Fall 1999 - Spring 2000

"Fred. Did you know the idea of the superjumbo came way before the A3XX*? I'm amazed, but it says here that Douglas came up with the concept almost 35 years ago as a possible design for the DC-10." Anne looked up from Destination Disaster, one of the supplementary texts they had that semester for failure analysis class.

"It's so strange, almost like they could predict the future. Look, they even came up with the idea of having stuff like private suites, nurseries and dining rooms in there. It reminds me of that A3XX picture I saw in the newspapers a few years ago - you know, the idea they had of putting shops and lounges and kids' play areas and even bowling alleys in the plan, so people could walk around and keep themselves busy while they were flying. Say, what d'you think it'd have been like if Douglas had been successful in designing the DC-10 as a superjumbo all those years ago? With three engines? Maybe we should do that for our project - what do you think?"

For senior year aircraft design class, they had to come up with a "paper airplane" - a set of specifications, such as calculating the engine size and thrust; the dimensions of the wings and tailfin; the size of the fuselage**; and the interior configuration of the aircraft, arranging seats, galleys and lavatories - to fit one of three possible design concepts. At the end of the class, they'd make a physical paper airplane with the dimensions they'd created, and the course would end off with yet another launch-fest. As with all the projects that they had to do in pairs, Anne and Frederick chose to partner each other, though they weren't fully in agreement about which concept to choose for this one.

"Don't be daft, Anne. There's no way that thing could fly. Can you imagine how huge the engines would have to be? That engine at the rear would eat up your entire tailfin." Frederick flipped the book. Normally he thought most of her ideas were cute, but this one was so way out, and he never minced words, not even with Anne. By now, she was used to that. "And it says here the concept was based on a four-engine aircraft anyway. There's a reason why all the new aircraft have either two or four engines - you know that as well as me. So why waste time re-inventing the wheel when it means we'll end up tanking our project anyway? Besides, I gave you your way about the whole superjumbo thing - if it was all up to me, I'd have chosen to do the supersonic concept. Anything flying below Mach 1 is too boring."

"What's boring is the way all the new aircraft look almost exactly the same," Anne countered. "It's as if nobody had any imagination anymore. I always liked those old trijet designs, like the 727 and the Lockheed TriStar. The way they design aircraft nowadays, it's like the total concept of aesthetics has gone the way of the dinosaur. It's sad. So before I actually go out there and have to work on real aircraft that look like they've been stamped out by a cookie cutter, I want to create an aircraft in the way I'd like to do it. Something with a bit of nostalgia, a bit of art, and a bit of the romance from the days when flying was a novelty. Even if it means doing double work, I don't mind doing two concepts - one your way, with the four engines, which will be everybody else's way anyways; and another one to honor the time when rolling out every new aircraft was like gambling; back when they didn't test and simulate everything till it was foolproof before it rolled out of the hangar and took to the air. And I know you don't have the time for that kind of extra work, so I really don't mind if you don't help me on the second concept. I'll do it on my own."

Doing two designs instead of just one did indeed generate a lot more work, and Anne found herself pulling many all-nighters to work on her DC-10 superjumbo concept while trying to also pull her weight for the A3XX-based one she was jointly doing with Frederick. But even though she'd told Frederick that he didn't need to help out, he ended up helping indirectly. He still didn't agree with the idea; the years of struggling for survival had left him with a hard sense of practicality, so he didn't approve when airy-fairy ideas stood in the way of achieving real-life deliverables. He knew, though, that this was something Anne felt she had to do, so he supported her in whatever way he could. Despite his extra workload from ROTC, he quietly took on more for their other joint assignments to pick up the slack, accompanying Anne on the all-nighters they pulled in her apartment without any complaint.

When the two-course aircraft design series wrapped up at the end of senior year, they had two paper planes: the standard one that, like all of their classmates' designs, converged to roughly the same design as the A3XX, which was at the time still a paper airplane itself anyway; and Anne's redesign of the DC-10 trijet as a superjumbo. To balance off the heavy empennage***, Anne had to add more weight into the front of the aircraft, making the entire plane larger than life. Just like the A3XX, it had two full decks; but the difference was that with all the extra space, she could draw a layout with all kinds of facilities in the lower deck as if the airplane was an ocean liner - with a café, a souvenir shop, a bar, a children's playroom, a karaoke room, and so on. It was technically a stretch, probably a safety hazard if it ever to be built, and definitely not commercially viable. But it showed beyond doubt the closet artist that lived in Anne Elliot the engineer.


In April of senior year, Frederick ran the Boston Marathon. Barely meeting the qualifying time of 3:10 was already a challenge for him, so the idea of breaking further ground was not really on his mind, what with all the other priorities that had consumed him in the run-up to the race. The knowledge that he had already secured his pilot slot and was well on the way to graduation and commissioned as an officer, though, was a load off his mind. With the race of surviving college almost done, he could now afford to be more motivated than he'd originally expected going into this other race.

Anne was there to cheer him on from the sidelines; in fact, Anne's role was much more than to just cheer him on. They'd driven along the course to identify the points where Anne would meet him, and devised a set of hand signs to communicate to him whether he was on track, ahead, or behind his target split times. The idea was that he had to either match, or if he could, improve upon his 3:09 qualifying time.

Frederick crossed the line in 3:05, a new personal best for him. This was the one dream Anne had carried into college without being able to fulfill within the four years there. And for Frederick, the smug satisfaction he got from breaking his own record, though still a major factor, was no match for the consolation he derived from having fulfilled the dream for her, on her behalf.


