Charles Darwin, scientist, naturalist, and creative engineer was around 67 years old, and had continuously been trying to please the society he now lived in for years. Multiple ideas had struck his mind, but have all failed. First it was the robotic microwave, then his own bionic hand, then his own take on the latest and greatest of phones. But every last one of them had failed. The people of his small town in England, around Shrewsbury, Shropshire area, had grown tired and have seemed to be giving up their hope in the shriveled up “engineer”. Never before would he have thought he’d be doing this and have to face the upsetting faces of the people had he once helped. Darwin wasn’t exactly too sure as to what to do with himself. He had grown tired, idealess, and even his closest of friends seemed to be steering away from him. He’d grown moody, restless, and didn’t want to stop until he created something that would strike the public’s eye. But sadly, the world had finally given up on him. No one talked, contacted, or made physical connection with him as he stayed locked up in his lab. He was alone, tired, and felt his loneliness kicking in. He figured a small nap wouldn’t hurt his old fragile mind. So to sleep he went.
Bright and early the next day, Darwin awoke to a blinding light. To his surprise, it was one of his crew members. He got up and confronted the man as he had not seen him in forever.
“Charles! I come bearing wonderful news!” the member said.
The member had been observing the world and had the lightbulb in his head explode with new ideas once he’d experienced the world away from Darwin’s lab.
“The world loves vehicles. They need them! They want them!” he exclaimed.
Darwin was still super confused as to why he was telling him all of this when they haven’t spoken in months.
“How? Why are you here?” Darwin asked. “Look, there are people out there who still believe in you! They have many ideas they think you are more than capable of doing! That’s why I’m here!”
After about an hour of talking, they’ve gone over the ideas of color changeable cars, invisible cars, hovering cars, and self-driving cars. Darwin thought all of the above were ridiculous to even think about.
“No way! None of that can be done with these old, broken tools. I can’t just magically pull new technology out of the sky to make these things!” he exclaimed.
Silence struck the two men for a decent amount of time until the crew member stared at Darwin said, “But what if we can?? I have two words for you. TIME TRAVEL”.
Darwin took a moment to himself. A moment just to laugh. He was so taken aback by this ridiculous answer that he nearly fell to the floor.
“Time travel, HAHA are you kidding me?! That’s absolutely abs–. ” The crew member quickly cut him off. “Think about it! You have the capability to do these things in this lab. You can go into the future to get new tools, you have my help, and you already have that bionic hand over there to assist you in your tough ordeals”.
Darwin was so shaken by the amount of thoughts rolling around in his mind that he couldn’t think straight.
“Look, why don’t we sleep on these ideas, and come back at it again tomorrow. Not like they’re going anywhere anytime soon.” he said. “Sure, I’ll meet you back here first thing tomorrow and get to work. See you bright and early tomorrow morning!” the crew member said as he walked out the door, not giving Darwin a chance to say no.
After lots of configuration and talk about their ideas, they decided to get to work. Darwin had taken the time to watch one of his favorite movies from the twenty-first century, Avengers Endgame, and used their ideas of quantum technology to move in and out of the future to figure out how their idea of flying and hovering cars would be possible. In the movie, Ironman played by Robert Downey Jr. is trying to figure out how to travel back in time to find the important stones to keep Thanos and his “children” from destroying half of the world’s population. In the movie, you see them execute this by having two characters, Hawkeye and Ant man, do a trial and error and the real deal to see if their machine and theorems will work. After watching the movie numerous times, Darwin is determined to do the same as in the movie to show society that he is capable of creating something desired and valuable. At first, they set aside all the metals and materials they gathered from his previous failures. He took parts from his robotic microwave and the cell phones he tried to make and configured them into working and moveable machinery. The key component to all of this is to get the bionic hand up and running again. He spent endless hours, days, weeks, and months trying to correct all the small tweaks in the machine, but nothing seemed to be going right. The crew member realized that the component that was missing was something so small they couldn’t believe that they had missed it.
“How could we miss it? It’s right in front of our eyes!” the member said.
He quickly ran over to the small coffee table set aside by Darwin’s small twin sized bed, took the batteries out of the television remote, and ran back over to Darwin and placed them into the small slot next to the thumb.
