Season 1 Episode 01: The Bar

A casual night in a bar, on a spaceship, that starts tumbling without gravity, gives a whole new meaning to the term Bar Mixer.

The room tilted.

I grabbed my barstool with one hand and the bar’s edge with the other as my feet flailed to find the floor.

Then the lights flickered to emergency lighting, and the artificial gravity failed completely, making the floor meaningless. The bar, bar stools, tables, and other securely fastened things began spinning around the room, turning everyone and everything they hit into tumbling projectiles. The woman who’d just bought me a drink (I later learned her name was Shelly Osborne) vanished into the maelstrom like a berry in a blender.

“Warning,” a mechanical voice announced. “Emergency Artificial Gravity engaging.”

My stomach felt a soft tug as a low-strength gravity field began to pull me gently back down toward the floor, and the chaotic gyrating of the room changed to a slow and steady roll. I grabbed a passing table and held on until the ride came to a full and complete stop. As the gravity increased, globs of various liquids that had been bouncing around the room fell around me with a pattering of splats.

“Proceed to escape pods,” announced the ship’s Captain over the intercom. “Please proceed to an escape pod assigned to your deck.” Someone turned up the volume the second time—as if they realized that the first announcement might not have been heard above the screaming.

I could feel the gravity returning to near-Earth levels as I slid off the table and saw a hundred or so wobbly bar patrons crowding towards an exit, floating the injured up from the floor and carrying them along. I followed the noisy river of people towards the emergency exit, grabbing tables along the way as my feet navigated the slimy, smelly cocktail of booze, barf, and blood.

Then I noticed Shelly lying face-down on the bar, screaming, clamped against it by her white-knuckled hands. Her expensive face and clothes were covered with the stuff on the floor, so I figured she must have landed there first before climbing onto the bar and anchoring herself there. I slid over to her and tried several times to pry one of her hands loose, but she would just let go long enough to slap me away and latch back on.

I waited for a breath to interrupt her wailing and yelled in her ear.

“You can’t stay here!” We were almost alone in the room by that point. “The grav is back on now, but we have to get to an escape pod!”

She opened her eyes wide, which had been squeezed tightly closed, and looked around at the catastrophe that had once been a posh luxury liner gathering place. She sniffed and quickly scrambled off the bar—immediately cursing as she slid to the floor, banging her shin hard on the bar foot rail on the way down. I tried to catch her, but my own traction was equally tenuous, making such quick movements out of the question. Instead, I wrapped one arm around a barstool and used the other to help her back onto her good leg.

“Careful now, it’s slippery,” I mansplained.

“Thanks,” she said through a forced smile.

I found the emergency exit light again and aimed us towards it.

“Enjoying your cruise?” I asked her.

“What happened to ‘Come here often’?” she replied between sobs.

We both watched as her tears dripped on our feet.

“I drowned it in the pool,” I said.

She interrupted her crying for a moment to chuckle.

“The pool?” she said, shaking her head.

“Yeah,” I replied. “As much fun as this bar is, I’d bet the pool is a blast.”

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Welcome to AnomalySciFi.com, a science fiction series with over 115 episodes available to read online.

The Meridian Star, a 7,000-person Interstellar luxury liner, hits a spatial anomaly that kicks it violently out of hyperspace, marooning the passengers and crew on an abandoned alien planet.

However, the survivors discover that the planet — and the anomaly that sent them there — conceal dark secrets that could alter the very fate of humanity.

To find out what happens when the artificial gravity fails on a spaceship with a swimming pool, hit the link below and read all about it in Episode 2.

Or, see the list of all of the episodes of Season 1 of Anomaly…

Anomaly: Season 1: Survival