I suppose it’s an inner ear function; I woke up the very second I took off into the air. It had happened to me before, but this time the familiar airplane cabin was absent. I realized I couldn't move. My body was strapped in a cruel way to what seemed like a cube stuffed with foam, which was all I could see. My legs dangled off its edges as did my arms, like a turtle with its shell upside down.
As I slowly regained consciousness, I heard the shouting and cheering. In awkward movements akin to swimming, crawling and humping, I managed to orient myself towards the sound. Miko and Jonah were standing below me, in the balcony of Miko’s apartment on the 175th floor and shouting my name, drink in hand.
The reason I hadn’t recollected my vertigo in years, was that I had learnt to avoid it. Over time, as I became a city rat, I had directed my courage to overcome urban fears such as getting run over or dying of hunger, but never being pushed off a cliff. Or for that matter, a balcony. Now, floating at around 1800 ft, I felt my heart sink, temples dissolve, voice disappear and judgment cloud. Worst of all, there was no way for me to control this balloon. There were no wires to steer it or burners to make it ascend. To get me into this contraption, they must have drugged me, because my head felt heavy, I felt woozy, a little nauseous and the hair on my back was upright.
I was flying through the air around the Pierro Towers, the tallest tower in the world. I always thought we'd be riding flying cars in the future, but I guess we had bigger problems in 2020. The Pierro Towers were constructed earlier this decade, to accommodate the growing population. After the Relapse of 2014, all those people who had lost their homes participated in a lottery for the 20,000 flats in the Pierro Towers and more in similar edifices around the country. The government was applauded for this effort but some of us were wary; how could the government afford this?
The wind had gotten a little strong and I was delirious. My voice had completely died and all I could do was hold onto whatever I could find as I was spun around in open air like a stone in a sling. My best bet was to try and get to the north side of the Towers and land in the heli-deck on the 160th floor. I was dreading dropping down any further, because then, I’d have to wait hours to get onto the elevator from anywhere below the 100th floor. For someone like me, getting into a crowded elevator was just another nightmare.
The spiraling balloon let me sight Miko and Jonah again. Miko was triumphant and laughing, clearly inebriated. Jonah had also been strapped into a balloon, and it looked like Miko didn’t particularly intend to send him to rescue me. I was fully convinced we were both going to be on tomorrow’s Tragic News.
I shifted my weight so that the balloon tended towards my landing spot, but I was afraid I wasn’t going to descend fast enough. I wasn’t particularly endowed with strong arms and legs. I guess the only strong thing I had on me were my teeth. I pulled down the wires connecting the balloon and bit through it until it began to hiss.
Jonah’s ears probably brought him into consciousness too, because he was literally writhing in fear. He was never the smart kind, but he had strong legs. He kicked around for a bit until he realized it wasn’t helping. As the wind brought our balloons together, I quickly grabbed the straps on his balloon in what seemed like a trapeze in midair. Very slowly, the both of us descended, and only when I knew there was no way that I was going to miss the heli-deck, that I regained my voice. Jonah, clearly a bit behind me in recovery, squeaked something unintelligible. After we landed, he freed me from my straps as I did him and we quickly made our way towards the elevator.
I was not in the mood to speak to Jonah. But this was not his fault. Miko was an engineer who had never had a real job; instead, he spent nearly all his life at home, desperate to invent something. He generally came up with things that had already been invented, which he enhanced with some irrelevant feature. These days, he tended to put solar panels on everything. Jonah and I, we were his unwilling guinea pigs. His latest invention was this balloon, which he claimed would obviate the need for elevators. And yes, it was solar powered.
Jonah and I stepped into the elevator, which was surprisingly, empty. The light was already lit on the button for the 175th floor, perhaps because Miko was thinking of coming down here. He was going to get a mouthful when I returned to his apartment, and perhaps I’d even refuse to see him for a while.
Just as the doors began to close, we heard two ladies in the corridor shout, “Wait! Hold it for us!”
Jonah and I froze.
The two ladies, dressed to the hilt, jumped into the elevator just as the doors closed, and began chattering away. Perhaps, they were not going to notice us.
But then, it happened.
One of them turned around, saw the both of us crouching down there and began screaming. Soon they were both screaming like banshees, brandishing their umbrellas and walking on their toes. Jonah and I were still frozen, indicating no intent to harm them. I even smiled a little bit. We could have escaped any other time, but not from an elevator. It was virtually impossible.
Fortunately, before the ladies turned us into pulp, the elevator stopped at the 165th floor and we ran for our lives. This is why I hated elevators. We were never welcome in it. Now, we were going to have to take twenty flights of stairs back up.
Well, it was a good thing we had four feet.