“Just a little extra power is all we needed! Test it out!”
Darwin went over to the machine, flipped all the switches and stepped back in disbelief to see that all the lights and bulbs were properly lit up. With just a flip of the switch he’d soon be in the future.
“You ready for this?” said the crew member, readily standing next to the lever to finally transport Darwin into the future. “I’ve been ready” said Darwin as the member pulled down the lever and disappeared Darwin.
In the blink of an eye, Darwin was transported far into the future. He landed in the year 2045. Darwin sat there on a park bench thinking to himself “where the heck am I?”. He looked around just to see fancy shmancy buildings, beautiful newly designed artwork, an array of people ranging from old to young, but no one looked familiar. He got up and walked around for what seemed to be hours, but still no luck with what he was hoping to find. He finally came across a building that seemed familiar, a little too familiar. As he walked inside, he was in instant shock to see that it was his own building that he called home, his lab. In this society, it had been abandoned for years and turned into a restaurant. He closed his eyes to see if he had been dreaming this whole time, but everything was real. He walked around the tables, and heard an unfamiliar voice ask “Do you need help with anything?”. Darwin shook his head no and slowly proceeded to walk away. He made his way into the back, where he should not have been. There were multiple staff members yelling and cursing at him to get out of there, but Darwin stood there, tears in his eyes. His lab was no longer his lab. Restaurant management proceeded to kick him out shortly after so. Darwin, so blinded by the loss of his home, shortly lost vision of why he was there in the first place. Outside he looked around to see multiple car dealers surrounding the restaurant and the many buildings in the area. He walked closer to them to find just the right one. As he approached it, he watched a car take off into the sky. His eye brightened up and he sprinted inside.
“Can anyone here tell me how those cars fly!?” he exclaimed.
A crowd of workers bombarded him and took him in the back to show him what he was looking for. The one mechanic began saying “here we use strategic methods to make our cars. We use–.” He was quickly cut off by another worker.
“My apologies but we don’t reveal our secrets. Try another dealer.”
Darwin had to explain that he was from the past looking for help with creating these said hovering and flying cars. No one in the room believed him and they all proceeded to laugh in his face. Once the members dispersed, one woman took him back and secretly showed him the parts that go into the cars. Darwin took in all the important information he could, took the materials, thanked the woman and ran out the room with no time to waste. Sprinting back to the original landing spot, Darwin made his way through the town and snapped his fingers, bringing him back to the lab. He fell to his knees as his crew member ran over to help him.
“What did you find? What did you see? What is it like there?” he repeatedly asked.
Darwin was so mind boggled to answer any questions, but instead ran passed him to start building the car with the information the woman had told him. Hour after hour, minute after minute, day after day they spent creating, building and remodeling cars to fit the structure and quality of the ones he had seen in the future. It took them months of drawing, creating and gathering the materials they needed to even start preparing for these cars. They weren’t prepared or aware of how much time would be consumed by taking on this task. They continuously had to go in and out of the future to take notes, gather materials, ask questions and figure out what it was they were exactly building knowing that all their previous machines and creations have failed. The lab was soon filled with everything they needed all the way from scrap metals consisting of copper, aluminum, brass, and steel to the different types of metallic paints and colors they needed to create a variety once they got the measurements and dynamics down pat. Months passed before the structure was even completed.
“Can we take a break here Charles? I’m famished and so tired” the crew member said. “Are you kidding me? We can’t stop. The world and future is counting on us right now.” Darwin said angrily.
Darwin continued to work and just ignored the crew member. The member walked out, and didn’t come back for hours. By the time he came back, Darwin had blueprints for each car, the dimensions, colors and types. He came up with different model types for four different cars: Bmw, Audi, Mercedes, and Tesla.
“Wow you got a lot done in the hour I was gone”.
Right away they got back to work. While making the first car, the new and improved Bmw, they took all the materials from the future and added them to the already existing parts of the car. After putting hours of their week into making it, the final product was done and was time to test it out. They simply pushed the on/off button, and… nothing.
“What? Wha-? What went wrong?” the crew member asked.
