Just outside the city is a gigantic cliff. Hundreds of people are lined up at its edge, and they're tossing all sorts of items over the edge to see if any of them fly.
A lot of things aren't designed to fly, but that doesn't stop people from throwing toaster ovens and washing machines over the side.
Today, someone comes along with something resembling a hanglider. As he sails away, everyone else starts jumping up and down excitedly. Something worked! The system works! Proof!
Everyone redoubles their efforts and now twice as many toaster ovens and washing machines are plummeting to the bottom.
A man stands at the edge, clutching a device adorned with paddles and flippers. He peers down tentatively.
His neighbor encourages him. "All you have to do is throw it over the edge," he says, dumping a wheelbarrow filled with sacks of pet food into the abyss.
Behind him in the distance, a hot-air balloon is drifting lazily in the sky. A few thousand people dragging snowmobiles and rickshaws are racing after it, desperately trying to grab a trailing rope.
"I don't know," the first man says, eyeing the balloon. "Seems to me most things aren't built to fl--"
His neighbor cuts him off. "Look, didn't you attend the seminar? Did you not just SEE the guy with the hanglider? The system works. All you have to do is keep throwing stuff over the edge."
Several people are now lobbing items at the balloon in an attempt to land something, anything at all in the basket. Others are trying to form a human pyramid in hopes of reaching the balloon as it passes. The balloon's pilot peers down, annoyed.
The neighbor continues. "Also, remember Ned? Ned threw things over the side all the time. Now he's both rich and famous. Well, we think so. We haven't seen him since."
"Right, but wasn't one of those things actually a bird? And didn't Ned also figure out that if you attach wings to a --"
"No. NO. You're not listening. The key is that Ned threw stuff over the side. Keep doing that and the rest will work itself out."
Another man rolls a tricycle off the edge, watches dejectedly as it plummets, then shuffles away.
"I think I'll go work on this some more," the first man says, hefting the paddles-and-flippers contraption. "Actually, maybe I'll throw it in the lake and see if it swims."
"I think you should attend more seminars" the neighbor snorts as they watch another group coax a tawny giraffe to the cliff edge. "You're only hurting yourself by not embracing the New Way Of Doing Things."
There's a collective cheer as one person succeeds in grabbing a balloon rope. He dangles for a few seconds, grasping the rope with one hand while clutching the lead tether of a full-size fiberglass canoe in the other. Then he and the canoe drop into the void.
"We're going to figure this out eventually!" the neighbor yells.
The air is now full of toaster ovens and washing machines and pet food and tricycles.
On a tiny speck of island just beyond the horizon, a man stands alone next to the ruins of his crashed hanglider and thinks: well, that didn't last very long.