Aurora's Night

That night in the bar was THE night. It stayed with me. We were having a lad's night. The usual stuff.A load of Buds, shooting pool, eating burgers, listening to Rock n Roll and dancing with girls. I was 23 years old. A graduate from MIT and Caltech. I got a job at Lockheed's Skunk Works₁. They made them all: U-2, SR-71, F-104, C-130 and a few secret ones. All were cool. In-between pool, beer, burgers, gals and my mates, I made a paper plane. I was bored! It flew over the bar for sixty feet. My mate watched it.

"Hey bro.You should enter that paper plane competition. It's next week. There's free beer. Be warned though. Some teams there take it very seriously."

I drank my beer and thought. Why not? It's about planes and there's free beer. Cool. I could even win!

"Why not? It sounds fun. I love a good competition..."

***

The week later, I entered the comp and won! Can you believe it? Me, the winner with my small paper plane. The more experienced 'teams' weren't impressed! Did they know I was a 'Skunk'? Working for Kelly Johnson's world famous Skunk Works. I bet they did.

***

One week after that, I was called into the boss' office. Why? Had I screwed up my job? Had a jet crashed? No, I'm too good. Why then? Did I talk when pissed when I was in bed with Sally? The hot bar girl I met. You should have seen her legs. Went on forever! No. The boss read me like a plane book!

"Relax son. I've a job for you, if you want it. You know how we work here. Hush hush. I heard about your paper plane win. Well done. Listen... build us a plane. The coolest plane ever built. You up for it?"

I nodded.

"Build us a Blackbird replacement. She needs replacing."

"Wow!" I exclaimed. "I'll do it."

"It needs to be twice as fast, fly twice as far unrefueled and twenty five percent higher. We've got a new engine design team. They're good. They made an engine. We call it the 'Donut'. You'll see why when we test it. It's new..."

I drank my coffee that my boss' secretary gave me. It was good. You should try it. I looked at the desktop plane models of his: U-2, SR-71, F-104, C-130 and the other secret ones. Wow! Wish I could tell my mum. She's gone. A nasty bout of cancer last year. Things aren't the same now...

"Glad you're on the team."

"Yes, thanks." My plane will be cool. And stealthy, that's the new buzzword round here. Invisible to radar. But she won't 'exist' in the real world. How sad. No civilians will ever see her, love her, wanna fly her. Only her pilots. We don't exist here. We are ghosts. My boss told me this, again and again. I nodded.

He stated, "Call her 'Aurora.'"

I nodded again and said the word, "Aurora.A pretty name."

"Yes, it is. Design me the plane. We have the engine. It's Pulse Detonation. Uses methane.Same things that cows make. It must also look cool. The coolest plane ever built. Like our Blackbird."

"Cows?Methane? All right... I've just the design..." And I had. You know which one.

Three Years Later

The Aurora plane designer, called Grant, died aged twenty six. He was still a kid. Cancer murdered him, like it did his mum. He never smoked and ran two miles a day in the cool desert mornings. He died three weeks before his plane, the Aurora, first flew. But before this, when he saw her in the hangar as he was cared for by hot two nurses while in his wheelchair, he cried and said she was an angel. When she flies by at Mach 7 and 125,000 feet altitude, she will be and touch heaven. And Grant will be there, looking down with his mum at his plane. And he'll say, There goes my bird.My beautiful Aurora. I designed her...

_{1 Skunk Works is Trade Mark of Lockheed Martin Corporation}