Zero 'g' Read online

  “Check my weight,” Beatrice called out. A virtual screen popped up and listed Beatrice’s weight as 120 pounds. She clapped because she had already lost 55 pounds, and she hoped to be back at her proper weight of 110 pounds in no time. Suddenly, the screen flickered, and the numbers started to drop drastically: 90…89…88…87…86…

  “That can’t be right. What’s going on, Harold?”

  “I’m not sure. There can’t be anything wrong with the program; it’s flawless. Ask it again.”

  “Check my weight,” Beatrice commanded again. But the number on the screen did not change to her original weight. It just continued to plummet.

  “What’s going on, Harold?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, I have been feeling lighter lately. I’ve been doing all my exercises well. Maybe I have lost a lot of weight.”

  “I don’t think you lost this much.” He looked her over, and she scowled at him.

  “Maybe it’s just an indication that my weight has reduced.”

  “Beatrice…” He stopped, and they both watched, mouths agape, as the numbers started decreasing again: 79…78…77…

  Harold shook his head. “Something’s not right, dear. This should not be happening.”

  Beatrice was too busy looking at her waistline to see if the fat was just falling off of it. She looked up when she heard Harold say, “Dear God.”

  “What is it?” she said as she looked to the screen. The numbers had plummeted to the fifties and then the twenties. They both watched in awe as the numbers counted down: 10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1, and then 0.

  “Something is definitely wrong here, my dear, and we need to…”

  Beatrice cried out as she suddenly felt weightless. To her amazement, her feet left the floor. She watched as her husband’s face went totally pale. Harold was about to grab hold of his wife when he, too, started lifting off from the floor. The two began to float up into the air.

  “Harold, my God, what is happening?”

  “I have no idea, Beatrice. Try to grab on to something, or we will hit the ceiling.”

  Beatrice scrambled around until she grabbed hold of one of the bookshelves in the living room. She hoped that Harold would not suffer another heart attack because of what was happening to them. She couldn’t explain it and knew it had nothing to do with weight loss or the virtual screen.

  “Beatrice, look out the window!”

  She looked at Harold, who was dangling from a kitchen chair, just as it began to lift up from the floor. They weren’t going to be able to hold on to anything. Just as the bookshelf shifted, Beatrice glanced out the large picture window to see what Harold was pointing at.

  There was a large group of children outside playing in a baseball field. They had a good game going on, and she could hear their excited cries as one after another began to float off the ground. Beatrice stared in horror as the children began to float away. Imagine the parents seeing their children disappear! At least she and Harold were inside and could only go so far. What would happen to those children as they floated higher? Would the floating stop and the children then plummet to the earth? The thought was too ghastly to comprehend.

  There were children all over who were starting to float up in the air. They giggled with glee, not fully understanding what was happening to them. They were unaware of the danger of their current situation. Little children who couldn’t be more than eight years old were floating up in the sky. Beatrice couldn’t remember seeing something more terrible than that.

  In another direction, there was a large parking garage where cars were lifting off the top and floating into the air. Beatrice couldn’t believe her eyes. She couldn’t begin to understand what was happening to the world. Why was everything around them floating away?

  “Harold…the statue…” It was all she could get out when she saw the Statue of Liberty ripping out of New York Harbor. It was a sight to see such a structure float up into the air. Suddenly, screams of delight were turning into screams of horror as people began to panic. Others were dying in the streets right in front of Beatrice’s eyes when items that were once in the streets began to crush people as they lifted in the air. People who were driving in vehicles were now floating in the air. Beatrice watched as a man climbed out of his car and jumped, thinking that would be safer than to float away. Blood pooled around his lifeless body. Suddenly, the body lifted as well as the pool of blood around him. The body and tiny droplets of blood began to rise up in the air.

  “Harold! Dear God, what is happening?” Beatrice shrieked.

  She got no answer from her husband, who was just as dumbfounded as she was. There was so much going on around them that it was hard to process it all. Harold wondered if the world finally had come to an end. It wasn’t at all what he’d imagined it to be. He’d expected something more jarring, as the movies suggested, not lying against the ceiling of his apartment as he watched his neighbors floating off into the atmosphere. Would they continue flying up into space? Was that even possible? He was surprised that his old heart was taking the shock of everything around them. He was just thankful that if this was the end of the world, he had his wife by his side.

  Beatrice gasped as she saw an airplane that had just left the airport heading to its destination. The lack of gravity caused the plane to lose control, and it started spinning in the air.

  “Oh, my God, Harold.”

  But Harold could already see what was happening. The miserable conditions that the airplane was now flying in caused it to spin uncontrollably toward their apartment building.

  “I love you, my dear,” was the last thing that Harold said before the airplane crashed into the building and burst into flames.

