Inkandescent Public Relations

299 792 458 m / s

The Speed of Light

How the rocket scientist found his wings

By Hope Katz Gibbs

“Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light,” explained the rocket scientist to the white-winged dove perched on the windowsill beside his tidy desk.

For the last two years, she’d kept him company while he was working, reading, or just quietly thinking loud thoughts.

“The Greek philosopher Aristotle believed light travelled instantaneously, but the Italian astronomer Galileo determined that light traveled at least 10 times faster than sound,” he continued. “It was Albert Einstein who taught us that traveling at light speed — 299 792 458 meters per second — would take you around the earth 7.5 times in one second.”

The dove found this fountain of facts fascinating because she always traveled high in the sky, soaring up up up toward perfectly puffy clouds.

But she never contemplated the science or strategy behind her soaring. She simply let the wind carry her where it wanted, or knew she needed to fly. Still, she had a curious craving to understand quantum physics — and a deeper desire to know what it was like to be human.

She wondered: What do men and women think about as they walk along streets and woods and mountaintops? They seem to appreciate the nature that surrounds them, but if so, why did so few of them consider the impact their behavior had on doves and dogs, trees and cumulus clouds?

The scientist was different. He seemed to fully understand the importance of respecting the birds and bees in his backyard, and the beagles that sat beside his feet as he worked.

Still, he lived in his mind most of the time.

The speed of light was one of his favorite theories, perhaps because he never felt he moved as fast as his thoughts in the 59-1/2 years of his life. That’s why he chose to buy a cottage in the woods.

The scientist longed to live in nature, far from people who drained his energy. One day while walking his dogs, he happened upon this home deep inside a grove of giant oaks. He smiled to himself and thought: “This will be my Beagle Hill Farm.”

Not long after he moved in, the dove happened upon his home on one of her wing-whooshing journeys.

She was barely able to slam on her brakes to avoid flying right through his pane. Although she fancied fast-approaching landings, this one took her by surprise. At the last second, she regained her composure and balanced on his windowsill.

The sound of fluttering feathers startled the scientist. Immediately, though, he was taken by the dove’s well-developed flying muscles, chocolate eyes, and indigo-blue skin. Mostly, the scientist was impressed by the bird’s ability to balance on one leg. “Why, hello,” he said.

“Hello,” the dove replied, slightly startled herself. After all, she didn’t make a practice of landing on strangers’ sills.

Rather, she was resolute about what needed to be accomplished each day: flying, giggling, loving her family and friends, writing poetry, and dreaming of worlds beyond her own. She rarely allowed herself to be distracted by others, especially humans. But there was something about this man that intrigued her. She looked deeply into his beautiful brown eyes shielded by thick eyeglasses, gave a wink, and flew off toward the clouds.

The scientist didn’t appear to be disarmed by the bird’s ability to communicate with him in a language that he could hear. In recent years, he’d learn to suspend his disbelief about things he didn’t intellectually understand. Indeed, he hoped in a deep and profound way that she’d return again — soon.

The white-winged bird felt the same.

From that afternoon on, she made a practice of visiting the scientist at dusk. He welcomed her with a twinkling smile, a tasty treat, and a tender pat on her feathery head.

Eventually, the rocket scientist began teaching the dove about topics that turned in his brain … the quiet cool of calculus, and theories from philosophers who paved the path for him to explore. Now and then, he’d throw in a few mathematical equations that made her beak tweak. That made him laugh.

Being with the scientist was different than any conversation the bird had in her nest. While her fellow feathered friends were kind and collaborative, there wasn’t the depth of knowledge or intimate sharing that she found with this handsome human. She was enchanted by the sound of his voice, and enjoyed his wry jokes that didn’t go over her head as much as he might have thought.

On occasion, the scientist would tell her about what he felt in his heart.

Those were the conversations she longed to have, for it helped her know him in deep and important ways. Theirs was a friendship she’d always longed for.

