Taking Off by Eric Kraft Page A

beach umbrellas, and even window mullions and frames.
    I want to take this opportunity to thank the citizens of Babbington for contributing their scrap to my dream. My heart soared when my friends and acquaintances, and even a few of my enemies, endorsed that dream by donating some of the raw materials that would make it a reality. My call for assistance sparked such a remarkable response, an outpouring of aluminum, that it resembled a movement. Its adherents and workers were zealous, some of them wrenching aluminum from the arthritic hands of their reluctant grandparents, and the most fanatical of them resorting to stealing.
    I will confess to a heady feeling of power when I saw what I had unleashed—followed by a deflating feeling of impotence when I discovered how difficult is the task of leashing a movement once unleashed. Aluminum scrap kept showing up at our house for years. Eventually the flow dropped to a trickle, but the idea that I needed aluminum was still alive in the world even after I had left Babbington for college, and my mother would often finish her letters to me with a postscript laconically listing the recent deliveries, such as: “P. S. two folding chairs and a tray today.”

Chapter 23
    Pinch-a-Penny, the People’s Plane
    ALBERTINE STARTLED ME. I had been lost in thought. (If Mr. MacPherson were here, he would ask me why I use that expression. In this case, I could tell him that I have often marveled at how apt it is as a description of my state when I am thinking in the experimental mode. I begin somewhere, with an idea or a question, and from that starting point I begin to wander. I go where my thoughts take me, and that is why Albertine has decided that I should no longer drive unless she is with me to bring me, when necessary, back from the distant place to which my thoughts have flown into the immediate context through which the car is hurtling. Sometimes she gives me a nudge to bring me back; sometimes she screams.)
    She was looking over my shoulder. I was looking at my computer screen.
    â€œWhat’s that?” she asked.
    â€œIt’s Pinch-a-Penny, the People’s Plane,” I said.
    â€œAh. The People’s Plane.”
    â€œAnyone can fly it. You don’t need a license. It democratizes flight.”
    â€œAnarchizes flight, you mean. Driving is bad enough, but just imagine ‘anyone’ getting into one of these things and whizzing around without training, tutelage, examination, or certification.”
    â€œScary,” I admitted. I pointed to the photograph. “I would like to point out, however, that the frame is made of aluminum tubing.”
    â€œIt looks like a folding table.”
    â€œThere are remarkable similarities between this plane and the one that I built—the resemblance to a folding table being only one of them.”
    â€œDid it really look like this?”
    â€œThe frame did—part of it—but by the time I was finished, I had made many original contributions to the design—”
    â€œImprovements?”
    â€œAdaptations inspired by necessity.”
    â€œNecessity being defined as the demands of aeronautical engineering and fluid dynamics?”
    â€œNecessity being defined by what I had on hand,” I muttered, returning to my study of the Pinch-a-Penny.
    â€œCome on,” she urged, with a nudge of her hip. “Tell me about the People’s Plane.”
    â€œWell, Norton Prysock—”
    â€œNorton Prysock? Who’s he?”
    â€œThe designer of the Pinch-a-Penny.”
    â€œNort to his intimates, no doubt.”
    â€œWell, I certainly wouldn’t doubt it. Nort says here on his website that this plane can be built in about two hundred fifty hours, using only simple hand tools. Anyone can do it, just by following the steps in the construction manual and referring to the detailed plans.”
    â€œâ€˜Anyone,’ says Nort.”
    â€œSays Nort.”
    â€œAn