Gravitas

They tell me later that the gray suit saw me and beelined across the plaza, one arm swinging like a Russian solider, the other weighted down by the cup of coffee in his hand. By the time I see him, my thighs are burning, my jeans are wet, and he’s standing over me with a sneer saying, “Must be magnets in that, eh, buddy?”

The team circles in. Their expressions range from curious to angry to hungry. I guess they’re all hungry, in one way or another.

There’s fear in the suit’s eyes. His smile dissolves. I nearly laugh—it’s what this Virtue Viper wanted from me, why he exchanged his shitty coffee and a couple minutes of his life for a heckle. Probably would’ve been the highlight of his day. He takes a step back, stumbles. He crumples the empty coffee cup in his fist and turns to flee.

When he’s gone, an anonymous arm wraps around my shoulders.

“Beta Newt,” says the man attached to the arm, shaking his head.

Cynthia gives this man a cold look and he slinks off my shoulder. I know what she’s thinking: no need to insult anyone’s manhood. We were all Newts at one point.

“You okay?” she asks me.

I nod. Sure, I’m okay. That’s what I love about us: some folks I only met this morning in the parking lot, but already, we’re already family.

The clown barely got coffee on my poster, which I now hoist above my head. Eric’s new sign features a Death Star drawn in red and orange Sharpie. It’s hard on the eyes, but you can tell he spent time on it. Sorry, Mr. Lucas—we don’t believe in The Force! I pat Eric on the back as I pass. I bet everyone patted him on the back for that one. Anyone strolling in or out of City Hall notices his poster. Even the youngsters on skateboards glance over. They teeter off stone walls and regard us as a pack. I nod, show respect. Giving the truth a warm eye, even for a second, is more than most give.

Cynthia uses the same yellowing, curling poster she’s used for three years. It’s got an illustration of a feather and a bowling ball, a ≠ sign between them. It’s too abstract, but good luck convincing her of that. “It gets Newtons questioning the lies they’re taught,” she says. “What more proof do you need there’s no such thing as gravity?”

I assume my position in the dead center of the rally, plant my poster on the concrete, and hold it upright with my chin. My poster’s the largest. It’s the pièce de resistance, our research summarized in capital letters. The gist being, how the Canadian government controls precious metals and launders money for terrorists who fill the earth’s core with magnetic material. How everything, and I mean everything, has enough magnetic attraction to keep us stuck to the planet. The way fabric sticks together. Hair sticks to combs. A bazillion magnetic fields goes through our bodies, keeps everything fastened down. How, if you did a minute of research, you’d know it’s unnecessary to have an all-encompassing magical “law” giving objects weight. How, if you knew the amount of metal in our bodies, you’d sell your soul to Elon Musk to get shares in ferromagnetic materials. Use your brains, people. It’s not magic.

We’re the magic. The force that unites us. Makes us undeniable.

#

Here’s what I tell them. Exactly as it happened.

It’s a week or two after City Hall and I’m eating Taco Bell for breakfast. As usual, when I’m late for work. The cat’s parading down the counter, tail on salute, when she knocks my Beefy Melt on the floor.

Get this: the burrito lands soft as a hacky sack.

My eyes don’t leave the burrito as I call Cynthia’s burner. “It’s happening.”

Her phone rattles. “I’m leaving the office,” she says, breathlessly.

Cynthia once climbed to the top shelf at a Home Depot to find me a showerhead. That’s the kind of woman she is. She’ll hang off the rafters like King Kong and shout to workers gathering below, “Told you your computers goofed!”

She makes the world seem okay, even when it’s not. She’s like our mother in that way. Only a couple years older than me, but still, she’s my mother.

Her brother died in a plane crash. That’s what called her. It was the same week Ontario announced its Canadian Minerals and Metals Plan. She single-handedly found the false flag and waved it at us. I’ve never met anyone like Cynthia. Her passion puts the rest of us to shame.

“I’m outside.” She’s gasping. “What are you saying? Big Metal’s ass is in check?”

“Bigger—it’s—” It’s scary how excited I am. “The magnetic attraction is weakening.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. The Canucks must be losing the core.”

A truck blasts his horn. A clatter and a smack. From a distance she shouts, “I dropped my phone. The screen barely shattered!” Her shriek gets louder as she picks up her phone. “I don’t know if it’s the Americans or the Russians, but God bless ‘em.”

“Find out who invested in weighted boots!” I remember to shout before she hangs up.

I don’t go to work, obviously. I sit at the computer and drop my burrito over and over. We never jump to conclusions. It’s our core tenet. Thorough research, always.

#

Our rallying cry echoes over the country. It’s a cry too big for City Hall Plaza. We swarm the park, scatter tools and data over card tables. We provide cold Beefy Melts to anyone who wants to relive The Moment.

Floaters make the pilgrimage from all over: New Mexico, Florida, the Dakotas, Alaska. We cast out invitations to passersby, curious Newtons who get drawn into our orbit. It’s our biggest gathering yet.

Cynthia hasn’t shown.

