Chapter 5: Buy, Build, Fall, fly

It’s only when gravity starts to take over you begin to think about your body. David Soul

A clear sky, its screaming makes a wingsuit thing that will most likely kill me because of my ineptitude in producing items. Fun, as we know I have a plan for my first project in this almost dystopia I apparently live in. The first goal of the day, message my boss I quit. That was easy, second plan breakfast. The best plan. I make an omelet French style with smoked apple cheese, spring onions, and a small amount of lemongrass, paprika you know to spice it up.

Now on to the meat of the day, with a new source of income I go shopping, first ordering things you cant buy in stores generally. I go shopping, even hire a moving van. Shelling out over £20000 on materials and advanced equipment. You know what they say you need to spend money to make money. Worst case scenario I still have a house fund ready in case of an emergency.

With the materials at hand I call my brother over, we need to set the lab up my basement is spacious but with all this stuff it's looking a little cramped, thankfully I have a vent on my basement I set up an interchangeable fume hood so it can be used with both the kiln and lab experiments. Safety first, probably should have started with safety equipment, whatever a parachute is fine for now.

Speaking with Connor we discuss the design plan and how to implement, my little bit of crazy and moderate intelligence combined with his work man's mind and hands produced a rather comprehensive plan.

We plan to select 2 gram and 1 gram crystals for different parts of the body. Each crystal will be encased in a small metal capsule, we bought some sturdy lockets which will be braced to the body along a thin metal skeleton to hold them in place, wouldn’t want them slipping off, because you will fall to your death. Not fun right. We planned to have a fail-safe one encased in the lead like the break in case of emergency thing but that’s a plan for the future we want a functional prototype first. That will be our baseline to improve, enhance, remodel, and any other plans. So we create a thin metal skeleton with joints lining up to the human body, divided in half 1 for the lower body and one for the upper torso. We planned the feet to be the majority weight for the entire body for controlled descent so they don’t just float away, instead of float down slowly. The crystals are attached to the skeleton strongly. 1 gram split from 20cm of the human body for limbs and 2 gram crystals for the torso and head. Plus not it looks like they a tiara, the bad news was male. In hindsight, we should have gotten long-range tools its hard to use your hands when working with materials that change gravity, your arm suddenly becoming weightless takes some getting used to.

After it finished it looked terrible, so we remade it optimizing it better this time, not much better but not terrible. Now we test it the fun part, Connor immediately jumps at a chance, I'm starting to take his six-year-old dream to fly to space realistically. He is tied with a rope and has the parachute on his back. We go to a foresty area. Open mostly but enough cover for what we need. He starts jumping around and we realize we need more weight he's flying like a hawk, then rebounds back from the rope. He fell on his ass very heavily. A small adjustment, we have the bottom grams on the leg on a movable case for adjustments of weight I knew this problem was a big risk.

After adjustment it was much better, stable, consistent, it didn’t fall apart. Most likely because the skeleton only has to worry about the joints being overused, gravity is not pulling it apart. Next step wings, we think we should start simple so we make some wooden wings using a type of fabric that doesn’t let air pass through it, they are small like paddles attached to the forearms. Is he a wyvern now? He's a wyvern now! But yes they work amazingly. We both practice until a good 4 pm. The sun has sunken down with a blue glow. Spotting of clouds, best chance for a test flight. We spend an hour making it look good, paint, decorations, feathers on the wings. Bulk up the skeleton with decorative metal plates. Test flight time. With parachute in hand, I take up the wings. He had his fun he can have more fun later but I want to catch up to that house that was slowly passing yesterday, I wear a mask to hide my identity, with a small backpack of equipment like rope, string, a knife the general. I see the house, it's by the horizon. Just in time. I want the massive crystal it must have to float like that. Flying inside I see a horror show of floating objects and terrifying amounts of blood dried onto the walls. I don’t want to know. I fly around searching for the house, no people. I'm grateful for that its traumatizing as is but I can't give up. I find the rock lodged in a sofa, it's massive absolutely massive, boulder-sized it will be a good haul but if I take it out this house will fall out the sky. I first search for the house for valuables. I find a safe, not a large one but I put it in my backpack. Collecting jewelry and small valuable objects. Il return it if I find the original owner but with this blood, I haven’t got my hopes up.

Okay, I have a plan but it's crazy, first I wait until the house is not over a populated area. Not hard it's over a farm field right now. I grab the rock and very slowly move it to the edge of the house. It's tied with a rope, as I move to the edge the house starts to sink slowly, perfect. As I step out of the house, I realize I made a massive mistake. This rock follows gravity, what would happen if I tied it to my self and left the house which was holding it in the air. Your right I would fall. Quickly pulling my parachute I watch as the house falls with me hitting the ground with a dust cloud looking like a nuclear explosive. I pulled my parachute in time but I hit the ground hard. Bruised and battered I carry the damned stone home. Broke a wing in the fall got to fix that. Il put it on the list of things that need improving. More durable wings. Getting home I toss the heavy as hell rock at my brother then take the flight suit off. With his van, we get home depositing the loot in the cave on the way home. We have to transport this material to a fine art. Since it was so damn heavy it held the van in place. Miracle the house didn’t crash and burn but I assume it had upwards momentum from the original impact.

I go bed, checking my email, no emails from the other 2 researchers. I feel really bad about that field. Il makes sure to anonymously donate some money to the farmer. Googling who owns the field I email him, sorry, and a £5000 tip. I see now why they always use email in moves, it is so much easier than adding people on social media and a little bit safer. I appreciate my brother not asking about my haul but I'm going to have to break into the safe and he's my best bet. While in bed I sketch out plans for improvements. First I sketch out design ideas, this suit needs improving massively, the ability to fly is intoxicating and tempting but it's dangerous. I wouldn’t have taken that risk if it was not time-sensitive. Plan one, reinforce the skeleton, plan 2 a way to control the gravity effect, I bought some tungsten I should test out its ability to stop gravity as it has similar insulating properties to lead except safer as far as I know. Number 3 always, always! Have a parachute. If I didn’t have one I would have more then a bump on the butt but a broken pelvis. Otherwise another way of avoiding a fall like that.

After that, I want to make ironman, not the actual technological marvel in the movies but an actual armored suit. Normally it would be unrealistic but with a lack of gravity, it gives the capacity to become a flying tank. Combined with some thrusters I want to install it would be a great new suit. Remind me to book a blacksmithing and workmen class to improve my skills. In fact, il email some companies tonight and see if I can build some basic hands-on skills for both me and Connor.

I turn on the news before I go to sleep. “Sightings of a flying bird-man, £100 for information on this mysterious flying person”. Shit that was quick. Followed by a video of me, the house, and me falling from the sky like a stone in a pond. Luckily I had my face covered. Iron man, I need an iron man suit, preferably strong enough to ignore high caliber bullets. Don’t have the money right now but I will. Or if I created an on-off antigravity rock like a massive one on my chest which I could control I could create massive zones of antigravity to stop guns somewhat and make an escape. It would also be the weight I need partially to not float away. It would be nice if I could control the weight, modulate it somehow. Well, time for bed I won't have a quiet day for a while if I'm planning on such a massive project as dangerous as it is. Good night crazy ideas don’t get me killed.