playback at a constant two Gravities mandates a calibrated diamond stylus in a proprietary oil-suspension Bertolait cartridge with a beryllium cantilver, and under three hours of stress-induced playback, regularly serviced at the recommended intervals, and available separately from your Bertolait dealership.”

“That sounds expensive,” said Bliss.

“Umm... probably is,” answered Stan. “But I’m sure we could get a discount if we ordered in quantity. What are those?”

“Those” were pickled green beans and slivered carrots, and as Bliss finished arranging the tray Stan smoothed the blanket and flicked away an errant ant.

“Stan!” scolded Bliss, “I made enough for him too!” They laughed, as young lovers will do, and Stan ceremonially served the dazed ant a sliver of carrot to go with its apéritif, if it had an apéritif.

○

“Look at all of them, Stan. So many stars.”

“Mm-hmm. Maybe we should get a star ornament for the new car?”

“I wasn’t thinking about the car.” Bliss rolled onto Stan’s shoulder and tugged at his chin. “What if you didn’t get a new one right now, Stan? I don’t mind the Cormorant.”

Stan looked at her carefully, then said, “I’m guessing you just use clap-trap as a term of endearment for it, then?”

“Oh, Stan. A girl needs a few little things to pick on, and they don’t mean she’s picking on you. It’s an aero-car. It flies, it’s safe, it even has enough trunk space. Why—”

“You don’t mind the fact that it scratches our records and makes us spill our drinks?”

“Not particularly. And Stan, you only paid forty cents for that old album. It isn’t as though you brought something from your father’s collection. When we really want to listen to music we can just stay in, can’t we?”

“I suppose,” answered Stan. “if this thing wasn’t as loud as a Lear Bus it wouldn’t seem so bad. Nothing wrong with the cushions, at least.”

“Stan, I’m serious.”

“You are?” The thought surprised him for some reason. The Cormorant was an albatross around his neck, and he often felt that Bliss had noticed him in spite of it, rather than for any intrinsic value he might have had on his own. Truth to tell, Stan secretly suspected such complexes to be a common conception among actuaries, although it was a suspicion he would never voice, even to Bliss.

“Daddy says Cormorant parts are fairly easy to find. He knows a good mechanic up in Arbourville.”

The conversation had suddenly taken a direction Stan had not anticipated, and the idea of resuscitating the Cormorant on a prolonged basis seemed slightly repulsive to him. “But Bliss, I’ve got almost enough saved to do it right this time! We can have the Shearwater in just three more months if we schedule payments on a fifteen year basis, and the fuel differential—”

“—is a string of big words. They’re pretty words, Stan. But I don’t want us to settle when it comes to all the other things we’ll need later, just for a string of big, pretty words.”

“Yeah,” answered Stan. Not much of an answer, he thought, but Bliss was smarter about the sort of things that an actuary who fancied himself a romantic tended to overlook.

“And I’ll be done with college next Spring, Stan. I’m just saying there are all sorts of other things we’ll need, and a new aero isn’t that high on my list.”

○

After a moderately bumpy flight to his office Monday morning (he only spilled his coffee once), Stan stepped into the lift cage with a grin and a whistle. “Morning, Barney.”

“G’Mornin’, mister Stan,” replied the senior lift operator, with a twinkling smile. He was, truth to tell, the only lift operator the firm had ever employed, and “senior” was mostly in respect to his longevity. Stan wasn’t quite sure how old Barney really was, but the old man seemingly had no trouble staying current.

“Still looking at that Shearwater, mister Stan?” asked Barney. “She’s a beaut for a long-runner, but she’s no runabout.”

“What do you mean, Barn?” countered Stan. “The Shearwater is good for more knots to the tonne than any other aero you can buy!”

Barney blew air through his lips, then said, “I’ll betcha that’s only good if you fly in a straight line, son. An’ you an actuary.”

“I deal with calculated risks, Barn. And I give honest data. And when I look at someone else’s data, I expect them to play straight with it too! Sure, they’ll give things the best spin they can, but the Bertolait corporation isn’t going to deliberately pull wool over anyone’s eyes. It says here that the Shearwater is good for, umm, seven hundred ninety-three miles to the tonne.”

