Author's note: First, anyone participating in any sexual act will be at least eighteen at the time of said act. Now that we got that out of the way, a couple of other notes. Thomas Edison's preminence in this universe is in no way a commentary on the Edison/Tesla debate. Also, this is a separate universe from our own, where certain physical laws are different, where the author may have taken more than a few liberties with historical characters, and where British titles and addresses might vary from those in our own universe, and where Americans still don't get them right. So, with all those caveats in place, please sit back and enjoy!
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James Davidson looked at his reflection in the mirror hanging above the china wash basin in his room. He was debating on whether to shave himself, or to pay the two bits to go get it professionally done. Of course, Mrs. Meynard, who ran the boarding house, would volunteer to do it for free, and she would do a very handsome job of it too. But then he would have to listen to her list the many virtues of one of her unwed daughters. Although he was a recent newcomer to the Raritan township of New Jersey, the fact the he was working directly for the "Wizard of Menlo Park" made James something of an up-and-comer in the township.
James decided he would go ahead and pay to have his face professionally cleaned and spare himself both his own amateur efforts at the job and Mrs. Meynard's incessant matchmaking. With a look at his pocket watch, James decided he definitely had time for the barber shop.
Stepping out the front door of the boarding house, James bought a paper from a passing paperboy and whistled as soon as he looked at the front page. The headlines announced the death of Horace Greeley, the Liberal Republican presidential candidate who General Grant had easily defeated for his second term in the Oval Office. That'll put the Electoral College in a spin, James thought to himself.
James walked into his favorite barbershop, giving its owner, Mr. Fioravanzo, a broad grin. Mr. Fioravanzo waved back. "How's my favorite ethernaut doing?"
James grin grew wider. "It's not official yet, Mr. Fioravanzo. Edison hasn't picked the first man to go up in his contraption."
Mr. Fioravanzo just smiled and gestured for James to take a seat in his empty chair. "With the way I'm going to make you look, you'll be the first man in space for sure!"
As James put his face in the capable hands of Mr. Fioravanzo, he couldn't help but reflect on the twists and turns in his life that had brought him to this point. James had been born in Baltimore, Maryland, the eighth of eleven children, and the youngest of six brothers. At the age of six, one of James's older brothers, returning from a long sea journey, brought him a book containing copies of Leonardo Da Vinci's sketches. From that moment on, James dreamed of nothing but becoming a great inventor himself. At the age of twelve, he read of the exploits of Armen Firman and his attempt at controlled flight by leaping from a tower in Córdoba. James attempted to emanate Firman's adventures with a homemade balloon, and actually managed to fly some distance before an uncontrolled landing. The injuries he sustained from his father's belt were more significant than the ones he sustained from the crash itself. Undaunted, James would continue seeking a life of adventure until he turned sixteen. In that same year, the U.S. Civil War broke out.
Maryland, like the nation at large, was divided. James's family was split, with three of his brothers joining the U.S. Navy, and the other two joining the Confederate one. James himself ran away from home, and within a matter of months (and a series of misadventures), was a proud member of Colonel Mosby's Raiders. James was a source of the Colonel's more unusual inspirations, including devising a semi-controlled gunpowder rocket that took out a Union observation balloon.
In 1864, James was captured and sent to the notorious Union prison at Camp Douglas, Illinois, where he, along with other Confederate prisoners, was given the choice of remaining in prison, or being paroled to the Western Territories, where they would fight Indians while Union Soldiers were pulled back to the Confederate Front.
It was here that James was fortunate enough to fall under the command of the scholarly Colonel John Patterson, who discovered a burgeoning inventor and scholar in the young James Davidson, and gave James access to his extensive private library. In 1868, when the Colonel gave John a copy of Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon, James knew that one day he wanted to go to the moon.
In 1870, Thomas Edison, the celebrated inventor, announced his attentions to put a man on the moon before the end of the century.
Even though the war had been over for some time, Confederate soldiers serving in the Western territories were not released from their parole until the seventies. Even then, Colonel Patterson had offered James a commission in the Army, with the full blessing of the military. James had made several small technical innovations that had filtered through the United States Army. A number of these innovations had even made their way into the private sector, including several that were incorporated in the Consolidated 2-8-0 railroad engine. In short, the military wanted to hang on to its own "Thomas Edison."
If James had never read "From Earth to the Moon," he might have stayed in the Army. Or if the government had launched its own ether program, he might have stayed in the West. But it was Thomas Edison who had declared he would put a man on the moon by the end of the century. And if any one man had the ability and the sheer force of will to put a man on the moon, it was Thomas Edison.
The fact that Edison had sent James a telegram inviting him to join the Ether Program as soon as his commitment to the US Army was over had clinched the deal.
Edison was everything and nothing like James thought he would be. He was mercurial, brilliant, controversial, innovative...any and every adjective that James could use.
Late 1872 found 27 year old James Davidson as one of three of the final candidates for the first manned launch of the suborbital Edisonian rocket. On paper, James was a lock. Of course, his Confederate service was used as a selling point on why he shouldn't go into the ether by his detractors. But outside of Edison himself, James was the most brilliant of the Ethereal Engineers on the Moon Project. He was in the best shape of any in the ethernaut corps and, outside of the Prussian aviator Otto Lilienthal, was the most accomplished glider pilot in the world.
