Slinger: Up Is Down in the World According to George

Slinger, in the Toronto Star (6-14-05)

In the history common room of a fine old university on a drowsy afternoon in the fine old year 2084, historians sat around doing what historians had done since time began: picking dust-motes out of the air and holding them up to the light.

Nothing broke the silence except the rattle of fine old teacups on saucers and the brittle, tinkling smash when one of the historians neglected to hold his cup firmly on its saucer and it flew sharply upward and broke against the ceiling.

"You'd think people would be more careful," murmured one of the historians, gazing at the shattered pieces of china and the stain of spilled tea spreading across the carved panels high above.

"I don't know why the common-room committee doesn't invest in some of those chain thingies that keeps cups from flying up like that," murmured another.

"It would save a lot in the long run, considering" — he nodded toward the historian who'd let go of his cup — "how forgetful some of us are getting."...

...It turns out, he explained, that there once was a year called 2005 in which the thenpresident of the United States, soon to become president of the entire planet, which became known as the Free World States — "You mean it wasn't always?" another historian interrupted.

"Apparently not," the first historian continued. In any event, the president said that a report by something called Amnesty International about how he kept thousands of people locked away in something called a gulag was utterly absurd. "He said it was absurd six ways from Sunday."

"And was it?" asked a colleague.

"There were radicals who claimed it wasn't," the first historian said.

But to prove he was right, and that when he said something was absurd it really was absurd, the president said the Law of Gravity was absurd too — he said he was repealing it — and from then on everything people didn't keep nailed down would fly straight up.

"You mean things always didn't?" The other historians looked astonished.

"Apparently not!" The younger historian clapped his hand over his mouth, awestruck.

There was another loud banging at the door. "History Police," a peremptory voice shouted. "Open up!"

"Run for it!" the historians cried. But they couldn't run because of their magnetic shoes. Fearing for their lives, they kicked the shoes off, forgetting, in their desperation, what would happen next.

When the History Police broke the door down, they looked around and saw no one. But then they looked up and discovered a pile of historians on the ceiling where, once a ladder was sent for, they were easy pickings.