Friday Fictioneers – Flying Boat

First of all, my apologies. I’m on holiday in Greece. I hadn’t been intending to write a story today, but when I saw the prompt it fitted so exactly with how I had spent this morning (see below the story) that I couldn’t resist…apologies are due, though, because I probably won’t read many stories by other people.

Every week, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields (thank you, Rochelle!) hosts a flash fiction challenge, to write a complete story, based on a photoprompt, with a beginning, middle and end, in 100 words or less. Post it on your blog, and include the Photoprompt and Inlinkz (the blue frog) on your page. Link your story URL. Then the fun starts as you read other peoples’ stories and comment on them!

PHOTO PROMPT © Ted Strutz

Flying Boat

It had been many years since he had demonstrated his displacement principle to the tyrant of Syracuse, years filled with achievement, honour and, above all, the satisfaction of his curiosity about the world.

Fire burned, a valve tripped, water flashed into steam in turbines, turning the sails from a windmill. The vessel surged heavily across the water, faster and faster, rising as the air rushed beneath its wings.

Crack!

The sails tattered, the laths from which they were constructed beating the blue water to milky froth.

Archimedes frowned. Materials. The principle was sound. All he needed was better materials.

Author’s note

I visited the Archimedes Museum in Olympia today. It’s devoted to the technology of ancient Greece, and it’s astonishing. If political conditions had been different, the Industrial Revolution would have happened two millennia ago. The story above is (probably) not true, but all the technology was available for Archimedes to make the experiment.

Blue Frog – join the Inlinkz party