“What’s that squiggle?” asked Barney.

“Let’s see—oh, here it is.” Stan was proud that he had found this one so quickly. Perhaps he was getting better with the arcane symbology of ad copy. “793 NM (nautical mile)/t (tonne) achieved via a low parabolic trajectory from the certification facility at Cape Canaveral, FL, USA, and projected across the North Atlantic Ocean. As an environmental consideration, the chassis of the test vehicle was donated as a spontaneously-placed anchoring structure for the North Atlantic Elk-Horn Coral Restoration Project.”

“Good mileage, huh?”

With a scowl, Stan left the lift.

○

By the end of the day, Stan was in a funk. He had spent the afternoon prepping tables for a stream of projected liability assigned to each of the four major aero makers given the onset of hurricane season, and this year’s data didn’t look very encouraging. Even his beloved Shearwater didn’t fare particularly well in the sort of rough weather the Atlantic Balloon Corps were predicting for autumn, based upon their observations of what was currently developing below.

When Bliss poked her head into his office, Stan had to remind himself to smile.

“That bad, lover?” she asked, interpreting the shift in his expression.

“I almost think old Withers put me on this lot because he knows we’re looking at aeros, Bliss. I was on heart attacks and stroke victims all last week until this came in, and then whoosh, suddenly Bailey gets to have all the fun calculating odds for when great aunt Mildred will leave her inheritance.”

“Couldn’t it be that he thought you were the best man for the job?”

“That, and he owns stock in Sewell and just wants me to stick with that old clunker out of loyalty.”

“Mm-hmm. How did Sewell do in the races, lover?”

“Surprisingly well. Shockingly well. All the others have gone with the current wide-body style, and it turns out that when the weather gets here, a lot of flyers are going to have dislocated shoulders from being thrown around inside their cabins, because those integrated fins can’t adjust quick enough to overcome the shifting drag vectors. That’s the one thing that Sewell got right, at least. They bounce things around all the time, regardless of the weather, so you’re accustomed to spilling your drinks and bouncing your shoulders off the armrest.”

Bliss giggled. “You’re exaggerating. I don’t think I’ve ever bounced my shoulder off the armrest, and I’d hate to think how we’d have to be twisted in the Cormorant for that to happen!”

“Maybe slightly, love. But either way, I wouldn’t want to fly a Shearwater very near a storm.”

○

Later that night, with Bliss safely ensconced back in her own apartment, Stan took the Shearwater brochure back out of his office satchel. He lit a bedside lamp, placed the sparker back in its drawer, and carried the light over to the small table he utilized for any office work that followed him home.

Recessed controls offer an unprecedented measure of comfort when handling your Shearwater, an enhancement that is simultaneously tactile and spatial. The full mechanical underpinnings of aeromotive control have been streamlined into the adjustable dual armrests, with all measurable performance parameters beautifully displayed upon a precisely calibrated three-forty-seven jewel dash movement. ß

And sure enough there is another blasted squiggle, thought Stan. Yes, he was definitely finding the right squiggles more quickly now, although he wasn’t any happier about the revelations they imparted. Every qualifier seemed not only to negate the supposed benefits of the advance being touted, but to disclose items that could hardly be seen as sales points.

Separate coverage for injuries sustained while using recessed flight controls (RFC) may be required by your aeromotive insurance company. Known RFC complications from improperly navigating into turbulence-inducing weather patterns include, but are not limited to, phalangeal amputation, carpal pulverization, radial splintering, and severing of the nasociliary nerve.

Naso-what? Stan didn’t really want to think about how using recessed flight controls could sever a nerve in his nose, especially if it also involved an amputated phalanx, and he knew what that was.

For a long while, Stan sat at the table looking at his hands. Many nights he had sat in the same place and pictured his hands in those beautifully-described Shearwater recessed controls, Bliss by his side, as they soared above majestic vistas and through picturesque billowing cloud formations.

It was probably because he had spent the afternoon on liability prep, and spent the rest of the day digesting the indicated weather patterns, but tonight all he could see when he looked at his hands was a pair of bloody stumps.