The livestream starts at noon so I’m wringing my hands. She’s the host, the one with charm and contagious enthusiasm. She’s the queen of cushioning harsh realities with love. As for me, I’m no leader. I relish in outrage, drive-by trolls, and logical fallacies. It’s like sticking my tongue to icy metal—it hurts but I can’t help it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not unempathetic. I get the appeal of making up rules and laws and calling them permanent. We’re all the same, Floats and Newts, trying to make sense of this looney-tunes world.

We didn’t expect wind, so Eric glues twigs to the sides of our projector screen. Line graphs ripple in the breeze, like a flipbook of flashing lightning. Anyone with half a brain can look and see that natural laws don’t change unless somebody’s holding the strings.

I’m helping José polish his vintage compasses—they’re under plexiglass, but people keep touching them anyway—when Cynthia materializes, out of breath, frizzy hair bursting from a scrunchie. “Shut it down.”

She’s wearing a neon yellow Croc and a hot pink Croc. They hurt my eyes. “Slept in?”

“Didn’t sleep at all.”

Floaters see her and freeze. Even Jolly Julian in his Hawaiian shirt keeps his distance.

Eric says, “Thank fuck you’re here.”

“What if it’s not Canadians or Big Metal?” Cynthia says. “What if it’s us?”

The digital EMF tester slips out of José’s hand and vanishes in the grass.

“Us?” Eric says. “As in humanity, as in climate change, the poles switching?”

“No.” Her voice is hard as steel. “What if the-effect-known-as-gravity only exists because we believe in it?”

I try to catch Eric’s eye, but he’s looking at José, who’s kneeling in the grass. “Our followers will flip if we don’t start at noon,” I say. “They’ll think that Big Metal—”

She holds up her hands, steadying herself against the air. Or surrendering. Or pushing us away. “I know how it sounds, but before my brother’s plane crashed—hear me out—that morning, I thought, how come giant metal vehicles don’t fall out of the sky? What’s underneath?” She spreads her hands out in a plea. “I’d never thought that before. That was the first time. The only time.”

José rises. “I’ve thought that before.”

The projector screen goes horizontal, and two sticks fly off. Eric chases after them. Then a pair of Newtons, mother and daughter, hightail out of the park.

“We never jump to conclusions,” I say, feeling dizzy. “We let facts marinate.”

“We don’t have time for that,” Cynthia says.

José counts facts on his palm. “The livestream will galvanize Floaters and turn more Newtons. If there are more non-believers, there’ll be less belief. You’re suggesting less…”

“Effect-known-as-gravity,” Cynthia says. “Potentially. If we’re successful.”

“I’ve read about that,” José says. “It’s called The Tinkerbell effect. Where something’s existence depends on people believing in it.”

Eric returns, sticks in hand.

A few Floaters I don’t recognize linger close by.

I don’t want to undermine Cynthia, but I want to shake her. She’s not thinking clearly. Her expression empties before my eyes. I can’t help but remember the way my ex-wife’s eyes looked the first time she brought up Neo-Paganism. A bulletin board had caught her eye, she’d said. I didn’t know at the time she’d already committed, both to the group and their core tenet, polyamory. So, maybe for Cynthia, it’s too late.

She’s staring around at us, meeting everyone’s eyes.

I feel like I’m floating, but my feet are on the ground.

Did the Canadians get to her? The thought makes me sick. Not our Cynthia. The one who adapted the NASA resistance training for us all using pulleys and tool belts in case the worst happens.

“Prove it,” I say. Not to be mean. To push her in the right direction. I’ve got extra sway right now because of The Moment.

She takes me in. “You mean… we go ahead with the livestream.”

I shrug, like I’m suddenly blasé. “It’s the only way to know for sure.”

Crowds cluster around with twitchy hands. Eric, José, Cynthia, and I exchange glances.

The livestream starts. She stands up there like a preacher and goes through the hymns etched into our hearts. She’s so amped, she’s practically glowing. It makes me warm in the chest, even though I know she lays it on thick for show.

The wind knocks Eric’s phone on the tripod over. I rush over to raise it.

“In the end, you are what fuels you,” Cynthia says. “You consume your beliefs. What do you feel in your bones? In your blood?”

I hold the tripod steady. Right now, I don’t know what to believe, but surely, her theory is ridiculous.

“Listen to your body,” she says. “Don’t be anchored by what should be true. Be elevated by what is true.”

And then.

Here’s what I’ll tell you. Exactly as it happened.

The ground rumbles. The tripod’s vibrating, I’m vibrating. It’s an earthquake, I think—a logical conclusion. But then I survey the rapturous expressions around me and know it’s not an earthquake.

It’s us. Earth, as we know it, coming apart at the seams. Because of us.

We should be scared. We don’t know if it’s the end or a beginning. We shook the fabric of the universe. But we don’t feel scared. We’re too captivated by Cynthia. She gestures to the sky. Breeze plasters hair to her forehead, a crown the colour of clay. Throughout it all, she never stops talking.

K. S. M.’s writing has appeared in journals such as the Bellevue Literary Review, Grain, Wigleaf, and X-R-A-Y. She is at work on a novel and her MFA from the University of British Columbia. Born and raised in the Washington, D.C. area, she now lives in Toronto.

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