Zero 'g' (5 page)

“
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.

“
Go
od 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.

It was
Henry’s turn to
jump, and he made a run for it. He fell into the air and thought he
would just keep on falling, but he didn’t. He hung there in shock
as he looked around him. Thankfully, everyone got off the airplane
just before it floated its way into a building. He couldn’t imagine
what it would have been like to have been on the plane when it
crashed. It looked terrible from where he hung suspended in the
air. He saw someone, a woman, hanging in the air not far from him.
She was clutching a young boy. Henry recognized her from the NASA
building. Did that mean that the building had been evacuated? Was
his father out there somewhere, too, floating around in the
air?

“
Excuse me
!” Henry
shouted.

The
woman turned
around and looked at him quizzically. “Yes?”

“
Do you know my dad? Jim
Iverson?”

She nodded as she shifted her weight to allow for a better
hold on the child. “I do know him, yes. I don’t know where he
is
, though. There was a lot
going on in the building.”

“
He’s my dad
, and I
have no idea where he is. I just jumped out of an airplane, and I
have no idea what is going on.”

“
Welcome to the club. I’m
trying to figure out what to do myself.”

“
Can I make a suggestion? We would have a better chance of
not rising up in the air if we h
eld on to each other.”

“
That’s actually a good idea. My name is
Carly
, by the way.”

He went to Carly and took the child from her hands.
The boy felt incredibly light in
Henry’s hands; he could hardly believe it. Carly moved around him,
and she then wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around
his neck. Henry held the child in the same way. Together, they
could suspend themselves in air in the same spot without worrying
about floating away. Hopefully, together they could figure out what
to do next. They couldn’t stay out there forever. There was a
chance their situation only would grow worse.

“
I’m Henry.”

***

Linus McCoy was Henry’s best friend. They had been
super close since they were kids.
They pretty much spent every waking moment together. When it came
to trusting someone, Linus could depend on Henry for
anything.

When the world decided to fall apart
, Linus found himself on a bullet train, of all
places. He was traveling on the bullet train to visit his father.
He knew something was wrong when the train started to shake
uncontrollably. Everyone on the train started screaming, and it was
almost too much for him to take. He got up from the seat to take a
look out the window. It looked like the end of the world. The train
was just passing the area where the NASA building was located. He
knew that Henry was not there that day; he was supposed to be
flying off for a school event. Of the two of them, Henry was always
the overachiever.

It looked as if the train was about to be
derailed
, and Linus didn’t
think that he should be on the train when that happened. The train
suddenly went off on another track in a different direction. That
was all it took for Linus to start running down the aisle and head
for the exit. When he got there, he opened the door, expecting
there to be a huge gust of wind blowing around, but there was
nothing. The air was just still. He looked one way and then the
other before he jumped. He expected to fall heavily and maybe break
a few bones. Instead, he lifted up in the air and found himself
floating.

“
What the
…” He watched
as many other people started jumping off the train before it went
off the tracks and crashed. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing,
and he hoped that no one was seriously hurt. He looked toward the
NASA building and saw all sorts of objects and people suspended in
the air. Maybe if he headed in that direction, he would be able to
find Henry’s father and figure out what was going on.

He started swimming through the air at a slow pace but
making decent headway. The dots that he had seen from far away
eventually turned into people. He went through a few groups before
he saw Henry. Linus was filled with relief at the sight of him. He
wasn’t sure how Henry got there
, but he couldn’t have been happier to see him. The world
might be falling apart, but he was sure that Henry would know what
to do.

“
Linus
! Oh, man! How
did you get here?” Henry shouted.

“
Luck, that’s all I have to
say. I can’t believe you are here. I thought you were flying out
somewhere.”

Henry laughed
. “I was!
I jumped from a plane, man. How did you get here?”

“
Funny you
should ask.
I jumped from a train. Do you know what is going on here? This is
messed up.”

“
No idea. But it has something to do with the gravity. This
is Carly
, by the way. She
works at NASA with my dad, and this little guy is David. We don’t
know where his parents are.”

“
So
, what’s the plan
here, Henry? I know you must have one, so let’s hear
it.”

“
We need to get close here
, Linus. Strapping ourselves together like this is the best
way to stay suspended for the longest.”

“
Yeah
, OK, no problem.”
Linus made his way over to the group and wrapped himself around
Carly. It was awkward at first, but after a while, it became
comforting knowing they were all working together to stay alive.
That was what was most important, after all. They would stick
together no matter what until the world got back to normal again…if
it ever did.

“
Now what?” Linus
asked.

Henry looked over his shoulder at
Carly and Linus. “We need to go back into the NASA
building.”

“
What? No, I don’t think that’s a good
idea
,” Carly
exclaimed.

“
We don’t have a choice. I need to find my dad. He’s in
there
, and he’s the key to
this. I just know it. He would know what to do, how to handle all
this. It’s the only way. We have to go back in.”

Carly was silent for a moment. “I think I might know where
there is a suit that would help me walk through the halls. Maybe if
I could get to it
, I could
move around freely inside.”

“
That’s a good
start.”

“
So
, how are we going
to get ourselves back inside? It was hard enough getting
out.”