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The day that Gravity stopped



It was a normal day in a normal little town and he, Bob C. Pennerton, was normal as far as things went. Bob got out of bed and noticed something, he was floating and not only was he floating, everything that was not nailed to the ground was floating as well. "What's going on?" Bob wondered and went to check the T.V. but the remote wouldn't work and Bob saw that the Television was unplugged and on the other side of the room. "Drat," the frustrated man said to keep it G "I'll just find out at work." He decided and went about his normal morning routine, albeit with more floating than normal. After a frustrating shower, he had a slightly less frustrating time of getting his clothes on.

His commute was a little less than normal, which troubled him. Bob normally arrived around 7:30 and got his coffee by 7:35, he would be down to work shortly afterwards. Arriving at 8:00, he felt lost at the lack of his co-workers and the lack of a double shot vanilla latte in his right hand. Never the less, Bob vowed to go on and paddled through the maze of floating furniture on his way to the elevator which hadn't floated away due to the tightly strung cable system. Bob pressed the button he always had and the elevator lurched to a start, which was normal, but moved quickly without groaning or straining due to the lack of gravity, which wasn't normal and troubled Bob further. Upon getting to his cubicle, Bob immediately began searching Wikipedia for answers to the mystery only to get distracted by a pop-up about dancing kittens. After finding that Wikipedia couldn't tell him, he tried Drudge Report and was further distressed when it provided no answer.

Over the course of the day Bob became more troubled after realizing it wasn't going to be a normal day around noon. Having had enough Bob decided to take matters into his own hands, and checked Wikipedia again not wanting to cause a hassle for other people. "So objects with mass attract each other." He said as he read up on the subject. Bob scoured the links that the page provided him, searching for an answer about how gravity would change and was led to a page about Earth's gravity. The page talked about how the natural features, such as mountains, and something about the density of rocks creating anomalies in Earth's gravity.

Though he never remembered seeing any big mountains around the town, he was sure that he had heard something about bedrock, though he didn't realize the flaws in his theory. Bob picked up the phone and called his friend Phil, but got a disconnected message. Bob had enough and decided to really do something about it, he scrambled to retrieve his coat and put it on.

At the end of the day, it turned out that Gravity didn't stop but rather a slightly frustrated and peeved scientist (He failed the mad scientist exam) just forgot to turn off his experimental anti gravity device, which failed in getting rid of gravity but managed to reduce the area's gravity to about 20% of Earth's normal gravitational pull, 9.8m/s^2, bringing it to about 1.96m/s^2.

Gravity was restored and the only reported injury was a man who was staring at his coffee was floating above him when gravity returned to normal, though the property damage was extensive. Bob was given a day off by his company (though he still went into work that day like normal), the slightly frustrated and peeved scientist finally got recognized by the AMSA (American Mad Scientist Association), Area 51 got a new toy, and best of all no one floated off into space as would have happened with a true lack of gravitational force. From that day on, in that now less than normal little town no one took the 80% of Earth's gravitational pull that they had lost temporally for granted, the other 20% could just go ahead and die.