The Man Who Made Magic

An Engine of Toy Making Deep in the Moonshot

For Mom and to every toy maker.

*A person picks up a phone.*

Storyteller: “Hey, you there?”

Listener: “Yeah.”

Storyteller: “Let me tell you the story of a man who once existed in an industrial-military complex in which society forgot.”

“He pushed the limits of creativity and fell by it.”

INTRODUCTION: Saving a Toy Maker

CROWDED IN A PARKING LOT, deep in smog overhanging the palm trees, men in suits huddled over a badly injured toy maker. With his glasses blown off his face, his starched suit was soaked in blood.

He lay there, looking up into the hazed sky. His situation was grave.

They worked to help the man, patching his wounds with clothes ripped off their backs. With calm assurances of his life’s protection, men with worried faces continued desperately.

Back at his company, the toy man inspired an incredible team searching for technology that would impact generations. But he lay there, losing his complexion and, in a short time, consciousness.

Will he survive?

He was the embodiment of the evolution that was to take place in the industry, and this story is a damning modern saga of a perpetual machine.

THE TOY MAN’S COMPANY was surrounded by the aerospace industry, deep in the moonshot efforts of humanity. It was a wild and crazy time for invention, with many benefiting from the education bill. They worked in science and industry since the last major war.

Cultural movements of progressive thinking in technological areas blossomed. So, too, in social recalibration. It was the Atomic Age, and men held the highest aeronautical, mechanical, fluid, and astronautical degrees.

And for some, futurists with open minds who believed in alternative energy sources.

Yes, this was when men dominated the industry, but a steadfast leader, not a man, ran a toy company. At this moment, attitudes began to flex for something better. And, for a time, this toy company had no real competition.

This story is about the inventor of this place.

CHAPTER 1: A Place To Create

ENGINEERS SECURED THEIR MEAL TICKETS in secret teams invented by their aerospace companies. They were protected through intense interviews with those who forged the best technology. They embodied Prometheus, and there were no suits to push them around.

Highly motivated and left to their devices, it was the place for a superior engineer. Code names were of animals, ghosts, and Gods. Icons were painted proudly on their endless aero hangars in each of their home bases.

They were elite, but the room was limited as far-away trawlers and newly launched satellites honed in on the sound of their welders.

This toy company benefited from their experience and application, taking in engineers who could not find room. Or those who were exhausted from the aero fumes.

It was good for their business as much as good for them. These engineers sought a higher technical form of inventive expression, a place to create without the intense competition from encroaching nation-states pushing furiously to a new horizon.

But in a sense, toys were rocketing, too.

This toy company was an oasis they escaped. They resisted the bureaucracy of mundane rocket engine calculations before the time of capable computers. Or whatever else, in an endless line of horizontal desks and a vertical ceiling of decorated men who crushed their souls.

They kept the model shop open for these curious pretending makers and dreamers. Some got recruited right there.

But they, aeronautical, astronautical, the very definition of engineer, existed in this incredible environment, which was unique and somewhat bizarre. Some describe it as a “special” time.

Personnel Powerhouse

The leader of the toy company was perfect at recruitment and secured the brightest minds, going across the Atlantic and Pacific to find them in their foreign technical hubs. And many locally, from what is described. She was the ultimate business recruiter, networked with military brass, and hired the industry's first women and diversity candidates.

She was the company.

Of the many poached, one in this career circuit performed the crossover from aeronautical engineer to toy company employee. He rose in the ranks of plaything making, leading a team of engineers in the firm’s maturing research and development group.

They brought the playground of aerospace construction locked away with a similar card system and guard. It was like the very thing, but these people worked to advance toys, not war machines. Plastic parts, draft boards, glue, metal, tools, and paint were all the same, too, just on a smaller scale. And the same brilliant minding.

Aerospace had invented the elite teams of such “Works,” a way to iterate on technology progressively, shielding brilliant engineers from such petty bullshit — this toy company had constructed theirs. It was their industry's inventive toy pipeline to stoke competition and forge the plastics to a higher revenue.

The prototype was their idol to advance an agenda of their business, its individual, and their profession. Each approved prototype secured its contract to the finish line.

The patent was its entourage, critical pieces of paper guarding the idea for sale, protected by the government aerospace supplied. These documents validated their work for a generation.

These patents supplied a permanent paper trail of the inventive history of which their births are written in smokey rooms where engineers fought, signed by legendary attorneys—and future peering eyes to understand its full, honest story.

Honesty sometimes included crediting those who deserved no credit. Some were granted lies.

One engineer had already risen in invention rank to its maximum. He was the prime toy inventor. He was secured from a base that shot rockets from month to month, traveling from far away. A future Hollywood would write his memory in the new millennia.

This man forged sex and speed into such newly crafted prototype toys at a royalties price. These would become the ideas that touched millions of lives and were marketed by the best in the world. But that is a story for a different time.

Our toy man in this story shares at least one treasured document with that disputed inventor, as history demands his record to be restored by his historical contributions, already written in government offices.

He had his vices. Doesn’t everyone?

One thing was clear about our toy maker. He loved mechanical tinkering and was a highly skilled auto mechanic. He also loved airplanes, being an aeronautical engineer and avid airplane modeler.

