‘Floaters’ by Kevin Sandefur

If you’re asking me did I know Zeke Fido, I’d have to say no, not really, except of course in the biblical sense, but that’s probably not what you meant. The reporters all called him ‘The Man Who Believed He Could Fly’, which was the title of that special they did on him, but I wasn’t in it much, which is just fine by me, if anybody’s asking. Which I guess you kind of are.

You may not believe this, since hardly anybody mentions him much anymore, but for a while there, they couldn’t talk about anything else. I met Zeke during the year of the floaters, which is obviously where he got the idea. The Institute had dedicated the first ward to them, and Zeke and I both worked there as night-shift nurses. He was good at his job, always there to help before you called, always efficient and professional. I appreciated that, but mostly I just thought he was drop-dead gorgeous.

I couldn’t take my eyes off him as we moved from bed to bed, loosening each patient’s restraints so they could drift up to eye level for the doctors’ morning rounds. He clearly cared deeply about all of our patients. You could tell by the way he moved around them, gently easing them upwards so they wouldn’t jerk at the end of their straps.

When we’d get to the end of the room, we would wait together, standing by in case the doctors needed anything. They shepherded their interns through the ward, pretending to examine each patient. You know how they are, peering under the floating bodies like they might discover for the first time what nobody else had seen yet, namely what was holding these people up in the middle of the air. You already know they never did figure it out, not after all the tissue samples and blood draws and image scans and what simple tests they were allowed to run on the living.

After a while they gave up. They never had all that much to go on anyway, just a bunch of patients in comas who no longer felt compelled to obey gravity. My theory was that it was supposed to be the Rapture but heaven was full, so the rest had to stay here. Zeke called my idea the Napture.

His own theory was more elegant. He thought they were all dreaming they were flying, and that gave them the faith they needed to float. When I asked him how that was possible, he said it wasn’t, but there they were anyway, proof positive once and for all that people could fly.