With graduation coming up, the thought of the time when he would not be able to see Anne every day weighed heavily on Frederick. It wouldn't be long before their life at MIT would become a thing of the past, and he'd have to ship off to a base in Texas to start his pilot training. Determined to self-supporting, Anne had been putting heart and soul into her job search throughout senior year, and she'd finally gotten her big coup also with Boeing. So come summer, Anne would be heading to Everett and Frederick to Texas, and this time around there wouldn't be any more fall semesters to bring them back together by default again.

Though Frederick knew they'd still be staying in touch often and regularly, he yearned for a more binding promise than that to keep them together. For almost four years, Anne had been the closest thing to family he had, and he dreaded going back to the solitary lifestyle he'd had before Anne.

Soon, he'd have to spend one full year in an Air Force dorm with very limited contact with the outside world before being sent to God knows where, and he wanted, needed a piece of Anne with him to tide him through the tough times that he knew lay ahead.

Many times, the idea of proposing marriage to Anne ran through Frederick's head, yet he tried his best to nip it in the bud every time. He knew that fresh out of college, they wouldn't be as stable as they should be; if they married after a few years of working life, with a basic nest egg of savings under their belts, they'd be better placed to weather whatever opposition the Elliot camp might dish out to them. Also, he wasn't sure if Anne was ready at that point; all this time, she had been so thrilled about her job, about starting her aerospace career, that he didn't want to spoil it all for her right now by making her promise herself to a life on base as a pilot's wife, not just yet. It was a constant battle of head versus heart, and in the end, he wasn't sure if he could let the matter drop without at least saying something about it to Anne.


In the end, Frederick settled for dropping a hint. The gift was one of the more extravagant ones he'd given Anne to this point, but he wanted to do something special. He'd gotten Harriet to let him in one day when Anne was slaving away on that DC-10 superjumbo design, and surprised her by sneaking up and hugging her from behind.

"Turn around, baby. I've got something for you."

"What's the occasion?" Anne was perplexed - after all, it wasn't her birthday, or Christmas, or anything special.

"Nothing. I just wanted to get you something to remember me by, before we graduate."

The gold-wrapped box sitting on the dining table was definitely too big to have come from any jeweler's shop. Anyone else would have been perplexed, but Anne knew instinctively what it was; she just didn't know which one it would be.

Frederick grabbed her hands and stopped her before she lunged towards the package. "Not now," he explained. "I want you to open it tonight, when you're alone, in total privacy."

He'd gotten her a collector's model of the Delta Lockheed L-1011 TriStar, the 1:100 scale kind of model that was mounted on a mahogany stand and had landing gear which could actually move. But what really brough the tears to Anne's eyes was the little card enclosed in the box. It read:

Dear Anne,

Ten years down the road, I don't know where this model is going to be. Maybe it'll be sitting on a bookshelf in the living room, and maybe by then, hopefully, I'll be sharing that living room with you. Or maybe it'll be on your desk in your corner office at Boeing. But no matter which way it is, I just wanted to tell you everything that's on my mind, before we start off on our separate ways in the summer.

You know, we've been together for years, and still it took me so much time to figure out which aircraft you like best of all. I know you like the 707 because it flew as Air Force One for over 30 years; you like the 747 classic model because you think it's an icon of the majestic and brave age of early commercial flight; and you like the Ilyushin IL-62 because you think it's a wacky idea for anyone to mount four engines on the tail of an aircraft, but it's exactly the same flavor as the wacky and cute ideas you come up with. But at the end of the day, this is my guess, and I bet I'm probably right.

Your favorite aircraft is the TriStar, because of the way it combines functionality, safety and design in one neat package - it's the kind of aircraft that you would have designed if you had a free hand. It doesn't matter that commercially, the TriStar was no match for the DC-10 - this is an aircraft for purists, and I haven't seen anyone who was more of a purist - not just about aviation, but about life in general - than you. I got it for you in the Delta livery, because of the time you told me about your first ride in the Lockheed TriStar when you were ten, and your father took all of you to Disneyland. I want this to be a symbol of all the nostalgia of your childhood and youth, to carry with you as you grow up, maybe even when we grow old. So you can remember the times when we were young and everything was a new experience, the times when we were together and believed everything was possible.

And last of all, I hope our time together won't end up being put away just like an item of nostalgia, just to be taken out as a happy memory once a year or something like that. I hope our time together won't be over the minute I get on that plane to San Antonio right after commencement. I hope we'll have many more happy days together to come.

I know we don't have any answers now, and I have no idea how we're going to get there. But all I know is that I won't give up hope of getting there when we're ready, and I hope you feel the same way too.

Love, Frederick


Chapter Notes:

Canon Notes - This is my version of "the letter", in a different spot in the narrative from canon obviously.
Also, the riffing they do about their senior project shows how well matched they are intellectually - for in canon, Captain Wentworth says of Benwick and Louisa, "I confess that I do think there is a disparity, too great a disparity, and in a point no less essential than mind."

Aviation Notes - Here's 3 nuggets of information to help with the names and terminology in this chapter:
* The A3XX was the codename given to the concept that is now the Airbus A380, which first flew commercially with Singapore Airlines as the launch customer in 2007. The name "A380" was only given at the official launch of the program in December 2000, whereas at this point, we're in fall 1999, hence the use of the "A3XX" name still.
** The fuselage is the body of the airplane.
*** The empennage is essentially the rear end of the airplane - it consists of the tail fin itself, and also the two horizontal stabilizers at each side of the tail.