Many men were this way, at this time, on this creative stage. Some, with the same degrees, were going to the moon.

But he was in a new class of keen inventors whose names are printed in old literature. They were called “real toy men” who practiced the finest social engineering in marketing and sales.

For him, he was the highest-caliber mechanical, sonic, chemical, and electronic engineer, locked away behind doors few could get to and competing with the best. He was a professional on a miniature scale.

As aerospace developed its concept of “systems engineer,” managing cross-cutting concerns, so did this toy company. These toy makers were more than systems engineers; they were cultural engineers.

They, alongside the women, made magic for children that transcended a century into the next.

CHAPTER 2: A Moonshot Engine

THE LEADER OF THE TOY COMPANY believed she had engineers who could “perform a moonshot,” as she rallied the people in the company. And this is not a myth. She was quoted to the word in an old dusty toy book inquiring into its operations generations ago.

This statement was a future promise to their eventual success, with its first generation of children as its direct benefactors, now with grandkids, and the next generation, graying hair, middle-aged, looking inward.

It will continue in an endless nostalgia loop.

Her peers in aerospace were on the same plane. Whether it was “Works” or “Toys,” they organized geniuses who risked everything. In the future, they will salute these heroes who made their lives what they were, ignited and organized by them.

They were both national treasures.

As the years passed in this toy maker’s employment, moonshot efforts went from a declaration from their nation leader to a fever pitch as the decade ran out.

Political stances changed, great leaders were shot dead, including the very man who decreed the capture of it, and drugs and a new sort of music played on the radio. Airplanes and missiles were shipped out to provide for war, men were drafted, and parts were assembled for a tall rocket ship.

Secret sorties flew across the boundaries, political marches demanded change, and children practiced duck and cover across schools. Peaceful students were shot dead on the very campuses where they stood by the government that protected them.

The tumultuous time continues, and the film pointing at the grassy knoll lies patiently.

And he, our aeronautical engineer turned toy maker, met the love of his life there in the aerospace community. She, also the first woman in that industry, sold aerospace parts to a sea of endless lines of powerful men. He would marry her just before he joined toy-making of the highest degree.

Sonic Boom

The children of this era, who matured, a cohort just narrowly escaping this toy maker’s complete grasp, were the first to grow up on TV. No paragraph, essay, book, or anthology could ever tell all of what was happening in the country at this time. Their generation was labeled poorly, but they advanced its society wholly.

Each former generation does labeling to its latter. In the story of toys, country, or war, the generational divide is its engine of success or failure as its power is transferred. Its success depends on communicating intent and expectation.

But to hell with them. They’ll do it their way.

Regarding the power of communication, our toy company wasn’t the first to promote a toy on television. They were the first to partner with a long-running show and to infuse products into full-length cartoons. Countless children were benefactors of its deregulation sometime in the future.

An entire generation of children lived with these beautiful TV memories and read those little gilded books illustrated by these artists in a new way of crafting believable, tactile experiences. They began to dream in them for whatever they wished.

It was what she, the toy leader, wanted.

At this time, toy companies were transforming into inventive technological and media machines that would impact the future generation of kids. Children began walking head-high among the endless shelves of vast warehouses of toys built with long steel girders, an extraordinary mechanical and logistical feat.

The toy company assembly line would impact this generation. And the next, ultimately capturing it, a time before beautiful screens, light in wires, and miniaturized radio glass would tear it apart.

No Gas

Finding an opportunity at a strange time, fringe inventors came out in this community to secure investment and keep their game rolling.

One such inventor had technology that would power an automobile engine without gas. It would produce no exhaust, run at a cool temperature, sound like a sewing machine, and produce high torque. All accounts are unproven, and its inventive secret was never revealed in literature.

People speculated, defended, wrote volumes of magazine pages, or flat-out called a fraud, as in the case of the auto author who single-handedly created the modern car magazine industry.

The story of such men who invented these wild ideas appeared in short tales about paranormal events sponsored by metallurgy companies. Those commanders wore white lab coats as they questioned its water-turned fuel. And Hollywood movies were made, glorifying their craft.

As the inventor sought investment with his radical engine, he found his next industrialist through an employee connection who believed in him. He pushed media time and published magazine articles. People began to know of this device, but the chemical reaction of an atomic nature that powered the engine remained secret.

They reached as far and wide as they could. They knew what they had. They were the best machinists in the world.

In essence, this investor went all out on believing the engine’s capability, even to the amazement of the questioning inventor. He was his one true disciple. Perhaps he was his ultimate challenge.

Just maybe the inventor believed he could do it.

A Race

At about the same time, the man at the toy company was reeling over the success of the newly launched toy line. New inquiries were raised. To compete, these engineers invested in any free-floating idea that could be used.

He learned of the promoted engine in one of the magazines read religiously by that toy company, an industrial design magazine. Perhaps he heard about it through a network of friends through ex-aviation and aerospace colleagues or from a pilot magazine.

Or perhaps the toyman was tasked by his company’s leaders to solve its mystery. It's not all clear.

What's the secret?

At that time, his toy company’s motivation was the low manufacturing cost for volume and profit. And if they could push the technological edge, the company would grow further.

