Sally's place (1 foot gridlines)
It was a Thursday night. Baker Street was busy. It was the holiday season, and store windows were brightly lit with Christmas decorations and merchandise for customers to buy. A few flakes of snow fell here and there. The sidewalks were filled with people, bundled up in winter gear walking both ways.
Two people walking in opposite directions walked smack into each other.
"Ow!"
"Hey!"
A young man and woman. They pushed each other away, but fell back into each other again.
"Watch what you're doing!" she scolded.
"I'm not ... YOU watch ... hey!".
She started hitting him with her purse, and he covered his head with his hands. But continued bumping into her hard. He covered his face protectively, guarding his sides with his elbows, as she started whaling on him with more abandon. He thought ... she's going to go for my balls next ... and decided to be more proactive. He grabbed an elbow, slipped behind her, grabbed the other elbow, and held her tight.
"YOU'RE attacking ME," he said. "STOP IT!"
"Let go! Police! Police!"
"I CAN'T let you go or you'll keep HITTING ME, you nutjob!" he said.
A crowd started to gather. "Hey, let the lady go," said a balding onlooker. She squirmed.
"I'll let you go if you can be calm and not hit me," he said.
She stilled herself. "OK."
He let her go, and she spun around and started hitting him again, her sandy blonde hair flying. She tried to knee him in the groin but he was expecting that, he had turned sideways. They continued leaning into each other.
"OK, she's hitting me, you see that?" said the man.
She kept hitting him.
"Hey lady, you should back off," said Mr. Balding Guy.
She pushed him away, separated by about a foot, then they fell back together.
"PERVERT!" she yelled, getting ready to hit him again, and he grabbed her in a bear hug, burying his face in her hair to protect his nose.
"Look, you have to stop hitting on me, or I'm going to get angry."
She stopped. They were both breathing heavily.
"Why are you doing this?!?!" she hissed.
"I'm not doing anything, you're doing it," said the man.
"I'm not!" she hissed.
"Ah. Of COURSE you're not."
The crowd looked on, not sure quite what to do.
"People?" asked the man. "Could you please pull us apart?"
The crowd cautiously grabbed the man and woman, and pulled. They came apart. "Why are you pulling toward him?" an older lady in a fur coat asked the woman.
"I'm not!" she said.
"You are!" said Mrs. Fur Coat.
"He's doing it too," said Mr. Balding Guy.
"I'm not," he said. "At least, I'm not trying to."
"You two are going to have to behave yourselves," said Mr Balding Guy, "or I'm gonna call the cops."
"Disgusting!" said the woman.
"... I can try to behave?" said the man. "Try letting us go."
The man and woman were both standing, and the onlookers carefully let go. The man ran his fingers through his short dark hair. They managed to keep standing, about six feet apart. But they were each leaning away from the other, about 30 degrees from upright, with her leaning a little more than him.
"Omigod that's freaky," said a teenage girl with blue hair. "You should both be falling over, standing like that."
"You're doing this on purpose," accused the woman.
"Yes! Of course I am! I was just walking down the street, and decided, 'Heck, who needs the laws of physics?' and decided to break them!" said the man.
She took a step, stumbled, and she fell into him again. He was prepared, buffering her fall. "You know, my dear, we've got to stop running into each other like this," he said. "By the way, my name is Joe."
"That's it, I'm calling the police," she said.
The police pulled them apart too, but they were drawn back together. They took their names: Joe Motley, Sally Green. They were taken in separate cars to the station. The cars followed one another though. Sally was in the car in back. She noticed that the whole world was tilted, and stayed tilted, as if the car ahead of her was downhill. She felt she might be ill. In the station, they were told to take a seat, but their chairs kept scooting toward each other of their own accord, especially if they did not brace their feet on the ground. Her whole world continued to tilt towards Joe.
The police discussed, talked, waved their hands.
"What do we book them for?"
"Breaking the law?"
"Which law?"
"The law of gravity?"
"I don't think that's a civil offense. How about disorderly conduct?"
They talked. They pointed. They made a call.
Half an hour later, a suited but dusty professor type came in the door.
