2041 Edison Dragonfly – Google Docs
2041 Edison Dragonfly
Description: basically, it’s an electric-powered ornithopter that seats five. Top speed is 150 miles an hour, range is about 1500 miles before a recharge (which is surprisingly inexpensive). With its four wings made out of iridescent purple and green scales, and its glittering carapace of crystal and honey-colored metal, the 2041 Edison Dragonfly is the most beautiful vehicle that you will ever see. This is not a subjective statement: it simply is, objectively speaking, almost perfect from an aesthetic point of view.
They found this vehicle, undamaged, in a snowbank in Minnesota in February of 2018, and it has spent the last nine months in a Detroit secret automotive repair facility. In that time, the Edison Dragonfly has been photographed, passively and actively scanned, and extensively examined using only the least invasive means possible. The people working on this vehicle do not like to breathe on it. This reaction is so ubiquitous and instinctual that many researchers suspect that it is supernatural in origin. Not that they actually care, but that’s what they suspect.
Based on the instruction manual in the glove compartment, the Dragonfly was built by Edison Practical Electrics of Poughkeepsie, New York; the ‘2041’ is more speculative, but consistent with the manufacturing marks on various pipes, cylinders, hoses, and mechanisms found in the vehicle (none of which has a timestamp earlier than 2039). There are not many clues about the Dragonfly’s origins, except for a map of New York state also found in the glove compartment. The cities are all there, and even the roads, but the map mostly shows ‘Authorized Flight Paths’ between the various municipalities, most of which are rather larger than the ones found in New York state now.
There are two schools of thought about the Edison Dragonfly. One is that it’s a relic from the future; the other is that it’s a relic from an alternate future. Further debate on that latter theory is bound up in whether the Dragonfly is from an alternate timeline, or whether it’s the flotsam from a temporal intervention in our past; and that last point is where people start to worry. If it’s just from the future, no worries; everybody just has to wait until 2041 and then put in an order. If it’s from an alternate timeline, then the question is finding the dimensional hole, then either sealing it up or sending through a trade team. But if the Dragonfly is from a timeline which vanished when our timeline was established, well: presumably somebody will want to change the timeline back.
And nobody knows if there was somebody piloting the Dragonfly when it ended up in that snowbank.