Free Gravitational Constantly: A Novella by J.A. Weddle

buzzing around the bridge. The pilot sat beside me, pushing buttons, taking measurements, and typing on her computer.
     
    The last three weeks had been hard for me, but in the end I had come to accept it, or at least not fight it any more. Cara was the shining star that Jayce had said she was. She had been recruited by Futura when she was still in school. Just as she said, she never went back to Earth after being rescued and brought to Luna as a little girl. It turns out she was adopted by a nice young couple that lived and worked on Luna. Selise and Arnold Madeos. They took good care of her and gave her as good a childhood as anyone deserves. However, things are often not what they seem to be. Mr. Madeos made a good living on Luna working for a prominent organization that had ties in nearly every aspect of the prospering colony. Mr. Madeos even rose to Vice President when he delivered his gifted daughter to the curious minds of Futura.
     
    Despite everything, Cara said she never blamed her adopted parents. “They had a strange daughter that they didn't understand, and it seemed like the right thing to do at the time,” she had said to me. “It may have been what cut our ties in the long run, but I don't bear them any ill will. They took care of me good enough, I suppose.” After Cara's disassociation with Futura, her father lost his job and her adopted parents were sent back to Earth. When I asked how they could be forced off Luna, Cara simply said, “Futura is Luna, Andy.” Cara went to work at Cosmos, biding her time until “something of interest came my way,” she’d told me.
     
    All of the time spent at Futura had been a waste according to her. “They're no closer to understanding why people on Luna have clairvoyance or … something like it,” she’d said to me one morning while we lay in bed.
    “Maybe it's the lack of gravity,” I suggested.
    “More blood flows to the brain maybe? I doubt it. We have the same amount of gravity here as on Earth, 9.8 m/s 2 , or close enough to make no difference.”
    “What if gravity plays on more than just the body … what if … I don't know, maybe it constricts your—”
    “Soul?” Cara interjected.
    “I was going to say consciousness.”
    “Ah, I forgot Andy Wright doesn't have any faith.”
    “Never needed any,” I said with a smirk that made her kiss me.
    She brushed her hand through my hair and let her other hand fall upon her curvy waist. “Well, you're still wrong. Like I said, we have gravity here on Luna.”
    “Yeah, but you spent all that time in the escape pod floating outside of the Moon's orbit with no gravity. That has to account for something.”
    Cara's smile faded and it seemed as if she were looking off to a distant place that only she could see. “Don't remind me. That's something I've tried very hard to forget.”
    “Sorry,” I whispered and rolled her over on top of me and began kissing her lips above and stroking those below.
     
    Despite what Cara thought of my hypothesis, I still held it in high regard. Jayce and I had spent considerable time talking about the subject at length as of late. There had been twenty-three test subjects, or candidates, as Futura referred to them. All of which apparently showed some level of aptitude in heightened levels of perception. Although, what determined a heightened level of perception was sometimes hard to identify. Some candidates had an uncanny memory akin to an eidetic memory, which is more commonly, but incorrectly, referred to as a photographic memory. A few could perform complex mathematics in their heads, without use of pen, paper, or calculator. More than most had just been plagued with some sort of auditory sensory reception overload. They claimed to hear things like clocks ticking in the next room, their neighbor's heart beat as they slept next door, but only when their REM sleep was at its peak. One even said he could hear light, although they could never prove it