They invented concepts like cost engineering, hired brilliant people to market, and developed profoundly cutting-edge margin systems that the industry then followed for a time. They found themselves in trouble with a particular government agency that regulates fairness.

But that, too, is a story sold now, held for later.

With their new toy selling out quickly, they wanted to increase success in a few months. It was an extended vision of the leader’s partner, launching that spring.

This is a testament to their highly skilled engineers, who once armed warplanes with missiles for a generation from a line of men poached, and those who once drew their chrome beauty.

There was an inquiry into powering such a toy. It must defy gravity. Their engineers bounced on it for a time for the incentive but also to ensure their inventive ego.

There was a chase to make it work at scale.

CHAPTER 3: Science By Press Conference

IN THIS MAN’S SEARCH for such a toy company’s ask, he was open to exploring all inventive processes, especially if it came to power and energy. The company encouraged these investigations. Being an auto mechanic and airplane modeler, this one was special to him.

Of course, he contributed to all the toy tech, too. He made sure all of his engineers had outstanding projects to pursue.

He looked so young, a man of new middle age. In his chase for a mega-solve, he had one of his men integrate an airplane model engine into a toy to make it go uphill. It was a ridiculous solution and unsafe for young children, but it solved the problem.

Airplanes of the past were on his mind, flown in miniature scale with a man who would eventually step on the first celestial body.

When it was demonstrated, someone had to open up a window. The mixture, not gasoline but methanol, nitromethane, and oil, had a sweet smell and sounded like a buzzing bee with a fuel that would glow.

Other engineers worked on alternative solutions, going across the ocean to implement plastic injection tooling and test manufacturing capabilities to make its metal lighter. The toy company began to shift their lines there so that it would be a bet they could not lose. They did it with this line, as they did it before, wonderfully.

Others chased rechargeable batteries when radical tech in toys like this was non-existent. Their local chemists couldn’t crack it, so they had to dial up sizeable conglomerates to assist.

And like aerospace protected their following projects, so did this toy company. They both had their silver bullet.

The leaders dialed up their home style of an aerospace “Works” format and ran it themselves. In the case of this toy, it would be no different. Concepts were tinkered with and then played in an open affair to the people who made yes and no decisions.

They were all leveled to the ground by the people who invented modern toy-making. Those other suits were separated. They couldn’t enter.

A transparent culture of competition, in which engineers built and demonstrated their work before the business leaders, was a radical departure from the Taylorism top-down. They picked what was best and approved what would sell.

Many ideas were pitched for a product, and at least three or four concepts were raised in this toy chase. It was no different to our toy maker.

He was familiar with the format. It was time to investigate something else as a new scheduled “demo” was looming in preparation to secure their sales orders, proving and vouching that following February, thousands of miles away.

It wasn’t too far away from where aerospace secured their contracts.

In a Parking Lot Dream with Strange Men

Meanwhile, the engine investor and inventor pushed the media to promote such an engine, which appeared in magazines. The investor pushed harder. The machine would be demonstrated to the general public in a parking lot.

The event’s location was close by, and the device's nature attracted lots of intrigue. Even aerospace needed work-like devices in closed spaces.

Or to travel through vast Space through the aether.

The engine’s capabilities interested people in the military of each branch, of which inquiry letters were sent regarding applications to ships, submarines, and tanks. Many of these branches were staffed with people of similar interests and peeked the aerospace men out of their hangers.

They were decorated men during the last significant wars who saw things like Foo Fighters and discovered space oddities no one else believed in. In this story of vivid characters, numerous men flew in those bombers, seeing strange lights and oval airplanes of incredible speed.

It was a strange land of business and a wide-open technological battle to zero-point insanity. Some of the men in this circuit would go on to cast the culture of UFOs and UAPs. One would write a book labeled after the creation of man and woman but tell a story of the world ending. Another was the man who claimed, “They are real.” Another was given a budget to experiment with anti-gravity.

Real enough, sure, even a government agency suppressed that book for a while. And without information, people do what is best—they hatch beautiful rumors. Where are the missing pages?

These men came from aerospace.

This engine caught the attention of the automobile industry, but perhaps they knew of such a game, or maybe they had other plans with what powered them.

Not so, there wasn’t a conspiracy.

But if the automobile industry didn’t want it, fine. If the engine were reproducible and accurate, it would be a significant leg up on the political war, military efficiency, and push on the space race. And in business, consumer applications would radically change.

This engine tech could technologically mature the toys, too. At this time in history, no one in that generation knew how awesome toys would become, nor did the toy makers from aerospace.

Even their successor toy makers, generations apart, will not know how much they impact children, who hold on to old protectionist attitudes.

And the public didn’t know how far the toy company would go, fresh off the literal heels of a doll that broke all the rules. Many people saw toys as baby dolls, lithograph tin, and wooden blocks. Not anymore. Their engineers finally touched the monolith.

This engine caught the attention of universities and their administered jet propulsion laboratories throughout the area. One scientist, famous for many breakthroughs and instrumental in decisively winning the last World War, got caught in the media push.

He made a clear decision from the university he had tenured, believing it was a fraudulent invention. It violated his guiding principle of “Is it reasonable?” Indeed, it must be a hoax.