  ***

  New York City wasn’t the only area being affected by the lack of gravity. On the other side of the world, where there was currently a war going on, a colonel commanded his forces to launch a nuclear bomb and finally put an end to the war. To everyone’s surprise and awe, however, the bomb did not go to its intended destination. Instead, it seemed to just hover in the air for a moment before it floated away.

  “Colonel, it’s not just the bomb. Look at the soldiers!”

  The colonel was looking up at the monitor in the command room and saw that all the robot soldiers that were in the middle of battle had started to float up into the air.

  “What is this? Who is doing this?” He wondered what kind of weapon their enemy had that would allow them so much power.

  ***

  It was evening in India when the world started to change. In front of the Taj Mahal, there were a group of youths meeting to celebrate. There was laughter in the air and songs of praise. It was a night that was no different from any other, and yet something bizarre began to happen all around them. The youths were there to see the Taj Mahal during the full moon. They had been planning this for weeks and were filled with joy at seeing something so beautiful and pure.

  Right below the full moon at the Taj Mahal, people started floating up into the air. Shocked cries rose up along with them. No one knew what to do about it, and people started to grasp on to objects to hold themselves down. It worked for only a short period of time because the objects themselves started to lift off the ground and float. One young boy looked on with excitement as he watched the beauty of the Taj Mahal itself floating up into the air along with everyone else. It wasn’t long before he was up there floating with everyone else.

  ***

  In China, a magnetic mountain was floating in the air. The mountain attracted all the items in the area that contained materials that are attracted to magnets. All around China, items such as cars, planes, and appliances floated toward the magnetic mountain. It was a sight indeed to see all these items floating off in a line toward the mountain. The mountain itself was moving, so everything around it was in constant motion. It was both a beautiful and terrifying sight to behold. People were being crushed beneath floating items as they made their way to the mo
untain. People continued to float up into the air, and some didn’t make it up when an item on its way to the mountain collided with them.

  ***

  There was chaos in Yellowstone, as the volcano over there had erupted, lava spilling out everywhere. The volcano itself was floating in the air, and the lava continued to rise from the ground below. A lot of people who had gone to visit Yellowstone were killed instantly as lava poured down on them. Others were covered in lava while more began to be lifted into the air. There were screams heard all over. Many had gone to Yellowstone for a relaxing vacation with their families only to have their vacation turn into a nightmare.

  One of the most bizarre events that happened during the gravity shift involved the ocean water all over the world. The waves of the ocean just suddenly ceased. The water was completely still for a moment before the water was converted into tiny droplets. Each droplet was suspended in the air and then slowly floated upward.

  Chapter Six

  Meanwhile at NASA, there was only chaos as the people in the building attempted to deal with the no-gravity crisis.

  When the world started taking a turn for the worse, Carly found herself in an elevator. She had been on her way up to her boss’s office to discuss her weekly assignments when chaos broke loose. The elevator was currently on its way down from the sixty-seventh floor to the fourteenth floor. She had been walking around NASA that day in a complete fog due to the visit she’d had with her ex Antonio. She hadn’t been able to get him out of her mind, and she wondered when he would show up at the house again. She didn’t want to have a run-in with him when Rose was there, but she was not sure how to avoid that. She had been going up to talk to her boss about the possibility of taking some time off. She could take Rose away for a few days until Antonio got the hint and hopefully stayed away as well.

  As the elevator rose, she started to hear some startling sounds. She stopped for a moment and moved closer to the elevator door to hear more clearly. People were screaming. Startled, she let that sink in. Why were people screaming? What was happening outside the elevator door?

  Carly could hear people shouting and scrambling about. She couldn’t tell what was happening, but it had to be something big to cause such an uproar. She wondered briefly if she should stop the elevator and take a look. She decided against it; it was probably best to get to a higher level if there was trouble brewing.

  She suddenly heard someone shout about no gravity, and she almost chuckled. What on earth were they talking about, no gravity? Just as the thought went through her head, she suddenly felt very lightweight. It wasn’t a feeling of dizziness, but her whole body felt like there was nothing to it at all. It was a weird sensation to feel as if she weighed nothing.

  Something was definitely up, and she wasn’t sure that she wanted to be in an elevator to see it all go down. If there was something wrong with the gravity, then they had a world of problems. She slammed her hand down on the “Stop” button and then selected the fifty-fourth floor. The elevator resumed and brought her to that floor. As soon as the door opened just slightly, Carly pushed her way through the door to the chaos outside of it. It was clear from the moment she left the elevator that there was indeed something going on with the gravity of Earth. There were people floating right off the ground, and she knew it was only a matter of time before she would be doing the exact same thing.

  Carly knew she needed to get out of the building as soon as possible. She looked around the floor that she was on and found an office with a retractable window. She would just jump out. It’s no big deal, she thought as she took a deep breath. She felt so light that she knew she wasn’t going to plummet to her death. Instead, she would start to float upward. Whether that was a good result or not, she wasn’t sure; she just knew that being in the building was bad news for everyone.

