Inertia

I am Jonathan Straussman. I work as a patent clerk, doing all the paper works and listings and billings, all for the sake of earning a life with the growing interest of new technologies. I was a clerk. Just like Einstein when he was my age.

Two hours away from the Treaty of Blue Food Products in Manhattan, it was cold. I have no car. It was dark and freezing. The road was black, covered by rubbery asphalt, battered by nonchalant vehicles speeding towards work on their nightshifts.

I slid my card across the obsidian painted box, exerted an effort to pass through the glass revolving door. I was whistling as I walked along the marbled floor, slipping my card back on its upholster which was strapped around my thigh. Before me was a man. He was trimmed with manly couture, gracious with his masculine smile. I greeted back. He was the concierge of the condominium where I lived.

It was so nice to be back home. My back ached. My feet were numb. I stared below, my shoes were still as shiny as if I never left home and worked this morning. And when I eventually reached my unit at the 44th floor and closed the door behind me, the last thing I wanted to do is to flip the lights on.

It was quiet: a silence that endures a lifetime. I jumped off my pants and ran over my undershirt. I jumped over the bed dramatically through the air—like on a TV commercial. Landed softly. Sheets and pillows wavered away to the fringes of the bed, adjusting from the new weight. Naked, I tried to escape momentarily from the active movements of the Universe. I wanted to see nothing but the darkness behind closed eyelids, and hear nothing but the silence of an empty room.

I wondered about tomorrow, fearsome that it wouldn’t come. Then, I chose not to think further. Damn! I wanted to sleep.


INERTIA

It was so nice to feel alive. My head told me I’d rested. Shouldn’t I? The clock registered 3 hours after midnight. Confused, I turned on my window: a small square aperture like a bathroom window. It was freezing, covered by building frost on its edges. Was it snowing?
Waking up in the middle of the night wasn’t a usual incident. I thought I felt a quake, or a thud, or an explosion. I searched around. On my relief, my growing panic was smothered by the sight of orderliness-- things on their places, unmoved, throwing curious glances at me.
Then, might be out of nowhere, I felt an awkward churning on my stomach, like I was on a thrill ride.

Boom! I saw a blinding light.

Silence.

Boom! Boom!

A long stretch of echo was reverberating around the four corners of the room, shaking everything on its nerves. I turned on my window. No light. The frost that I previously observed was gone. Rather, it was wet like as if it rained. But it wasn’t broken.

I stepped off the bed and look for any sign of destruction through my tiny window.
The window was a small square aperture. Like a lavatory window wherein a bright day was in sight- a playground, rich and green, with moving images of children frolicking under the sun, riding over swinging swings. They were moving so slow. In fact, too slow to be real, like a relativistic time dragged by a speeding space rocket…

A playground. The slowness, tenderness, lacking of crisp definition arose from my human confusion. A disbelief that suspended anything that tried to move faster than an average snail inside a lazy bubble…

A playground. The slowness melted into an accelerating exchange of movements—a sign of coming epiphany. Gradually, everything started to move and appear on a higher definition, like on a TV monitor, away from the undesirable blur.

My unit was in the 40th floor of a 60-floor building. And when I realized that everything inside, my phone, wall clock, unattended clatter of clothes, bed sheets, all in all, we are experiencing a free fall. A perception of zero grav was inevitable.

Silence.

Moving now in a realistic, regained velocity, the playground was slowly titling sideways, accumulating angles after angles. I felt my feet entangled by the telephone wire while my head was almost touching the blue painted ceilings. I felt weightless. I slowly swam towards my window and reminded me of astronauts viewing earth from their spacecraft. Floating, rolling in midair, entangled by a telephone wire.

From my reference, the playground was now up side down, falling down onto the ground. But after all, it wasn’t a playground. And it wasn’t upside down. I, my things, my room; we were upside down. Swings weren’t swings but another infrastructure falling on its knees.
Empire State.

Children weren’t children but humans thrown kilometers over the streets by massive yet invisible arms. Their eyes and mouths wide open.

Manhattan was green, not from the rich green grasses of a playground but of funny globs of matter falling like gigantic spits from the pitch black sky.

I felt like an astronaut. I looked around slowly, searching again for orderliness inside my room. Wishing maybe it was just a dream. On my disdain, I found none.

Slowly…slowly… the concrete wall where I nailed my wall clock crashed, not it pieces, but in boulders of fractured concrete.