Making the final changes to the contract went very quickly now that Corey was out of the room. I didn’t know what his problem happened to be. I’d never had anything to do with him before so that was a bit of a mystery to me. In fact, to my knowledge, this was the first time I had been involved in any production which came under the Magical Lensmasters Productions, Ltd. banner.

Jacob made certain I added my own little contribution. ‘And who is not a female’ was written once again onto yet another new contract. This time everyone initialed it except for Corey who was missing, and Mr. Penn who said he would do it without hesitation.

We finished the procedure in the record time of less than a half hour then I was bundled off on a golf cart along with Jacob and the rest of them. We rode for what seemed like four or five kilometers before arriving at a large building which reminded me of an aircraft hanger for some reason. I figured there must be offices in it since it just went up and up and up some more as well as on and on.

We were informed I was “on the clock, so to speak” as we walked through the door, even as Jacob was informing me that the hundred hours of stunt pay was lump sum and the base was actually a fixed amount for however long it took to complete the pilot. Not too much different from my usual method of being paid which went by the completed and filmed stunt and not how long it took to set up for it nor for the amount of time before the cameras.

“You’re an actress now so your overall payment for doing the pilot will be divided into bi-weekly amounts which will be taxed, split into the various union dues, agent fees as well as for your insurance. The balance will be yours. Don’t spend it all in one place.”

He hadn’t needed to remind me. I was beginning to worry if I would have anything to take home after it was all said and done.

Mr. Grangier and Mr. Tollenger led Jacob and me deeper into the building before we suddenly stepped into the huge empty expanse which was the hanger itself. Inside it had exactly that appearance. I knew this building was a little small for the purpose and even though we weren’t in Long Beach I couldn’t help but look around for the “Spruce Goose”, Hughes prop driven super large amphibious aircraft which I’d never had the chance to see.

The whole place was pretty much empty. Our voices and footsteps, especially mine because of the heels, echoed a little as we walked across to one end of the center line of the hanger. There, a line from a mono hung down from where the mono was attached to an overhead rail near the roof of the building. The line reached close to the floor where it fed through a shroud which was wrapped around both it and whatever was hidden under that shroud. Closer examination allowed me to see the building was nearly eight floors tall and looked like it was somewhere around three football fields in length. It reminded me of a blimp hanger I had seen down in Irvine. I presumed the shroud near the floor was covering those wings about which I had heard so much rumor and learned far too little fact.

Finally one of the men carefully removed the shroud and I got my first look at the wings. To say they were a ‘little strange’ was definitely an understatement. I had envisioned something like a bird’s wings or maybe a stretch looking something like a butterfly but these.... These were.... different. Pretty, but different. I had the faint memory in the back of my mind that I had seen something like them before somewhere. I couldn't quite place it and it did its best to remain elusive.

There were four on each side separated by only perhaps twenty centimeters or so where they mounted into some sort of flesh colored.... harness.... vest.... I guess. They reminded me of something you would have seen stuck in a lady’s hat sometime back near the twenties. I had this nagging feeling I’d seen something like them somewhere before but couldn’t quite place it. I know I’d remember sooner or later. I was still trying to decide how they could flap without getting in each other’s way when the line from the mono registered on my brain again. Using the mono as a clue I figured that it didn’t really matter if the wings got tangled up since the line from the mono was what would hold me aloft and prevent me from falling even if the wings really did tangle. If they did tangle then all that would need to be done was reshoot whatever scene it was.

That flesh colored vest thing covered the upper portion of the mannequin and then a really abbreviated dress was present over it all. If I’d been the one wearing that, even if I was a girl, it would have had me blushing like crazy. I guess it shouldn’t bother me all that much since it was more than I had worn in that Amazon flic - barely. The design let the wings appear to be exiting from the back of the mannequin itself, by inference that meant from my own back once I was the one who would be wearing them. After the shroud had been removed I had taken the opportunity to go up for a closer look.

The vest was a strange affair with what looked like somewhere around a dozen little ‘pockets’ sewn into it in a manner which pretty much hid them and whatever was in them. The vest was soft, but stiff. At a guess with those pockets and all, it was about half to three quarters of a centimeter thick depending on where you were looking at the time. The back portion was quite a bit thicker than the front, maybe three or four times as thick. At a guess the part between the wings was maybe a centimeter and a half thick. The wings themselves were pure translucent with both a yellow and green tinge with the longest about the same length as my arms. They were.... I don’t know – I didn’t know what else to call it, they weren’t feathers like a bird would have, but they were soft and I was almost afraid they were tissue paper. When I gently touched them, they felt stiff, like the vest. Strong, soft, and yielding all at the same time. Kind of weird actually.

