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Levitation failure
2026-04-19, 409 words, backlink: Emergence
The main challenge in trying to find the cause of levitation failure is that we know it already, it's gravity. Things go down, that's normal, we've been studying that since we were monkeys falling out of trees. Huh, I guess I feel connected my ancestors right now. No, the challenge with studying levitation failure is that it's the same as studying levitation, and we have no fucking idea what's going on there.
The rise of the skyline was almost as precipitous as its occasional falls. A green tide (173) swept over the ground layer (or "the ground", as it was called) and when it ran out of space, it found more above. Vertical branches shot up like natural skyscrapers (184) of the biological variety. The emergence closed a lid over the world, and the rest of the skyline followed. Even with the vertical branches, the moss should not have been able to support its own weight, but it didn't stop there. In a final middle-finger to established physics (123), the branches got pulled up into the skyline like rope ladders to a tree house. Now only skyscrapers connect the skyline to below, except for when it needs a place to crash in a hurry.
It's so easy to forget that you're walking on wishes. I study the phenomenon, been doing field work for a decade and will continue until I die, and I barely bat an eye at stepping off the town scaffolding. Routine quickly erodes away the sense of danger until it's purely intellectual, and it doesn't stop there. Soon enough, precautions are rituals whose origins and purpose are all but forgotten. Protocol becomes dogma. A box to check. Sometimes not even that. Sometimes you skip the dogma because extra snacks are a lot more fun than a crash bubble (93). Sometimes you roll the dice because you've never lost before.
One thing they don't tell you about levitation failure is the unreality of the moment. The magic doesn't go out all at once, it sighs away in a dying breath. The ground grinds against nothing, trying to arrest its plummet. It's not free fall, its moon gravity. Some areas give out faster than others, but the thick mat of moss bends to accommodate. Bubbles and waves roll across the layer as birds and stone pillars and, oh god, rooftops fly by past the edge of your tumbling world. Say goodbye to wonderland and face the onrushing Earth. Moss is soft, right?