○

“Good morning, red eyes,” said Bliss, cheerfully.

“Ugh,” Stan responded. The night had not been kind to Stan, as every dream had been punctuated with crashes, dismemberment, voided warranties and deep turbulence-induced scratches through irreplaceable gramophone recordings.

Bliss gave him a peck on the cheek, a quick squeeze, and whispered, “Go slay those number dragons, lover.” She turned on her heel, and headed down the front steps of their rooming house to meet the cable car which would take her within walking distance of the community college.

“You too,” mumbled Stan. He felt slightly envious that the cable car went where she needed to go, as Withers & Co’s offices were rather inconveniently placed for any sort of public transportation. Even when Bliss met him after work, she had to walk a number of blocks after catching a number of connecting cables, and he longed for the day when he could simply take her places, or let her have the aero if he was going to be stuck in the office. If it wasn’t so notoriously difficult to find a landing spot in the campus lots he would be doing so now, he told himself.

“I don’t even have any irreplaceable records,” muttered Stan as he climbed into the Cormorant. “Stupid dreams.” All the same his hands felt good on the flight column, where he could see that his fingers were safe.

○

“Hey Stan,” called Bailey, “wait up a second. I wanted to ask you something about those old lady tables Withers sent me. You—whoah, you don’t look so good. You and Bliss have a fight?”

“What? No, just trouble sleeping.”

“I know what you mean,” said Bailey, elbowing him in the ribs. “If my best girl was living right in the next apartment, I probably wouldn’t sleep very well either.”

“Not what I meant, Bail. Withers has me on hurricane season aeromotive analysis, and I’ve got a vivid imagination.”

“What’s so vivid about aeromotive liability numbers?” Bailey spotted the rumpled Shearwater brochure sticking out of Bailey’s coat pocket. “This isn’t about those numbers, is it?”

“Not really,” sighed Stan. “Bliss is also hinting that we could do with just the Cormorant for a while longer—”

“That old thing?” snorted Bailey.

“—and I don’t know, Bail. We could swing a new car now, but the more I learn about them, the less sure I am about what matters.”

“You’ve practically married her already, haven’t you? Okay buddy, who is the car for?”

“What do you mean?”

“Stan, take it from a guy who’s flown a few of those loops, if she isn’t sold on the car, you don’t need it.”

“What would you do, Bail?”

“I’m an actuary, Stan I deal with acceptable risk. When is the last time the premiums went up on your Cormorant? Or on any Sewell aero, for that matter?”

Stan had to think. “Probably when I turned twenty-three, and got certified for solo flight. So a couple of years.”

“Okay, I forgot how young you were. Stan, almost everyone’s premiums change every couple of years. They always go up. You’ve done those numbers enough times to understand how it works, right?”

“You know I have.”

“Your premiums will probably shift a little every now and then too, but it’s more of a token adjustment than anything serious. You could plow a Cormorant into the ground at top speed, and walk away with nothing more than a broken arm. They came up with an absolutely brilliant restraint system for it, so you could have full range of motion and still split-second response to any unexpected thrust vectors. There isn’t another aero out there with a safety record like that.”

“Then why don’t they have a better image? Or better slogans, or PR or, or, something. I see a Cormorant and I think ‘Albatross.’ ‘Millstone.’ ‘White Elephant.’”

“Maybe you should ask Withers about it, Stan. He knows a little more about the inside of that company than I do.”

“Thanks, Bail. I might just do that.”

○

“Thank you for staying to talk about this, Mister Withers.”

“No need for thanks, Stan. At my age I take what pleasures I can, and I actually enjoy talking about Sewell Aeromotive. But you’ve seen most of the analysis we have on them, so I’m guessing you wanted to know something that wasn’t on paper.” There was an unmistakable sparkle in the old man’s eye.

“Well, yes. You know Bliss and I plan to get married once she is out of college, and we’ve been looking at aeros for a while—”

“Not too much on company time, I hope?” asked Withers.

“No, no,” hurried Stan. “Not other than weather liability, sir.”

“I was joking, son. You do good work, even if you do leave glossy brochures sticking out of your coat pockets.”