As I looked around I found small boxes located near the mannequin’s right and left hands. The boxes had thin bundles of wires in thin flesh tone colored tubes leading back to the vest. There were seven buttons and several switches on each small box. I guess this was how the wings were controlled. I experimentally pressed a button on the right hand box but nothing happened, I guessed they weren’t turned on.

Just then a voice echoed across the cavern, “The wings have a fail-safe. The control activation button must be pressed on the opposite box at the same time an action button is pressed on the other box or they won’t respond.”

The man attached to the voice finally arrived at our location and reached down to the control boxes. With one in each hand he flicked the switches on both boxes into some sort of pattern, then pressed a button on each of the boxes.

The wings dramatically shifted although it was a very slight change which made me even more certain they looked like they belonged on a lady’s hat. A bit like those hats seen around the nineteen twenties which had feathers sticking up from them. As I stared at them another thought drifted into my brain and I began to compare them to one of those helicopters which has two sets of blades, one on each side of the fuselage. The blades were designed to weave between one another during their rotation. If these wings started to rotate it wouldn’t have surprised me a bit at this point. It wouldn’t look particularly realistic but it wouldn’t have surprised me. He again pressed several buttons and the wings began to slowly move, each flapping but in a way that wasn’t anything like that of a bird or butterfly. As they moved it was difficult to watch them as they seemed to just ‘ripple’ through the space around them, flexing almost like we would flex our fingers but more.... synchronous?... or possibly stepped like they were jumping from one position to another then pausing for a very short beat before doing it a bit further until finally they had come all the way back to begin it again. They also had some pretty elaborate folding and scooping going on as they did this. Even though they were moving slowly, they were displacing a lot of air which was kicking up what little dust there was on the floor. I was beginning to wonder if they could actually cause enough displacement to provide true lift. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the head? Yeah, and it could also be a stunt nightmare if it interfered with the line connecting me to a helicopter.

“Want to try them on for size?” The guy asked me.

I gave it a quick thought, “Uh, not just at the moment thank you. Let’s wait until my medical insurance premium is paid a month or two in advance.”

He laughed and pressed more buttons which halted the wings again allowing them to go back into what I guessed was the stowed position. For some reason they looked smaller when they weren’t moving. Once they had stopped he clicked all those switches back to the position they were in to begin with.

“Hi, I’m Adam Thornton, developer of these beauties.” He pointed to the wings before he held out a hand for me to shake.

“They’re quite impressive. They look like stained glass but they feel soft and both flexible and stiff if that’s not a contradiction of terms.” I tried to be positive while I reserved my opinion of their potential abilities.

“Wait until you see them in action. They’re the latest in smart metal technology....”

“Metal? Those are metal? They seem so soft.”

“Yep. They’re metal.” He reached up and bent one over slowly. When he let go it just remained that way.

“You broke it?”

“Nope. Watch.”

He hit a couple of buttons on each of the boxes again and the wings began to move slowly but that one just ‘warped’ back into shape then kept moving right along with the rest of them like nothing had ever happened.

“It takes a lot to cause a bend like I just showed you. Just shaping the wind or accidentally hitting something won’t cause that sort of thing. The original smart metal from fifteen to twenty years ago just used an electric current to heat the metal causing it to change shape. It was slow and required a lot of power. Now we run the current through the metal while pulsing it at various AC frequencies and we can have up to sixty or more different positions or shapes the metal can adopt. As a result we can cause what seems to be a nearly continuous movement with far less energy expended. The wings themselves are patented. The program which runs them is copyrighted and the computer system is proprietary but designed and patented by someone else for our specific needs. That computer and the software were the big stumbling block originally. We needed a pretty sophisticated computer on board to control these beauties. About a fifth to a quarter of the energy taken from the batteries is used to power the computer and the other electronics which are held within the vest. Feedback, in the form of changing currents and stress gauge outputs, allows the on-board computer to adjust for changes due to shifting load, air gusts to a hundred and sixty kilometers per hour, and a lot more. Flat out, they’re easily capable of over twice the speed allowed on the highways, so be careful not to follow a highway or you’ll likely get pulled over for speeding." he paused a moment apparently waiting for a response before he added, "That’s a joke....”

Again, no one laughed which caused him to frown for a moment before continuing, “Here, take a look at the vest.... Back here right between the wings is the current control module. Yeah, that’s it, that six by ten centimeter lump located between the wing mounts. The major reinforcement for the wings is also located beneath the control electronics here in the back. That reinforcement goes all across the back and is securely attached to the rest of the vest which is designed to easily shape to fit a woman. We have other vests for men to use as well as different and slightly larger wings.