He represented the best formal science and had an assertive attitude. Inspired by the notion of not caring what others think. He would undoubtedly go and, in turn, foster his mentees.

This engine demonstration was to be held in a parking lot on a Monday. Our toy maker, well respected and looked up to by other nascent modelmakers, rode on his velocipede, smiling and laughing in the company’s locked hallways.

While others refused, he would see the unbelievable engine.

CHAPTER 4: Belief vs. Research Fields

FOR MOST, SUCH A STORY has never been written for them. Those in the know have read these materials found in underground magazines. They listened to booming long-wave radio during the night hours. They believed intensely.

Our engine story is familiar to them as they watched metal glow in the water a generation later. The man who defended that technology also brought this story to light. He was dispatched from the earth shortly after his reveal, lying on the pavement.

But from the toy maker’s purview and the industry he represented in the story? No.

Today, these stories spill over on the vast network of people, curated video channels, and endless threads. Their “fringe” or “pseudoscience” inventions attract dissenting skeptics. Some people become convinced, and others move on. Few are captured forever, like this storyteller.

This demonstration of an engine fits into this category. It draws from all walks of life and minds of all kinds. The engine's legacy is retested as another mystical document is written.

If there is ever such a story of how formal science vs. pseudoscience musket shot heard worldwide, it was in this parking lot in a transformative country. However, nowhere was it heard, silenced for no one who could recall.

Film and Watch

Our toy man woke up that morning beside his lover in an apartment. He was now estranged from his wife but trying to work things out. His dorm was littered with prototype toys.

He got up and drove to work, and his toys sat in the back seat of his car. After spending a half-day at the office, he left in a hurry. Some employees chiding him, while he gave them the finger, smirking. He briefly said goodbye to the company owners, and they smiled. “Good luck.”

He later appeared in the parking lot, as did men from science and industry with large corporations who backed their presence. Men in suits appeared. One man, a lawyer from an aerospace company, had a contract in his pocket ready to sign.

Another man in this parking lot would later co-invent an application millions of people wear, subsequently sold to a company that embodies the essence of modern footwear.

There were many examples of men in this very place. The intensity of the inventive gaze filled this parking lot in the last century. Men with aeronautical, astronautical, and government identification appeared, including our believing toy man and skeptical scientist.

This investor in the engine pushed the inventor to the brink of getting everyone in the public to watch. And now he had done it. The inventor was, for once, nervous.

Will it work?

The engine investor called a local TV station. Their van pulled up, something printed with a number on it. They set up a 16mm camera and began to film the event.

They called for security, which the local patrol provided, keeping the public peace with their low-slung pistols out of a spaghetti western.

Those westerns played in the very theaters at the time. Attitudes also changed, and Hollywood was to drop its binding golden contract.

Hollywood was rolling out a rating system to match what people wanted to see. In the same way, a local newspaper reporter and photographer were there, snapping photos of what others wanted to see on an old-style camera.

As the men filed into the parking lot, they signed liability waivers, as did the toy maker. There was a particular danger.

This device was mounted on a rolling table. It was a modified automobile engine typically seen off the chassis. It had four cylinders and additional chrome hardware on top. A silver fan was attached to the front of the crankshaft to demonstrate work. Its cylinder block was painted racecar red.

Nothing shielded the engine from the crowd, but sure enough, reflecting mirrors were attached to increase its spinning spectacle.

At around 2 p.m., the inventor showed a brief film on a projector screen of the liquid’s tremendous power that filled the engine so the crowd would understand what it was. Or was it speeches by the investor and inventor?

Either way, the scientist watched and listened in disbelief. He couldn’t understand its bullshit.

Then, the inventor began the startup. Once the engine started producing power, the lead batteries were removed from public view. Nothing was to power the engine; it was just the secret formulation pushing the perpetual energy seen in film.

There was no gas or smoke, just small wires connecting the engine to an instrument panel and a unifying wire to a wall socket across the parking lot. The fan on the engine spun furiously and made a weird, subtle clicking sound, like static zapping, as it turned.

The fan whizzed, with the fan reversed, blowing hot air into the crowd. But was it an automobile engine?

Of course, the crowd was amazed and applauded. The toy man looked curiously over others' shoulders, moving closer and noting what he saw, perhaps to bring back to the table for the toy company.

The photographer snapped a few photos into the crowd in front of the engine, of which we know of the toy man.

But one such man, the scientist, was not pleased. Looking across the parking lot, he followed the wire to the wall and inspected it.

In white lab coats, the investor and inventor hovered over the engine and answered questions from the crowd, which had grown to seventy-five people, some walking off the street. It was a scene that caused a lot of attention and intrigue.

At some point, they had to lock the parking lot gates to prevent people from filing in unexpectedly. It was everything the investor wanted: eyeballs and opportunity. They both were going to change the world.

The toy maker and others watched on. To up the “believable factor” for the crowd, the inventor, queried by an onlooker, asked about the attached wire from the panel to the engine. Is it powering it?

Sweating, he disconnected the monitor wire pointed out. It began to run a bit “rough.” This was to prove that the engine ran with nothing connected to it.

The inventor whispered in his language, “Go, baby, go.”

