A/N my submission for  GE Adventures In Science contest. I've copied the picture it comes into the story.

"What are we doing here?" Elizabeth asked as she scrambled up the path leading to the large hill in front of them."You disappear for three months out of my life with little more than a cryptic text every so often to keep me going. Then you turn up and whisk me out here. I have a life. I have a new job next week in a big financial company in New York. What's up with you Joe?"

"Today I'm going to show you everything" said Joe.

"and the hill is here because?"

"well it's got  the best view. And you know maybe just maybe it's a metaphor" answered Joe.

"Couldn't you have chosen a lower metaphor Joe" said Elizabeth scrambling up the steep slope.

"Your dad is a physicist right?"

"And my mum" said Elizabeth.

"Makes you think that two wrongs can make a right doesn't it?" said Joe even he was starting to get breathless at the pace they were doing. "Anyway I have a story for you."

"OK" said Elizabeth too breathless to get started and argue.

"There was a physicist called David MacKay. He writes this book called sustainability without hot air. In it he says you can never run America by wind Power alone. You know why?"

"No, but I have the uncanny feeling you're going to tell me." said Elizabeth catching up to Joe.

Joe stopped and he held his palms out.

"So this Cambridge Professor David Mackay says if you look at a wind turbine if you put them close together then they begin to interfere with each other" while he did Joe moved his Palms close together to show the wind from one word turbine interrupting another. "too far and your wasting space you could fit more turbines in." said Joe his palms moving out "from this he derives this mathematical law that wind turbines should be at a particular distance apart. This fixes the maximum amount of wind you can get per square mile "

Joe spread his hands out to show and evenly spaced forest of turbines.

"yes and..." said Elizabeth impatiently.

"So McKay says the laws of physics shows there is an optimal density of wind turbines. He also points out that the cost of the wind turbine goes up with the square of a height. Double the height quadruple the price. From this he says the laws of physics tell us we would need to cover millions of square miles of America in wind turbines to make all our electricity. And they would have to be away from cities where we use it. He says, he's sorry, but you can't beat the laws of physics"

"Then he is right" said Elizabeth looking down.

"Your dad also said he would never let an engineer marry his daughter"

"Like he has any say in the matter," said Elizabeth sitting down on the grass "is that why you went off   You were In a huff because my dad is looking down on you?"

They were half way up the hill, even this high up the electric car looked small. They could now see to the fringes of the city beyond.

"and your mum" added Joe.

"Well he's right and she's right you can't break the laws of physics. Or do you mean my mum's Book? She really hates a whole marriage industry she wrote that whole book about it. If her daughter married anyone she look like a complete idiot. I told you I'm not marrying anybody, it's impossible." added Elizabeth.

"When we started at University the guys I was with told me it was impossible to date a girl taller than me. Arn't you glad that I ignored that one." said Joe starting to walk up again.

"So what have you been doing all this time?" said Elizabeth getting up.

"Breaking the laws of physics," said Joe striding again.

"Joe I spent a long summer as a 6 year old kid trying to invent a perpetual motion machine in lego. Believe me you can't do it you can't have something from nothing"

"Impossible right?" said Joe over his shoulder.

"It's the laws of physics Joe, the word Law is there for a reason, even an engineer has to obey them" added Elizabeth.

"Elizabeth if there is one thing you know about me it's I'm not good with rules" said Joe climbing up. The bank was now steep enough to make you hold onto the long rough grass with your hands.

"It doesn't matter Joe. You can't break them" said Elizabeth.

"Okay," said Joe turning around, his shoulder length hair had slipped from his ponytail "make you deal I show you I can bypass the laws of physics. The laws of David MacKay in this case. I show you I can break the laws of his physics. I do that you promise that you'll marry me. ".

"Okay if you can get past that physical impossibility I will marry you, and fly in your time machine while I' at it" admitted Elizabeth.

"Good. Feel that wind on your face?" started Joe You know why they put wind turbines in out of the way places? Because the wind power goes up with the cube of the wind velocity. You double the speed of the wind you get not four times but eight times the amount of power. Tiny and I mean tiny increases in speed leads to massive increases in power. Do you know where there a huge supply of fast wind?"

"No but I'm sure you'll tell me," said Elizabeth getting out of breath again.

"hang on" so Jo taking a deep breath from its inhaler and pointing up "the wind velocity gets faster the further up from the earth you get."

"But you already told me that the cost of the tower goes up dramatically with the height" said Elizabeth. "That's already taken account into David MacKay's physics of wind turbines"

"That's right. What if you didn't have a tower?" said Joe.

"huh?" said Elizabeth as she scrambled to the top of the hill after Joe. The ground levelled out and they could feel the strain on both legs. Joe took Elizabeth's hand and walk towards the far side. Down below on a large grass pitch they could see a huge silverdome held down by wires before a tree. It took a second for Elizabeth to register what she was actually looking at.