The actual computer package rides on each side and across the bottom of the back portion just below your rib cage. About a third of that area is the system which cools the electronics by dehumidifying the outside air which is then blown through the pack by a static pressure flow system that can flow over two cubic meters of air per minute. There are no moving parts in the whole system except for the wings themselves and the compressor which produces the air necessary for breathing at higher flight speeds. That portion of the pressure flow system which compresses the air stores it into these two small cylinders, here and here.” he indicated the top of a very small tube on each side near the back and partially hidden by the wings as was the area he said was the current controller.

“When you breath the air it will have been warmed by the current control module so when in flight or at altitude where the air is near freezing, that which you are breathing remains warm enough not to cause problems in your lungs. The flight suit is a close flesh tone, completely flexible, and less than two millimeters thick so it can be worn directly against your own skin. It also has elements which add warmth, if necessary, to help maintain body temperature when in flight. Otherwise, it could become quite cold up there. If it is providing warmth then the batteries will drain faster but it doesn’t generally come into play close to the ground or at speeds under about eighty Kilometers per hour.”

He motioned for me to come around to the front with him.

“Here.... here.... and here are three of the pouches each holding two high voltage batteries. These provide the power for the whole thing. These, too, are the latest technology. it's an offshoot of both the paper and the tubular battery technologies from the last decades of the 1900's. This refinement is a radical offshoot and which is just beginning to be sold to the defense department to power a number of things which I can’t discuss. The batteries contain enough energy when fully charged to start your car a few thousand times, if your car could use a one hundred eighty-six volt battery. They are able to provide enough power for between ninety and a hundred sixty minutes of flight when fully charged. That depends, of course, on the speed of flight and type of use; such as aerobatics or level flight. When the system gets down to the ‘minimum safe return’ or MSR charge level then the flight computer will take the system into a return and automatic landing sequence. I was about to add a fourth pair of batteries to the empty area right here, which will help a bit with both balance and fit, as well as add another thirty to fifty-five minutes of flight time.” He pointed to what appeared to be an empty pouch.

“What do you do if you’re over water when they decide to land? I don’t swim so well and being metal, I don’t think the wings would float very well.”

He laughed again, “That’s a pretty good joke. I’ll remember that one.”

He didn’t seem to understand, I wasn’t joking.

He continued to tell us (mostly me) about the wings and all the wonderful things they could do. Somehow I was beginning to get the feeling that he thought they could actually allow me to fly. I was also beginning to get this queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach and I didn’t believe it was due to the field canteen lunch I didn’t have at the MGM shoot. I needed to have a talk with Jacob.

“Hello, Earth to Denise.”

“I’m sorry, I was just thinking. What did you say?”

“Take off your coat, go in the restroom over there and try the suit on. You can dress again over it but we need the suit on you for the vest to connect. There also are sensors in the suit which are needed during any flight operations. When we attach the vest don’t touch any of the controls. This is just to see what changes need to be made to fit the package to the shape of your body. I’ll slip the new battery in later. The vest needs to be adjusted pretty much like a parachute harness so none of the packages in it will cause you discomfort. We’ll begin training you in the use of the wings another time. You’ll need to be on the tether at that time so you don’t get into trouble when you actually begin learning the controls. The wings themselves have a dozen pre-programmed operations and there’s room for a half dozen more; or at least the flight computer can hold that information. I use a laptop to program the built in computer. Come on, off with your jacket. Take the suit and go over to that restroom.”

I wasn’t really ready for this but the two big wigs who accompanied us were salivating at the idea and Jacob was still hanging around so it was my guess he wanted to see this too before he returned to his office. I removed my blazer as this Thornton guy was checking in a couple of boxes for a suit which would likely fit me. He handed me one after holding it up in front of me to see if it was close to my size. Then he made shooing motions at me to go over to the restroom. As I walked over to it he began to disconnect the vest from it’s fittings on the mannequin. By the time I returned, the wings were hanging from a line leading to that monorail above us so I supposed I wouldn’t be able to get into too much trouble. I watched him puttering around the wings.

“How much do they weigh?”

“The vest and wings pop in at about thirty kilos.”

“The battery in a car weighs more than that.”

“True. But the battery in a car isn’t the same technology. The power cells in this are cutting edge.”

“I easily weigh more than the whole package.”

“I hope you don’t weigh more than a hundred thirty kilos. You don’t look to be anywhere near that.”

“No. About sixty four,” uncertain if I should be offended since he mentioned such a heavy weight. Then again, he did say I didn’t look to be anywhere near that.

