Imagine one day you walked into your living room and noticed that one of your chairs was floating. Really imagine this. The trusted chair for which you have so enjoyed for many years is now inexplicably hovering one inch off the ground. What do you do? The first step would be to overcome the overwhelming spectacle of the situation. The next would be to try and gain some understanding.
You move the chair. It still hovers. You pick the chair up and set it back down. It still hovers. You can feel its feet slide across the nonexistent ground as if it was as solid as your wood flooring. Soon your inquisitive and puzzled emotions would change to the worry. Now what? Just throw away the chair and say it never happened? No chance. Call someone? Not quite yet. Stay focused. This is your favorite chair. Acceptance and dedication to your chair is critical.
Wether or not you realize it yet, your life has forever changed. From this moment forward not a day will go by where you will not think about the floating chair. Tomorrow when you wake up you will enjoy a brief moment of normalcy that will soon followed an overwhelming confusion of the chair that floats in your living room. Perhaps you will even forget why your alarm clock went off in the first place. It is not unlikely that at this point you may call your respective Employer and request the day off. Very few people of sane minds would be able to focus properly with such an anomaly waiting at home for their return.
Problem. You just recently moved to the big city for an important new job, but haven't yet had time to acclimate. So far the only people you know in town are your coworkers and business relationships. Any one of your new relationships would easily be damaged by news of your ‘floating chair’. Frankly it would be unpleasant to exclaim to anyone. “I have a floating chair in my living room”. When said with conviction, a statement such as that would easily anger most people.
For a chair to float on it’s own, with no additional assistance, is scientifically impossible. And even though the words themselves will sound like a silly lie, your first victim would recognize that something unnatural has occurred. They will become unnerved by you. You have told them what sounds like a staunch lie, with the complete and natural conviction of a personal telling the truth. The very anomaly of your presentation would upset them to an argumentative state would then lead to the interpersonal version of the “Blue Screen of Death”. Complete system error. You will be judged. Despite your persistent invitation’s, it is very unlikely they will actually be coming over to take a look.
You must tell someone however. You take some photos and videos and share them with your trusted friends back home. They don't understand. They see the photo and confirm it looks like it's floating. They simply don’t get the “joke”. It is likely you will only receive some confused and worried comments, and perhaps a continued congratulations on the new job. If you were lucky, you may have managed to get another person to confirm that the chair appears to be floating. This will provide just enough sanity to confirm what you already know to be true.
Attempts to bring your anomaly to light have only brought you unpleasantness. It would not be worth the damage of the reputation to continue to explain without presenting hard evidence. Of course you could always try and expose the situation publicly by going to a respected authority. Perhaps they march right on down to your house and immediately uncover the chair in question. What then? You definitely lost your chair. Not only that, it will just be a matter of time before you will be known as the “Man With the Floating Chair” in the worlds mediia. Certainly this would attract bizarre and unwanted attention from a multitude of people that we have not yet to imagine. Your life would be left unhinged with no place to sit. The chair is technically still in working condition. You move on.
Days, Months, Weeks. The chair is still there. The nice new duvet cover you purchased comfortably hides the chair’s floating nature. The new extra height provides for welcomed change to your familiar place of relaxation. You begin develop friendships, just as you had originally hoped.You are even dating someone, and it seems like things are getting serious.
One night you are at her apartment watching her favorite live broadcast when suddenly the power goes out. “No!” She screams. She insists that you that you both must go to your place and watch the end of the show. Being the super hero that you are, you quickly pull your car up front and disregard her refrigerator. You reach your apartment door and hastily get the key in the lock. Suddenly it hits you, The floating chair. Like a scene from a movie she quickly crosses through your apartment and sits down into the center of your deepest darkest secret. Alarm bells are going off in your head. Did she notice how it slide a bit when she sat down? Will she notice that her toes only barely touch the ground? Does it feel different from normal chairs? Do you remember what the proper ground feels like? The show is on. All is seemingly well. “I love this duvet” she remarks, as she sinks in deeper. The duvet? Did she mean something by that? Does she know? She said that she loves it. Thats got to be good right? The night ends and all is well.
So when are you planning on telling her about the floating chair? You may think you have it covered, but her declared fondness of the duvet insists some future tugging and pulling. What then? Supposes she happens upon it. How is that going to look for you? Is it appropriate to expose someone to an unexplained anomaly such as that? Suppose you confess and tell her about the chair yourself. You just let her sit in it like that? The whole time secretly knowing that it was floating? You can sit in the 8th wonder of the world and watch TV, fine. To just allow someone to unknowingly have that experience is morally reckless. So now what? What next? First off, she likes the chair, even if you could, you shouldn't just up and get rid of it. As it goes, the comforts and burdens of the floating chair belong to you, and you alone. She however, does not.
Alone. Alone in your floating chair. Why? Why has this happened to you? Was this all your fault? Are you being foolish? Should you just go on hiding it forever? Should you expose it and become floating chair man? Should you just get rid of it on the street somewhere and be done with it? What if one night you flip on the news and see that someone else has discovered your chair? Let someone else take credit for the glory of your chair? Never. Problem. Exposing the floating chair is a lead parachute. It must be kept secret.
A life of solitude precedes. Time passes and perhaps a schedule keeps you comfort. The world goes on, the news cycle continues. You live comfortably with your chair. Your patchwork job duvet has long since been removed, and comfortably live your life among your private phenomenon. You know the chair will never touch the ground again. The chair will float as long as the earth rotates. As long as you are alive, the chair belongs to you. You have accepted this. In the daylight of the real world, life continues normally. At your home a new normal persists as steady.
As the seasons change so does your society. One day you begin to notice bizarre stories popping up here and there. These sorts of occurrences start to happen more frequently. Suddenly you walk outside and notice something different. Have you changed? Has the world changed? On that faithful day when you first discovered your chair the world was not ripe for such information. Now, years later, the world suddenly seems potent. A floating chair begins to make sense. There is almost nothing too bizarre, too scary, or too daunting that the people have not yet heard.
Its almost like a floating chair is exactly what the world needs.
Submitted August 12, 2017 at 03:57PM by Sargent_Paprika http://ift.tt/2uzHiDA shortstories
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