"Halloo, I am Helmut Zweigart!" he said, nodding curtly to her. "You are haffing physics troubles, I hear!"
Helmut had them sitting in seats in tracks, facing opposite directions. They were pulled backwards towards each other. He adjusted the distance between them, and the tracks measured the forces.
"You are attractink her," Helmut said to Joe.
"You hear the professor?" asked Joe.
"You're enjoying this, aren't you," said Sally.
"Absolutely," said Joe. "You really are quite attractive. I'm sure I'd be interested if you weren't such a nutjob."
"Pffththtbt," she said.
"Well reasoned," said Joe. "Professor, how much, exactly, am I attracting her?"
"At a distantz of 5 meters, the fortz ist 162 Newtons," said Helmut.
"I find you utterly repulsive," said Sally.
"No you don't. You're drawn to me. Tell her, professor!"
"This is fascinating!" said Helmut.
"Pfffththbtht," she repeated.
"Sally, has this ever happened to you before?" asked Joe.
Sally flushed. "No of course not," she said quickly.
"I think I've seen it before," said Joe. "Every now and then, walking past people, things tilt, like perhaps there was a little earthquake. Or my balance wasn't working right. I'm thinking, maybe it was this, but much smaller. You're SURE this hasn't happened before, Sally?"
Sally seemed frightened. "I always knew where my mother was," she said. "Even if I couldn't see her, even with my eyes closed, I always felt I knew which way she was. She died of cancer two years ago. When I saw her afterward, I knew she wasn't really there."
"I'm sorry, Sally," said Joe.
Helmut pressed some buttons, and the chairs moved together, so that they were back to back, heads touching.
"Hey," protested Sally.
"The fortz ist now 390 Newtons!" said Helmut. "It is not distantz square! This is something else!"
He moved it again. "680 Newtons at one meter," read Helmut.
He moved them again. "390 Newtons again at two meters."
"It's good to have some space between us," ventured Sally.
"Oh! I am Wounded!" said Joe.
Helmut moved them again, as far as his mechanism would allow. "81 Newtons at ten meters." He adjusted the chairs close together again. "There must be some distantz of maximum attraction," he said, trying various distances of about a foot.
"That's quite a strong pull," observed Sally.
"44 centimeters, 917 Newtons! Over the fortz of gravity! Even on you, Joe!"
"Wait, it's different for me?" asked Joe.
"No no the fortz is same on you both of course," explained Helmut. "Otherwise no conservation of momentum! Hah!" He laughed at the joke, and wiped a tear from his eye. "But Sally is lighter, so the fortz ist strongker on her. Gravity ist proportional to weight. But this is not."
Helmut disengaged the mechanism, and the chairs snapped together, back to back. Joe carefully kept his head forward so as not to knock Sally, then relaxed his head gently back against hers.
"The pressure's not so strong now," said Sally.
"No it falls off beyond some point" said Helmut. "Let me see. Square root maybe? Or Log? Hmmm...."
"I'm sorry I hit you earlier," said Sally. "This wasn't your fault."
"No harm done," said Joe. "Really it's been a more entertaining evening than I would have had otherwise. I was going to go home and binge-watch 'The Good Place'."
"Really? I loved that show!" said Sally.
"Me too," said Joe. "It doesn't seem to go anywhere, but I enjoy the characters bouncing off one another."
"Jason is awesome," said Sally.
"Jason is funny. JANET is awesome," said Joe.
"Did you see the episode where Jason and Janet get married?" asked Sally.
"They WHAT?! No, don't tell me. I haven't got that far," said Joe.
"I haff it," announced Helmut. "If x is distantz, then your attraction ist 820J*x/(0.2m^2 + xx)."
"Well, that's ... what does that mean?" asked Sally.
"It means, if you are very close the fortz is not bad, if you are about haff a meter apart the force ist unbearably strong, and if you go very far apart it drops off to very little."
"But why is it happening?" asked Sally.
"Why? Why? I cannot measure Why!" said Helmut. "I can measure What. You ask me What, I can tell you. I cannot tell you Why."
