---

A discourse between Chim and Robot

The coffee cup came drifting past Chim’s nose.

Chim watched it go by, considered the matter, and reached out with one paw.

“Just what I needed.”

“Your cup is upside down,” said Robot.

“Of course it is.”

“Then I fail to understand how you intend to drink from it.”

“I’m not drinking yet. I’m making coffee.”

Chim hooked the cup with a claw and drew it close. A little cloud of sugar crystals floated past, rising toward what had once been the ceiling. Chim turned the cup over and caught them neatly.

Robot watched.

“You have inverted the cup.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“You have also inverted your body.”

“Have I?”

“Your head is pointing toward the floor.”

“Which floor?”

Robot paused.

“There is a floor,” it said, with considerably less conviction.

“Then by all means, point it out.”

Robot consulted its instruments. Chim took advantage of the silence to snag a drifting packet of coffee.

“You have been in free fall for an extended period,” Robot announced.

“Have I?”

“According to my calculations, yes.”

“Funny. I hadn’t noticed.”

“That is precisely what concerns me.”

Chim shook the coffee into the cup. The grounds dispersed in a dark, slow-motion cloud.

“What’s concerning about it?”

“You appear to have adapted.”

“Isn’t that the idea?”

“Adapted to what, Chim? You are falling.”

Chim’s ears tilted forward.

“Am I falling down, or falling up?”

“Down is a direction established by gravity.”

“Lovely. And where is gravity?”

Robot paused again.

“Locally, the gravitational field is—”

“Elsewhere, then.”

“Not exactly.”

“Then perhaps we should have some coffee before we decide.”

A small sphere of cream drifted between them. Chim caught it, squeezed a little into the cup, and gave the mixture a gentle spin.

Robot observed this with increasing alarm.

“You are behaving as though this were perfectly ordinary.”

“Well, it is Thursday.”

“That is irrelevant.”

“Most things are, if you give them long enough.”

Robot considered this. It did not like the answer, largely because it could not find an error in it.

“Yet you adapted.”

“Eventually.”

“And now you have acquired what you call space legs.”

“I call them that because space tail would be misleading.”

“Your tail is currently wrapped around a handrail.”

“Useful things, tails.”

“But you have no ground beneath you. No stable horizon. No reliable up or down. How can you possibly orient yourself?”

Chim took hold of the cup. The coffee had gathered into a dark, trembling sphere inside it.

“Robot, when you were learning to walk, did you first establish a comprehensive theory of gravity?”

“No.”

“Did you calculate the angle of every step?”

“No.”

“Did you consult a reference manual before scratching your ear?”

“I do not have ears.”

“Exactly. You see? You’ve adapted already.”

“I have not.”

“You’ve stopped noticing what you don’t have.”

Robot looked at Chim’s ears, then at the cup, then at the distant blue curve of Earth through the viewport.

“I am not certain that is the same thing.”

“Neither am I,” said Chim. “But the coffee’s ready.”

For a while, neither of them spoke.

Chim drank. Robot watched the planet turn.

At last Robot said, “How long have you been falling?”

Chim considered the question.

“Long enough.”

“That is not a unit of time.”

“No. But it’s a perfectly good answer.”

“You must have had some indication at the beginning. Some awareness of the change from standing to falling.”

“Oh, certainly. There was a moment of considerable surprise.”

“And after that?”

“After that, I had to get on with things.”

“What things?”

Chim glanced at the empty cup.

“Coffee, mostly.”

Robot processed this for several seconds.

“Then the art of falling,” it said slowly, “is learning to perform ordinary activities while deprived of ordinary reference points?”

Chim’s whiskers twitched.

“That sounds rather grand.”

“Is it incorrect?”

“Not at all. Just grand.”

“Then what would you call it?”

Chim caught the last of the sugar, turned the cup upside down, and tucked it under one arm.

“The art of getting on with it.”

Robot was silent.

Outside, the stars remained where they were. Earth turned. Somewhere, perhaps, a ship was pitching on a dark sea, and a sailor was learning to trust a moving deck. Somewhere else, a child was taking its first uncertain steps, discovering that the floor could be trusted after all.

And here, in the long fall between one certainty and the next, Chim adjusted the old leather flight helmet, checked the cup for stray sugar, and looked out into the dark.

“Robot?”

“Yes, Chim?”

“Do you suppose we’re going anywhere?”

Robot consulted its instruments.

“Of course. We are following a trajectory.”

“Good.”

“Does that satisfy you?”

Chim settled into a comfortable float, tail curled loosely around one ankle.

“Not especially. But it means we don’t have to be in a hurry.”

Robot looked again at its instruments. The numbers were reassuring. The trajectory was real. The destination, however, remained uncertain.

“Chim?”

“Yes?”

“Which way is north?”

Chim smiled into the cup.

“Now that’s a question worth asking.”

And the two of them went on falling.

---

About the Art: Other things on my mind. Ocean Cryptids.  

^-.-^ Yeah, I’m non sequitur like that.

---

---