Zero 'g' (4 page)

“
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 sa
id
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 the
ir 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 mountain. 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.