Surviving Gravity - A Writer In Motion Short Story

The First Draft

The stars in the sky over the old, abandoned boat twinkled as they spread the latest celestial gossip. Theirs looked like eternal existences when compared to most living creatures, but true objectivity is nearly impossible.

Time, it turns out, is a gravitational matter; it relates to each and every thing in the universe in proportion to its individual gravitational pull. As such, gossiping galaxies have much the same perceived life span as a cockroach - though only if you're experiencing it from their point of view.

Cockroaches, depending on who's point of view you're currently inhabiting, also have eternal existences. From humanity's point of view they all look much the same and in so far as a human is unable to tell one cockroach from another, immortal. The fact that they can be hit, stomped, or attacked by numerous means and still apparently reanimate to drag themselves from the scene, only to come back the next night as good as new, lends substantial weight to this theory. This is, of course, preposterous, but their survival abilities are impressive.

It is said if anything could survive the apocalypse it would be the cockroach. This theory is absolutely correct. Two such survivors are just a couple of a colony of hundreds inhabiting the aforementioned boat. They're looking for dinner.

"Oy! Bob! Found anything?"

"You mean, have I found anything new?" Bob said.

"Yeah."

"No. You?"

"No. There's just this last bit of eyeball hanging by a hair. I still can't reach it." Rolf's voice echoed in the hollow skull.

All other edible parts of the food source had been cleaned out long before. The body's exterior shell, which had once been skin, was dried and hardened in the harsh desert air.

Bob scuttled up the face to the edge of the open socket, antenna twitching back and forth, feeling the opening.

"Should we get a harvesting team out here?" He called.

Rolf scurried up and around the inside of the skull until he was upside down at the top where the hair hung, quite unexpectedly, from the surface, a last bit of what once had been white tissue swung slowly on the tip. It wasn't very large, but it could feed a family or two for a lifetime. Too many harvest teams were coming up empty recently, and things in the colony were turning ugly.

"Look, Bob, I recon if I use my head to push this part of the hair back and forth, it might swing the food to you, and you could catch it," Rolf said from above.

"Well..." Bob surveyed his perch on the edge of the orbital socket. It felt a little precarious. "I guess that could work. I could catch it with my mouth, you think?"

"Yes. But Bob, you need to promise me, this doesn't go into the colony harvest. This is for us - our families - nobody else."

"Well gosh, Rolf, that doesn't seem very charitable. What about old Mrs. Dervish over on starboard south? She's in a hard way, you know."

"Now Bob," Rolf twittered, "This is end times here. It's not like it used to be. Our ancestors had plenty of food, before and after The Time of Fire. The colony thrived easily once it was safe, but we don't have that luxury ya hear? We've got to think about survival."

Survival. Bob let the word pass through his tiny brain. Rolf had always been the smart one. Always finding him the best bits of food, or doing new things. He liked Rolf for that, but that word pulled at something deep within him at a molecular level.

"Ready?" Rolf called.

"Ready," Bob said.

The hair began to swing. At first the wrong way but Rolf corrected the direction and the food came closer and closer. Bob missed it as it passed by his mandibles, once, then twice, but on the third time he caught it. The force of the swing threatened to pull Bob off his perch and he nearly let go of the food, antenna zooming wildly around as he tipped forward. Only Rolf's quick catch saved him from toppling over into the skull. Together they detached the food from the hair and set it down. It was bigger than they thought. Maybe enough to feed four families for a lifetime.

"Good job, Bob," Rolf said. "That was a close one."

"Thanks for the help, Rolf. I was sure I'd end up flat on my back at the bottom of that skull, and that would be the end of me."

"Well, we've done it. Let's get this back to our families before some turd muncher like Francis sees our haul and squeals to everyone else," Rolf positioned himself on the inside edge of the skull to push the food forward.

"Bob?"

Bob was standing funny, like he'd been caught in one of the sticky traps which were still dangerous to young roaches even after all this time. Then all at once he grabbed the food and pushed.

Rolf lost his footing and fell over the edge, landing on his back at the base of the skull. He kicked his six legs wildly, antenna flailing, and tried to right himself, but he was stuck.

"Why, Bob, Why?" He cried from below.

"It's what you said, Rolf: Survival." Bob watched him flounder from the edge of the orbital bone.

"This food will feed four generations of my family if preserved right, and I've got to think about them if we're really running out of time. It's been good knowing ya, Rolf."

Rolf's calls of sad betrayal echoed out of the skull, following Bob as he scurried home. They were carried on the dry desert winds up through the atmosphere, where they dissolved into the darkness of an equally unforgiving universe. The stars took no notice, as they twinkled, equally concentrated on their own survival. Their time, they felt, was also running out - which is, perhaps, debatable - but then, it all depends on your perspective.