Gravity III

The first thing that I learned about humans was that they were more complicated then I had thought. They were very easy to convince to believe something but at the same time they were slow to observe. For instance they had already figured out about Time but they still hadn’t learned about me, even though not once did they escape me.

I knew to be careful, I didn’t want to kill any of my future believers, but I did experiment with the making people weigh more or less as I pleased to see if they would notice. They never did, they would talk about how they felt odd and move on. As I grew more frustrated I started making rocks fall and smash a home, or a prized horse, but still no one gave me a name. Instead everything was granted with blessings; to whichever god it was that this set of people had created. All of my hard work went to that quarter and I remained unnamed.

I suppose that I can count myself lucky that there was never an end date given to the contest or I would have run into problems. Instead the bet had simply been that I beat Time in human respect. With no deadline that could happen whenever I managed it. Centuries meant nothing to us and therefore the others didn’t complain as I continued to try. I probably should have given up but I was far too stubborn to admit defeat even as I made no progress at all.

It wasn’t until I had a chance meeting with Newton that I finally gained myself a name, and even then it wasn’t a huge one at first. That was so long after our bet that I had trouble imagining that the others would even remember we had had a bet. It wasn’t until I did finally become a constant topic of conversation that I realized the other flaw in our bet, which was that there was no unit to measure respect in the human mind. If you were going for mention in conversation it didn’t really work because Time and I were abstract ideas and that wasn’t always what people were talking about when they said our names. I called a meeting of the others again and we talked it over.

“You’re still going on about that?” asked Future, though she didn’t seem really surprised.

“I hate to lose,” I admitted. I was getting older at this point and while I would have bristled at her comment at one time I was now willing to take the criticism. I was being a little silly but the personification of gravity has little to do with his time rather then waste it. The job comes with an eternity of no job description.

“We need someone to judge I guess, one of us who knows all about humans,” said Justice. We all knew she wasn’t talking about herself. Justice kept away from humans as much as she could for fear that she would be corrupted.

“There is always Death,” said Wind, doubtfully. I looked at her in disbelief.

“Do you really think that Death will take it well if we go to her and tell her that we want her to mediate a meaningless dispute like this one?” I asked her.

“You never know until you try,” said Time, shrugging. As the other contestant he got a lot of say.

To be continued...