With an embarrassed shrug Stan fished out the Shearwater pamphlet and laid it on Mister Withers’ desk. “That’s sort of why I asked to talk to you, sir. Bailey hinted that I should look at Sewell’s numbers, and asked about the last time my premiums went up. Well, I dug, and he’s right. Sewell has a safety record that none of the four majors can touch, yet they’re saddled with a lousy public image. It’s almost as though they want to be seen as the poor man’s aero—”

“Maybe they do, son. Is that so bad?”

“I don’t understand, Mister Withers.”

“Stan, have you ever noticed what I fly?”

“Sure. You’ve got a swell Osprey. I can’t imagine what the insurance runs on a chauffeured number like that, though.”

The older man chuckled. “More than I pay you, son. You missed the point. I ride in my Osprey, but I’ve never flown it. Louis does the flying, and he’s also a certified paramedic if that hunk of scrap ever goes down. I wouldn’t fancy my chances of surviving an Osprey crash without his assistance.”

“Has it ever crashed? I thought it looked as new as the showroom floor.”

“It should. I only ride to and from the office in it, and I don’t intend to ever ride any further in an Osprey than that if I can help it.”

“Then why have it at all, sir?”

“Basically the same reason I ask you to wear a suit. Our clients expect a certain appearance, and have more confidence in our data if it is professionally presented.”

“I’m a little lost, sir.”

“I asked if you had ever noticed what I fly, and the answer is that you haven’t. It’s also a Cormorant, and believe it or not, mine is a few years older than yours.”

Stan stared at the older man for a few moments, before picking up the Bertolait brochure. “But sir, I’m still just as puzzled as when I came in here. I can understand wanting to fly in the safest aero you can find, and the more fine print I read, the more I understand why fancy ad copy doesn’t mean a flyer is any good. But why doesn’t Sewell spend a little on their own marketing?”

“Maybe you were right about wanting to be the poor man’s aero, Stan. I’m into that company, pretty deep, and I didn’t start out as an actuary, you know. I was a diversified aero-engineer and compulsive tinkerer for thirty-two years before making the switch.”

“You worked for Sewell?” asked Stan, slightly aghast.

“I was Sewell, or at least the engineering half, before I transitioned to this numbers racket.”

“Why would an engineer want to become an actuary?”

“Who said I wanted to? What I wanted was to make good aeros. Johnny Sewell and I came in on the ground floor of the aeromotive boom, when anyone who could throw the parts together was dying to get off the ground. Half the outfits that launched folded within a few short years because their customers literally were dying for those blasted things—and nothing kills a company’s reputation faster than a few untimely corpses. It was only a matter of time before the government stepped in, and by that time there were only five of us left with any sort of standing. But Johnny and I had something the others didn’t have. Johnny had enough sense to patent anything we doped out before the others got wind of how to do it, and I was figuring out how to do it faster than any of them. Once the first regulations were passed Sewell Aeromotive had every aspect of performance and safety tied up, and we were selling the safest rides money could fly.”

“But how could you go from that to this?” asked Stan, sweeping an arm around the cramped office. He didn’t want to appear insensitive, but Stan felt he might be understating his own miscomprehension. If anything it sounded as though Sewell should be on top of the aeromotive industry, rather than all but beneath it.

The older man shrugged. “Idiocy, for one thing. Did you know there isn’t any way to compel a foreign concern to license your patented advances, unless their own government steps in? Well, for the most part Bertolait and Evangel weren’t selling in their own countries. Krupesk couldn’t sell in their own country, since they had no concept of non-governmental flight licensure. And Größbus decided to focus on the commercial market, which was a shame because they actually had a few good engineers. Their governments didn’t give two shakes of a rat’s tail about consumer safety, because their own consumers weren’t affected. Everyone selling was selling here because we had the cash, and since every one of their lines was custom-built for an inflated price, they also bought a bevy of lawyers to assemble a book’s worth of liability waivers for each and every customer. I’d wager the same lawyers worked on all of their accounts, because a good ninety percent of it is the same book.”

“I still don’t follow you, sir.”