“Good. No problems then, you fall well below the cutoff for these wings.”

“Cut off?” I asked, beginning to discover once again that there might be some basis for this feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“The lifting ratio for the wings. They can lift a maximum total weight of nearly nine times their own weight. The wings themselves weigh in at eighteen and a half kilos with the remainder being the vest, batteries and electronics. That means the wings can lift a rough total of over a hundred and fifty kilos. You and the entire package weigh in at about ninety four or five so we have a leeway of roughly fifty five. That can be important during aerobatics.”

“So if I was to fly a simple pattern then I could carry a small child or something?”

“Well, theoretically. It would be a bit difficult to control the wings if your hands weren’t free to use the controls.”

“What if the weight limit was exceeded for a short time? Will the connection for the tether break?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Hypothetically, if I were to be able to carry something which caused the total weight to exceed the limit, would the tether connection break or pull out of the vest?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. What tether are you’re speaking about?”

“The one to the mono overhead or to the helicopter or however we are flying me.”

“Oh.... The wings.... okay.... tether.... I guess that’s as apt a description as any. Initially they would go into a glide but they could fold to storage position causing you to drop. If you try to initiate them again without dropping the extra weight then they could snap and you would be in free fall. This is the first version. The second and third versions are much more robust. I’ve flown hundreds of hours with the third version. They have much more lift and nearly three and a half hours operating time. We added two more batteries to those packs bringing the total to six. This one only has three although when the fourth one is added we will gain thirty to fifty-five minutes flying time, which I think I mentioned before.

Of course the less weight you lift and the fewer aerobatics you perform then the longer the batteries will last during a session. Straight and level flight you might get.... umm.... possibly as much as a hundred fifty minutes or so in this version with only the three batteries presently included.”

“All right. Then why aren’t we using the third version?”

“The following versions the wings are larger. Made to carry a man, you understand. This is the only one where the wings are small enough to carry a woman while holding the appearance of being proportional. How tall are you by the way? I ask because the ground clearance will make a difference during takeoff and landing so I might need to change the program slightly to account for it.”

“One and three quarters.”

“One and three quarters what?”

“A hundred and seventy five centimeters. In bare feet.”

“Oh, well, that should work out then. We need a hundred and sixty for the ground effect to begin to diminish. I’m more concerned at the moment with how the skirt you will be wearing for the show might interfere with the wings operation. We should probably try a full dress simulation along about the second or third week of your flight training. The wings are a bit expensive and I’d prefer not to damage them even if they are insured.”

“What about damaging me?”

He pointed at me again as he laughed, “I like your attitude. We’re going to get along great. Come on, you’d be surprised how much difference in lift at take off or landing the wings can achieve with only a few centimeters difference between the center of lift and the ground. Okay, I’m going to begin to attach the wing package to the flight suit. Remember, don’t touch any of the controls.” he mentioned as he draped the two boxes and their flesh toned cables over my shoulders.

He kept going on about flying the wings as though he thought they were what actually did the flying. I was beginning to think this might not be quite so simple a stunt production as Jacob and I originally thought.

After nearly an hour we had attached the vest to the suit and adjusted it slightly up, down, right, left, forward and back. It still wasn’t completely comfortable for me but it was nowhere near as bad as when I had first put it on. The majority of the vest, to suit, to me support changes he told me would occur when we powered up the whole thing, allowing it to self-adjust its final shape before we did any flying. When I looked around a few minutes ago to mention something to Jacob I discovered he had gone since he, presumably, still had a lot of work to do for other clients. The two big wigs departed for more interesting pastures after giving me a phone number to use to call for my ride home.

“It might not be the same driver or vehicle every time since we do have other people who need to be ferried around. There will be a few times when you may need to share the ride or wait as much as a half hour for one but one will always become available.”

That sounded good to me so I carefully placed the phone number into my purse before I was left to the tender mercies of Mr. Thornton, ‘call me Adam’. He was more and more reminding me of some eccentric inventor type. I was praying that his inventions turned out a lot better than those of the inventors one found in movies which usually portrayed inventors as eccentric bumblers whos inventions turned out okay by accident rather than design.

“We can make some more change’s later which will help a little. The weight isn’t the biggest thing to get accustomed to. It looks like we will have good ground effect clearance but it could be better. I might have you try a take off while standing on the ground here and then again while standing on the table over there. I can record both sets of data and then, when I go back to the lab, run it through the computer there to see if the flight computer’s program will need to be updated. Hopefully it will do as is and the parameters will fall within the variable set which is part of the calculation program. We’ll auto-reset it before you begin to do any serious flying.