"So ..." said Joe.
"So, you two can go to your separate homes, and you will hartly notice each other. And you be careful to not get close or you will get stuck together again."
"Thank God," said Sally. "It's late. I thought this would never end."
"But come back tomorrow 7pm, we will double check," said Helmut. He separated their chairs, and they were able to walk apart and go their separate ways.
But it hadn't ended, thought Sally. She still knew which way Joe was.
Sally's place (1 foot gridlines)
When Sally woke up, she knew where Joe was. As she cut her grapefruit and buttered her toast, standing in her kitchen in her fluffy bathrobe, she sensed the world shifting. She knew Joe was driving to work. Occasionally he'd stop at stoplights, and things would stay steady briefly, then they'd move again. By the time she was ready to leave, Joe had made it to work, and things were steady again.
At work she read mail, and answered calls, and people came by to ask questions which she answered. But her heart wasn't in it. She looked at her queue of tasks, tried to get in the right frame of mind, but her mind would drift.
She ate lunch with Mary Stefanick.
"My Ben, I tells him he has to apply for colleges, but he just wants to play video games," said Mary.
"Mm-hm," said Sally.
"You know, you need to earn money, I tells him. He says, no, I don't need much. How are you going to live without earning money? I ask him. Oh I'll just stay in your basement and play video games, he says. Well that's a problem, isn't it? I should take away his TV, you know, then what would he do?"
"Mm-hm," said Sally. She knew where Joe was, but he wasn't moving.
After lunch she picked up an item from her queue, read it word by word, look up at the clock, realize she didn't actually remember what she had read, then she would try it again. She tried walking around the building. The sky was clear, the air was bitter cold, it felt real. And she thought of the strange force that was operating on her. What was it? What did it mean? What was it for? And why Joe? He was a stranger, a strange stranger, she did not know him. Back at her desk, she had a queue of things to do, and she told herself she had to pay attention to them.
Shortly before quitting time, she felt the world moving again. Joe was driving home. From point X to point Y. Maybe she had more mail to read. No, the inbox was empty. She looked at the clock. Yes, time to go. She should get something done today. No it was time to go.
Joe's place (1 foot gridlines)
Rather than drive home, she drove to Joe's house. She didn't need to know an address. She just drove towards him. As she approached, the pull got stronger.
Joe was standing in the doorway of his second-floor apartment as she walked towards the flying staircase leading up to it.
"I felt you coming," he said. "I figured I should meet you at the doorway. It might get messy if we were stuck to opposite sides of the door."
"I thought we could go out to eat somewhere, before meeting the professor?" asked Sally from the ground, keeping her distance.
"Where?"
"Nothing fancy. Something with booths, so we can lean against each other. I can picture sitting on chairs on opposite sides of a table in a nice restaurant and being pulled together underneath. Or on top of it across all the food."
"Round Table Pizza?"
"Excellent!" she said. "Separate cars?"
"That seems best," he agreed.
At Round Table, with an extra large pepperoni and cheese pizza in front of them, she was glued to his side with her head resting on his shoulder. He ate with his free left hand, she with her free right.
"You're a what?" she asked.
"I'm a mason," he said. "I lay bricks, I lay tiles, I do stonework. I repair and reinforce existing masonry."
"You like it?" she asked, shoveling another piece of pizza into her mouth.
"It suits me?" he said. "Indoors, outdoors, sometimes at heights, making new buildings, repairing new buildings, repairing old buildings ... there's a lot of variety. Usually the actual work is very repetitive, but before you can do the actual work, often you have to sit back and think about it first, what's going to work in this situation. It takes a little muscle, a little thinking, a little being OK with not knowing what is going to come next."
"I process loans for a bank," she said, licking her fingers. "My work ... you know, I spent all of today just looking at my queue and I couldn't bring myself to care about it at all."
"Just one of those days?"
"Yeah. No. It's this magic force thing. That's all I can think about. Why am I here stuck to you?"
"Because you drove to meet me after work and asked me out to dinner?" he asked.