The investor and inventor told the crowd to stand back when it was plugged in. The engine spun up to a smoother operation. They did this a few times, and the wire appeared to be a timer monitor to keep the cylinders balanced. It may have been a timing variac, but it could not power it.

Men of aerospace and toy-making looked on as the sun burned the asphalt. People began to sweat as the sun's rays reflected off the white warehouse.

One thing was clear: the inventor didn’t want this happening, but his investor made him go along. More time and money were needed to continue its development to understand.

The investor was the inventor's most significant match, showering the inventor with money.

Wild West Electric Standoff

As the cameramen took photos and film imprinted on a reel, the engine began running rough again in the next minute. The people looked at the inventor and investor, confused.

They stared in his direction toward the wall of the building. Everyone looked over. The local authority men hunched, hovering over their holsters, becoming familiar with their long silver pistols.

In only his mind, the scientist stood there, holding the opposite wire, disconnecting it in a move believed to stop the engine as he requested the actions of the inventor.

The inventor, sweating even more profusely in front of the engine, did some of what he said and denied other actions.

Perhaps a scene that quickly moved through the scientist's mind on how Wood debunked Blondlot, snatching his hovering prism in the dark, albeit impolitely, and in the sunlight as the jets dumped their leaded fuel over them in contrail.

He said something like, “This demonstration is a fraud!” or “It’s a God damned hoax!” depending on which man you believe or in an old newspaper captured forever in a digital Parthenon.

Either way, the crowd looked back at the inventor and investor. They turned beat red, spoke to themselves, and rushed for a trite conversation with the truth offender.

Disconnected Silver Smoke

By all accounts, the scientist did what was right, clearly to disprove the engine’s hoax nature. Nothing of this world was understood to produce more power than was given. No gas, no power. No electricity, no work.

No over-unity device had ever existed, no excess energy, no atoms to be disassociated to unlock new power from chlorine, water, or noble gas mixture surrounded by something perpetually hot, arranged neatly in buckets surrounding the cylinders.

Noble gases are named for their very nature.

Even so, did this inventor snatch the idea from an old Hollywood flick based on another man? Was calcium carbine thrown in to make the gas that powered the aerospace welding? Would it’s metal ever last? Would it ever scale? Would it ever be safe?

Was it real in alchemy between combustion and nuclear?

He was right about what the scientific community understood and had proved. The thought of keeping this secret invention violated everything. It must be presented openly in debate. There was no mention of pathological criticism or pathological science. No “scientism” or “shlock science.”

It was just the right thing to do, and he, too, was also this man who brilliantly straddled the impossible line. He is a scientist who is not celebrated enough. He must be held in the highest regard.

He was a man who helped birth the Atomic Age, which these men in a strange parking lot stood in, living in a bizarre land of nuclear power, leading the way in a world that didn’t know where it was headed.

Aerospace was consuming everyone and every inventive mind. Toy making was going off in the very direction.

He was a man who oversaw the enrichment protocols and invented formulations on account of what was organized and asked by his late superior to construct such an ultimate weapon.

He would also save aerospace in his final act.

If one person in the universe could mentally unplug such a fraudulent device, it would be this scientist. And by the alignment of the stars, the planet, and the cosmic timescale, and unproven aether, it was him, called up by the formal physics science God itself.

Then, after a small back-and-forth, they said to the crowd, “Stand back!” Some people adhered, jumping behind the cover, but others were unphased since the engine behaved as it did prior: run rough, then smooth. Why would it do anything different?

At this moment, the plug was inserted. A second went by.

And since time passed with the engine running rough, the engine then made a sound, as their triste of disagreement and their argumentative backs against the cohort of people, confusion.

Blam! The engine exploded violently into the crowd. Shrapnel, silver smoke, and debris showered the crowd.

After everything had cleared, someone said, “Okay, get up now!” But men lay on the ground. Another man, a short minute later, collapsed, holding his chest as he was experiencing a heart attack immersed in the horror he saw.

The concussion of the explosion faded. Then, someone said, “I’ve been hit!” as he nursed his shoulder exposed, half off the bone. The man who would invent sneaker tech had a newly embedded metal in his head.

The other man with the aerospace contract had his leg hit, slightly hanging off his knee, shrapnel blown through the very contract in his pocket.

Others in the crowd took their scraps, including the cameraman from the local TV station, who took metal in his leg. His camera protected his life and was damaged, but it remained operable, and he kept filming.

But our man from the toy company was most horribly injured, taking a large piece of metal into his abdomen and blowing through his back. He was bleeding heavily. Then, a newspaper reporter and the scientist rushed to the man, as the images of complete disbelief paralyzed the inventor and investor.

It was already over for them.

Others huddled over the toy maker, and the scientist started reviving him or his student, depending on which accounting believed. Either way, the toy makers’ situation was grave.

They both worked to help the man, patching his wound and performing resuscitation. They kept trying with cloth and rags with calm assurances of his life’s protection.

The incredible toy man who inspired his team, looking for toy tech, lay there. He was the embodiment of the extreme evolution that was to take place in the industry.

He died.

Death By Engine of Invention

The newspaper reporter once chased his phoenix but then hung his head low. The scientist’s face who helped him burned in his mind as he hurried along, a memory he would not forget.