  She approached the window and took a look outside. It looked worse out there than indoors. The world was going to pot, and she hoped somebody had a plan to stop it all. She looked around the room and at the people doing their best to run around the hallway.

  “Everyone needs to get out of here as soon as possible. Get outside as soon as you can. It’s not safe in here,” she said.

  Many people stopped and heeded her advice, while others looked at her as if she had gone crazy. Maybe she had, but she knew that she needed to do what was best for her and her family. What was best was getting out of the NASA building and fast.

  “You are going to fall to your death. Are you stupid?” a woman cried out.

  “No, you won’t, and neither will I. I promise you. There is no gravity left out there. You will just start to float.”

  “You’re crazy! A madwoman!”

  Carly knew she probably sounded like one, but she didn’t care. There was one thing for certain: she was not a stupid woman.

  “Trust me. You can watch me go first. But please, everyone needs to get out of here now.”

  The woman looked doubtful, but a few people stepped into the office. Carly had done the best she could. It would be up to them now to decide to save their own lives.

  The great thing about NASA was that it had gravity generators that were being used to slow down the process that was affecting the rest of the world. That was why she still had her feet on the ground. But they were failing and quickly. Carly looked around the office and cringed when she saw a woman fly up to the ceiling, her head cracking hard against it. There were a lot of accidents in the building due to the gravity generators failing. It was only going to get worse, and that was why she needed to get out of there.

  Carly pushed open the window and looked around. It wasn’t going to be easy, but she really didn’t have any other choice. It was then that she realized that there was a small kid curled up against the wall. She quickly glanced around to see if there was a parent nearby, but the kid appeared to be alone.

  “Come here. We have to get out of here.”

  The kid looked startled that she was talking to him. “Are you talking to me?”

  “Yes! Please, get up. We have to leave now.”

  He got up off the floor and walked over to her on unsteady feet. Carly looked out the window once again. It was just mind over matter. Thinking of jumping out of a window on the fifty-fourth floor definitely seemed insane, but she knew that logically, she would not fall to the ground. She could see all sorts of things and people already floating around. It was just a matter of wrapping her mind around the whole idea of it.

  The kid looked terrified, but at least he wasn’t running away from her. She grabbed him around the waist and hoisted them both onto the ledge. Before he could change his mind, she made the leap. The kid clutched on to her tighter, and she heard a scream in the office. Once in the air, they immediately started to float. Carly exhaled in relief, realizing she had been holding her breath the whole time.

  “See? There we go. No biggie, right? Now, just don’t look down.”

  The boy clung to her for dear life, even though she knew he would float just as she was doing. As gravity completely disappeared, she would continue to rise, but for the moment, she was OK.

  Now what?

  ***

  Henry finally got settled in his seat and opened a book his father Jim Iverson had given him to read during his flight. The plane had just finished its preflight checklist and was rolling down the runway. The airport he was using was close to the NASA building, and when Henry looked out the window, he gasped as he saw objects starting to float up in the air.

  “Oh, no.”

  He knew immediately what must be happening around him. This airplane was now officially a deathtrap. If he stayed on it, if any of them stayed on it, it would be certain death for all of them.

  He stood up. “Something weird is going on outside with the gravity. We need to get off this plane. As soon as it levels off in the air, we need to get in our parachutes and get off this thing.”

  Most everyone on the airplane looked at Henry as if he were an insane person. He couldn�
�t blame them; he was a sixteen-year-old kid asking them all to jump out of an airplane.

  Just then, the captain of the plane made an announcement. “Attention, passengers, we are facing some unusual problems with the airplane. This is an emergency. We need all passengers to follow proper procedures to disembark. The robot flight attendants will help you in any way they can.”

  Henry breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that all the passengers would find their way off the plane along with him.

  “Good call, kid,” the guy beside him said.

  A couple of robot flight attendants came down the aisles and started handing out parachutes. Henry felt sick to his stomach, and he wished that his father was there with him. He could hope only that his father was somewhere safe and out of harm’s way. Henry had to assume he was at work at the NASA building, and he wondered how safe it was in there for everyone. If his father died in this crisis, Henry wasn’t sure how he would handle it. It occurred to Henry quite briefly that this disaster could be his father’s fault. They had never discussed again what he had overheard in the office between Bill and his father. Did this crisis have something to do with that? He hoped not, for everyone’s sake.

  Henry started to strap himself into the parachute and make his way to the exit. He had to admit that he was terrified. The idea of jumping out of an airplane had never seemed very appealing to him. Many did it as a recreational sport, but Henry was never one for extreme sports. He preferred to keep his feet on the ground at all times. This would be very interesting indeed.

  One by one, the robot flight attendants led people off the plane. They jumped into the air, believing they would fall to the ground. To everyone’s surprise, they didn’t. They just floated in midair. Henry smiled. It was the gravity. Something was wrong with it. It had to have something to do with what his father was working on.