The seaside town of Fartle Bay was founded in the year 1717 by Dalus Strallger, who had a deep love of the sea. He was legendary for his love of the Moon, but unbeknownst to the residents of Fartle Bay, he also had a desire to be the first man to set foot there.
So Strallger set to work on designing a means of flying to the Moon, building and testing countless designs before arriving at the one design he knew would work. The problem was keeping it a secret from residents, so he disguised his rocket ship as a fully functioning lighthouse. Unfortunately, Dalus died before he could make his historic flight.
Determined to continue the secrecy, Dalus’s widow Camryn hid the designs for the rocket ship along with his diary under the floor of the attic, where they remained undiscovered for the next 200 years until a young Stephan found them while playing in the attic. Upon reading the diary and studying the plans, he became so excited that he showed them to his parents. His father became furious as Stephan was not to learn these secrets until his retirement from service. As punishment, Stephan was no longer next in line to operate the lighthouse after his father; instead, Matthias was hired, thus breaking a long-running tradition of a Strallger family member running the lighthouse.
As Stephan finished his story, Matthias was nodding. “Now it all makes sense,” Matthias said. “Now I know why you treat me this way. But this is not all my fault.”
“It IS your fault!” Stephan roared, producing a pistol. “You came and took my job!”
“Well, this job would have been yours had you stayed out of the attic in the first place.” Matthias replied, not realizing he had spoken his last words.
Stephan became furious and fired the pistol. Immediately Matthias collapsed on the floor in a lifeless heap.
Stephan turned away from the body and looked out the window. The ship was now leaving Earth and entering the darkened region of space.
Stephan grinned. “I am now the first man in space. And soon I shall be the first man on the Moon!”
To be continued…
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