Pillar to the Sky Read online

  Franklin was nearly twenty years older than they were but seemed ten years younger, his dark features framed by a neatly trimmed gray beard and gray hair. He stood tall and erect, features alight with a welcoming grin. He extended his hand to grasp Eva’s and then Gary’s, all but pulling them into his plane.

  “Are you really Franklin Smith?”

  Gary turned to see his daughter looking up at Smith’s towering frame, wide-eyed, as if gazing at some film star.

  “Last time I looked in the mirror, young lady, I was,” he said with a chuckle.

  “This is so cool!” she cried, and Franklin grinned with delight.

  Gary could feel himself swelling with pride as his daughter, now blushing over her outburst, took Franklin’s welcoming hand. She truly was a “nerd” and he adored her for it.

  “I just read your article on disruptive technologies and marketplace investing as affected by that thesis,” she said. “It was dead-on, sir.”

  “I think I sense an internship here,” Franklin said, smiling. “Maybe next summer, young lady. I understand you start at Purdue, the same as your dad, in a few weeks.”

  Now she was truly blushing and could only nod.

  “Consider it a firm offer, Victoria. We’ll set it up for you.”

  She was speechless for once.

  “If your parents are going to be helping me with a little idea I’ve been kicking around, it is the least I can do for them and you as a thank-you. Besides, I see something of me when I was sixteen in you as well.

  “And might I add my compliments in standing up to that bully of a senator, always have wanted to see him put in his place.”

  “You saw that?” Victoria asked, a bit embarrassed.

  Franklin chuckled.

  “The blogger that filmed it, let’s just say he works with me,” Franklin grinned.

  He gestured for the four to board the plane, pointing out where they were to sit and buckle in.

  “Time for a little fun,” he announced. “Once we clear D.C. airspace, I love flying this bird of mine. Five hours to Seattle—plenty of time for us to talk, if you don’t mind hanging around the cockpit while I copilot. Captain McMullen there won’t let me take his seat, though. I’m still working on my hours to qualify for the left seat of this plane.”

  He nodded to the captain of the plane, who grinned and shook his head.

  “Sorry, sir, that’s my job, or do you want to take it from me?” Danny had a decidedly Georgia accent and a warm, friendly grin. “Anyhow, the FAA would have my hide if I ever let you take the left seat.”

  The copilot didn’t say a word, just looked up at Franklin with a nervous smile, obviously not pleased that he wasn’t logging the seat time.

  “Well, at least the copilot can go sleep while I have some fun. And I promise I won’t try any rolls or loops this time.

  McMullen looked at him sharply and Gary wondered if this remarkable man had actually tried to pull such a stunt. He felt it was better not to ask.

  Minutes later they were safely buckled in, Victoria about ready to explode with excitement, Franklin punching in a loudspeaker switch so she could monitor air traffic control and hear that they were number one for takeoff, the sixteen-year-old exclaiming how, once at Purdue, parents’ objections or not, she was getting her pilot’s license.

  As they climbed out of D.C. airspace, Gary sat back, looking out the window, the city disappearing beneath a shroud of low-hanging clouds. Smith got up to act as host. Erich, half curled up on the wide seat aft, which could be converted into a bed, was fast asleep. Eva gratefully accepted a glass of wine, Gary ignored her sharp look when he accepted a Scotch, which Franklin mixed with plenty of soda, and Victoria dived into the offering of sandwiches, a soda, and munchies. Franklin poured a sparkling water for himself and maneuvered two of the seats to face aft, where Eva and Victoria were sitting, motioning for Gary to sit beside him, folding down a table, and pulling out iPads for each of them from a storage cabin.

  “I’ve taken the liberty of loading some things into the iPads,” Franklin announced. Victoria began to open her carry-on bag to get hers out but Franklin shook his head.

  “This is the latest model with a few extras added in by friends with that company,” he said, and Victoria’s eyes went wide as she hit settings and saw the extra gigs of power and features.

