I just want to say thank you, to all of the people that reviewed, for putting up with such a long wait for the next instalment. I am however, pleased to announce that I almost have the entire story finished. First, though, before it continues, I need to clear a few things up.
marblez brought to my attention that I haven't really specified whether this story is tv-verse or movie-verse. To clear that up, I'll say that it's both. I'm an avid fan of the tv series, but I also can see good things in the movie that allow Thunderbirds to move forward into our version (not the sixties version) of the twenty-first century. So, here are the things that you will notice right away:
1. The chapter The Winds of Advent takes place in December of 2010. A Hurricane in Barbados takes place in April of 2011. I have heard that the movie takes place in both 2010 and 2020, but based on the technology demonstrated in it, I'd like to think that it's in 2020. We could be pushing it to have a monorail up in London by 2010. If anyone would like to think of it as happening in either 2010, or the tv-verse 2065, that's fine with me, though I think that commercial airlines will be flying on something like ramjets by 2065. The rest of the entries will be dated from now on, so it'll be easier to follow.
2. The age difference between the boys is the same as in the movie. In chapter The Winds of Advent, the ages are approximately (I haven't worked it quite down to the months) as follows: Scott is 14, John is 12, Virgil is 10, Gordon is 8 and Alan is 4. I have, however, kept most other things consistent with the show, which you'll see as the story progresses.
3. There are other little subtle things that I've done, simply to keep the story consistent with the more modern take that I prefer. In the end, however, what I want to do is show the Tracy boys in a light that will make the movie seem more plausible. The age/date differences aside, I think you could view this either as a movie or a tv story. The Tracys are still the Tracys. I won't say anymore – you'll have to wait and see. I do, however, promise that you'll see the boys after the next three chapters. Jeff will pretty much be put to the side for most of the rest of the fic.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own the rights toThunderbirds,or any characters or settings that may be recognizable therein. I'm just a poor college student, so please don't sue.
Homework
September 2012
Development was progressing well on a new product at Tracy Industries. The work crew was just putting the finishing touches on the prototype model of a new stratosphere launch craft, but already the engineering staff was hovering around their latest creation. The white coated men and women glanced approvingly at the silver paint that covered the exterior, then turned most of their attention to the data that was flashing on their hand-held research monitors.
Jeff Tracy watched the entire process from a scaffold high above the work floor. The whole production floor was visible from the office tower, and it gave him a bit of enjoyment to see his products coming together under the hands of capable engineers. It had been a long time since he had truly touched any tools, though the desire to create something new was still burning deep inside of him.
Just as it had been so strongly yesterday morning, when a very odd idea had jumped into his mind and had subsequently refused to go away.
The previous morning for Jeff Tracy had been the product of two very different things. First, he had taken his three youngest sons, Gordon, Virgil and Alan, and had dropped them off at school.
He had watched them from the driver's seat of the family sports car as they had run past the fence of the institute and onto its green grounds. Virgil and Gordon, both a few years into school, had immediately found their friends near the large play apparatus. Alan, however, had hung back for a long while until Jeff finally got out of the vehicle, took him by the hand, and led him into the playground.
Though Alan had, at that point, already been to school for one year, he was still unsure of himself. Jeff almost smiled at the thought, when he considered how Alan behaved at home. He didn't worry about it much. The previous year it had taken Alan a week to adjust, and then he had been a little heathen that had terrorised the school.
The slamming of a steel winch against the factory wall shook Jeff from his reverie. He quickly checked his watch, then convinced himself that he had plenty of time before he had to be at his meeting.
Thoughts of the previous day came drifting back into his mind. Boys will be boys, Jeff thought with a wry smile, smacking a stack of papers that he carried with him against the long metal railing that separated him from the surrounding bay. He had a good feeling that Alan's second day would go better, and that he would soon have his chipper young son back from wherever he had gone to.
He couldn't hold the thought back though, and Jeff wondered if perhaps Alan was scared to leave his father for a very logical reason.
"I'm not going anywhere," he muttered out loud, though the words were lost to the constant noise of whirring machinery. "Don't worry about it, Alan. Daddy's not leaving just yet."
