A.I.R. (Chapter 1)

"Today marks the one year anniversary of the debut of the Amazing Winged Man..."

Violet McAdler blinked as she heard the Riverstone, Illinois local news station's first story, its words spurring her memory. She had completely forgotten that today was Wings Day, a new holiday recently instated by the American government. Today was to be the first official Wings Day, the anniversary of when a single human had first successfully acquired wings.

Vi remembered that day vividly, her memories rising uncomfortably to the surface now that the news had revived them. It had been a year ago since she had seen that unimaginable thing on the television, and the memory still burned in her brain.

Vi’s mother was watching it, her face frozen in a mix of shock and wonder. The government was making a nationwide broadcast, their message appearing on every station throughout the country at that very moment.

A very unusual man moved about on the screen, and Vi could not look away. The man looked mostly normal except for one distinct thing- he had immense, pale blue feathered wings sprouting out of his back. Vi looked closer and saw that he seemed so happy that it was as if he was almost glowing, making him seem all the more unreal. A reporter from the top news station in the country was conducting an interview with the winged man in a large, deserted farm field. The winged man stood on the ground, his wings folded, as he talked to the reporter, and Vi wondered- could he fly?

The reporter turned to the camera. "We will be on air, if you'll pardon my pun, all day broadcasting about this amazing phenomenon that has changed the world forever!" She turned to the winged man. "I'm here with Henry Davidson, the first man in the world to acquire wings through a groundbreaking new surgery that has finally been perfected. Show us what you can do, Henry."

The man was beaming, so elated by having wings that his smile seemed to be permanently plastered on his face. As Vi looked closer, however, the smile seemed staged, as if the man had other, less cheerful things on his mind. He turned to the camera. "Watch."

And with that, he jumped into the air and spread his wings, soaring upward as if pulled by an invisible cable. The camera focused on him now, zooming back and forth as he flew in circles above the news team.

Vi and her mother gaped in astonishment. Vi could scarcely believe it. How could the surgery be successful on this man, and not…well, she wasn’t going to think about that right now. Vi had never thought something like this would work without harming the human involved. She wondered when they had gotten around to perfecting this “miraculous” surgery.

Henry soared down again, seeming to float slightly even while standing on the ground. The reporter seemed almost breathless for a second, still filled with awe. After a moment, she regained her composure and spoke again.

"This man is truly a miracle of science, possessing an ability no one ever thought humans would truly acquire. Henry is the first human ever to successfully undergo this extraordinary operation to receive wings, which is called AIR. Those three letters stand for Aerial Implant Reconstruction. Scientists use DNA from birds to create fully functional wings for humans. Isn't it amazing?" The reporter gestured at Henry, her eyes wide with wonder. "And within a year, AIR is likely to be available to the general public because of a new surge of government funding for the project. Wouldn't it be amazing if we were all able to fly someday…?"

Vi snapped out of her memory and focused on the TV again.

"…And as promised by the government one year ago, AIR surgery is now officially available to the general public and is guaranteed to be covered by any insurance plan. The President believes that it will be in the best interests of the country and will give us freedom beyond anything we could have imagined a decade ago. It is exclusive to America at the moment, and it will give us advantages we had never foreseen. On that wonderful note, have a very happy Wings Day…"

Vi switched off the TV, quite hesitant to believe that what she had heard was true. The reporter had said nothing

about any possible side effects or dangers of the surgery, or even how the surgery was really done. Wasn't combining bird and human DNA dangerous? Technically, anyone who went under the surgery wouldn't be human anymore. They'd be half human, half bird. Vi thought that was going too far and meddling with nature where no one was supposed to. Sure, it was miraculous in theory, but AIR couldn't possibly work on everyone. In fact, she knew it hadn’t.

The phone rang, jolting Vi out of her thoughts. She brushed her short black hair out of her face and got up to answer it, hoping it was her mother calling to tell her when she'd get home from work, as Vi's mother usually arrived home from work shortly after Vi got home from high school.

"Hello?"

"Viiiiiiiiiiiiiii!" A loud and familiar voice exploded out of the speaker. Vi held the phone slightly away from her ear because of the volume, but smiled. It was her friend Lisa Reilly, who was prone to shrieking into the phone when she was excited.

"Hi, Lisa," Vi sighed, affectionately exasperated.

"Were you watching the news just now?" Lisa sounded as if she were about to burst with excitement. "I was hoping this would happen so much that I couldn't sleep last night! They’ve been giving us teasers on TV all week!”

"Lisa, you can hardly sleep any night," Vi reminded her friend, who was an insomniac because of all the coffee she constantly drank. "Yeah, I did see what was just on the news, though."