  “Take it with you when you start at Purdue,” he added. “It will blow everyone there away.”

  “You mean you’re giving this to me?” she asked, gaping at him.

  Franklin chuckled and Gary immediately started to feel a deep bond with this man. The laugh was rich, deep, taking delight in their tech-head daughter. He was obviously a man who enjoyed such things for the pleasure they brought to others, and not to show off his wealth, or as some subtle bribe upon opening their conversation. He spent a few minutes more chatting with Victoria, explaining the new flash drive chips that quadrupled the power of the device over the current commercial model, and then, in a serious tone, he cautioned her, for heaven’s sake, not to lose it or let it be stolen, because the machine she held was still a year away from public release, and more than one competitor would pay a bundle to get their hands on it and take it apart.

  “Perhaps we should leave it at home when you go to school, dear,” Eva offered, and Victoria reluctantly began to nod in agreement as Franklin laughed again.

  “If I didn’t trust her, I wouldn’t have given it to her,” he said, and then winked. “And besides, it has a built-in destruct: if you get your password wrong three times in a row, the insides will cook off.”

  He settled back in his seat, and Gary looked at his iPad a bit nervously, noticing that one of the app icons was titled “Pillar to the Sky.” He touched it and then sat in silent wonder as a video without narration began to play. Franklin touched the same button on his pad and a screen on the bulkhead flashed to life and began to play the same high-res video, in which computer-generated people boarded what looked like a high-speed train car, similar to the new French five-hundred-kilometer-per-hour rail coaches, and began securing their four-point belts and shoulder straps. The view shifted for a moment back to outside as the car began to accelerate like a maglev, switching onto a track that began to curve upward, ever upward. Then there was a view out the forward window of the car as it whisked through a terminal-like building that looked hauntingly like a Gothic cathedral. The angle of the car tilted higher and higher until it burst through an opening in the roof, and Gary could not help but gasp with delight.

  The image shifted and swayed a bit, as if the car were transferring from one track to another, and then the view went straight up a wide pillar several dozen meters across, while to their right a car was coming down a parallel track, silently decelerated as it passed, then disappeared into the terminal, which was now half a kilometer or so behind the ascending car. The view shifted forward again. They were climbing straight up, clouds above, climbing on the side of the “pillar” that cut arrow-like through the billowing cumuli above. A few seconds later they were into the clouds, all going gray for several seconds, a dramatic flash of lightning off to their left, and then bursting through the clouds. It was twilight, the sun setting to the left, the landscape to either side and the tops of clouds brilliant with reflected light, while straight above, the sky was shifting to blue and then dark indigo.

  It was a computer-generated vision of his dreams. He looked over at Eva and saw tears glistening in her eyes. Victoria had laid down her pad and sat in silence, watching the large video screen. The view shifted as if a passenger were looking out the window and the curvature of the earth was now noticeable, the glow of the atmosphere on the horizon giving way to a deeper indigo. The view shifted forward again, and then the screen was filled with a sea of stars beyond that pillar, which continued on straight up, ever upward, with no end in sight.

  The heavens above, a sea of stars, a full moon off to the right. But it was the stars that held Gary’s vision and dreams, and he,
too, had tears in his eyes as if he were actually aboard that “car,” riding his dream to the heavens.

  The video suddenly came to an end.

  “With your help we are going to build that,” Franklin said, and his voice was actually touched with emotion. Gary turned away from the video screen and saw that Franklin was indeed filled with emotion. He chuckled a bit self-consciously.

  “Some of my IT guys put that together for me—promotion video when the time is right. A lot still to be added. Stopping at what they call ‘Five Hundred Mile Station,’ a tourist destination. Some really cool views from five hundred miles up that only astronauts had before. Then a stop at what they are calling ‘Geriatric One,’ at the 12,000-mile mark. Some interesting thoughts there about medical benefits of low gravity for the mobility impaired. Then on up to the top at geosynch orbit. They promise it will go viral when we use it for selling the program.”