Oddly enough, it had not been Alan that had - the previous day - turned his mind to an even greater issue. It had been a group of children, not friends of his son, but other students of the swank private school playing in a nearby grove of trees, that had given him the idea.
The kids had been running in and out of the trees, chasing each other down whist using skipping ropes like lassos. The game had been entertaining to watch, and Jeff had parked his car near the playground so that he could watch the kids. Eventually they had tired of tag, and they convened in a small group so that Jeff couldn't see what they were doing.
What they did finally do didn't register with Jeff as being anything truly profound. At least at first it didn't.
The kids had picked one kid from the main group and had sent him off behind a tree. Then, without warning, he had sprinted up the tree and had climbed to the very highest limbs. What the original intent of the game was, Jeff had no idea.
The boy had raised a fist in excitement, then, his balance thrown off, had tumbled. His foot had caught in between the tree limbs, and he had been left hanging from his ankle, suspended over ten feet in the air.
The part of Jeff that was a father had panicked, but the part of him that was also a young boy had watched curiously as the kids - still treating it all like a game - ran off to somewhere behind the school. They had returned promptly with a set of rope and a piece of wood that had been a few feet long and a foot across.
One boy, the tallest of the bunch, had tied the rope to the wood and tossed the entire piece over the top of the branch. He then had sat down on the wood, waved his hand, and grinned mischievously as the other kids had hoisted him up with the other end of the rope.
What is this school coming to? Jeff Tracy the father had asked.
What a great idea! Jeff Tracy the kid had shouted. Jeff Tracy, who had once been a young boy himself, living on a corn farm, and who had also done many stupid and dangerous things in his life, could understand where the kids were coming from.
That idea, Jeff had thought in wonderment, shaking his head in amusement at the entire concept, had been crazy. That older boy had been able to get high enough to pull the other kid down without hurting him. And they had pulled it off too, with stuff that was just beside the school in a utility bin.
Stuff, the right stuff, that had been available, that had been handy, that had been there when it had been needed.
Somehow the kids had averted a disaster because the stuff had been right there for them. Of course, Jeff had thought in retrospect, they probably could have avoided it in the first place. But kids didn't think about things like that - they just let events happen and unfold on their own.
And it had been at that moment when his own idea had ran into him rather abruptly.
It had been nearly two years since Lucy had died, and since then something had still been eating at the back of his mind. Though he had given up trying to change the face of a corporate world that didn't want to change, he couldn't accept that fate couldn't be reckoned with.
Over that period, he had in his free time worked out exactly what could have been done to save the life of his wife after the accident had taken place. A big clamp and steel rope, thrown over a beam or something similar, would have done the trick. When the train had jumped there had been a few minutes where it had rocked precariously on the edge of the rail, where someone could have tried to save the passengers –
A few minutes where a rescue could have been attempted.
Except, Jeff thought with a sad smile, that there had been no one with the right equipment in that area of the city. There were clamps and steel cables everywhere, of course, but in no good place to be taken out and used on a moments notice.
The elder Tracy took a deep breath, and glanced down at the papers that he held. They were mostly blank, save for a few lines of text situated near the top margin.
A rope or a steel cable, he thought, ia board or a metal clamp. It's all the same.
The image of the kids playing flashed through his mind again, though it was the box at the side of the school that stood out the most. It was the box where the ropes had been held, waiting to be used for something.
The stuff was there for the kids - it wasn't for me. But it could be.
"It could be possible," Jeff said, his voice subdued. "We can't save everybody, Lucy, but we can sure try. I guess that I had it wrong before." His hands trembled and Jeff worried that he might drop the assignment sheets. "I can't change people; humans just don't work that way. But maybe," he sighed and then continued, "maybe there is something else that I can do."
With a determined glance down at the main floor, Jeff Tracy turned around and headed for the elevator. It was time to take a chance on a crazy idea, and hope that what he was mistaking for insanity was perhaps a small glimmer of brilliance instead.
One by one, the engineers employed by Tracy Industries discovered the slip of paper that was carefully inserted into their mail-box.
One by one, they read the puzzling assignment, labelled humorously by Jeff as 'homework', and set to work on the task that had been set before them.
