Note: This can be read separately or as a continuation of the following story:
The air was still and the sun was soft. He could hear the sound of clouds sliding on an invisible sheet of some crispy material. The soft sun rays pricked him, but he didn't seem to care. He looked down. And then smiled like he owned the whole of the world.
Well, if you haven't yet guessed it, he was up there! He was on the top of the world, literally. The feeling of joy was so frothy that he couldn't help himself laughing insanely all alone in the middle of the sky. Strangely, he realized that he wasn’t even floating in the air. He was simply 'in the air'- suspended like the moon. He wasn’t falling down; he wasn’t going up. He wasn't even gliding across the sun-soaked layers of the sky. He was just there.
He wasn’t wearing any flying suit or cape. He didn’t have some high-tech plane or even a pair of wings like Icarus. He was dressed like he always did down below. Everything about him was ordinary but then he was up there - in the air - and that was something.
He chuckled when he realized that he was far up from everything. Far from the touch of the world and its madding crowd. Far from a touch of any force. Far from even the omniprescient gravity. Or maybe, gravity didn’t exist now. He smiled. Maybe gravity never existed. Maybe anyone could have been where he was, the way he was now- but they all had been fooled by that guy named Newton. Yes. That was the name they told him in high school- Newton- he whispered. Maybe they all had become too prejudiced to think out of the calculated world that Newton had put up on display. They didn’t dare to venture out of the field of that world. Maybe something kept them glued to the idea of gravity- something like gravity itself. It's funny, he thought and then started searching for a word to label this force that kept people from straying into uncharted ideas about our world. 'Prejudice'- yes that was the word they had told him in high school. He then burst out laughing, a thousand miles up in the air. Prejudices are like gravity- he thought- they always pull you down.
The world is a charming place from far, he said to himself as he looked down from his high station. Everything was so beautiful except- he raised his eyebrows- the billowing smoke rising from the tall and fat chimneys. That was gross. It was a stain on the painting of civilization that he was seeing from the top.
He moved his sight from these despicable things and focused on something cheerful. He liked the green tops and even the tops of the skyscrapers. He especially liked the clouds which were passing by. He saw the Golden Pillar Bridge that span across the Trinity River. Man, you are something, after all, he said. Of course, he couldn’t see people, they were too small to be visible, but he saw cars and trains and planes moving around. A parade of cars and buses were moving furiously from one point to another like a colony of ants.
Suddenly, in the hive of all those vehicles, he noticed a car that stood out from the rest. It was shining crazily - like a light-emitting diode or something like that. It was shining like the sort of thing that shines and hits your eyes and then you think you are blind for a few seconds. And so he took out his sunglasses, put them on, and followed the car. He followed the car with his eyes like a fox out on a hunt. He then wondered why the hell was he following it.
To be continued…
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