This man was not well-recognized outside intellectual circuits, but he eventually asked for his name.

Another man with an aeronautical degree from a university thousands of miles away shared with the help of the wounded toy maker. They graduated just a year apart. He did not recognize the scientist, but his face was imprinted in his mind, eventually identifying him.

He said, “They shouldn’t play with such dangerous gases.”

Then, the newspaper reporter rushed to other people in the parking lot. He was the very person who was identified as the first responder, as his military training aided his smooth leadership actions in a chaotic moment in history. He would become a two-time nominated Pulitzer.

He approached the cameraman and acknowledged they were both media men. The story must be told, and the film must keep rolling as he nursed the cameraman’s leg.

It is in this exchange this story can be told a century later.

The inventor and investor walked around the parking lot in a complete haze, holding their heads, one cursing in his first language.

It was a tragic scene, deep in the moonshot efforts, but this newspaper reporter had helped, aided, and saved one man from bleeding out. He kept going and became the hero, shouting to the guards to unlock the gate, protected by barbed wire, fumbling to find the keys.

Where were the ambulances for the toy maker and these men? They took time to get there, as this was in a far-off, unincorporated area, hidden past a strip of the highway, deep in the hanging smog over the palm trees.

They eventually got there ten minutes later.

Subsequently, the cameraman dragged himself into the van, needing to drop off the reels at the TV station. Encouraged by the newspaperman, who kept him motivated as he bandaged him, he drove himself to the hospital with the film in tow. He was to be a multi-award-winning cameraman.

The uninjured photographer continued to take photos as the newspaper reporter tended to others. The paramedics came, provided oxygen to the man who was having a heart attack, and took all the injured who needed critical support. The toy maker and others were hauled away.

Then things calmed.

The newspaper reporter, sweating and kicking the dirty pavement, finally got rest. Seeing other men wander around, he spotted the man’s face, which helped him in his quest to save lives.

He walked over and pulled up a chair for the wandering scientist. Then, he asked for his name. The scientist said the word, and he asked where the bar was. The scientist offered to get “a stiff drink,” as the newspaper reporter remembered.

Blood started to drip down his neck, bothering him. The newspaperman realized he had been hit in the head and needed to get to the hospital instead.

He politely excused himself, not grabbing the drink. He was to be an example of an investigative journalist and would follow through to print.

CHAPTER 5: Investigating an Observer

AS THE LOCAL AUTHORITIES pulled up and started investigating the scene, they took many notes and interviewed the remaining people, including the inventor, investor, and others.

After rendering aid to the toy maker and others, the scientist left the scene just before they arrived to get that drink.

The fire department called its hazardous materials unit, and its investigators pulled up with unique materials equipment. A news organization snapped a photo as the fire inspector took notes, which was relayed on telewire.

And they believed something at the scene may have been radioactive.

Yes, in the depths of something out of fiction with a scientist, aerospace, and men in lab coats with a weird engine, Geiger counters were deployed, and they surveyed the engine and parking lot. Another photo was snapped.

Men with old-styled cameras continued to take photos. After a few minutes, thumbs up, the meters read normally, at a baseline that factored in the strontium-90 hanging in the air.

But no unusual radiation was found.

The investor and inventor would cooperate on information about the engine to authorities. They said what they could but fell short of its secret. But in a bizarre twist, the press report from the local authorities printed “fuel being developed as a semi—classified experiment for the Navy.”

As the local authorities investigated the incident, the observer, the scientist, became a primary witness to the unfortunate event.

The principal lieutenant, a decorated detective fresh off a victory in a decades-long serial case, was the first to prosecute a hidden medical murder mystery in history, investigated and commented to the press. He would write his career book in the next century. But not for this.

Even with the best people, the authorities could find nothing that suspected sabotage, and no reports arose.

The investor and detective knew each other too well at the pinnacle, a bond in the fraternity.

After speaking to the newspaper reporter and others, the lieutenant dispatched the authorities to issue a search warrant for the scientist, and the local press relayed this in newspapers as an “observer.” The search lasted one day. He was found and interviewed.

No criminal charges were filed.

The press and media continued to swarm the scene of the engine explosion into the evening. Another local newspaper reporter pulled up and performed an interview. They snapped a photo with the blown engine in the center, men on the right, and reporter on the left.

That reporter was noted of the original newspaperman, described him as bushy-tailed, like a replacement in a war he had just gone through.

Then, a politician pulled up, a well-respected local city official. The scene was still hot with the investigation, and there were many witnesses. He asked the inventor and investor why shielding was not provided for crowd safety.

The man who connected the inventor and investor responded that the engine had been demonstrated many times without such an explosion. He left wondering what to do or what new legislation to promote.

It was a time before OSHA and other modern protections. Today, this former city official’s name is prevalent, memorializing many public work projects and parks.

As the story tracked through that week and the impacts felt by everyone involved, there were reports of the manhunt updates. Tuesday and Wednesday went by, and the press became disinterested in the need for a conclusion as no criminal charges arose. Most newspapers failed to report his name.

All but that local newspaper reporter, who worked to save people in the parking lot, was the man who had written his name in print. It was published that Thursday in full accounting, with seven photos.

