It was as if I flew to the edge of space, and found heaven from there. It sounds as corny as the old TV show, but it turned out to be true, in a very strange way.

Some may have heard of the Helios Program – A project by NASA to fly high altitude solar powered aircraft capable of staying in the air indefinitely. All of the aircraft used in the early 2000s were unmanned – UAVs or “drones” designed to be super lightweight, but a few years ago a much heavier manned vehicle was designed and built. The reason why such an airplane was even considered worth experimenting with were classified, and still are. For the purposes of my story all that needs to be known was that there was an experimental flight and I was the test pilot.

The US space program was not doing much at the time and I jumped at any chance to get even close to space, although the altitude I would be circumnavigating the globe would be less than 100,000 feet (30,000 meters). My route was to fly west from Houston across the Pacific Ocean with the world rotating beneath me. At these altitudes I would wear a pressure suit and be using oxygen, and in all respects it would be like being in space. I was very excited.

But things started to go wrong from the time that the ocean was all I could see around me. I was close to my maximum altitude and all I could see around me was the blue of the Pacific with spots of clouds and the curvature of the earth. I was housed in my bubble but even with full speed on the electric motors were noiseless. You can barely hear the propellers in the thin air at altitude. It was an incredible feeling, like riding the wind … until it all turned to shit.

I had no idea how it started but for fire to take hold at that altitude and with such ferocity, I knew that it had to have been fed by oxygen leaking from somewhere, so the first thing I did was to shut off everything and move to the small portable tank I had beside me. The protocol is simple, radio in a distress call and then lose altitude as soon as possible to equalize pressure and find breathable air.

The fact that the radio was not functioning was not surprising. Everything was shut down, but I had a satellite phone and EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) for when the emergency was over. In that moment I needed to concentrate on keeping the airplane together and flying it to safety. It was just that when the air became less rarified, the fire came back. I was white knuckling through this, with no time to call for help that I knew would not come in time.

As long as the wings stayed together I could glide, but I could not count on that. It seemed that I would need to ditch in the sea, inflate my raft and call from there, relying on the emergency food and water that I had in the survival pack aboard. It was the Pacific Ocean – just a huge expanse of blue, with a few island groups every few hundred nautical miles in any direction. Dry land seemed like an impossibility, until I saw something in the distance.

I thought that it was an illusion at first, because it seemed so isolated. As I drew nearer I saw that it was an atoll, perhaps 8 nautical miles across, with the largest island dead ahead of me. To my amazement I saw that in the middle of that island was a clearing with a house in it, and beyond that, anchored in the lagoon, was a small boat. I had to land but there was no clear area of land. Every island was covered with thick bush or coconut palms. The only way seemed to be to execute a crash landing in the sea, as close to this island as possible.

I was coming in from the northeast, and the aircraft seemed to have timed its disintegration to perfection. A wing had already parted from the fuselage even before I hit the water. I was still going straight and at speed, but my capsule hit the water and tore the canopy straight off. I found myself in the water, with a reef to my left and the island about 600 yards ahead of me. The water was deep and the aircraft was gone, but the only way was forward – swim to shore.

Within 20 minutes I walked ashore onto Suwarrow.

You can find it on the map. It is in the middle of nowhere but is part of the Cook Islands group. It was discovered by a Russian and claimed by other nations. It was once visited Robert Louis Stevenson. Pirate treasure was discovered there. It is deserted more often than not, but to my good fortune, I was not going to be alone.

There was a path from the beach in front of the very place I had landed, leading up the buildings that I had seen. It seemed as if it was a motel, and I learned that it was a place where sailing boats could anchor and stay ashore, but only for half of the year. For the other half this place was a nature reserve, with only a single park ranger on duty, and no visitors were allowed.

As I approached the main house I head the sound of music, in a language I did not recognize. But it drew me on, right inside to an open living area. There, in the middle of that room, was a woman dancing alone. She was facing away from me and had not heard me walk in. She wore a tropical print sarong and her dark brown hair hung down her back as she gyrated to what must be modern Polynesian funk. I knocked on the doorway to get her attention.

She turned and saw me, and immediately her hands went to cup her breasts, one of which was fully exposed, small but perfectly round. There was something about her that was not quite right, but I could not place it. It was not until she spoke that I understood.

“Oh my God, you gave me a fright!” It was a man’s voice. This was not a woman at all, even though she looked like one. She was well-formed with long legs and a flat belly, broad shoulders but slim arms. The breasts seemed real and the hair too, and she was wearing makeup on her tanned face, as if she was out dancing in some club in some city in some other part of the world. But this was an island in the middle of nowhere.