"You shouldn't think I like you. Just because I asked you out and I'm leaning on you. I'm hoping the professor can find a way to turn this off, so we can go our separate ways and forget this ever happened. No offense."
"None taken."
"I'm just leaning against you because ... we're connected somehow, and maybe the reason why is something about you, so I want to find out more about you. And this dumb force requires me to lean on you to do it."
"Same here. It's quite unfortunate. It's a situation we're Stuck in together."
"Really I came because you're so Attractive," she said.
"I thought you found me Repulsive," he said.
"I'm just Drawn to your Raw Animal Magnetism," she said.
"Good grief, I may have created a monster," he said.
Sally experimented with putting her palm against his, and pulling it off again. Their palms were pulled together lightly. The bulk of the force was handled by them leaning on each other.
They argued over who would pay the bill. They walked up to the cashier, leaning on each other. Both offered their credit cards. The cashier took Joe's. Then Sally braced herself at one side of a table, Joe pulled himself to the other, and that gave enough distance for Joe to stand separately and walk away. They drove separately to the professor.
They were back in their movable chairs. Helmut Zweigard was excited. His assistants Hanz und Franz stood nearby, grinning, holding notepads and pencils.
"The fortz is different! It has changed!" he said.
"How so?" asked Joe.
"When you touch, it ist 160 newtons now. Yesterday was 390. At 1 meter, today ist 800 newtons, yesterday was 680. At 10 meters, today ist 160 newtons. Yesterday was 80."
"Translate that for us lowly mortals here, professor?" asked Sally.
"The relaxt zone when you are together ist gettink bigker. As you separate, you are pullt together, like by a rubber band. The maximum fortz ist at 1 meter now, yesterday it was about half a meter. The maximum fortz ist about the same as before. At greater distances, the fortz has about doublt in the past day."
"So ... it's different?" asked Sally.
"Oh it ist dee same formula as before. Kx/(C+xx). But both the constants are increetzing."
"What would cause such a formula, doktor?" asked Franz.
"It is a mystery! In a three dimensional worlt, one expects invertz-square laws, by Gauss. Or composites, like the invertz-cubed law for magnets. This is more an invertz law. It would be natural in a two dimensional worlt."
"Perhaps," posited Hans, "Feynman had it correct?"
"Ah that ist very goot," said Helmut.
"Mortals," prompted Joe impatiently.
"Feynman notict that fortzes can be modelt as a particle beink releast ant apsorpt. Light only goes out if it will eventually be absorpt by matter somewhere else. But the whole universe is full of matter, so light can go anywhere. This fortz, it is between two people. PEOPLE are not anywhere. They are on the surfatz of the eart. A two-dimensional surface. Perhaps that ist vat makes the invertz-law possible."
"I think you just made that up," said Joe.
"Of course ve just made it up!" cried Helmut, waving his hands. "It ist scientz! You make thingks up! And then you test them. That ist how it ist done."
Hans stood behind Joe. "Feel anything?" he asked. He was waving a magnet behind his head.
"Only a slight breeze from you waving your hand," said Joe.
"The force is not magnetism," said Hans.
"Joe, try thinkink romantic thoughts of Sally," said Helmut.
"If you insist," said Joe.
"Hey!" said Sally.
"Now thing how annoying she is," said Helmut.
"OK," said Joe.
"Hey!" said Sally.
"No change in force," said Hans. "It isn't affected by what they are thinking. Maybe light?"
They set up lasers, bouncing between mirrors between the two of them, measuring any deflections. They found none.
"Not light. I don't know any macroscopic test for the strong or weak force," said Hans. "Maybe gravity?"
They hung a bowling ball from a chain, and moved it at varying distances from Joe and Sally, bouncing lasers off to measure deflection. "Gravity seems normal," said Franz.
"This fortz, it ist not any fortz that scientz is familiar with. Following an invertz-law rather than invertz-square ist also new," said Helmut.
"Oh! I have an idea!" said Hans. He grinned. "Joe, you lie on this table!"
Joe did.
"And you, Sally, you lie on the floor under the table!" Hans paced back and forth in glee.
