Meta the Geek

Gary was the geek of the group. He was the one who came up with the MetaWing. The wing that had changed everything.

Before Gary was rich and famous... he was just a socially awkward geek. He spent most of his time as a recluse... designing on his computer like Michelangelo (at least in his own mind). Experimenting like Edison... he wished. But he had to work as a business software developer to fund his experiments. Boring work, but it paid the bills.

His work didn't allow for much fashion or hygiene . Jeans, a t-shirt, flip-flops... with some rumpled hair... that was Gary almost 24/7.

Gary liked to talk about meta-data and meta-programming. People tended to nod and say "oh... okay". But since Gary would frequently pull off minor miracles with his databases, folks would tolerate his weirdness. His weirdness hadn't been well-tolerated in his youth. Schoolkids can be so cruel.

When his software clients nicknamed him "Meta", Gary could feel an element of love, but he also knew he was way different. He knew he wasn't really understood.

As an adult, Gary often attempted to share his out-of-the-box designs. But he could tell folks weren't really receptive. He felt like everyone dismissed him as a dreamer.

But he knew. He knew he could come up with something big.

And when he finally got something big, it was huge. The MetaWing revolutionized aviation.

The wing could morph radically and transform itself from "fighter jet sleek" to "hang-glider slow". The MetaWing lift system was light, inexpensive, fuel-efficient, fast and safe.

The MetaWing combined some traditional composite wing surfaces with something Gary named the MetaFoils. In the tuck state, wing look almost like any other wing. But if you knew what you were looking for, you could see that the wing could split into a top wing and a bottom and the MetaWing would in essence change into an old fashioned biplane.

Of course that meant that there was much more drag and the plane was a lot slower... but that meant safer. And since Gary was incredibly risk averse, he felt safer was good!

But if two wings were better than one, Gary thought, what if there were 10 wings? There would be tremendous drag and lots of lift and a wing that could fly really slow.

And that was the genesis of the MetaFoils. After the single wing would split apart and morph into a biplane configuration, a set of para-foils that looked sort of like venetian blinds would spread out and catch the air between the biplane wings. This created such tremendous lift and drag that the MetaWing could be landed at 20 mph, even with a good sized load.

General aviation was never the same. And neither was Gary the Geek. He had embraced his nickname and created a new and improved image as "Meta". The money and the fame had definitely helped to heal some of the old wounds. But if you dug deep, Gary the Geek was still there. The old hurts... the old shame... it was there. Waiting there.