  He looked to Eva, then Gary, and again gave that infectious laugh.

  “If it wouldn’t embarrass you later, I wish I had this cabin rigged for taking video. Your expressions right now are priceless.”

  He paused.

  “Well, actually I do have it rigged, but that is rather against the law if folks are filmed unaware … No, there are no hidden audio and such. I know some others in my position and in government who do that, but I hope you trust me on that.”

  “Trust him.”

  It was Erich, who apparently had woken up at some point.

  “I hate take offs,” Erich grumbled. “Bad memories of the time we wound up ditching in the North Sea. Then again, lucky we did: the Krauts were waiting for us where we were supposed to drop, and the other two teams were wiped out.”

  He shrugged, forcing a smile: it was a story that Gary had never heard about his war experiences, which he would try to prod out of him some day.

  “Ah, my friend, the usual?” Franklin asked, and Erich nodded, coming up to sit across the aisle from them, refusing Victoria’s offer of her seat and accepting the double Scotch handed to him by Franklin.

  Franklin sat back down, pausing to look at the video image, the sea of stars bisected by the tower that rose into infinity.

  “How do we do that?” Gary asked, staring at the screen filled with stars. “You saw the massacre we endured today at the Senate hearings. It is over with, at least in our lifetimes.”

  “That? Just a speed bump. NASA though a government agency—and dare I say the best of them all, along with our military who keep us free—does have friends in the private sector. Patriots, though that word sounds old-fashioned to some, who believe in dreams bigger than the narrow minds of a few who get elected for a few terms and then disappear without a trace in our history books. I have friends in a dozen different companies who kept projects alive when government funding was not there because they believed it was best for our country to keep those projects alive. So, my friends, just say I am one of those who still believe.”

  “And you are suggesting…?” Eva asked.

  “If the government won’t start building it, we will, and then there will be a day when Congress catches on to the idea and NASA gets the funding it truly deserves. Then together we finish it.”

  He paused.

  “Actually it was obvious years ago, in spite of the touch of optimism when they did some testing on lift vehicles out at White Sands. You might not have noticed me then, but I was there to observe the testing. But I knew a space elevator seemed so far-fetched to too many, and that is when I became, shall we say, very interested. Early on, I learned to look into ideas that others thought impossible.”

  “Like cracking MIT’s computers to change grades?” Erich asked with a chuckle.

  “Only illegal thing I’ve ever done,” Franklin replied with a smile. “At least, so far.

  “And thus our conversation now as to the next step we can take together.”

  He said it so matter-of-factly, as if it was already an assumed reality, that Gary just sat there, silent and wide-eyed. Six hours ago he had been calculating how much he and Eva would get in pensions, and at least, thank God, Victoria was on a scholarship. But now this?

  “Sir, I do find this a bit unbelievable,” Eva interjected, always the pragmatist. “You are saying you want to build the Tower. How?”

  “Oh, the usual way,” Franklin replied. “Draw up the plans, get the money, hire somewhere around 20,000 workers, and start laying bricks.”

  “Bricks?” Victoria blurted. “We need nanotube carbon, by the thousands of miles.”

  He laughed his infectious laugh.

  “When I was a boy and the preacher first read the Tower of Babel story to us in Sunday school, I was actually rather ticked off. I told him it was lousy engineering, and after it collapsed, someone doing the investigation as to what went wrong got paid off to blame God.”

  He smiled at his own joke.

  “I got spanked by my father for being disrespectful to the preacher over that one. Though later I remember the preacher over at our house and overhearing him talking with my parents to encourage me to question and do something unheard-of in my world at that time: go to college.

  “When I was growing up, we didn’t have Erector sets or stuff like that for us to play around with, even in school. So as a child I used to act out Bible stories in our yard, building hanging gardens, pyramids, and, yup, a few towers out of mud and cast-off bits of bricks.”