Okay, now I’m going to slowly raise the monorail’s tether until the monorail is in a position to support some of the weight. That will allow us to learn where the vest needs to be adjusted so that when you’re flying it won’t cause problems for you. Another hour or so then we’ll be done for today. Tomorrow, bright and early, we can begin your control training, and possibly actually get in a little flight time. With any luck we’ll be able to do the center of control resets before we quit today.”

An hour later I had endured perhaps a thousand more ‘adjustments’, or at least it felt like it. He made all those using his notebook computer while it was attached to the vest through an umbilical cord he called an optical link. That was a bit of a misnomer since there were some electrical connections also made through the umbilical. Finally he declared the whole thing to be “about as good as it’s going to get until we actually power and take the package through it’s first auto-set.”

I must admit, it was much more comfortable than it was when we first began this whole thing. He let the tether down a little so I was standing while supporting nearly all of the weight of both myself and the package.

“Okay, brace yourself. I’m going to deploy the wings and then after five seconds or so I’m going to take them into nearly two minutes of slow flapping. This will change speed as the ground effect is measured and the computer determines the best wing angles for take-off and landing based on the height you offer it, give or take four centimeters. Ready?”

“Yes.”

He clicked those switches again and then pressed a button on each box which caused the wings to unfold to that interim position about a second later. The sudden movement caused me to lose my balance for a moment but I managed to catch myself, teetering on one foot for a second or two as the tether began to hold most of the weight. My heels might not have been terribly high but the strange action of the wings still gave me pause trying to hold my balance. I asked him to wait a moment then kicked my shoes off finally standing there in my stocking feet.

“Okay?” he looked at me with his eyebrows almost up at his hairline.

“Yes. I think if I had pressed the buttons then it wouldn’t have been such a surprise and I might have been able to hold my balance a little better.”

“Good idea. Okay. Try to hold your balance. I’m going to initiate the first fifteen seconds of operation. This will be the slowest speed the wings will ever be going and they will be stopped for a while before we initiate the full two minute sequence. Ready?”

“Yes.”

“Three, two, one, now.” He pressed the enter key on his notebook and the wings began to move. It was an eerie sensation. Even though they were moving slowly, I could feel the power in their strokes. Where they connected to the vest and flight suit I could feel their effect as they seemed to actually be lifting me slightly. Almost as soon as it began the effect ended.

“How are you doing?”

“I’m fine. It’s a little strange, even going that slowly I could feel the wings providing lift. I’ll bet I could have seen it on a bathroom scale.”

“Well, you’ll see it much more during the next sequence. The flight controller has a GPS built in which can measure vertical as well as horizontal movement as fine as fifteen centimeters. The wings could lift you off the ground during this alignment phase. Don’t panic because it will slowly lower you back down again if you do lift off. Remember this time will last nearly two minutes so don’t expect it to put you back down immediately if it lifts you up. Using a good dozen MEMS gyroscopes, the computer will be trying to determine weight ratios and lift characteristic baselines as well as the optimum curvature for each wing to minimize stresses measured by those devices, in effect a balancing of the load. These changes are measured as the system goes through lift-off, landing, hover and a short flight. Some of the movement of the wings is to maintain balance rather than to lift and during flight that will translate into guidance information. The alarm systems as well as the flight computer use this information to calculate remaining battery life as well as establishing the baseline against which erratic changes in flight conditions will cause automatic stability corrections. Ready?”

“I suppose so. Go ahead.” I hadn’t the faintest idea what he had just said actually meant. Do mad scientists speak in the same language as doctors?

Again he pressed several keys on his notebook then looked up at me as he held his finger over the enter button. He nodded his head just before he pressed it.

He swore, when it ended, that it had only been two minutes, in fact one minute and fifty seven seconds, but it was the longest two minutes I ever remember going through.

I think I was off the ground less than fifteen seconds after he pressed that enter key. And I didn’t stay just fifteen centimeters from it. Those wings, for that’s what they were, took me up nearly two meters before they quit climbing and simply hovered around very nearly at the same place where I had been standing when it all started. They weren’t satisfied with just hovering either, there were all kinds of ‘little’ aerobatics they went through as they tried to determine how the weight of my body would affect their performance. I was seriously hoping the computer was salting all this information away so I didn’t need to go through it each day I was to put the confounded things on for the show. God, by the time they landed me I felt like a salt shaker which had been nearly emptied in that two minutes. Oh, and the landing. That was interesting as well. I don’t know if the wings quit trying to hold me aloft because they had reached an altitude about twenty centimeters or so above the floor of the hanger or if they quit because he pushed another key on his notebook at about that time.

