Chapter 30: The Wrong Brothers
The Luddites:
Tom Stoyer had a most satisfied grin on his face as Maggie sat on his lap after dinner. "My friends, it is time to deal with the scourge of Temperature Change. For centuries, the temperature of the planet was a constant 72 degrees. Science tells us so. But over time man created toxic machines which spewed forth gases which raped Mother Earth. As a result the temperature started to vary. On any given day the temperature can vary by as much as 20 or 30 degrees! Soon life as we know it on the planet Earth will be unsustainable. And there is no bigger polluter than our stratoliners and spaceships, which fill the sky with toxic gases. Therefore, I am launching a project to save the lungs of the planet. We are going to shut down air travel, and space travel, for centuries to come. We will stop it before it is even created."
He pressed a button on his pad, and the holoimage of two men appeared on the screen. "These are the Wright Brothers, Orville and Wilbur. They are each ten times more evil than Adolph Hitler, twenty times more evil than George Washington and Thomas Jefferson combined. These are the villains responsible for inventing air travel. They must be stopped."
"We will kill them," said Gerstad Mueller.
The others murmured their approval.
"No," said Tom. He put a fatherly arm on Mueller's shoulder. "I appreciate your enthusiasm, my friend, but that would be too obvious. The Continuity Service would pinpoint the time of their deaths and reverse things to our detriment. We need something more subtle."
"We could sabotage their airplane," said Craig Fuller, the resident inanimasexual.
"A good idea, Craig," said Tom. "But even then, the CS or even the Wright Brothers themselves could spot obvious sabotage. No, we need a more subtle way of stopping these fiends, a way even the villains at the Continuity Service could never, ever detect."
********
"Hello John," said Ayesha, giving Calle a smile.
"Hello Ayesha, how are you doing today?"
"Fabulous," she said, wiggling her large Indian buttocks as she walked away with an atomic coffee jug.
"Did you hear that?" Sarah said, raising an eyebrow as she stared at Calle in a most flirtatious way. "She's doing
fabulously
."
"Do you enjoy using other women to taunt me?" Calle asked.
"Why not?" said Sarah. "There is so little to entertain me here." She pointed to her holoscreens. "So many channels, and so little to watch," she sighed. But a moment later, she sat upright in her chair.
"Sarah, what is it?"
Sarah didn't answer. Instead, she pressed some keys, and her screens flickered rapidly. Then she pressed a button, "Commander Strayker? You'd better get out here."
********
"Space travel is now in its infancy," said Colonel Strayker. He wore a black suit with tall collars as he puffed on a nuclear cigarette. "The Survey Service doesn't even exist."
"How can that be?" Major Reynolds asked.
"Maybe because the modern airplane was only developed two centuries ago," said Strayker.
"But... airplanes were not invented in the 23rd century," said Daniel. "That was way back in the 20th century."
"Precisely," said Strayker. "By these two gentlemen." And a holoimage of Orville and Wilbur Wright appeared above them. He turned to John Calle. "Your mission, Captain, is to find out what went wrong, and fix it. You can take Lieutenants Acton and Green."
Daniel and Erica.
"Me, sir?" said Calle.
"Yes, you," said Strayker. "You've led missions before. Is that a problem?"
"No, sir." Suddenly, somehow, without knowing exactly when, Calle realized he had become a team leader. Major Reynolds still led some missions, but Strayker now had enough confidence to let Calle lead more and more of them on his own, especially where combat situations seemed less likely and the need for his Special Talent seemed to be greater.
********
It was all about the cocaine.
Orville and Wilbur Wright originally opened a bicycle shop because they loved bikes. They were more dependable than horses, and didn't have to be fed. But then they realized that fixing bikes wouldn't make them very much money.
Distributing narcotics, however, was much more lucrative. The first time Wyche Fowler came to them and offered them five dollars for "delivering a package, no questions asked" ten miles down the road, dollar signs went off in their heads. Well, Wilbur's head, anyway. Not much ever went off in Orville's head.
And so they started a cocaine distribution service. They got rich, but realized along the way that they wanted something more, much more.
They wanted to get
filthy
rich.
Wilbur had the idea for a flying vehicle, like a glider, but powered by an engine. It could carry cocaine for miles and miles in mere minutes. Spurred by the need for technical innovation in the narcotics delivery business, he and Wilbur labored for months in their shed, until their first model was complete.
They started the propeller, and it roared!
Orville, Wilbur decided, would be the first test pilot, as he was the more expendable one. But while Orville could get the plane to move, slowly, he couldn't get it off the ground. It should have worked, but it didn't.
And that was the state of affairs when John Calle, Daniel Acton, and Erica Green entered their bike shop on March 3, 1903.
They had been drinking the night before and were not in the best of moods. And so when "journalists" started asking about their new flying craft, Wilbur told them to go away.
"We want to see it!" said Calle.
"It doesn't work," said Wilbur moodily. He grabbed his pounding head. Whiskey always did that to him; beer, less so, but beer wasn't nearly as good.
"What do you mean, it doesn't work?" Daniel asked. "You couldn't get the propeller started?"
Wilbur leaned forward. They could smell the whiskey on his breath. "The propeller works fine. The engine works fine. The wings, the little wheels on the bottom, they all work fine. But the thing just won't go into the air."
Daniel and Calle exchanged glances. "Well, I'd love to see you try," said Daniel.
"Go away," Wilbur suggested, staggering into a back room.
********
It didn't take much sleuthing to find the plane, it was where it was supposed to be, historically speaking, in a shed on an outer barrier reef in North Carolina, just a few miles from the bike shop.
"Let's give it a spin," said Calle.
"Do you know anything about primitive 20th century airplanes?" Erica asked.