  “You didn’t even have Legos in school at least?” Victoria asked innocently.

  Franklin smiled but didn’t say anything.

  “You grew up in the South, didn’t you, sir?” Gary asked.

  “From now on it’s ‘Franklin,’ though I prefer ‘Frank’ with my friends,” he replied. “And I hope ‘Gary’ is OK with you.”

  “Victoria,” Eva said, looking at her daughter, “Mr. Smith grew up when schools were segregated.”

  Victoria looked at him and blushed a bit.

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Sorry I grew up in a segregated world?” he asked.

  “Well, I meant about how stupid my question was.”

  “There is never a stupid question, young lady, when it comes from a heart that wants to learn. As to my school, I didn’t know any different; you don’t when everyone is just like you and you don’t see how the other half lives. But I was blessed with teachers who loved us; a school librarian who urged me to study math; a preacher who encouraged me but also taught me that I was part of a far bigger world and had a responsibility to that world; a kindly old man, a refugee to America, who would fish through his bins of discarded electronic parts at his store, explain what they were, their function and how I could put them together into something useful … I actually built a television for my family when I was in tenth grade—first one we had.”

  He sighed as if looking off to a distant memory.

  “And now? Well, let’s just say I was blessed with loving parents, same as you, and a country where I could fulfill my dreams after all. So there is nothing to be sorry about.”

  He reached over and patted her reassuringly on the shoulder.

  “Anytime you want to learn more about what it was like growing up then, you just ask. I am proud of where I came from … and where we are going.”

  “You’ve said ‘we’ several times now,” Eva interjected.

  “Oh, we’ll get to contracts and all that at some point.”

  “Ask for a million apiece for starters plus some royalties—gross, not net profits,” Erich grumbled. “Hell, he can afford it!”

  “Are you their agent?” Franklin asked in mock horror. “God save me from patent lawyers and agents.”

  “Better than that: I’m their mentor.”

  Eva smiled at that, and reached across the aisle to squeeze Erich’s hand.

  “I will not discuss what my retainer in all of this is,” he said with a smile.

  “I am certain we’ll come to a satisfactory arrangement before we finish this leg of the journe
y,” Franklin replied, nonplussed by Erich. “So, let’s talk a little business first, then I’m up to the cockpit to do some flying, if I can drag the copilot out of his seat. Victoria, there is a jump seat up forward. I suspect you’d get a kick out of giving me a hand.”

  She grinned with delight, nodding eagerly. Gary said nothing, and Eva just looked straight ahead. In spite of their dreams of where they hoped to one day go—the riskiest venture in the history of aviation and space exploration—both were less than enthusiastic about their daughter’s obsession with learning to fly. Several years back, the young son of one of their friends had “augered in” while still a student pilot, trying to show off over his girlfriend’s house by attempting an aileron roll.

  “While we’re up front having fun, you two will find the usual contracts, nondisclosure forms, W-4s, incorporation papers; it’s several hundred pages’ worth on your iPads,” Franklin continued. “You can go over them at your leisure. If you should desire, you can be referred to several lawyers in Seattle who are contract experts to go over the paperwork, though I hope that, as is, it meets with your satisfaction. We got plenty of time later to talk details, and, yes, I know Erich will act as your agent.”

  “Without charging them the usual agency fee, I might add,” Erich muttered, drifting back into sleep as the double Scotch took effect.

  “But for now, let me give you what we used to call in ancient times ‘the CliffsNotes version.’”

  Gary laughed at that, though Victoria and even Eva seemed a bit confused.

  “Back in the old days,” Gary explained to them, “when we used to listen to music from black disks that spun around on what was called a turntable and televisions came with rabbit ears sticking out of them, the way to get around your English and history course readings was to buy something called CliffsNotes. All the works of Shakespeare explained in thirty pages. Plato and all those other Greek guys in thirty pages. Stuff like that. Problem was, the professors read them as well.”