It was a test, Jeff claimed on the paper, to see how well they could reason through obscure ideas. It was to test their creativity, their knowledge of technology, and - most of all - their ability to do what some might consider crazy.
They had one week, and then the papers had to come back.
One by one, the sheets were returned to the small silver inbox at the end of the management hallway. And all of them, save for one crumpled sheet at the very top that had been thrown in at the very last minute, were mostly blank and unfinished.
It was the wrinkled and coffee splashed sheet that Jeff took delicately in his fingers, glancing briefly at the chicken scratch writing that was mixed with food and who knew what else. He laid it out with great care on his desk, using paper-weights to hold out the curling edges. He sat down on his chair, reached for his coffee, and began to read what he soon realized was the work of a genius.
At the top of the sheet lay a single scenario, written out in purposefully scant detail so as not to give the engineers too many hints:
'There has been a train accident in the mountains. The engine and carriages have come off of the tracks, and an ensuing rockslide has blocked all passage up the main mountain roads. The back carriage is hanging dangerously close to the edge, and in thirty-minutes time it will fall from the cliff, killing all aboard.'
And then, Jeff thought, the line that likely sent most of his workers scrambling for an expresso:
'Using any available technology that you can think of, how would you save these people?'
Most of his engineers had at least attempted the problem.
One had gone into detail about how the rock could be cleared with dynamite, only to later say that the entire process would likely take too long and would likely send tremors through the mountain that would make the carriage tumble anyway.
Another had said how an all-terrain vehicle could be used to traverse the path up to the train, but that somehow the vehicle would have to be carted up to the mountain in the first place.
An impossible scenario, Jeff thought, unless you are willing to think beyond the normal and into the realm of the obscure. He unconsciously reached for the paper with his right hand, and lifted it out from under the weights so that he could hold it closer to his face.
'There are several methods by which the train could be reached' the crumbled paper began 'including dynamite and ATV transport. However, there is a key problem in this scenario: the needed supplies and equipment are not available in an area close to the crash site. Most army transports capable of ferrying the necessary supplies can't move fast enough to reach the mountain in the allocated time - and any plane capable of mach speeds in excess of the distance/time allowed do not have the capabilities to land on or near the mountain.'
The next paragraph nearly split Jeff's face in half with a grin.
'A new and better aircraft could be built that could fly at high speeds in the upper atmosphere, have VTOL capabilities, and a large enough equipment bay to carry the needed supplies. This would require extensive work, but it is entirely possible. This plane would not prevent this disaster, but, if kept on hand, could possibly hinder further accidents in the future. And - possibly - if the plane were already prepared and ready somehow, this entire tragedy could be avoided.'
There it was. The answer that Jeff was looking for.
He let the top of the paper fall gently to his desk, his mind still swimming with the possibilities. There was no doubt that many of his men and women were on the right track with their ideas. They had the method and the means, but they were neglecting to look beyond the obviously tried and tested forms of transport.
They were trying to be practical when he didn't want them to be.
In the corporate world there was no need to have high performance aircraft carting around large stores of goods. It would be expensive, and for the time saved during transportation - a few hours at the most - it would never be worth it. The technology to create new and incredible aircraft was there, but it just was not needed by the government, or the corporate society.
If one looked at the problem in terms of money and profit, it was a futile venture. VTOL craft existed, for sure, but not of the size and scope that the engineer had so bluntly suggested. There were no specs for such a craft, no pre-designed flight circuits, no integrated systems - not to mention no fuel source for something of that size and speed! The entire project would have to be started from scratch.
But, Jeff insisted quietly to himself, I am not in this for profit. I'm not in this for practicality, or for long term commercial use. I'm in this to save the lives of those fictional people on that fictional train.
He had the time, and he surely had the money. But, most of all, he had the motivation - and it was obvious, from the lovingly crafted work that lay before him that another man also shared a similar vision. The page of equations and diagrams beneath the written essay showed that quite plainly.
Without a second thought, Jeff Tracy picked up the receiver of his phone, checked the number listed on the corner of the paper, and dialled. It was time to get started.
That's it for now! I'll have two more shorter chapters up within a few days. :D
R&R, please! I love hearing your thoughts.