“That was good. Care to try a flap or two up a few meters and down the wire?”

“Not today, thank you. I feel quite shaken enough for the moment.”

Undaunted, he pressed his enter key before I had gotten out my first few words. The wings began their beat again reminding me now of a hand mixer with the two beaters interlacing between each other in a carefully orchestrated dance which kept them from hitting one another while they took the air from around and above me, thrusting it downward between them and lifting me off the ground once more. Perhaps he couldn’t imagine anyone not holding the same fascination for the wings that he obviously did.

I must say that as soon as he realised what I had said, his fingers flashed over the keyboard and soon the wings were allowing me to come back down to land. During that short period of perhaps ten or fifteen seconds, I had risen to the dizzying height of nearly half the hanger and gone down the wire a distance of perhaps the same. At any rate it wasn’t halfway down that long expanse so I didn’t have too great a walk returning. What was most surprising was how smooth the flight was. Nothing like the two minutes the computer was testing and categorizing the stresses involved in flight while attached to me.

The flight itself had been an eye opener. For the first second or two, I had felt myself being slightly lifted as the air caught by the wings was thrown down around my feet much as before during the period when the computer was testing things and determining lift characteristics. Suddenly, however, I was quickly lifted from the floor unable to hold my balance as the wings climbed for altitude nearly forcing me into a forward-lean which took me down that monorail much as I remembered seeing a butterfly or something flying. I was still trying to remember where I had seen wings like these before. As insubstantial as these wings appeared to be, they were quite capable of lifting and transporting me from one place to another and I think they were supporting all my weight rather than the mono doing it as I had originally thought.

That taste of flight when I had said I would rather not try it, brought a strange reaction from me. I went from upset and concerned to encouraged and curious almost in a heartbeat. And believe me, while I was in the air my heart was beating pretty quickly.

“Sorry. I didn’t expect you to say no.”

“Obviously. Now that we’ve gotten that little step out of the way and I’m a bit more prepared, could we try that again?”

“Again?” He asked almost surprised.

“Yes. Perhaps from here to the end of the hanger, land for perhaps a minute then a flight back? OH! And could we please not go up quite so high this time?”

“The flight down and back I can set up quite easily. The height is another matter altogether. That height is the minimum safe flight altitude. It takes into account a number of things such as the height of most trees, small buildings and most importantly the ground effect. Air works a bit differently closer to the ground and the wings need to work harder and use more energy until they have reached sufficient altitude that they don’t need to fight the air coming back up off the ground. Think of it as a loud echo which can interrupt your own conversation making it difficult for others to understand you. The further you get away from the wall, or in this case the floor, which is providing that echo the easier it is for others to understand you and therefore the less you need to shout but you still need to speak slightly louder than normal speech. You save energy by not shouting.”

I nodded my head. His explanation understood and accepted, not necessarily happily. He began to type into his notebook, pressing enter after each set of instructions. At each press I expected the wings to begin flapping but nothing happened until he paused and asked me if I was ready as he also began to explain.

“All right. I’ve set a number of things into a simple down and back program. When you land at the other end of the hanger and turn around, look at the right-hand control box. One of the buttons will be blinking. When you are ready to return, press that button. The flight computer will give you a two second interval to prepare before the wings will begin. I’ve also made a speed change in the program. From here down to the other end will be at the same slow pace that you have already experienced. The return will be much faster. About ten times as fast. Understand?”

I indicated that I did even as I thought the ten times faster bit might be interesting. I thought about the first time they had flown from here down to that first landing point. That had been quite rapid from my point of view anyway. I couldn’t quite imagine what it would be like to be going ‘ten times faster’.

His voice suddenly dragged me out of my contemplations, “Ready? Three, two, one....” he pressed the enter key just before he said zero, and as the wings moved into their flying positions they began to flap almost immediately. I leaned with them just a little rather than trying to remain upright as I had done before. Very quickly I was up at half the height of the hanger and moving along at something like a brisk trot toward the other end. A few seconds later the wings brought me to a standstill, hovering a few centimeters from the floor before they gradually quit providing lift which allowed me to land, more or less gently. I was beginning to understand how landings were to be accomplished. I noted that the wings were also bringing me closer to the floor before shutting down than they had that first time.