It would be preserved through the generations, residing in a publically funded basement. Its integrity is confirmed.

Perhaps the scientist’s name was finally released by authorities. Still, any press in their right mind, deep in the scientific moonshot, surrounded by aerospace and nothing worthy of recall, would touch the metaphorical ionizing lightning rod.

His name was so clearly attached to scientific prowess, but the newspaperman believed in truth. And those trawlers out in the sea would quickly pick it up, or those satellites beaming in.

Aerospace and other industries hummed on as the family got the word. It was complete devastation; a beautiful toy maker was gone, searching for new tech that was never to be. His children were without a father. A world without a tinkerer of such beautiful toys.

His girlfriend, family, and other admirers would leave small toys and packages of small diecast cars at his resting place.

If the reader believes the meddler is at fault, think again. Our toy maker's demise is a corruption case between other men, not the scientist. And the toy maker's justice was never served.

“I guess there’s a certain amount of wisdom in not going to court — “ the scientist said before passing.

And the film, pointing at the engine, now lies patiently.

CHAPTER 6: A Toy Legacy Written In Prank

A MONTH LATER, as astronauts first saw the moon's dark side with their eyeballs through the aerospace that operated around this toy company, the toy leader approved a prototype.

Then, a memory of such a fine toy maker, a leader, a life cut short.

Rumors spread, people talked, and engineers became familiar with the passing. As everything happened, the business needed to move on. Attitudes of the day were to keep hush, and ordinary people did not know, and no videos were recorded to post. Few could voice an opinion.

A man replaced him, refiling his engineers into the other team, and some missed the real toy man’s leveling style.

The deceased toy maker had a genuine people-leader attitude to play and invent before it was ever a thing. But this new man was so different. He would appear in print as the fall guy with such a stark, contrasting command and control attitude.

He wasn’t well-liked, but he was also an aeroman.

In the meantime, private conversations and outreach to our toy makers' grieving families. In time, his widow was to exit aerospace and join the personnel ranks at the toy company, trained by the best personnel in the world.

Then something interesting happened: a prank would be played, a recorded reminder of a man who lived, invented, and maybe once believed in an alternative way to create. He was a believer in something others would not join.

The prank was written in a book a century later, recalling people uncredited, now credited, and no one caught on. Not even their historians, not even this storyteller, until the facts were rechecked.

As the engineers continued advancing the toy line from engineering to product packaging through the following year, a bag would be hung, filled with a liquid, and two wires were dipped in it.

Lots of parts would be laid around on the draft tables and benches. Some of the carcasses of the electric engines were in sight. With adjustment and tinkering, it would be made to spin… forever.

A small electric motor was strung to those wires, and a small propeller would be attached to its shaft. It was hung at night for all to see.

As the engineers walked in the following day, the motor spun the fan attached to the armature at furious speed. No wires connected to the bag, suspended from the ceiling. What was powering it? Indeed, not the liquid. Or… maybe?

The engineers took bets, and some started drafting patents. Finally, after time was wasted on calculations, a leader came out. They asked it be taken down for inspection. The fan stopped spinning right there on the table.

Lots of time was wasted.

Intrigued, the electric motor was inspected, and the magnets were removed. How was it powered? Looking up, they climbed the ladder and stuck their hand out. A small air stream blasted from a discrete location in the false ceiling hooked up to the A/C duct. That spun the fan.

This toy motor was a hoax. It was an encoded memorial to our toy maker.

CHAPTER 7: Toy Maker Crosses a Century

TIMED PASSED. THE WORLD CHANGED, and those toy companies went through the excess of one generation and the modernization of another. Sequestration cycles happened in aerospace, as did the toy company, recession, boom, earn, and churn.

Their leader left the company a long time ago, not by her choice, but somehow, it kept going, modernizing, growing, and then moving to a much larger place. The embodiment of her was still there and working well.

They were now being wholly challenged by another toy company, overtaking them. Perhaps another pretender against the doll that defined them.

Aerospace was changing, and consolidation was taking place. Technology was proven, stealth was long-established, and jets were so advanced no other nation was anywhere close. And most of the manufacturing is now happening nowhere near them, sometimes making it hard to quality check.

Toys became a commodity. Advancing technology became easier. Computers shaped the prototype and calculated the logistics. The vast toy stores began to crumble, and toys were bought elsewhere, a wonder on endless warehouse screens.

But the intrigue was present, and toys were attached to their media and movies. Regardless, children want toys in their hands. It's a forever human thing, and they, the toy companies, will be in business forever.

Walls and buildings came down, bombs were dropped by remote control with cameras capturing the dead, pandemics spread, horrors occurred in the deserts, students practiced active shooter drills, and nation-states changed.

A space shuttle came and went, losing its glory by blowing up in front of millions of children's eyes. That shuttle wasted time and money because it failed to make anyone believe in the next station. It was too routine.

Once powerful government organizations waned, losing was once theirs. UFOs and UAPs have become accepted, but governments haven’t let the information rip, clasping on to what little control they had left.

Privatizing men now controlled future offices and space.

Computers and smartphones were delightful, varied, and magical new things. Now, people's voices are squarely heard in the advancing information age. Personal secrets are revealed, and authors can see what was once impossible.