Charles stood there was scratched his head.
“I don’t understand. Like i don’t understand what went wrong.”
He walked around the car multiple times, inspected his work, and was still stumped. He checked the engine, the wiring and the dynamics of the car, and couldn’t seem to find the problem.
“Mmmmm, I don’t know what could be wrong.”
The crew member went and adjusted the wiring just to be safe, and said to try it again. With doubt Darwin turned the car on, and it finally worked.
“We finally did it!” they both exclaimed and hugged each other.
Now that they have the wiring and engine correlations down pat they were finally ready to start working on the other model types of cars they were planning to do. Now with everything moving forward in their favor, they were hoping to have one of each model done by the end of the week, ready to reveal to the entire town.
About a month flew by, and the two men had about four to five new models to show to the entire town in the grand reveal of the new and improved flying/hovering cars. Each model consists of new versions of past models of Bmw’s, Audi’s, Mercedes, and Teslas. The town community was prepared to meet in the square in approximately four hours to see these products they’ve been promised.
“We need to get these cars to the town square to prep them for the grand reveal. They need to look their best so people can come to us to buy them.” the member stated.
“We have plenty of time! Trust me! We’ve got this whole thing under control.”
The team began to get their tools together and were ready to make their way to the town square to prepare for their presentation and grand reveal. They made sure they didn’t forget their tools for anything that could possibly go wrong, extra materials and supplies to show to the crowd that the materials are all authentic, and the physical cars themselves to give the crowd the wow factor. While getting his things together, Darwin went into complete silence, which concerned his crew member.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I’m scared. I can’t afford to fail in front of everyone again. I cannot let them down”.
Darwin made his way to the car and rested his head on one of their inventions.
“Listen, we made an amazing product that the world would love. How can they not. You promised them an amazing product, so let’s go out there and sell it!” he exclaimed.
A large smile grew on both their faces, and they got up and going. They were feeling the best they have ever felt about their cars and they knew everyone would come to know and love them.
It was finally time, the grand reveal of their inventions. There were hundreds of thousands of people waiting to see what was being presented to them. The cars were set up with beautiful flashing lights all around them, streamers were draped among the building and music played softly in the background.
“Good Evening ladies and gentlemen! I am your host today Charles Darwin, and this here is my sidekick partner. Today we are bringing you the latest, the greatest, and the best new product.”
The drums began to bang, echoing was the drumroll for the curtains to reveal what was to be behind them. And in a matter of seconds, the current rose, and the crowd went wild.
“Introducing, the newest luxury flying/hovering cars! These bad boys can pick up speed, but still give you the family luxury feeling”.
Smiles were on everyone’s faces as they just wanted to come up and see the cars. The men stepped out of the way so event members could come up and show off the features.
“Look Charles. Look at all their proud and happy faces. You proved them all wrong this time”.
“I finally did it. I’m not a failure after all. But I couldn’t have done it without you coming back and helping me. So one hundred thanks to you, my partner”.
The men hugged and figured it would be in their best interest if they went up and discussed with the people what it would be like to incur in one of these cars.
There were many hardships throughout that Darwin faced, and had to overcome. But the main message Darwin figured out is not to give up on himself.
THE END
Sources:
- Knight, Rosie. “What the ‘Avengers: Endgame’ Timeline Means for the Future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.” Esquire, Esquire, 26 Apr. 2019, www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a27276757/avengers-endgame-timeline-time-travel-explained/.
- “Quantum Information.” The Big Idea: How Breakthroughs of the Past Shape the Future, edited by National Geographic, National Geographic Society, 1st edition, 2011. Credo Reference, https://wilkes.idm.oclc.org /login?url=https://search. credoreference.com/content/entry/ngeobig/quantum_information/0?institutionId=4180. Accessed 04 Nov. 2019.
- “Transportation – Flying Cars; Investigators at University of Oxford Discuss Findings in Flying Cars (from Flying Cars to Tesla: Examining the Personal Automobile Preferences of Primary Schoolchildren in Denmark and the Netherlands).”Defense & Aerospace Week, Oct 09, 2019, pp. 150. ProQuest, https://wilkes.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/2302632457?accountid=62703.