When I learned that the Pentagon was upgrading the B-52 yet again, with an eye to its perdurance through the 2050s, I realized I wanted to write a story about a future B-52.

Very early on I hit on the awesome title "BUFF of Theseus." "BUFF" is the nickname of the B-52. It means "Big Ugly Fat Fucker," though the prissy Pentagon reports it as "Fella."

Like most of my ideas, this one lounged about my idea pool for a while. I really liked it, though, and soon began researching the B-52, so that my story would be accurate.

I've probably complained before, that for a guy like me who works in the short forms of stories, forms that should simply blossom from my brain, I find myself researching all the time, as if I were, like John Jakes or James Michener, a producer of doorstoppers. This is due to my stories always involving things far from my boring life.

In any event, I watched YouTube vids, queried Grok, and read online reminiscences of B-52 crewmen. I printed out ~40 pages of info that I reviewed and highlighted. You'd think I was writing a term paper. (I had to do the same sort of things for my Bato stories, which are set in the 3rd-century Roman Empire.)

The nice thing about researching your subject is that you learn things that are wonderfully suggestive. For example, there is a catwalk in the B-52 in the wheel-bay, which passes the insulated engine bleed pipes, which are used to pressurize the aircraft and are so hot, that the bleed systems must be turned off for ten minutes before anyone can use the catwalk. Wonderful! As it was, I didn't need my characters to go into the wheel-bay.

Other details were equally wonderful and in fact shaped my story. Some details were perfect and accommodated my plot too well!

And of course, the research kept me from saying dumb things about B-52s. For example, a bad author who doesn't do his research might write about his 2050s B-52 having been in Vietnam. Nope. All the B-52s that were in Vietnam have been decommissioned, usually as part of disarmament treaties. The only B-52s that are and will be in use were part of Strategic Air Command (the nuke patrol). And while neither Vietnam nor SAC figure in my plot, it's a character detail for my B-52, and I was spared the embarrassment of mentioning Vietnam.

Yes, I am grateful that my story has a tidy verisimilitude. I think the reader will be given a sufficient sense of being in a B-52, even in a story of only five thousand words. But boy, I'm tired of all the research. My next story needs to be complete nonsense...