This one makes me a little bit restive. I had trouble trying to capture the essence of this story in words, so here goes nothing...
1985
A boy stands in a field of wheat. A gentle breeze cuts a furrow through the long stalks, marking it's approach. The lilting sound of children's laughter followed, carried on by the wind.
2024
"Control, this is Icarus, all systems read green , over."
"Clear read, Icarus, you are go for final test procedures."
"Clear read, Control, Icarus out."
Captain Lenglev thumbed the toggle on his dashboard, cutting off communications to flight control while leaving a direct channel open to his flight handle.
"Okay 'Hotshot', you got this now," a voice piped through his headpiece.
"Shut up, George, you know I hate that nickname."
"...Whatever you say...Hotshot." Came the reply, with a hint of a smile.
Lenglev suppressed a groan; instead he pulled back on his flight stick, angling the plane towards the stratosphere. He watched as the digits on his altimeter slowly climbed.
2024: Mankind in all its honour (and horror) had all but explored the lovely blue planet called Earth. And at the risk of sounding cliché, Space, was the final frontier, sparking the second Space Race since the turn of the century.
And in the middle of all the cock-strutting and feather-fanning, came in Lenglev. As part of one of many NASA offshoot projects to come off of the exploration fever, this project – labelled 'Icarus', was testing Multiple Electro-thermo Re-entry Systems, or MERS in short (The distasteful acronym clearly the brain-child of a scientist who had developed the programme – also called 'scientist humour', basically, unfunny stuff).
Although the exact workings of MERS were classified, Lenglev knew that the system aimed to generate enough additional thrust to slingshot a plane into the mesosphere by playing on the electrical charge differentials in the atmosphere.
Once in 'pseudo-space', the MERS would take over propulsion where traditional combustion failed.
A neat idea all in all, but one that remained untested...until today.
An alert flashed on his dashboard in the form of digits: two minutes till the Icarus breached the mesosphere.
Captain Lenglev felt himself pushed back further into his cockpit sit as the craft started picking up acceleration. He looked at the control panel where a bobble-head of a frog was glued on and was reminded of home.
1985
The sun was setting. A boy played in a field of wheat, running along carelessly with his left hand stretched out and ahead, fingers splayed wide mimicking an aircraft. 'Woosh', he whispered breathlessly, dipping low – the 'plane' coming dangerously close to the ground. The boy then straightened on tippy-toes, fingers barely grazing the tips of the crops as he rushed by.
2024
A sudden glare jolted him from his reverie...The Icarus had pushed past the boundaries of the stratosphere. In his trajectory west, Lenglev had ended up chasing the sun, slinking away from the horizon. Nothing in his heads-up display was flashing, always a good sign.
He thumbed the communications back on.
"Control, this is Icarus, approach into mesosphere successful, standby for re-entry."
"...Clear...Icaru...proce..with re-..try. I repeat, proceed with re-entry."
"Clear read, Control. Icarus out."
Although half of the journey was past him, Lenglev would only allow himself to relax once his feet were firmly on the ground.
Taking a moment to soak in the view, he mused on the fact that here he was enjoying first hand what millions of people, apart from the few astronauts, would never experience. That is, until someone figured out how to sustain colonial habitation in space stations.
Pushing forward on his flight stick, he proceeded with phase two of the project: re-entry.
The friction from re-entry was most visible at the nose – which was surrounded by an umbrella of displaced air – there, the metal had started glowing a dull ember. Lenglev bit back a gulp, unwilling to think the worst.
'Any time now', he muttered to himself, looking fervently at the heat-sinks installed along the body of the craft.
All of his insurance rested upon the MERS as it sought to convert the intense heat into a series of miniature sonic booms. These shock waves of compressed air released from the belly of the craft would help to slow his lateral and vertical descent.
However, the reassuring blasts of air never came and he watched with mounting fear as the nose of his plane begun to turn molten red. At the same time, he wrestled with his flight stick in an attempt to keep the plane steady. Clearly the MERS wasn't working, yet nothing on his HUD indicated otherwise.
"Umm, George, there seems to be a pr..."
He never finished his transmission. The shuddering aircraft lurched wildly on its side, slamming Lenglev head-first into the reinforced cockpit glass. With a ear-shattering screech, he watched helplessly as a panel was ripped off alongside the body of his plane, having warped from the heat and assaulted by the buffeting winds.
In that moment, time seemed to slow down for Lenglev as he watched the rest of the craft surgically peel apart. His view in the cockpit gave way to endless sky as the canopy glass seemingly grew larger, when in reality, it slammed into his forehead a moment later. He rocked back in his seat, head lolled to the side having fallen unconscious. Like a deck of cards, every component was snatched out of the air craft and scattered mercilessly across the sky.
In all the destruction, the bobble-head frog had somehow wedged itself under his helmet, its head flailing wildly.
The frog held on bravely for a few seconds before it too was whisked away.
2024
A boy played in a field of wheat. He ran along, fingers splayed wide as if they were an aircraft. In that moment a flare of light lit the evening sky, spilling through the gaps in his fingers. He lowered his hand and stared upwards, tracing the streak of light as it arced an ambulatory course along the heavens. Just as soon as it appeared it was gone, leaving the evening sky dark, once again.
