Defeat at Lakehurst

As the plastic giant descended victoriously, violent cheers erupted from the viewing audience. Broad grins all around, perched on the faces of men in black hats, who occasionally interrupted the strange ceremony to slap one another on the back, a gesture almost as meaningless as the former. Several cameras stood aimed at the graceful giant, a sort of manmade beetle, to capture the rays of light scintillating off its smooth surface. No one remembers exactly when it happened; I certainly did not see it happen as a momentary event. It seemed to occur in-between observable seconds, in the blind spot of our perception. Rather, all I remember is a grand confounding of the senses, as we saw the previously invincible dirigible tip, its rear engulfed in flames, and plummet to the Earth. The happy, careless flight of a gigantic vessel which floated in the air happily, a Swift-esque city-sized balloon, the pinnacle of human innovation and technology, came literally crashing down in a horrifying cloud of flame, brought to the unimaginative, sacrilegious ground by the smiting of a jealous god, or gravity, or both. Cruel was the world, cruel were the principles of flight, hydrogen and helium as the beautiful beast which had moments before gracefully floundered in the air was apathetically killed, shrinking to a grotesque metal skeleton as the skin peeled off like an apple placed in an oven. The flames lapped at the tropopause, and the smoke literally exploded in the air, exciting atoms, destroying the three dimensions as we observed them, speeding past the fourth, and moreover shattering both our childish sense wonder as well as nulling our human desire to rebuild, to build better and bigger than ever. I know not how fast sound travels, but in our sad little crowd, silence never travelled faster.