The Flying Wire

Boxing Day – the day after Christmas – is celebrated as a holiday throughout much of the English-speaking world. The origin of the term remains obscure. Modern readers often assume it’s connected with sport, but this explanation is not supportable, for the word ‘boxing’ wasn’t associated with pugilism until the reign of William IV (1830-1837). The most plausible hypothesis is that the name is a corruption of the word ‘bauxite’.

Bauxite is an aluminum ore composed of gibbsite and disapore in conjunction with iron oxides. Aluminum is a common element in the Earth’s crust, but it unlike other metallic elements such as iron, copper, or tin, it requires comparatively advanced technology to refine. For this reason, it was once considered a treasure metal, and until the development of the Bayer Process in 1887, it was worth more than its weight in silver or gold. Its ores were also highly-regarded, and bauxite was treated as midway in value between ivory or jade.

The relationship between bauxite and with Boxing Day is straightforward. Like the festival that preceded it, this day was occasion for the exchange of gifts, which often took the form of ornaments and semiprecious gems. Due to its attractive appearance, durability, and the ready availability in parts of southern Europe, bauxite was a logical choice for the latter, particularly for betrothal gifts between junior members of aristocratic families. Indeed, it is said that William Bentley, third son of Lord Bentley of Devonshire, commissioned a ten-pound bauxite necklace, decorated with pieces of uraninite and jade, for his fiancé Emily Strawb on the occasion of…

…actually, I’m making this all up. But you must admit that it did sound superficially plausible. And it’s considerably more plausible than what actually happened this Boxing Day.

The tale began several months ago, when I lost my car key remote at one of our hang glider launches. This was, of course, the end of the thing. Oh, I made some attempt to find it – several attempts in fact – doing the old military airbase FOD inspection routine as I paced back and forth through the rocks, gopher holes, and grass. I even considered renting a metal detector to search for the unit, but in view of the size of the area, difficulties of the terrain, and the passage of weather and time, it was quite clearly gone. This was what Captain Everett might have called a ‘rum thing’ and someone from our era might have called a ‘bummer’, for Jeep key remotes are harder to come by than some, and require intervention of a locksmith to program.

So matters rested until Boxing Day, when our hang gliding club decided to hold a fly-in. I have no idea why this particular day was chosen, but since our wings are made from aircraft-grade aluminum, it does seem appropriate to celebrate the mineral from which this was derived. I hadn’t intended to participate, since the forecast was poor and I had other obligations, but fate and chance provided the opportunity, and I found myself on top of the mountain, watching the sky, evaluating conditions, trying to decide the best time to fly.

By now, all thoughts of the lost car key remote had been forgotten, for weeks had passed, bringing wind, storms, rain, and even dusting of snow, that most surely buried the device under layers of mud and grass. It was gone dooby gone gone gone. It was no more. It had ceased to be. It had left the world of life, light, and humanity to enter the realm of the God of Lost Things.

Then, as I was carrying my gear over to launch, a friend came up and said, “Paul, I just found this. It is yours?”

To my amazement, the unit still worked after weeks of mud and rain. Try that with your Lexus. Jeep parts are tough!

It’s Christmas time, which means it’s time for the Very First Flying Cloud Christmas Special. I must confess that this was not part of the Original Plan. Indeed, at this late date, I would be hard put to say just what that plan might have been. But as the year drew to a close, readers here asked, “You are going to have a Christmas Special, right?”

My response quick, succinct, and precise — a superb example of forethought and clarity. “Um… err… yes…” It was only after this witty reply that I realized a Christmas Special set in Australia in July might be a bit of a trick. (Yes, I could have set the story seven months earlier, when Captain Everett and his crew were aboard the R-212, but that would have been cheating.)

This was not the only challenge. There were questions related to the timing of events in 1926. (How could Everett get that copy of Hemmingway in Australia if it had only just been published in the US?) There were questions related to the timing of events in Everett’s story, for this had to be consistent with his career, which I’d worked out in considerable detail. And I never did very well in those big international reindeer drawing competitions they used to have when I was in high school — one of the many reasons I abandoned my childhood dream of becoming a rich, famous, and successful reindeer artist with estates in Malibu, Bahama, and the Riviera. Though I would have settled for Malibu. If it was a particularly nice estate.

How well did the story work? I leave this to you to decide. But I hope you enjoyed it as much as Sarah did. I’ll be taking the next week off to entertain friends, celebrate the season, and perhaps even do some flying, but Season Two is ready to go, so unless I get kidnapped by Elder Gods – always a problem here on the shores of the Pacific – Episode 52 of The Flying Cloud will the first Monday in January. See you then, and I hope you all have a great holiday!

It’s been a long and interesting journey, but Season One of The Flying Cloud has finally drawn to a close. I hope you’ve all enjoyed the story so far, and I’d like to thank you for your comments and support, and even more for your suggestions. In particular, I’d like to thank Kona and Andy for their valiant and continuing efforts of copy-editing, Kirk and Publius for catching any number of technical and historical details I’d missed, and Nick for his valuable suggestions about the graphics!

Next week is… well… surely I am allowed some surprises And then we can look forward to… Season Two…

Many of you have asked how much of the world of the Flying Cloud is real. This is a fair question, which most certainly deserves an answer! The airships are as real as I could possibly make them. I compiled reams of specifications and design notes as background for a novel, and much of this material – along with some of the ships – serves as a background for the story. The Flying Cloud herself may lie near the upper limit of performance that could be achieved with the technology of the time, but with smaller 12-cylinder counterparts of the big 16-cylinder Daimler Benz LOF6 diesels aboard the Hindenberg, streamlining comparable to the R100, and high-efficiency four-bladed propellers, her speed and fuel consumption figures are possible. Most of the other technology is real as well, though some gets developed a few years sooner than it did in our world, and it’s possible that the Alice Springs-Darwin narrow-gauge rail line was not quite as slow as I suggest

For the most part, the major public figures are the same as they were in our world. The points of departure between Captain Everett’s 1926 and ours are small, so there was little chance of someone like Winston Churchill forsaking a career in politics to became a soccer player for Balgownie. Some differences are part of the historical background (“Actung, Herr Zimmerman! Passen sie vom bus auf!” CRASH! “Oops”). Others were unavoidable. Since the War ended in 1916, the Germans had neither reason nor opportunity to smuggle Lenin into Russia in 1917, and he remained an obscure bookseller in Geneva. But the October Revolution still happened, and the Communists took power under Trotsky instead.

The places are also real. I even visited a few to make sure. One possible exception is Sarah’s island. At the time of Captain Everett’s visit, this was a sizable body of land, with and area and population comparable to that of a small English county. If you examine Google Earth today, you will find an island at the same location, but this is a barren windswept rock less than a mile across with no permanent inhabitants. What is the relationship between the two, you wonder?

Life is full of mysteries…