The View from a Stratoliner

 [continued from here]

November 1940

Against a brilliant blue sky, with a spatttering of cumulus clouds in the background, a shiny fixed wing aircraft, a Boeing 307 Stratoliner, bearing no marks of any commercial airline, hovers gently in the air as it soars twelve thousand feet above the Lower New York Harbor, the contours of which below describe gentle arcs forming the northern coast of New Jersey and the islands of New York that frame the unbridged opening of Hudson. In the distance, towards the direction of motion of the aircraft, the little tops of the skyline of the City form jagged crests recognizable in their climax in Midtown at the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings.

Even at that altitude, the Midtown towers---both in volume and height---clearly dominate the skyline at the near tip of the island, the ancient glacial hillock where the old Dutch settlement has become for many decades running the city's financial district, the skyline of which reaches it own singular crest at the recognizable four-sided pointed copper spire of the high pyramidal copper top of Bank of Manhattan Trust Building---70 stories and 942 feet---rising out straight up out of the bedrock of the island a little down Wall Street from the top of the hill at Broadway.

The view advantage from the Stratoliner is the apparently same that one would have achieved with any of the passenger aircraft of the day that could achieve twelve thousand feet, yet at the same time it is completely different and unique. For the Stratoliner is not just any fixed wing commercial aircraft, but is the first one produced by human beings with a pressurized passenger cabin. For those who have had the privilege of experienced this comfort, the experience of air travel has changed for ever. The jarring physiological side-effects that came with high-altitude passenger flight in unpressurized flight, and its concomitant psychological disruptions, is now a thing of the past. For those who can afford it, a new type of personal transportation is available.

Eventually too the noisy propeller engines will be replaced by sleek jet ones. The gas turbine engine has been the rage among flight enthusiasts since the 1920s. The Germans have already flown such an aircraft, and shown that it is practical. It is only a matter of time. The pace of advancement may be slow or fast, depending on the exigencies that drive the adoption of such innovations. Now there is a war. Things always happen faster in a war.

In the meantime, for a few select people in the know, this ability to place oneself swiftly anywhere on the globe in relative ease and comfort, has rewritten the rules of the game. All the ways that things were done in the past has now been eclipsed by this new power, of appearing in person at any place on the planet of one's choosing.

One day this ability may be commonplace, but for now, those who can experience this are a very select club. They are the same people who even when not in the air, can travel in the greatest luxury on sea or earth. They have always lived in a different world than the rest of us, but now the gap has suddenly gotten much, much bigger.

The great statesmen and generals of the past, and even the great conquerors of empires, could barely have dreamt of the ability to do such a thing.  

Compared to previous eras, a new type of human being has been created, one with almost godlike abilities compared to previous eras.   

Those who can take advantage of it first will be those who can master the world. This is always how it has worked, and how it will always work, until the end of time.