"It's a balloon?"

"The professionals call it an Aerostat. Unmanned airship or dirigible. It's not so much balloon more a kind of stretched sky doughnut."

The balloon began to fill. And as it did it looked like some giant had pushed his huge finger through the dome making a huge hole. In the middle of the hole it was a small wind turbine.

"Sometimes you know you have the right idea when everything get solved beautifully with one simple idea. The doughnut is long so it always faces into the wind for you. The edges act like a funnel, so large area of wind gets squashed down too small one. That means you get small fast turbine doing the work of one slow big one" Joe began excitedly.

The long donut balloon took off leaving a silver shadow of itself on the ground.

"This is where it gets interesting " Joe promised.

"How does the power get down to the ground?"

"the same way it gets from here all the way to the city over there down those power cables except that instead of going along, they go up. The cables carry power and anchor the balloon" Joe said.

"What about the weight of the cable?" Asked Elizabeth amazed at the gargantuan turbine taking off.

"That's where it gets clever. " They sat down together and watched as a second balloon was inflated.

"You see David MacKay said there was an optimal distance between wind turbines and he was right, what he didn't think of was that you could stack them vertically as well. We give them the same separation vertically and horizontally. Instead of a flat wind farm we're building a wind cube. With two turbines we get twice the density. More in fact the upper wind turbine gets faster wind and the lower one." Elizabeth could tell Joe was getting excited when he started throwing details around like confetti.

The second balloon was filled with gas. The turbine inside began to spin slowly. The first and second balloons hung on too long cable which was being paid out for huge drum. It was like two perl beads on string. While they watched a third aerostat began to be attached the cable.

"What happens if the cable breaks?"

"Given that most of the power cables and bridges in America are held up by those kinds of cables we would probably shut down the economy." Joe shrugged. "if it breaks the airship drifts away with the cable, like huge dandelion seeds in the wind, the control box senses this, sends out a signal waits until it's over water and then descends."

"Must take a lot of helium" observed Elizabeth.

"This is where things go clever. It's actually full of hydrogen. There is no one on those turbines we can take risks. We actually pump up tiny stream of water and they fill themselves through electrolists. the clever part is What keeps them up also is the reserve which keeps the power coming out at a constant level"

The first three balloon aerostats were up now and Elizabeth noticed the letters. 'A' on the first , 'T' on the second, 'O' on the thirds.

"What's the lettering?"

"Name of the company Altitude Tubine Operations and Management" said Joe.

"That needs work" said Elizabeth.

"so what do you think. I broke David MacKay's laws of physics. What do you say?"

"Was that breaking them or bending them?"

"I did the impossible. I come from a family of engineers. My great grandfather built early iron rails, they said that was impossible, my grandfather worked on aircraft the went faster than the speed of sound when they said that was impossible, then he worked on the Apollo spacecraft to go to the moon when that was impossible. I come from a long line of impossible dreamers."

They looked up the first turbine was high above them in the crisp sky.

"With these we don't need to be far from cities. We can put them out of the way even in the sea. We don't need to worry about foundations they are even too high for birds to reach. See that building down there. We are making the envelopes in it. We can actually ship our turbines on the back of a pick up truck. Did I say that 15% of the cost of a turbine is generally just shipping these huge parts around getting a crane to sight? Sorry I'm blathering I"m still in investor pitch mode"

"You pitched this to investors? I guess that would explain the suit." said Elizabeth.

"Me and the boys in my engineering class." said Joe. " We had a crazy idea which no one would believe possible. We built it and they believed the watt meters on the ground. This is best bit"

Down below them they watched a transparent plastic balloon be added to the line.

"From a distance you can't see this one. Blinks at night for planes but during the day the transparent blades spin so fast you hardly notice it. By both using a funnel on to a smaller faster generator and by using faster higher wind the costs drop so low you can cut the price of electricity. With the money we got from the investor we can build a factory to mass produce these. We can go green fast we are going to make fracking look like it was done by Galapagos Turtles"

Elizabeth got her camera out and held it low below them.

"smile" said Elizabeth then started typing widely on her phone.

Joe looked up at the last M on the lower aerostat. The movement of transparent one they called mother reminded him of huge jellyfish.

"So what do you say. Your the best programmer I know. With the money the investors gave we can go hiring. Yeh, you could make more money crunching numbers for that big finance company but why money when you can make history Say you'll join us, join the dreamers join, the risk takers join the future makers?"

"He's my answer." Said Elizabeth handing over her phone.

Joe read the screen, dropped the phone and kissed Elizabeth. The phone ended up on the floor. On it was a tumblr picture, a selfie of the two of them the transparent airship wind turbine behind their heads. On it was the label

"Me and husband to be Joe doing the impossible - inside the A.T.O.M"