Dan loved the modern world.
Loved that he could build an air-fix plane, put a webcam on it, and use his phone to watch the toy fly around the room. His children gathered round the telly to watch the results. He knew despite his glasses and the hole in his cardigan, he was one cool Dad.
He had spent a month planning his latest experiment. The stunt was a perfect mix of simplicity and marvel. Get a weather balloon, construct a sturdy container for a basket, put in an Ipad with geolocation in said basket, switch on the camera, and let that baby go!
You will get a video all the way to the corner of the stratosphere. A glimpse of the curvature of the Earth, before the balloon pops, and sends the device hurtling back to the ground.
Hence the need for a safe container.
He and his girls drove out to the farmer’s field, and carried their contraption to the grassy center. The farmer was used to Dan’s shenanigans. Soon the balloon shot off into space. Dan craned his neck to watch a shadow against the sun.
Later the IPad’s location vanished off his phone. An inevitable feature of descent. Dan kept his cool, and ten minutes later the signal returned five hundred meters away from where they stood.
Hand in hand they raced across the field, and spied the intact shell of the container, and the ragged remains of the weather ballon. Dan ripped open the lid, and whipped out their prize.
He expected the spider web of cracks on the glass. But not the bubbled plastic around the outside, and the scorched rim.
Grace, his youngest daughter, tugged at his sleeve.
‘Can we watch the video now Daddy?’
'Let’s get it home first. We can watch it on the big screen.’
'No, Daddy, now.’
Dan always gave into Grace. He swiped on the menus, and within two taps the video began.
So began a glorious one shot of the ground falling away, turning into a patchwork of fields. Then the weird murky gloop of the clouds. Finally the green, blue and orange of the globe, shot on a device designed for spreadsheet and shopping. Dan smiled, and his children gasped.
It didn’t last.
Without warning the Ipad plunged back through the seemingly eternal gloom of the clouds. Dan went to switch off the video, knowing that the bulk of the fun was over.
His thumb was a millimeter from the off switch when the black and white world appeared. A landscape of ascending staircases and thin circular platforms, each coloured checkerboard style.
Crawling down the stairs were something like human beings, only with joints and hands the wrong way round. Stripes of black and white instead of noses and mouths, dark triangular patches instead of eyes. All made noises like a clock going backwards. One demented finger touched the corner of the Ipad, and smoke covered the camera.
With a crackle the video switched back to never ending fields, now with a crack across the lens. The video halted on impact with the rugged dirt.
Dan turned off the Ipad, not sure if the machine was warm, or his hand was cold. He thought how happy the farmer would be that Dan would never visit his field again.