A World Above
Chapter One: Flicker Powder
The RAS Titanic was the largest airship of her time. Commissioned into service in 1890, the ship had had but one mission: give the common vacationer an adventure.
"The Royal Airship Division has announced that plans for a new, faster, bigger ship are to be laid in a few days you know. I bet your father is working on that design right now little Ms. Bell." The burly man behind the counter often called her by her father's name, Bell. He was Joseph Bell, the single most decorated and prestigious engineer in all of England. He had pioneered years before, the field of advanced optic and sensory illumination; that was, lighting. He had won several scientific awards for his many breakthroughs but none was as important as his discovery of the most efficient and abundant source of light that could be harnessed into the little glass bulbs named after Bell himself.
"This energy is to be the most widely used in all of England! Perhaps even in all of Europe!" Her father had exclaimed at its discovery. He was almost right; it was the second most widely used energy supply, second only to steam. Since it was nothing that anyone had ever come into contact with, except for a few random encounters here and there scattered across time, no one knew what to call it. Some people tried to name it after Bell and chose the name Belluminium or Bellumose. Mr. Bell was in no such state to have his name forever immortalized in a discovery so important. He would accept every credit for his creation of the glass sphere which held the little particles of light, but not for the discovery of said particles. He believed that energy was universal and should thus have a name that did not boast affiliation with any such scientist or company. Energy was energy and was not created, only its potential discovered. In the end, he did get to name the element but after the great laborious task of choosing which name to don on the element. He chose the name that his daughter, Mary Bell, had first called it when she saw it; Flicker Powder.
Flicker Powder was a translucent substance that was found in layers of rock under bedrock. It was fairly easily mined and separated from the rock around it as one might mine a vein of iron ore. In nature, it was a rock and not a powder that had the consistency of gold. People first began to mine it because it resembled gold but once it was found not to actually be gold, people dismissed it as worthless. That is, everyone except Joseph Bell.
The first thing Mr. Bell noticed about the rock was that it gave off the same consistency and light color as a candle or a fire did. One gram of this luminous rock gave off the same light consistency as one lit match and did not lose its vitality for a month. It was safe to touch and probably even safe to eat should one be interested in eating luminous rocks. The rock was even softer than gold so it was easy to shape and cut. Mr. Bell had not been the first person to see this then unnamed rock as a possible sort of light but he was the first to ground the rock into powder. The idea occurred to him while in a tea shop meeting a friend for afternoon tea. Two women were sitting next to him discussing an article in that morning's Herald edition. It was a fashion piece, even though those articles rarely made it into the Herald. The glowing rock was common knowledge by this time, late in the 1870s, and people were starting to put hunks of it in their houses. The particular article happened to be about this stone.
One woman had commented to the other that mounting "heaping hunks of rock" onto one's walls in one's home was a terribly awful way to light the place. The second fully agreed and wished that some scientist somewhere would come up with a better way to use the rocks that was much more stylish and fashionable. At that instant, the waiter asked Mr. Bell if he would like sugar or milk in his tea. He watched as the waiter put two cubes of sugar into the transparent glass cup and the cubes dissolved. Vaguely he thought of how he disliked the dissolved sugar lining the bottom of the cup so that the last sip was always too sweet. Then, an idea struck him. What if he were to coat a transparent surface with a crushed up form of the glowing rock? A transparent surface such as glass could be shaped and blown to any size or figure. How was he to coat the glass though? What was the material like as a powder? Would it naturally stick to substances or would there need to be an adhesive? How was he to even crush the rock? Such thoughts filled his mind and, one by one, over the next two years each thought was sorted out and solved.
In 1879, Joseph Bell was named the winner of that year's Scientific Breakthrough Award for his Flicker Powder. He soon became a household name with his invention. He was so popular that when the Royal Airship Division began a project so large, that needed the most up to date equipment, they went to Joseph Bell first for their plans for lighting. Of course these little spheres of light, called jay-bees, didn't last forever. Sooner or later the powder would die out and the jay-bee would have to be replaced. This was the biggest obstacle for the RASD. Carrying tens of thousands of little jay-bees around took up much more room than their desired ship could afford and stopping every month or so to restock their supply and change all of the old jay-bees out with new ones took far too long. So, the RASD hired Joseph Bell to come up with a sequel to the jay-bee that would burn longer than the current ones by about twice as long, burn forever, or have a mechanism to automatically switch out the dead Flicker Powder with new powder (apparently it's easier to store a thousand grams of Powder than a thousand jay-bees).
"Yes sir, I believe my father has been hired by the Division. He is in charge of lighting the entire ship which is said to be larger than even the RAS Olympian." Mary replied to the hearty gentleman who had been set to care for the Bell family while Joseph was away at the Harland and Wolff Royal Air Field. The gentleman's name was Baxter Basil. People often switched his name around to Basil Baxter as that sounded like a more proper English name than Baxter Basil. He claimed that his mother gave him a last name as a first name to spite his father who was Richard Basil II and wanted to name their son Richard Basil III. His mother would have none of it since they were not a royal or noble family and had no use in pretending to be one by the vain naming of her son in his father's lineage. All of that was rubbish of old and so she donned him a last name for a first name.
"Well I'll say! You said larger than the Olympian? How can that be? She was the biggest airship to ever fly in any sky! How can they make a blimp that can sail any farther or any higher?" Baxter exclaimed.
"I don't know," Mary answered innocently, "That's just what father's letter said."
"Well, if Mr. Bell be saying it, it must be true." Baxter resolved contentedly but still awestruck.
Baxter was not a man of great intellect and it was the small things in life that stuck him as beautiful or ponderous. When he was a younger man, Baxter had bought the pub that he now owned off of an older man who always kept a clock running around his neck. That was back in 1852 when steam power had just taken over coal as the best source of energy and clockwork gears were getting comfortable in their time. Baxter had no use for such modern technology and though the pub was full of gear and steam powered gadgets, the old man promised to teach Baxter how to use everything in the pub if he would just buy the building. Feeling the bravado of youth flood his soul as the perfect opportunity to do exactly what he had wanted to do with his life arrived, Baxter agreed wholeheartedly to the man's offer. Within one month Baxter had worked up the money he needed to pay the owner and bought the Gears and Cheers Pub.