The Gardeners: A Tale of Balance
".....And in other news, today is going to be a special day indeed, isn't that right Mary?" The Newscaster asked the woman next to him.
"Yes Jim,and a special day it will be! A rare phenomenon will be occurring today, March 21st, when all planets behind and including earth will be aligned on the same side as the sun."
"Yes, and while this is quite an amazing event, we've been told to send a warning out to everyone thats in or on anything elevated in the city, to please refrain from jumping as the gravity from other planets will cause you to-
*CLICK*
"Its too early in the morning for this crap." Eusine stated, yawning his way through every word. He got up from the couch and walked to his bathroom. Not that he had to go far, his apartment was only a 20 by 20 square with a couple very cramped rooms, the bathroom being the smallest. He took relatively good care of himself, his teeth were clean and his jaw was in the right place, he kept himself clean shaven and his hair was conditioned. Eusine was a strapping young man of 21 years, not exactly a male model but he was no lightweight either.
Finishing up his morning routine showering, brushing, flossing, combing, and deodorizing, he made his way out to the balcony to check on his plants. He didn't have much, but it was enough for a couple o planters and a set of pots. Eusine liked to call himself a gardener but he just bough and watered plants. Not that he didn't know how to maintain a garden, but he just didn't have the time, space, or environment to practice his knowledge on. Eusine kept several basil plants, thyme plants, even some mint. You could see from the next building over how well he took care of his plants. They flourished with life and got to the point where he had to get fencing to keep them from overtaking each other. And while he did take care of them, he had the unusual habit of talking to the garden as if it were a group of people.
"Why hello minty! I didn't see you there! What have you been up to lately?" All the plant could do in response was wave in the wind.
"Really? Wow, what a dick. Well you tell me if he repays you in full. I can always lend a hand if you need me to."
Next he walked over to "Thymey" who was already shifting through the breeze before he could get to it.
"Hey is that the wind or are you just happy to see me? I'M JUST KIDDING RELAX!" Eusine laughed a hearty laugh and checked his watch.
"Whoop. Time to go." A horrible joke came to mind as he left the balcony. "Ain't nobody got THYME fo dat! HA! .........oooooooh I need help."
Exiting the apartment building, he walked down the sidewalk getting the typical New York greeting, "Hey watch it!" whenever he brushed someone. Eusine never had liked New York City very much, if at all. In fact, if he had his way, he'd have half the city taken down and replaced with the wildlife that had once inhabited it. Now don't get him wrong, he wasn't opposed to humans expanding a little, but the rate and intensity was beyond our fair proportion of land. No, Eusine felt that there should be more balance in the world. He even had his own small "garden" (if you can call a few potted plants on the apartment balcony a garden) to help bring his own little helping hand to New York.
Today however he'd take a little time off from bringing "balance" to NYC and go to his favorite place, Central Park. It was one of the best places in the city to actually get close to nature. Upon arrival at the park, he went through his usual routine- Pick a path, follow and observe the scenery. Today however, as he walked the path he had chosen at random, he noticed a young woman with bright, vibrant orange hair freckles and pale skin "gingerly" (hur hur hur) picking weeds out of a small patch of flowers. Since he seldom saw people do this, he decided to approach her.
"Hi there!" Eusine beamed, greeting the woman. He waited for response for a minute after there was none.
"Ummm, hi?" Still nothing.
"Helloooo?" He said as he poked her trying to get her attention. Before he could flinch or even see her move he was suddenly on his bak in the dirt with an abrupt pain in his back.
"Oww! Jeez lady calm yourself!" He yelled at her.
"Whoops sorry! Reflex kicked in!" She looked at Eusine and smiled. "I took 12 years of Judo, it's sorta become a bad habit."
He looked at her with a face of confusion, then got up and brushed himself off. "Well okay then. Do you have a name miss?" He tried to still be polite. That's harder than it looks when you were just thrown off your feet by the same person.
"Sarah, but most people call me carrot top."
"Can't imagine why."
Sarah scoffed. "Shut up."
"Fair enough."
"What about you, you have a name?" She inquired.
"It's Eusine. So I saw that you were working on the plants there. Do you work for the park or are you just a citizen who actually enjoys natural scenery?" He asked, looking genuinely interested in the subject.
"Oh I just like a good garden. Though this city does need a little more life in it though, so I decided to plant some flowers here and there throughout the park."
Eusine smiled and said "It's nice to see someone cares around here. Have a nice day!"
Sarah returned the look of happiness. "You too!" She replied. As they were both about to walk away, silly klutz that she was, Sarah slipped on one of the weeds she had just picked out and began to fall. Just as she was about to hit the ground, Eusine caught her in his arms bridal style. Quickly picking themselves back up, they backed away awkwardly.
"Yeah.....Have a nice day." The both said at the same time. Eusine was just about to turn and walk away when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
"Hey," Sarah asked "do you by chance have a phone number?" She held a small look of anxiety on her face as she asked.
He fumbled around for a second trying to get his phone out of his pocket. "Ye-yeah I've got one..." He listed off the number "It's uhh 212-356-3729."
Sarah visibly relaxed when he gave it to her. "Thanks, I'll call you sometime, if that's alright?"
