Where Gravity Sleeps

Synopsis

The story takes place in a future where giant cities orbit the earth. Workers in the asteroid belt manufacture products they cannot afford to buy and ship them back to Earth. Technology has advanced to a point where computers have minds and arbitrary matter can be converted to energy with almost no loss. Matter can be reformed so that almost anything can be manufactured with the right software to control the process.

Humanity is threatened when an object hurtles through space toward the earth on a colision course. Despite all efforts, the earth is destroyed. Before that happens, the orbiting cities are hauled away from the earth toward the asteroid belt.

The remaining humans find that their money-based system can't work anymore and they abandon it, because it would simply not be profitable to survive. Instead, they establish a system of requests and fulfillments so that each person participates, gives and receives. Combined with a form of potlatch, they are able to trigger the best instincts of people and work together to build a new world on the inside of an asteroid by hollowing it out, filling it with air and setting it spinning over a period of years to give the effect of gravity on the inside.

That is where gravity sleeps.

Foreward

There are still plenty of surprises in the story, and some decent science, if you can get past the idea of near-total conversion of mass to energy, sub-atomic manipulation, and thinking machines. Perhaps the biggest leap of faith is the notion that any modern society could transcend its addiction to money.

I should mention that strongly religious people might possibly be offended by this story. That wasn't my goal. I wanted to write a story that went beyond beliefs, not a story that pandered to current beliefs. It had to break the mold to be satisfying to me. I meant no offense to anyone.

Interested in reading it? It is here.

Tue Dec 31 01:58:20 EST 2013