The scientist had developed a deep fondness for the dove, as well. They began taking journeys together. She’d fly above his shoulder as he walked through the woods, checking far and wide to make sure the path was clear of wilder creatures. Always, the scientist made sure the dove had a safe place to land. As they meandered, she’d tell him tales of flying high into the sky, of what it meant to live in a flock, of how she believed that everything — and everyone — was interconnected.

The hours spent with the dove made the scientist’s cool exterior soften and sweeten.

After about a year, he asked the dove if she’d like to live with him on Beagle Hill. She immediately said yes, for being with the scientist was the place she adored being most on earth. She worried a little about how a bird and a man would live in harmony, but the dove was a trusting soul — and because she believed wholeheartedly that all souls were eternal and interconnected — taking this step seemed as natural as flying up up up toward the clouds.

They quickly found a rhythm to this new version of their relationship.

By day, the scientist would do his work, and the dove would fly off to do hers. After the sun set, they’d sit together on his patio covered in sparkling lights and eat their meals, talk and laugh and dream of going on new exciting adventures.

Eventually, though, demons the scientist long repressed began to resurface. He knew it came from experiences in his life that he’d never quite resolved, but at this age and stage of his life it seemed easier to let them idle. The silence of solitude was better than being responsible for the care and feeding of anyone or anything including a dove — sweet and lovely as she was.

It took a tiny bit more time for him to decide that letting her go was truly what he wanted. Ultimately, he concluded that he didn’t want a bird to land and live at his home, after all. Over time, he talked to her less, and kept to himself more.

The dove could sense that the scientist had a change of heart.

While she, too, longed for the freedom of flying wherever and whenever she wanted, she was willing to modify her desire to swoosh about, for she wholeheartedly loved this human. The idea of him being sad, or worse angry at her, hurt more than she could bare. At her core, she knew leaving was the best way to show the deep adoration she felt for this man.

One morning while he was hard at work, the dove gathered her courage and the few feathers she’d brought to rest on in the nest she’d built beneath his windowsill, and flew off. She wanted to give the scientist what he wanted: She left him alone.

As the dove began her ascent up up up, she prayed she could could fly at the speed of light — fast enough to make her sorrow disappear.

She flew so fast, and so high, that her tiny broken heart began beating at sonic speed. The air thinned, and her breath slowly faded. Everything went dark as she fell down down down until a strong wind found her and carried her back toward his cottage. Finally, her bird body lilted toward a most peaceful place to rest — in the nest she’d built just beneath his windowsill.

As she landed, the dove felt her soul expand. It was as if new life had been breathed into her. Time and space held no the limits. All at once, she was nowhere, and everywhere.

On the day the dove didn’t come home, the scientist imagined she simply had better things to do.

When she didn’t appear for a week, his brow furrowed. But he was resigned to the fact that they lived in different worlds. After all, how could a scientist truly love a dove?

Months, then years, passed. The scientist embraced his life of solitude, grateful that he was living in a lovely cottage with a band of beagles that increased in number each year. A few human ladies came and went, as did his children and eventually grandchildren. He made friends with more creatures in the woods, especially a family of red foxes that kept a watchful eye on him. Now and then he’d look toward the sky, tracing a memory of a love he once felt. As time moved on, it became easier and easier to push away those thoughts.

On the last day of his life, the rocket scientist awoke with a start to find his blue bedroom filled with hundreds of doves.

Cooing him from sleep, they surrounded his warm body and began lifting it toward the window. A gentle wind blew a gust of silky air toward him, and with it came a vision he hadn’t seen in decades. It was his dove.

She appeared just as she had the first day he met her. With a nod of her feathery head, all of the doves began singing a soft song that made the scientist sing along. As he took his final breath, a smile came over his face. He knew he was truly and fully loved.

“You lived your life just as you chose,” his beloved dove whispered. “You are safe.”

With that, the flock surrounded him to create an arc-like cushion around his body that became his wings. They flew him around the earth 7.5 times in one second. His dove made her way into the palm of his hand, travelling with him up up up into the clouds.