It Made Us What We Are Today

When they finally discovered it everything made sense. Despite all the technological advances of the preceding decades no one had managed to utilise them to maximum effect. Then it happened. One of those Eureka moments that transform the world we live in. Life has never been the same since Zebediah suddenly realised there was more to this planet than meets the eye.

It began in a small way as these things always do. Eminent Victorians had been building ever more impressive machines for trade and industry. Great cities had grown up around the exploitation of these machines to manufacture goods. Prosperity such as never before was available to a few. Yet even the inventors who had created this prosperity lived in perpetual frustration. They knew their machines worked. They just did not know how. They could explain how the bits they invented worked but not why that was the case. The bigger picture was beyond their vision. Without understanding the natural laws which governed their manufactures they would never be able to use them properly. They had achieved a lot. But in an age which dreamed of eternal progress their achievements could never be enough.

Zebediah Puddlecock was an amateur in the full sense of the term. He earned no living and dabbled in everything to a certain degree. At some things he became quite competent. One week he travelled to Hereford and won the Welshman Shooting Championship held there in the cathedral close under the terms of an ancient bye-law. Another he built a prototype mechanical tortoise which he saw as a more viable prospect than the mooted internal combustion engine. A third week he rowed the river Humber in a box with one arm. Zebediah was quite happy with his leisurely life. He needed no sense of purpose. Then suddenly he found one. He had to go a long way to do it but finally the missing link of all the developments of his age hit home. It was there waiting. Always had been. It was only strange that it had taken so long for anyone to come across it before.

Zebediah was taking his usual passing interest in a new amusement. He wanted to go up in a balloon. He asked how it worked. It was explained to him that air was heated to make the balloon rise. He asked what air was. He was told that it was the stuff that is around us all the time. He pondered on this. We are all individuals and our lives and circumstances differ. Around us? All of us? All the time? This needed further explanation if it were to have any real meaning.

Zebediah decided on an experiment. He travelled to the far north of Scotland where he had never been before. Nothing there was a part of his life before the experiment. Sitting on a deer fence in Sutherland he assessed what was all around him. There was some breath from the natural world but there were other things too. He still had all his problems and joys with him. As they existed independently of him they surrounded him. As did everything else in his world. There was a lot more to air than some sort of atmospheric movement. Air must be everything that is part of a person at any one time that also exists outside that person. He then followed this idea to its logical conclusion. Air is what you say it is. It depends on you. All those great machines that needed air to operate only worked because people said they did.

At the time Zebediah's ideas were dismissed. Objective standards were considered inviolable. Then science fiction was invented. Writers began to map out strange new phenomena such as television, fax machines, computers and space travel. Then people who read the books developed working models. They worked because the science fiction writers said they did. All that was needed was for the right person to come along and put the theory into practice. All they ever needed was the air that they breathed and to love them.

We all benefit greatly from the discovery of the true nature of air. Armed with this knowledge we can make things exist simply because we say so. Zebediah died forgotten except by a few close friends. But was he wrong? Look at the next budget and see how it relates to the world you experience. Is not the true conception of air the basis of our entire civilization?