Looking down at the control box, I did indeed see one of the buttons blinking. I wasn’t quite ready to be whooshed back to my starting point at ten times the speed I had taken to come down to this end, so I waited a bit before pressing the button. Even as I finally lifted into the air I heard Mr. Thornton yell something toward me and hoped it wasn’t important. The return flight began with start to finish lasting perhaps three seconds, maybe four with some stretch of the imagination. I thought of a basketball being shot from one end of a court to the other. I’m certain that somewhere along that trajectory I attained the aforementioned half hanger height but I didn’t rise to it then fly to the other end before landing again as I had during the flight from the working end to the far end by those large doors. On the way back I traveled more like a cannon shot, and it felt to me to be just about as fast.
“
What did you say just as I took off?”

“Nothing important. I just wondered if you were going to do it any time soon and saw you lift off even as I was beginning to ask.”

“Oh. As much fun as this has been, I think I need to stop for the day, go home, and think about this a bit.”

“All right. Come over by the mannequin so I can transfer the wings to it, if you would.”

He transferred the wing mechanism then I went back to the rest room to change out of the flight suit. Once I returned I tried to give the suit back to him but he told me to take it home and clean it. “It’s safe to simply nip it into the washer on the gentle cycle. Dry it on low like your delicates. That will be the suit you’ll use for the rest of the movie, unless something happens to it. If it’s damaged at some point in time then we will need to give you another and that will necessitate our going through that fifteen second and two minute programming interval again. There are sensors in the suit which are used by the flight computer so the data needs to be re-calibrated each time a suit is changed. Okay. Good first day. I’ve got a few things to work on before I leave so why don’t you go on ahead?”

“Thank you. What time tomorrow?”

“I think eight should do nicely.”

“All right. Eight it is. Thank you, that was.... Interesting.”

He smiled and I turned, walking away toward the door which led to the office area being the one through which we had first entered the hanger and through which I had seen others leave. The offices were still empty but I found a phone in one of them, which was quite fortunate since I remembered I had allowed my cell to go dead. I tried to call the number I was given from which to obtain a ride but some operator came on the line. That was when I learned it was the studio operator and that I needed to dial “9" first in order to get an outside line. I attempted my call once more and was told there would be a car available in about fifteen minutes. I thanked them then we hung up. True to their word, sixteen minutes later a small limo pulled up out front and the driver held my door for me as I entered. Soon the trip ended and I was safe at home once again.

After a normal evening which had me telling Candy about my day as we ate supper, we relaxed for a while. I wasn’t dealing with a script yet and Candy didn’t have any lines she needed to memorize for tomorrow so we were actually able to spend a little time just being together.

The following morning I called for my ride, learning it would take nearly an hour since there were far more people asking for rides than there were automobiles and drivers to provide them. The hour actually turned out to be closer to forty five minutes before we were off to the studios and the hanger.

The delays caused me to arrive twelve minutes late but Mr. Thornton had been busying himself during my absence. I was to learn that today we would be spending most of the time on the simulator which explained the meter and a half video screen that was now sitting on the table, his notebook next to it and two chairs facing it. Also connected to his notebook were two of those controllers for the wings, the wires led out from the notebook to one of the chairs where the controllers had been placed. It was a bit of a let down since I had been busy preparing myself for one or more flight events. I had even put on the flight suit at home before dressing so that it would save me time here.

Mr. Thornton, ‘call me Adam’, began to explain the various functions allowed by the control boxes, and there were a lot of them. I began to wonder how pilots of helicopters could remember all this stuff. The simulator was moving a set of wings on the screen, or causing a cartoon person to fly on the other half of the screen as I selected various controls. The actual flight would be controlled by the flight computer but I could input requests for changes and things like gaining or losing altitude through the use of the buttons and switches. We spent nearly three days on that simulator before he said I could put on the wings again. It felt a bit to me like someone had given me some candy to which I rapidly became addicted before they said I couldn’t have another piece for a week. I was wondering if time flying was going to be the carrot. That got me to worrying about what might be the stick.

When I was allowed to fly again, it was a greatly abbreviated control system which was presented to me. Much like that first flight where the only choice I had in the matter was how long I was going to remain on the ground at the other end of the hanger before pressing the button to tell the computer to take me ‘home’; that is, back to the original starting point.

“For the purpose of this learning session, I have programmed the controls so you need only to press the left-hand activator button and then any control function button on the right hand in order to bring you into a landing and the resultant loss of lift due to the wings shutting down. Normally shut down would be a separate function from landing. It takes longer that way but allows you greater control. It’s a bit important not to get the sequence out of order or you could fold the wings while in flight. That might not be so good for your health. You don’t need to worry about that for this test flight though.”

He got his desired snort of displeasure at the ‘not so good for my health’ quip and smiled at me before going back to his laptop.

