Duration 2.22

Before the Violent Unknown Event, Castel Fallboys was a competent pilot and an experienced hang-glider enthusiast, happy to discuss his enthusiasm on film. After the VUE, Castel's ability at both skills had become phenomenal. The VUE added four inches to his height, shed him of three stone, encouraged hair growth, heightened his blood temperature, shortened his vocal cords and taught him Instantaneous Dekis. 

Castel achieved his significant personalised flight by a prodigious mastery of technique, and by the use of new materials. He was able to stay in the air for very long periods, his record being five days and four nights, and his longest recorded flight was nine hundred and seventeen miles.

His skill at recognising and assessing weather conditions, and his ability to manoeuvre in poor visibility were not equalled. He left his competitors so far behind that his skill isolated him. He bricked up the ground-floor doorways of his house making it compulsory for himself to enter his home by the roof. And to minimise muscular growth that would inhibit flying, he used his legs as little as possible, until his gait resembled that of a starling.

Castel developed a great restlessness at every change in the weather, and on autumn nights he accompanied migrating birds far out to sea, always turning back with great reluctance.

To extend his range and his comparability with birds, Castel ruthlessly streamlined his body by excessive exercise and diet, growing very lean in the leg, muscular in the shoulders, long in the arm and short in the neck. He was finally and fatally caught out. Flying with a flock of terns, he banked too steeply, too sharply, too suddenly, and broke his neck.

His corpse dropped like a stone into the sea at Hell's Mouth, and his last pair of nylon wings are preserved at Slimbridge.