“Son, statistically Johnny and I were proving that aeromobiles were safe. Even when something went wrong with one of our machines—God knows if you throw enough of them into the sky, something will go wrong!—my adaptable restraint harnesses and shock-slung chassis mechanisms kept the flyer from getting anything more than a few bruises, because the landing redundancies Johnny and I built into every Sewell could bring one down light as a feather from the highest they could climb, even if it was surrounded by storms, mountains and seawater.

“Ever wonder what idiot names sucker-rods like that Shearwater of yours?” continued the old man. “Any flyer unfortunate enough to find himself making a water-bound landing in one of those deathtraps is going to learn ‘shear’ is a euphemism for what happens to the top of his spinal column on impact.”

A cold chill crept up between Stan’s shoulder blades.

“That isn’t a pretty image, is it Stan?” asked Withers. “From the way you just shuddered, I’m guessing your reaction is sort of like mine when I realized what was happening. We were selling the safest aeromobile money could buy, but that safety came at a price. Our aeromobiles weren’t as stylish as the competition, and so the suicidal lame-brains were throwing money hand-over-fist toward our competitors so they could have a fancier body, with prettier fins, and safety be damned. They were happy to sign their lives away in those waiver books, and it made me sick.

“I almost walked, Stan. Johnny was the one who convinced me that you can’t fight human nature, and humans, bless ‘em, want chrome. The rich ones will pay through the nose for style and flash, and will do it despite anything you can show them about numbers. Well son, you look like something just twigged?”

It was just an inkling, but Stan had the momentary impression that there was something larger behind the older gentleman’s words. “It’s what I said earlier, about wanting to be seen as the poor man’s aero.”

“Go on.”

“Sewell really is still making the safest aeros you can buy, aren’t they?”

“We have been all along.”

Stan shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir. When you started out by telling me how you were connected to Sewell, I sort of thought that meant we were somehow cooking the numbers about how dangerous the other companies were.”

“Son, that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all day. We’re giving everyone the straight dope, and if my pal Johnny starts selling lemons to the public I’ll be the first one to skewer him. I don’t blame you for thinking it, but I’d be mighty disappointed if you ever went along with a book cooking, regardless of how well intentioned it might be.”

“I wouldn’t sir. But that’s just it! If everyone sees the right numbers, why do the other aeromobiles sell at all? It seems nuts.”

“People are nuts, Stan. We can’t keep the general public from buying a shiny suicide machine, because the general public doesn’t care about the numbers. You know who does care about the numbers?”

The other shoe dropped for Stan. “The insurance companies. Our custo—holy smokes!” Stan let out a long, low whistle. “No wonder my premiums haven’t been going up. Our customers are the ones who set the insurance rates!”

“And poor people can’t afford much insurance, Stan. But the law requires them to have it, and the only way half of them can manage their mortgages, groceries and everything else is if they can fly to work where the jobs are. So they buy the poor man’s aero, because it doesn’t cost them an arm and a leg in coverage, and sure as I breathe half of them fantasize continually about upgrading to a Bertolait or an Evangel. But in the meantime they are safer, and that is what lets me sleep at night.”

“But why did you have to give yourselves a black eye with such lousy PR?” asked Stan.

The sparkle was back in Withers’ eye. “Johnny and I didn’t start this to get rich, but it sort of happened to us anyway. Sell enough pennies by the pound and you’ll start to realize what real money weighs. Johnny came up with the black eye angle after I showed him the numbers, because it keeps the price expectation low for the general public, and the insurance companies aren’t concerned about how the Hell we market ourselves. Plus it’s fun—the ‘We don’t plummet’ campaign was my idea. Like it?”

“It was, uh, memorable.” Stan was stunned. “There’s just one thing about it I don’t get, sir,” he confessed. “An image is one thing, but why would you ever consent to the Osprey? I can’t believe you chose it, since anything by Krupesk would be as respectable, and marginally safer.”

Withers chuckled. “It was a gift, from Evangel. All the others know what I’m doing, and why. I still think they were hoping I’d get myself killed in it.” At the look in Stan’s eyes he hastily added, “Don’t worry, son. Johnny and I put that bird through some proper grooming before I ever set a foot in her.”