"Yeah of course, anytime." He looked at the clock on his phone and noticed he was running late for his next errand. "Oh, looks like I've gotta be off! Talk to you later!" He called out as he jogged to the end of the path. The last he saw was her sending him a goodbye wave.
The errand in question was actually a visit to his second favorite place in the city, The Empire State Building. Which is ironic because it is one of the largest human constructed buildings on the planet. But it wasn't the building he was there for, it was the view. It gave him the a great view of his absolute favorite spot in New York, which was Central Park. It was the closest to nature that he could get all the way out there in the city.
Eusine wasn't enamored to be up there but he still went up to the top floor at least 4 times a year to watch the changing of the seasons. He even took pictures of each season and compared the changes just to be even more amazed at how the seasons alone could change and reshape everything.
On his way up the elevator he remembered that not only was he going up on the first day of Spring, but was also going the day of a syzygy (see Author's Notes) at least, that's what the news called it. After a long elevator ride to the top, he then had to wade through a crowd of people to get to the outer edge of the building.
"Excuse me...Pardon me...On your left..."
Holding one hand up with Winter's photo and the other with his life-proofed iPhone 4S. Just as Eusine was about to snap his usual Spring picture when a warm breeze came through. It was as nice as it was surprising, and with poor Eusine's butter-fingers, blew the picture right out of his unsuspecting hands- and over the edge.
"Crap!" He grunted as he leaped to grab the photo.
The moment his feet left the ground he felt weightless and actually seemed to float several feet more than should've been humanly possible. Because of the unexpected air time, he lost control and flew straight off the edge of the tallest building in NYC.
Gravity taking back effect at the worst possible time, Eusine plummeted down the 1250 ft. building and had only a few seconds to go into shock after realizing what had just happened before he saw the sidewalk. He prepared himself for his last moments as best he could, but it didn't last. At the very last second when he should've been a human pancake, a hole opened in the sidewalk right where he was about to be crushed, and instead of flying into the ground, Eusine was instead thrown right back out into the sky. Passing through the hole in the ground, Eusine felt his body churn painfully like a roaring tempest of water. All this happening so fast was too much for Eusine's mind to handle. As he quickly faded into unconsciousness his final glimpse was a flying cyan horse with a rainbow mane kicking a cloud. Wait what?
*****
"Ugh...Owww my head." Eusine moaned, trying to rouse himself from his unwelcome slumber.
"What on Earth happened?"
"What on Equis is an Earth?"
'what' He thought to himself as he shook the cotton feeling out of his head and opened his eyes to the weirdest scene he had ever laid eyes on. Horses, very colorful horses to be specific, were in the room bustling around and grabbing different pill bottles and syringes. Most of them wearing a doctor's gown and matching hat, which made no sense at all to him. He began to reach out to one of them, before pulling back in a panic as he realized his hand was gone! In a panic he flipped off the blanket that was draped over the top of his body to reveal that his whole body was covered in a fur like hair and no longer had any of his previous features. His limbs resembled that of an equine creature. Of which kind, he wasn't sure but at this point he didn't know what to be sure of. His heart started racing, his hands-hooves, whatever, got sweaty and clammy. This of course did not go unnoticed by the staff.
"His heart rate just shot up!" One said as she looked at the monitor. Another one, this one pale and having a large symbol on her rump shaped like the Red Cross symbol, rushed up to him with pleading eyes.
"Sir, you need to calm down!" She pled. Unfortunately his mind was too panicked to listen. Before the nurse could get ahold of him and put on restraints, he leapt out of the bed and rushed to the nearest doorway, stumbling over his new legs trying to walk bi-pedal. After the first few steps he realized trying to take advantage of his equine frame and switched to all fours as soon as he passed through the doorway. Barely missing several patients and staff, and even bumping into several carts, he ducked around corners running through unfamiliar halls of an impossible hospital until he found the stairwell. According to the sign he was on the seventh floor.
"Odds are the exit's at the bottom..." Eusine thought to himself. As if he wasn't in a rushed panic already, he heard yelling from the other end of hall.
"After him!" Several guards yelled to one another. Wasting no time, he barreled down the stairs skipping as many as he could without breaking something. Signs whizzed past as he went from floor to floor.
...floor 6...
'Keep going'
...floor 5...
'Warmer...'
...floor 4...
'Warmer!'
...floor 3...
'Almost there!'
...floor 2...
'so close!
...floor 1...
'That's it!' He thought, slamming open the door and charging around the corner of the reception desk and looked for an exit. He knew he only had a few precious moments before the guards made down the stairwell. Finally, he found a small sign a few paces away from the front desk labeled "EXIT".
'Well isn't that convenient?'
And with that, he thrust himself through his exit to freedom.
Author's Note
For those who don't know, a syzygy is an anomaly when 3 or more planets in a gravitational system align. We had an extraordinarily rare and large one come by on the 4th of July, where all planets behind and including earth were aligned within an arc of 95 degrees on the same side of the sun. Because of the combined gravity of all the planets, they slightly counteracted earth's gravity. So if you were to jump at precisely 9:47 PM you would find yourself feeling a sort of floating sensation and would take a whole 3 seconds longer to fall than the usual 0.2 seconds. I altered the date and time for sake of convenience because I'm lazy. Thank you for reading, sorry about the wait.