“I am Captain Jason Mattingley, US Air Force. I have just crash landed in the ocean down the path there. I need to make contact with my headquarters … please.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” she said. Her voice was now modulated to sound more feminine, but I suspected that she knew that I knew.

“I glided down,” I said. My flight was need to know only – the less said the better. “I take it that you have radio communications? My equipment is on the bottom of your channel.”

“Yes, of course. But are you alright? A Plane crash? Was there anybody else aboard? Are you hurt? I am sorry – I should have offered you a drink … water? Or I have beer.”

“Actually, a cold beer would be perfect, if you have one.” It seemed too good to be true. And to add to that, she smiled. I guessed that she was part Polynesian, with big eyes more green than brown, full lips and bright white teeth. She had a flower in her long hair, frangipani, and the perfume filled the room. I had to comment as the bottle of beer was handed to me. “It seems that maybe I have landed in paradise – a tropical paradise and a fair maiden to serve me.”

She put her hands together and said – “Do you require anything further of me master?” There was a sly smile as if I should understand the reference. Who would? I had been laid up in hospital years before and had watched a few reruns of old shows.

“Should I call you Jeannie?” I grinned.

“I would like that,” she said. “It is better than John.”

I decided to finish the beer before she took me to the “Ranger’s Office” where there was a telephone connection to an Inmarsat Dome. I simply called the base and informed the base that the plane had gone down and I was – where was I?

“Suwarrow,” she said. “Suwarrow Atoll, Cook Islands. No airstrip, so you need a boat in and out. 950 kilometers to Rarotonga, or 830 kilometers to American Samoa.”

“I heard that,” said the man on the other end. Let me check what the Navy has in your vicinity, but it may take a few days. Are you okay with that?”

I looked at her and she nodded, so I said – “All good here. I will send through this contact and a pin on the aircraft wreckage, but it is well under water. I will check in in a few days.”

“Another beer, Master?” she said.

“Thank you Jeannie,” I said. “And I feel that I should explain that I am not quite an astronaut, but I am very close to it.”

“Oooo, wonderful Master,” she said. We both laughed.

She was Polynesian – Cook Island Maori, as they say. She was what they call in that language “whakawahine” – having the soul of a woman. She had studied ecology at a university in New Zealand, and returned to her home country to work in conservation. Her transition to female had proved difficult so she had volunteered to go to Suwarrow in the off season to keep records of the bird populations and nest numbers and to ensure that the islands in the atoll were undisturbed by visitors over the closure period.

As for old television shows, she explained that there was a TV channel in New Zealand, just for those, but “I Dream of Jeannie” was her favorite.

“I thought that she was the most beautiful woman in the world. I just wanted to be her, and I wanted to have an astronaut to look after, and here I am, my dream has come true.”

To me she was never a man, but if she had been a born woman would we ever have made love? Would she have offered herself to me? Jeannie did, perhaps because of that dream, or perhaps because on those warm nights, with the sea breeze and the air smelling of frangipani and warm coconut oil on hot bodies, sex seems natural, even if a little nature is still in the way. But for a woman like her there is no way to say no.

“How can I serve you, Master?” was our private joke, our special bond. Sometimes I felt as if I was serving her, but I was happy to.

An American boat did arrive. Not a Navy vessel but a vessel used to maintain trans-oceanic cables contracted by the Airforce and perfect for the job, once approval had been obtained from the Governments of the Cook Islands and New Zealand. It meant that I had to stay, or rather I chose to stay until my aircraft was recovered.

When others arrived, I suggested that she not disclose her past, and she was pleased not to. I wanted them to see what I saw – a woman, beautiful and flawlessly feminine. Whakawahine – having the soul of a woman.

It was paradise for me, and living a fantasy that was so wonderful that even now I marvel that it happened. To fall from the edge of space to the tiniest dot in the largest ocean in the world, to swim from a wreck and walk onto a sandy beach without a scratch on me and there behold a dancing maiden who offers me a cold beer followed by hot sex. Tell me if that is not every true man’s fantasy. How could any small accident of nature destroy that dream.

I think of her all the time, even when I am deep inside my wife. The sound of the sea and the smells of that island will be forever linked in my mind with orgasm, the moment when the brain stands still in ecstasy.

Was it a dream? If it was, may I dream on.

The End
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Author’s Note: When I was very young, I really did think that Barbara Eden was the most beautiful woman in the world - I longed to be her. And the image opening this story is of Suwarrow Atoll, originally named Surarov, after the famous Russian general.