Different Circles

“Talent like yours, like Laura’s is not genetic at all. It comes from God.”

“From ... God?”

“That’s right,” Joey said. “God gave her that talent for a reason: so it would shape her life for her and guide her on her path. And look what it did. Because she had that talent, she met you and fell in love with you, and you her. Without that talent, you two never would have met. What you’re dealing with here is God’s plan.”

Jake nodded thoughtfully. “An interesting point,” he had to admit.

Two days later, Ron Standish, the ramp worker from Pocatello Regional Airport, drove to a local Walgreens after work and picked up the prints of the pictures he had taken on his last roll of 35mm film. He took them home to his little apartment just west of downtown. While he heated up two Hot Pockets in his microwave and waited for them to cool down to something less than the temperature of the sun inside, he looked through the pictures.

Most were of aircraft that had flown into and out of the airport. Some of the shots were taken on the ground, a few taken of them landing or taking off. The second half, however, were the shots he had taken of Jake Kingsley’s Avanti and of Dallas and Jake and Jake’s wife, the local girl who had done well for herself. He had had duplicates made, as well as digital copies on a CD, so he sorted out the ones that would go to Dallas and set them aside. He then began to flip through again, paying particular attention to the ones with the Avanti in them. It was such an incredibly beautiful aircraft! And he had stood right next to it, close enough to touch!

He decided that the shots of the Avanti were just too good not to share. He put the hard copies of the prints back in the little envelope and took out the CD. He carried the CD over to his computer desk—Ron spent a lot of time on the computer—and put it inside the CD-ROM drive. While it spun up, he went and retrieved his Hot Pockets and a can of Pepsi. He carried the food and drink back to his desk and sat down. After taking a tentative bite of Hot Pocket number 1 and finding it was still up there near Venus temperature, he opened up his file manager and used it to navigate to the CD-ROM. He transferred copies of all the photos to his hard drive and then opened the photo editor to look at the digital versions. One by one, he admired the shots again. The ones with just the Avanti in them, he renamed using the word Avanti with 01, 02, etc. as the differentiator. And then, almost as an afterthought, he added the one with he, Jake, and Laura in it. He converted all the renamed shots to jpeg format and put them in a separate folder. He then opened up his email server and pulled up his contacts list.

Ron was a member of an online photography club that communicated with each other by group email. He was known and even a little admired in this group of 312 enthusiasts for his aviation pictures. He opened a new email and then used his group setting to address it to all 312 members of the photography group, none of whom he had actually met in person. In the subject box, he wrote: Jake Kingsley and his wife visit Pocatello Airport. He then wrote the body of the email.

I was working the ramp the other day at Pocatello Airport and who should fly in but Jake Kingsley and his wife Laura in their Avanti-180! Such a beautiful aircraft! They were nice enough to let me take a few pictures of the plane and one with me standing with them! Very nice people! I’ll try to catch a shot of the plane taking off when they leave. Hope I’ll be there for it!

He attached the jpegs in his folder to the email. This took a while as he could only afford dialup internet access, but finally, the email was ready. He pushed the send button, sending copies of Jake, Laura, and himself out over the internet in a format that could easily be sent onto others and attached to other files.

And soon, this is exactly what would happen.

Chapter 13: Touching Bases

Posted: 29.06.2023, 04:50:27

Pocatello, Idaho

December 7, 1996

It was a beautiful day for flying, with bright sunny skies and only scattered high-level clouds all the way to their destination. The air temperature was still rather cold—it was 31 degrees at Pocatello Airport, 34 degrees at South Valley Regional just outside Salt Lake City—but this was not a concern for an aircraft that routinely flew at high altitude where the temperature was 40 to 60 below zero.