It began with the DirecTV guy, Mike.
During the course of troubleshooting our equipment, he set every receiver in my house to the History Channel. That's how I caught the tail end of an American Pickers episode and learned of the Forevertron.
It was a steampunk fan’s dream – on steroids. The Forevertron is 50 feet tall, 120 feet wide. And weighs 600,000 pounds. It was created by lifetime scrap metal collector and artist, Tom “Dr. Evermor” Every.
Sure. That’s what they want you to think.
More likely, the real explanation for its presence is something more like this …
The Wanderlust came down hard -- not as hard as it might have, considering that it was a starhopper.
A big boat like that has no business chugging through a planetary atmosphere at 5,000 feet, but the captain was looking for signs of intelligent life on, of all places, Earth.
When the Firefly Drive, never intended to be used for anything but parking, suddenly quit under the strain of that gravitational proximity, the ship had nowhere to go but down.
The pilot was good. He headed for a dense pine forest and brought the ship’s nose up as much as he could. Slicing through nearly a mile of standing timber brought the ship to a gradual, smoking halt, turning what would have been complete destruction into mere cataclysmic damage. The trees slowed the ship, but they took their toll.
The Wanderlust had found its final resting place, a scenic Earth locale known as North Freedom, Wisconsin. Fortunately, the hopper had been cloaked when it came down. The incident was neither seen nor apparently heard, raising the question: If an interstellar spacecraft crashes in the woods when no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
Nobody came to investigate.
The crew took stock. Miraculously, none had perished in the crash. The front third of the Wanderlust had been turned into scrap metal. Navigation, life support and communications were gone. The first two no longer mattered; the third did. The aliens had no ride home and no means of calling for one.
On the plus side, the planetary atmosphere that had flooded the ship when its nose was destroyed was breathable, and it looked as though the local flora could provide edible grains for the distinctly birdlike aliens when homegrown supplies were depleted.
Much of the ship’s equipment remained functional. The transporter showed promising signs of life, but its range was limited to the typical distance from orbit to planetary surface.
The crewmembers knew the drill. They got to work.
Yes, the Wanderlust would fly no more, but the crew could re-purpose its surviving equipment for alternative transportation. What they couldn’t salvage, they could find in stealthy visits to Terran landfill sites.
Within a surprisingly short time, they had constructed a device that, with a little help from lightning, took them to their nearest outpost. The device remained behind, mysterious, and nameless, until Dr. Evermor claimed it as his own.
Meanwhile, back in reality (or as close as I get) …
Holy Sith! The Forevertron incorporates such exotic components as a pair of Thomas Edison dynamos, a giant telescope, and the Apollo 11 space capsule decontamination chamber.
Dr. Evermor’s Sculpture Park is only a little more than 100 miles west of me? A must-go day trip went on my calendar. Even Mary, my decidedly anti-science fiction wife, agreed to join me, once she had seen a few Forevertron photos.
Matthew, my 8-year-old grandson, who thinks a trip to the supermarket is a never-ending journey, was the toughest sell. He spotted what he thought were a TARDIS and a Dalek in the photos, so he was in.
Two weeks later, under cloudy skies and a promise of sun to the west, we sallied forth. We wandered about the countryside near our goal for a bit -- but we finally found the park, not visible from the highway, hiding behind a surplus store and what appeared to be a junk yard.
We were not disappointed.
Well, Matthew was a little bummed when we couldn't find a Dalek, and the TARDIS he had seen in the photos turned out to be an old English phone booth -- no phone but still bearing instructions for dialing numbers in Ireland.
Thanks, History Channel -- and Mike.