A World Set Adrift

 Some rules in life feel unbreakable—until they suddenly aren’t. That was the thought in humanity’s mind, when everything changed on New Year’s morning.

I woke up weightless, my feet hovering inches above where I’d fallen asleep on the sofa. The blanket around my shoulders slipped off, and floated upwards. My first thought was that I was dreaming.

My mother’s voice screaming from the other room snapped me out of that. “What’s happening?” She shrieked.

“Hold onto something!” I yelled back, arms clutching onto the sofa, before that began floating towards the ceiling as well. I swung my arms around in a wild attempt to swim through the air.

Outside, I saw cars lift off the ground. People were hanging on to trees and lampposts—anything still attached to the earth—with their legs kicking in the wind. Some were not so lucky. A boy in a blue sweater screamed as he floated past the window of the apartment—which was on the fourteenth floor—with his scared chihuahua in his arms. My stomach twisted as he disappeared into the clouds.

The remote hit the ceiling, and the television switched on to show a news channel. “A global gravity failure!” The reporter screamed, holding onto her desk for dear life. “Scientists are unsure—” The rest of the words were lost to static.

It was a catastrophe. At first, panic took over. Cities crumbled as buildings—now free from the grasp of earth—were ripped free from their foundations. The oceans lifted, creating large walls of water. The sky—once a far-away star-filled wonder—was now a hungry abyss looking to devour us whole. The rules of life had completely changed.

But humans are survivors. We adapted. It was slow in the beginning, but we learned to tether ourselves to the ground with ropes and weights. Architects designed floating cities, with high ceilings to stop people from floating away. Handrails were installed everywhere, and air currents mapped like roads. Scientists created electromagnetic fields to hold furniture and homes in place.

People stopped being afraid. I watched as children were born in this strange new world—ones who had never felt the pull of gravity and who would never walk on earth. They played with no fear in the skies, laughing as they effortlessly learnt to maneuver the winds. Sports like gymnastics evolved further, now unhindered by gravity.

Nations began to work together, leaving behind rivalries and enmities. With gravity no longer holding us down, the stars were closer than ever. Space travel was no longer a distant possibility, but was just within our reach.

One night, decades after that fateful New Year’s morning, I let go of my ropes and handrails. My house shrunk below me, and the galaxy felt like it was an inch away. I saw the Earth below, not as something that I was trapped on, but as something I belonged to.

Gravity wasn’t what held humans together, after all. It was empathy that connected us, even as the world fell apart.