○

Stan’s Cormorant had received a little more respect in the weeks and months following his conversation with Withers. It still spilled his coffee with alarming regularity, but Stan was slowly learning not to fill his mug so full... and he could honestly say that the Arbourville mechanic Bliss’ father mentioned had done wonders with a handful of spare parts and barely charged for his services. What Stan had previously saved toward a new aero was willingly redistributed to other needs, and Bliss had a wonderful time showing off the one that adorned her finger on the day she graduated from the community college, with all the squeals of envious appreciation that a girl might expect from her friends.

Graduation day brought another surprise for Stan, as he left the bleachers following the ceremony. “Gosh, what are you doing here Mister Withers? I didn’t realize you had any nieces or nephews graduating this year.”

“Ulterior motives, son. We’ll have a new actuary joining the firm in a few weeks, after the licensing exams. You can spare some time to help with training, can’t you?” The gleam in Withers’ eye was razor-sharp.

“If you think it will help, sir,” gulped Stan.

“I’m sure you’ll get along with her just fine. She’s using her signing bonus to buy a Cormorant, she says. Do you think that’s a good investment, son?”

“Best car an actuary can have,” said Stan. “It lets you keep all your fingers, for one thing.”

“And you need your fingers four tousling my hair,” said Bliss, hooking an arm through his as she departed the crowd.

“Hi babe,” answered Stan. “Mister Withers was just saying there’s a new girl starting with us in a few weeks, and she graduated today. He also said she’s getting a Sewell with her signing check,” he added, as an afterthought.

“She’s hardly a girl, Stan!” exclaimed Bliss. “She’ll be a married woman soon.”

Stan’s jaw dropped a few inches.

“Oh, didn’t I ever tell you, lover?” grinned Bliss. “I’m pretty good with numbers!”

Afterword

“We Don’t Plummet Out of the Sky Anymore” began life as a challenge. To be more specific, it was conceived as a response to The Friday Challenge, which is sort of an ad hoc literary community hosted by Bruce Bethke, one of only a handful of writers able to claim an entire subgenre named after a story he penned. Without Bruce, “cyberpunk” would have been something infinitely less catchy, and science fiction would have been poorer for the loss of a word.

12 March 2010 brought an assignment to produce ad copy for a flying car, and I veered a little further afield than that. My entry did not win, but in handing down the judges’ decision Bruce made a statement that felt like more of a prize than anything tangible. He wrote, “If I were editing a magazine I would be seriously considering buying this story for publication—but I’m not, so I can’t. Sorry.”

Those words led me here. You just finished reading the story Bruce complimented, which I hope you also enjoyed as much as I enjoyed writing it. I am still writing, and if you would like to read more of my works as they are published, I invite you to do so.

My participation in The Friday Challenge came about through storyteller Henry Vogel, a family friend who learned that I had once submitted stories to a handful of magazines. Henry helps to run the site. He is, at least in part, to blame for whatever comes next.

You see, in turn I ask you to visit us. Lurk as long as you like, with an open invitation to submit entries whenever you feel like participating, and to read, comment on, and vote for what you like, assuming you like any of what you’ve read... or even if you don’t like it, for that matter. Writers need feedback to hone their craft!

http://thefridaychallenge.blogspot.com/

About the Author

Over the course of three and a half decades, M. David Blake has been a Revolutionary War reenactor, a ditch digger, a troubleshooter, a gallery artist, a woodturner and a poet. He has run soundboards for live performances, done lost-wax casting, scooped ice-cream while serving as a barista, crash-tested software used by a significant portion of the entertainment industry and reassembled the shattered skull of a murder victim. He was asked to leave one college, graduated from two others, and in the process utterly flunked a course dedicated to the study of science fiction.

Blake currently lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina, with his wife, their daughter, one geriatric cat, and several thousand books.

About this Work

All text was composed within OpenOffice.org Writer. The jacket artwork was designed and assembled using GIMP, to produce an overlaid composite of three separate photographs from the author’s iPhone camera.

http://www.openoffice.org/

http://www.gimp.org/