Darwin's Helicopter

"Incredible!" he shouted, as the wind sliced through his fettered hair. "I can't believe it! I'm flying!"

Darwin threw his arms outward, soaring over the crashing waves below. It had not taken him long to realize his dream, for he had come to realize what few dared to think: that life could adapt. That life could change. That nothing prevented nature from tinkering with her own creation, leaving circumstance to determine her successes and her failures. That the form of life was not confined to the mold God had created it from: that it could stretch out, spread its wings, and realize its true potential.

Moreover, Darwin had dared to ask a question that man had asked throughout the ages: could a man fly? Could a man shed the confines of the Earth and soar amongst the birds, and experience the heavens firsthand? Throughout history, man had turned to mysticism for the hope of flight, but Darwin knew better. Darwin saw the world for what it really was. His precious finches had taught him much, but their final contribution would prove as tantalizing as his theory of natural selection: the knowledge of flight.

It had long been presumed that a natural, physical basis for flight was what lifted the birds to the skies, but it was a phenomenon that had escaped the understanding of man. Darwin, however, had gained an intimate understanding of the finches that he studied on the Galapagos Islands, and it was not long before careful observation had led him to the conclusion that the substance of the wind was present in the air all around us. It simply required an appropriate tool for its harvest.

Darwin's finches had such a tool: their wings. With these simple structures they were able to generate their own 'wind,' and use it to sail through the air as a ship does the seas. But surely such a privilege belonged only to the birds. Surely a flightless creature such as a man could not be permitted by nature such an unnatural right?

Darwin's eyes had been opened. Knowing the secret of the birds and knowing that nature was not so confined an arena, Darwin took to work. Through his uncle he was able to commission the building of a machine of flight, one that a man could adhere to himself and thus adapt himself to the environment of his dreams! For many months Darwin worked, knowing that his machine would change the world. It would guide the evolution of man!

Of course, if nature has indeed guided the evolution of man since the beginning of time, it has been by a cruel means. For every successful adaptation there have been countless failures, and Darwin, being an intelligent man, came to this realization as he plummeted downward, aided by whatever awful contraption he had strapped to his back, into a jagged precipice of irony and death.