"Vi, we're going to be able to fly! Isn't it amazing? I'm going to ask Mom for AIR for my birthday! It shouldn't be too expensive if it's covered by insurance. It might even be free. We won't even have to use cars or planes anymore!" Lisa gushed, but Vi didn't find herself any more excited about AIR than she had been before. Vi then got lost in her own brooding thoughts about AIR, forgetting to reply to Lisa until she heard her friend’s voice again.

"Vi? Are you there?"

"…Yeah. Sorry, I just spaced," VI paused. "Well, if you're going to go through with it, could you think about it for a while first? Do some research. What they told us on the news didn't say whether it was dangerous or not."

"It shouldn't be dangerous. The government approved it," Lisa said, as if that was a legitimate reason. "They'll tell us if it's not safe. That's what all those organizations in the government that evaluate things before they go out in public are for."

"Lisa, your birthday is in less than a week from now. That's not enough time for you to really consider what you're doing. What if something goes wrong?" Vi was getting frustrated now. She'd had time for her suspicions to brew about AIR since last year, and she definitely didn't want to trust how supposedly "safe" it was. The whole thing seemed far too good to be true. Vi had always had a longing to fly, but wasn't about to endanger herself to make it possible.

"Why are you so against this? We both always used to dream that we could fly one day…" Lisa sounded hurt. "I really want to have wings, and now it's possible…I thought that this would be something we could do together. You're my best friend, Vi, and I don’t want to see you miss out on something we both wanted so much."

"Lisa, I'm not against this. I just can't make myself believe that something this amazing could exist without any catches. I don't exactly have the greatest faith in things like this. I'm not going to waste my time or money with it until I have believable proof that it works," Vi said, a bit more tersely than she had meant to.

The line was silent, and for a moment, Vi thought Lisa had hung up on her. Then Lisa spoke again, her voice cold and angry now.

"Well, fine. If you want believable proof, you're going to get it," Lisa snapped.

Vi reeled in alarm. "What do you mean? You're not going to – “

"You just sealed my decision, Vi," Lisa said coolly. "If you don't want to do things together this time, it's your loss. But I'm not going to miss out on something this big." She paused. "If you change your mind, let me know. I'll talk to you later."

"Lisa! You-" The phone clicked, disconnecting, and cut off Vi's words. "- can't…do that."

Vi slammed the phone down into its holder in frustration. They had just become good friends again after a bad spell, and this whole argument wasn't going to do any good for the state of things between them.

Vi and Lisa had been best friends since they were three, but their relationship had started deteriorating as soon as they had entered high school. They had been like twins and had done nearly everything in their childhood together. Once they hit high school, however, they had suddenly split off into two separate groups- Vi to the theater and music geeks, and Lisa to the more popular, shopping-oriented crowd.

At first, Vi and Lisa still tried to do as much as they could together and were able to have a richer friendship because of their differences. When junior year came, however, something had happened to Vi's father that Vi still refused to speak about to anyone but her immediate family. Vi had hoped that she would be able to give the illusion that her father had merely left her mother, and that they wouldn't be seeing him anymore, but Lisa had begun to catch on to the real situation, which was entirely too traumatic for Vi to tell her. Vi had preferred only to tell Lisa that her father was incapacitated, and said no more about it. Lisa and Vi had begun to fight more often because Vi refused to tell what had happened. They then began to spend less and less time together because of how awkward it had grown between them, and it had gotten to the point where they only waved politely at each other in the hall.

Recently, both Lisa and Vi had gotten together and had a long talk, and their friendship had been slowly going back to the way it had used to be. Lisa seemed to have forgotten or lost interest in pursuing the sticky issue of Vi's father, and Vi was grateful. Both were very happy to have each other back, until the topic of AIR had come up just today.

It seemed to Vi that Lisa had turned into someone completely different again midway through their phone conversation, and it disturbed Vi. She wished she had the old Lisa back. Lisa before high school had certainly been more rational.

Vi sat in the silence of her house, empty without the presence of her younger brother Mark, who had stayed after school for art club, and her mother Rosalie. The only other being in the house was Mark's pet python, Fuzzy, whose name Vi had still not figured out the reason for. Fuzzy hissed briefly from his cage across the living room, acknowledging Vi’s presence and then settled down to sleep, leaving Vi feeling more alone than before. A year and a half ago, Vi would not have been alone in the house. Her father, a botanist who had run a part time floral business from his home when he wasn't at the lab, would have been with her in the house, laughing and joking and filling the desolate silence Vi found herself in now.

Losing him had been bad enough, and the last thing Vi wanted was to have the same thing that happened to her father happen to Lisa. The anniversary of AIR had created an eerie sense of déjà vu within Vi, and she feared that the event which had totally destroyed her normal life was to happen once again.