Willie and the Whistling Wind

Willie and the Whistling Wind is a children's story featuring the titular character, Willie, meeting a series of winds that sound different and what he should do if he hears each one. Though on its face a whimsical fable about the importance of not keeping secrets from one's parents, Willie and the Whistling Wind is actually designed to impart two important lessons about life in the Cobalt Protectorate: the fact that air needs to be kept fresh and moving aboard spacecraft for people to live, and the fact that the Code of Evermorn imposes a duty on all citizens to act in the interest of preserving life.

Summary

Willie is a young boy who lives in a small town - presumably an asteroid colony or a settlement on a distant world, but the specifics change with the edition released in a given market. He leaves his house to go play in the woods each day, and each day he runs across different winds that talk to him. Each of these winds - personified as another young person - identifies itself with a pithy name that changes between tellings, makes a specific sound, then tells the boy not to say anything to his parents. The boy is obedient and always tells his parents. On the last day, the breeze called Violet of the Vents thanks the boy for not letting her unruly siblings trick him. The boy tells his parents, as always, and they say he should be nice to Violet and that he can go play with her every day if he wants.

Historical Basis

Willie and the Whistling Wind is published and retold with different personified winds that correspond to different plumbing, ventilation, and other sounds that a young spacer or colonist might encounter wandering around a ship, habitat, or other piece of important infrastructure where they live. This is because these sounds indicate either important life systems working properly (atmosphere circulation, algae filters burbling, etc.) and others represent dangerous situations (atmosphere leaking through a seal, fuel escaping a tank, coolant filters backing up, etc.). Each of these situations should be reported by a child that hears them - even if all is well - so that repairs or maintenance can be carried out if necessary to prevent potentially dangerous malfunctions.
Aside from instilling the 'Good Samaritan' practices found in the Code, pretending to be Willie also provides a great passive test of young spacers' developing sensory interpretation and language skills. As the youngsters get older, their parents might start asking them questions about where they think the winds come from as a way of promoting critical thinking about how technology works or why technology is important in their lives. For example, Violet of the Vents is portrayed as a good entity because air doesn't naturally circulate in a non-rotating habitat; she is contrasted with 'Sammy the Silent,' who denotes stagnant air and, thus, the suffocating carbon dioxide bubble that builds up around people's faces when the vents aren't circulating the air. While a young child might look at Violet's role in the story uncritically, an older child with some experience in space travel might recognize the importance of not going into compartments where the air isn't moving because of the danger that entails.