By Ramprasath Rengasamy

If it was not Yves Rossy in 2006, to fly in the sky using a jet pack on his back; It would have been Adam Thorp, a 55 years old, 6 foot tall and weighing 70 kilogram the first to have fled in the sky in 2000.

Initially when he threw this challenge upon us, we thought he was joking. We never took it serious until one day when he finally announced his plan to fly in the sky in the local newspapers.

The only conditions he laid was he should be allowed to fly with his own safety tools and no one should inspect them until he lands safely at the destination. In the patent papers that he shared with us, he had wisely avoided details of his safety tools. We were only able to see the date the patent was registered along with some details about the weight of the safety equipment which was a mere 5 kilograms.

That was all right. We were only interested to inspect tools that were proven right. What is the point in investigating equipment which doesn’t work?

He had arranged for a huge show. People from different parts of the world came to see it. The company which sponsored his adventure must have bagged a huge profit. On the announced date, he stood at the center of a large ground where usually people do camping in high numbers. People took photos with him moments before the countdown started.

Moments later, we saw him flying in the air. Yes. A jet in his backpack propelled him and by moving his hands he controlled his trajectory. After making a couple of rounds, we saw him vanishing into the clouds and we never saw him back after that.

We never recovered his body which meant he was breathing elsewhere. What happened to him, none of us got to know.

An investigation team was arranged and their findings shocked us to the core. The first that the team found was the company that sponsored his fly ceased from existence after that. The company was registered only a few weeks before the actual event happened. This led the investigators suspect that the company itself could have been Adam’s.

The next thing that the team revealed was the weight of Adam with his safety packs moments before flying. It was registered that he was weighing around 90 kilograms, which was almost 15 kilograms more than what he was supposed to weigh with the safety backpack.

With his disappearance, it was quite easy for us to derive that he must have smuggled something very high in value in his so called adventure event. Around 50000 of us witnessed his adventurous smuggling attempt. What he smuggled, we do not know to this date.
But we learned something. We must give inventors, their due respect, attention and pay. If we don’t give them, then there is a world that is ready to give them a much higher pay.