“This will be a deploy to operational position, lift to several meters, and then hover. It should refuse to allow you to move in any direction more than just a little even if you lean heavily in one direction or another. The flight system will continue to hover until you press the buttons or until I tell it to bring you back down. Try leaning heavily in any direction so you can feel the effort of the flight system preventing the longitudinal motion. That will begin to give your mind the practice at understanding the mechanics of carrying small items. If you have ever tried to change the orientation of a gyroscope then you’ll recognize the feel of it.

Carrying things will upset your balance so the flight system will use more energy during the period it takes for it to determine how the change of balance can be handled. For this demonstration, your leaning one way or another will be much the same thing. The system will sense that change in your lean and normally would either slowly or quickly begin to move you in that direction while still hovering. For now, if the lean causes you to begin to drift, the program will fight it and return you to the location from which you lifted and first began to hover. Any questions?”

When I didn’t immediately say anything he began another of his now famous count downs.

“Ready? Three, two, one....”

Again the wings shifted and again I was lifted as they flapped. This time they took me up about five meters which wasn’t nearly as high as I had gone during my near parabolic flights. I was again struggling to maintain my upright balance. True to his explanation I drifted a little as I tried to remain upright, but I basically continued to hover with the center of my location moving a meter or two before drifting back toward my original location again. This was difficult, not as bad as I had thought it would be, but.... wow, I was flying. Like a bird, or at least something similar. I could feel myself bobbing up and down very slightly as the wings flapped. I’m not certain just how far I dropped each time before I rose back up with the next set of flaps. It wasn’t as far as I’d seen birds drop, proportionally that is, with eight wings rather than two the effect was minimized a great deal even though four of those eight were more for stabilization and direction control than lift. This was amazing. It was exciting.... exhilarating. God. I was actually FLYING.

If God had wanted us to fly he would have given us wings. Well, He just did. Yes, even though it was through the actions of some inventor, I had wings and I could fly. I don’t know just how long I stayed up there. It seemed like it was only seconds but it was long enough for me to know I was hooked. I prepared myself for landing then pressed the buttons as I began to lean upright again so I could land on my feet. When I touched down the impact was no more than if I had jumped off a chair to the ground. The wings moved into their non-flight positions almost immediately which caused me a few more balancing difficulties compounding that of the landing itself but I remained upright and was more than ready to do it all again. At least these past few days I had begun wearing sneakers rather than heels. I had learned that I would be barefoot for some of the flight scenes. His caution about the cold during flight had me concerned since the flight suit didn’t cover my feet.

When Adam finally called a halt he explained, “You were up there for nearly two minutes before you landed. It’s after six so you best call for your ride and go home. We can do this again tomorrow.”

“When? Is eight too early? Which studio is this? I had to direct the driver here this morning since I didn’t know the studio number.”

He smiled at me again, “No. Eight is fine with me. This hanger has the designation of studio 14, although none of the show will be shot here as I understand it. Most of the shooting will be done elsewhere with some of it on location.”

“Could I make that flight just one more time before we call it a day?”

He laughed, “Okay. Once more.”

When the flight was over, I was sorry to see the vest unfastened to be returned to the manikin. I could have happily worn those wings home. One little problem though.... I might have found it a bit difficult to sleep while wearing them – or riding in the car. Well, guess I would just have to fly home and back in the morning. Suddenly I had a favorite new toy, well.... I guess the ‘beast’, my computer at home, was still my favorite but these now held a close second.

Soon I was into one of the offices where I placed my call and I was promised a limo within fifteen minutes. I’ve got to admit, once the high muckety mucks made a decision at this place they went all out in nothing flat. True to the promise made by the limo gods, my ride was here in less than fifteen minutes and I was on my way out the studio gates headed for home in less than ten. Twenty minutes later I was exiting the car having made arrangements for a pickup around seven thirty. They couldn’t promise an exact time since they had so many pickups early in the morning and some of them went so far as fifty, sixty and even a hundred or so kilometers out of the area so that particular limo and driver would effectively be out of service for several hours if not all day. Especially if they had to wait for the person they taxied around.

I told them, “It’s okay if your driver is a bit late or even if he is as much as fifteen minutes early. I’ll try to fit into your schedules.”

When we arrived at my apartment building, some of the neighbors were watching the limo to see who got out. I don’t think they recognized me but they did recognize the female they saw as being someone who had been around the area off and on recently. Temporary entertainment over, they retired back to whatever they were doing before I so rudely interrupted them. Entering the apartment building I went upstairs to my place where I found Candy still in the process of practicing her lines for tomorrow.

“About time you showed up. What kept you?”

“Wow, where to begin?” I finally opted to begin with the end of the simulator training and carried on from there.

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