Gravity was off again. It was the third gravity outage this week. The last one had lasted for hours, and had left such a mess, it had taken the housekeeping bots almost a day to put it right. Word from Upstairs was that everything was fine. Rumours that the gravity outages were signs that the ship was failing were, Upstairs said, absolute nonsense and were being spread by traitors. Bill thought Upstairs thought they were all idiots. The ship was old, clunky and was supposed to have reached its destination almost a century ago. The bots did their best to repair what had worn out, or had been broken (by "traitors" according to Upstairs) but the whole place ship felt like it could fall apart if someone farted in the wrong place. Bill floated up to the ceiling to try to catch some of his lunch. The first time it had happened it had seemed like fun, before the implications occurred to him.
...