The right to be forgotten? Not so. What about the right to be remembered — but importantly, to learn.

Then, advances in artificial intelligence started to write stories and create movies. As it blossomed, even this author's toy story was written and visualized using its technique. A beautiful mosaic of stories now told.

If the men of the parking lot, if still present, would not believe their own eyes nor understand its magic, as much as they did not understand an engine.

The world has changed a lot, but gasoline, natural gas, and oil continue to make plastics. They increment slowly. Somehow, society struggles to reach a Type I civilization, trying to return to the same moon a century later, making mistakes that once were mastered.

The once heroic scientists no longer exist nor show the way. Instead, they monetize videos on their published channels while people no longer speak to one another. Instead, they look downward.

And the questionable engine of the incredible machinists is still a mystery. They were technical magicians.

Collectorship

As the new century dragged on, our toy man’s airplane-car prototype would be dug out of an old desk. It somehow survived a significant move but has since been abandoned.

Someone knew of its worth, saved it from the trash, and grabbed it on their move from building to building. They took it and held on, and when they could not go any further, they gifted it to the children they loved.

For our past toy maker, his prototype found his child.

Lots of stuff occurred between here and now. No one knows where it came from, and desks changed hands, packed with old prototypes of yesteryear. Maybe even the engineer he directed to make such a prototype long left the earth, too.

Probably.

An outside person, first re-experiencing their childhood, handed a box of toys cleaned out by their loved one, turned middle-aged to a brand, was experiencing a nostalgic time.

Collectors became the thing for a modern generation of grown kids. They had to have it and show their charms in endless videos.

And so, with talk and belief of kinship of the very men and women who inspired them, it was handed over as some began to pass away.

They were building a collection of wonderful toys—so vast and varied. It was a beautiful arrangement of many men and women who worked incredibly hard in what was somehow a stunning reflection of all that was right in a child's life.

The collector dreamed into them as well.

When we discuss toys, the adult is always a child, never seeming to escape the memories. And in our way, being a child shined through.

This prototype was shared with a friend, a friend's friend, or whatever. Either way, they were all children, no matter their age.

They took the prototype, as all kids do, resisting the sad, dusty shelf, adjusting it, making it wild and weird.

With the tinkering, they placed some fuel in it to make the magic come alive. They put it on the pavement in a parking lot. They somehow got the engine to rev up. They pushed it.

One of them whispered, “Go, baby, go!”

It shot like a rocket for a moment, but then it ran rough. It blew up in front of them, tearing everything into metal pieces. They were all in shock.

But this time, it was different. They all laughed, and no one got hurt.

Perhaps wherever our toy maker was, in whatever the belief, well into his next station, in the mind of some, that toy maker must have smiled.

No politics, no stress, nor commercial interest. Just being the stuff that made them kids. His prototype was destroyed by play, never again to appear in a prized collection.

It was what he always wanted.

CHAPTER 8: The Mystery and Legacy of an Inventor

HE WAS A DEDICATED CRAFTSMAN, an outstanding leader, and a “real toy man” of the most profound lore in unprinted history. This person was privately memorialized but never written in print. He is even forgotten online.

He does not exist in any museum, but his story is the very definition of his country, a story shared by no child or adult.

His story is one of the endless lines of uncredited incredible toy makers.

The man's mystery and legacy will undoubtedly be revealed in the distant future. He impacted the lives of countless people and inspired play through growth as aerospace continues to hum in whatever hell it needs to do with whatever army of controlled drones needs to accomplish.

The people he inspired, its next-generation, achieved wonders, leading its industry’s growth, writing in books, and appearing in streaming television documentaries in their retirement.

Somehow, no one wanted to talk about him or mention his name. No one knows why. It is a tragedy, but why not see it differently? Why is he not a legend? Yes, because the story was complicated, but all human stories are.

Or perhaps they didn’t even know what happened in the parking lot.

But they were all inspired by such a fine toy maker. He was a man who made their magic for all that transcended an epoch to the subsequent children who would someday write his memory.

Pierce the Veil of Historical Immortality

Then, it gets so wild, mystical, and incredible. His experience is a story that briefly pierces the culturally juxtaposed veil between interactions of the people appearing in two mega-blockbuster movies, seen by millions on separate screens, in one new century summer.

Most people would never know.

The exhaustive act of writing these distant truths confirms to the industry how imperative it is to act with utmost integrity, remember their incredible impact on generations of toys and movies, and secure their records, which have all vanished.

With one local paper printing his birthday, he was born on a day when children receive gifts of invention. He was a man who made magic for them as much as his engineers, born on Christmas.

He believed.

In the story of each perpetual machine, a human drama attempts to shift the existing powers from one hand to another, whether in science, money, war, or toys. The rest are within its orbit of conservation.

But to a few like our fallen toymaker, we must not be afraid to tell of their wonders in an endless sea of realities and incredible complexities. So when we look up to the sky and hear the roar of a jet plane or unpackage a toy for a child, our inventor was once there.

And of the engine? Its capability remains unsolved.

Storyteller: “I have to go. It's time to move on.”

Listener: “Wait, I have so many questions.”

Storyteller: “So do others.”

*Call ended.*