BR110 Jack's Idea

I woke up with a start in Bridget Beaver's living room, lying on the sofa, and the several Blue Tits who had been standing around on my stomach while I slept went flying off in a flutter. Bridget Beaver was sitting there next to me.

“Where am I?” I asked, although I knew perfectly well where I was. I just didn't for the moment remember how I got there.

“The Fox family have decamped to a hotel,” said Bridget, “The sun has gone down and you have been napping for over an hour. You must have been exhausted.”

I lay back down and stared at the ceiling. I was in the process of having some sort of realization, maybe starting in my sleep. Unfortunately, I had no idea what it was. I felt it floating in front of me in a sort of haze, a new understanding, a New Idea, and yet I didn't seem to know much about it. It could be anything. However there it was, inside me, and even the ceiling I was looking at looked somehow different.

I tried to search my dreams for a clue, though I had no certain memory of dreaming. Bridget sat very quiet, as if she knew that I was reaching around for something in my mind, with only the sound of her knitting needles and the Blue Tits shuffling about to break the silence. And there was still a bit of rain on the window. But no traffic noises.

I waited for the cloud to clear and for the the New Idea to reveal itself. I now felt sure that it was a New Idea that was in the cloud. I was having a New Idea! I felt that very clearly and a thrill of excitement shot through me. But was the idea? I could feel it's nearness but I still had no idea what department of life it had to do with. But the sense of revelation was absolute, though clouded and hidden, hovering right there in front of me.

Suddenly the word “Hoverhopper” came into my head. My new Jackster car that I have been trying to get to make short hops in traffic... what if I could get it to hover as well as hop? A lot of the 'hopping' problems would be made easier for us to solve. Maybe if we had a second central engine, to be run off the same two-pedal power chain, we could manage the hovering aspect with tiny, instantaneous up and down thrusts.

I closed my eyes and breathed more easily. What a great idea! The Hoverhopper! Everyone at the factory would be happy about it. All the nervous worries about having cars that hop would disappear!

I opened my eyes again. The cloud of the New Idea was still in front of me. The Hoverhopper was all very well but it was just an idea that had happened to come to me as I faced the real metaphoric cloud of some hidden New Idea that I had woken up to. Whatever that New Idea might be it was still there in front of me. Future revelation was a possibility that I was going to have to live with. I knew something and yet I didn't know it.

“I'd better call Jilly,” I said to Bridget as I sat up. “I was supposed to be out at Woody Spit by now.”