Sally tried. But as she approached, she slipped. "Aaagh oh my help help!" She was pulled under the table, but up, as well, off the ground. But she did not stick to the table: instead she was left hovering above the ground, halfway in between. "Help I'm, um, ah ..." She waved her legs and hands, suspended there by nothing.
"The distance of maximum fortz ist further today than yesterday," observed Helmut. "If the constants continue to increatz, you will be able to use this trick to hover several meters below Joe, rather than half a meter as today."
"I wouldn't want to be clinging to a ladder doing this," said Joe. "She's very heavy."
"Hey!" said Sally.
"Heavier than I want to be carrying when clinging to a ladder," said Joe.
"I'm weightless," she said. She marveled at the experience.
His results gathered, Helmut packed up his equipment. Joe was holding Sally from behind, her leaning into him, his arms wrapped around her, hers pulled back against him.
"So, what have you found out?" asked Sally. "Will it go away? Can you turn it off?"
"I'm afraid not," said Helmut. "I don't know what it ist, and I don't know how to stop it. I only haff two data points, but it seems to be getting strongker at a distantz over time. But the center is getting bigger. I'm afrait this town ist not bigk enough for the both of you. If you are not always together, you must be very far apart."
"Is the world big enough?" asked Joe.
"Oh yes, the worlt ist plenty bigk. If you livt in separate states you should be able to pretent this never happent."
"My job is quite portable," said Joe. "What do you think, dear? I could move to California tomorrow."
"You would do that?" she asked.
"As you said, this is an accident," said Joe. "You never CHOSE to be stuck to me. I shouldn't impose on you."
"What do YOU want?" asked Sally.
"Me? This has been fun! I wouldn't mind doing it more! But I like doing new things. If we had to be always together, I'd be tied down. New things would be harder. It doesn't feel like it right now, but I'd probably be better off going away."
Sally chewed on her lip and thought. "I'll always know where you are, Joe," she said.
"There's that." said Joe. He held her warmly.
She thought.
"Yes," she said resignedly. "Yes, it's best that you go, then."
They tried to pull apart, but they couldn't.
"Helmut, Hans, Franz, could you help pull us apart please?" asked Joe.
Helmut pushed on Joe. Hans grabbed Sally's waist and Franz pushed on her shoulders, and they pulled them apart. Sally felt the world tilting toward Joe, pulling her to him, as she was ripped apart from him through the distance of maximum attraction. And then the force tapered off, and started to fall away.
Sally thought of Mary at work. She thought of her queue of tasks, waiting to be done. She thought of her little apartment. Maybe she could set up an easel and do some watercolors. She'd like that, right? She thought about watching Netflix alone at night. She thought about eating a grapefruit in the morning. She thought of a world without this force anchoring her to Joe.
And it just wasn't as good as this world with Joe.
"No. NO!" she said. Sally struggled free of Hans und Franz. "I WANT YOU, JOE!!!" she cried, and she ran downhill to Joe. The force pulled her in, faster and faster. Joe started moving toward her. She smacked straight into him, front to front, her head against his chest. She hugged him, she pulled his head to hers, and she started seriously kissing him.
They stood that way awhile, with their arms wrapped around each other.
"Um," said Helmut to Hans und Franz. "Maybe we should be goingk?"
"I don't want you to leave," Sally told Joe quietly. "Please stay."
"I will," said Joe.
"I'm afraid you're going to be stuck with me," said Sally.
"Perhaps you could try your hand at masonry?" asked Joe.
"I'd love to," said Sally. And they went back to kissing.
After that they were inseperable.
This was in response to a prompt on reddit.com r/WritingPrompts, "Sometimes, when you walk past someone, you stumble, as if pulled in by a tiny magnetic field. You never paid it much mind until today, when you find yourself yanked nearly off your feet, slam into them, and find yourself stuck to a complete stranger." It's also very similar to a Terry Pratchett line from 'Night Watch': "In Baker Street, a couple who had never met before became electrically attracted to one another and were forced to get married after two days for the sake of public decency." I bet this plot has been done innumerable times. The English language seems to beg for it.