Third Place - ZineWest 2008
THE THEORY OF GRAVITY
Luke Rule
I'm a rational man. As a rule, I don't believe in things I can't see. Specifically this includes ghosts, God, and gravity. The first two don't get
me into nearly as much trouble as the third, even with members of the clergy. Even with supposed scientists. I mean, just because things land where
you drop them most of the time isn't any reason to believe it's always going to be the case. Gravity's just a theory anyway. They're not going to
feel so smart when they get flung off this rock like water from a wet tennis ball.
Me, I've taken precautions. Everything in my house is nailed to the floor. I've got an emergency kit screwed into the ceiling. It's got Panadol,
a roll of gauze, a .38 revolver... I'm prepared. Be prepared, the scouts taught me, before I dropped out. I've got my house set up with guy wires
and countersunk foundations, which caused some problems with city council, but I'm not going to be swayed. It's going to take more than some
uppity centripetal force to take my home away from me.
Stories keep drifting in from all over, the kind the government won't put in the papers, about people floating away like they weren't ever there.
Dropping their briefcases and reaching for the sky. It's already happening. Levity is taking hold.
I used to be no better than you, before a woman got to me. Grew up out on the old man's farm falling out of trees and dropping rocks down wells
and thinking - here's something you can depend on. Things fall down. Doesn't matter if you're up in a crop duster or trying to scrump some apples
from the next farm over - everything's coming down eventually. In high school, I had a science textbook with a cartoon of Newton getting nutted by
an apple and it was perfectly hilarious that it took a head injury to twig to all this business of things falling down.
And then I moved to the city, all smooth-shaved and serious, and the city wasn't much smarter. The bus I took had to take a detour because a guy
had jumped out of an office block in the CBD, and I shook my head. Gravity demanded respect. The boy had probably met a girl, got his head full
of all kinds of ideas.
Nowadays I don't trust skyscrapers, or people who live in skyscrapers, or people who spend any amount of time in skyscrapers. People in two story
houses or apartments are also suspect. They're going to be the first to go when gravity gives up the ghost, flying out of their penthouses or trapped
on the sixty-fifth floor with nowhere to go but up, or down, or whatever it'll be called in our post-gravic society. The high shall be made low,
and the low... well we'll still be pretty low. The sky won't discriminate.
None of this would have happened if it weren't for the women. I've seen them, their hair floating every which way while they drift like paper bags
down the street, laughing at us and our Newtonian notion of mass. Sirens of the sky, singing of all that will pass on the fertile earth, putting
doubts in the mind of a sky-fearing individual like myself. Everything will be okay. Leave all your cares behind. Just step into the sky.
And that's how they get you. Gone up past the clouds, never coming down again.
I don't get out of the house much anymore, since carrying all the crampons and pitons and ropes just in case gets to be a bit of a chore, but when
I did I used to see a girl. With the hair and the eyes and the hips and you wanted to flap your arms and fly just to look at her. And when she
kissed me, those lips quivering with the promise of feeling, I felt that soaring, terrible flutter of levity. But I kept thinking of my house,
my collection of old magazines, of all the things I'd leave behind on the earth below. And when I fell, the ground met me with open arms.
And I'm never going to fall again.
Meanwhile it's been spreading, getting bigger, the earth is washed with joy and everyone's leaving it behind. And I'm prepared, my feet
nailed to the floor, nothing's going to take me away. You'll see. Gravity will betray you. Any minute now. Any... minute... now.
The Writing and Society Research Group, in the College of Arts at the University of
Western Sydney co-sponsored the prizes in the ZineWest 08 competition. This group led by Ivor Indyk, brings together scholars in the humanities, writers,
and members of the publishing industry, who have a common interest in exploring the social power of writing. The group has doubled the first prize
of $200 to $400 and added a subscription of HEAT Magazine worth $60, to second prize.
