“Welcome to Friday Morning Headlines,” the news reporter announced calmly, “the astrologists and Physicists woke up this morning to discover that the space we used to understand had changed.”
“Here is the Head of Physics Department at Qchong university, Dr Henry Pascal, tell us more about the incident,” the camera turned to an elder man dressed in what seemed to be pyjamas.
“It is impossible!” Dr Pascal screamed at the top of his lungs, then, he hurried his face in his hands and sobbed, “Forgive me the fathers of science, but what is observed is the evidence. No…It doesn’t make sense! Space had no centre!”
The reporter looked awkwardly at the Physicist waiting for him to stop crying. After a whole minute Dr Pascal managed to pick himself up, “Okay, if you looked at the night sky yesterday at 9:30 pm, you may notice the rapid movements of stars. This is because an unknown change had caused all the galaxies observed to switch to the same plane as the Earth’s equator.”
“What do that mean Dr?”
“It means,” Dr Pascal paused to take a long breath, “ladies and gentlemen, I am here to say that, based on our calculations on the relative motion between interstellar objects and Earth, we have proven that the universe gained a centre, which is, our planet. I may be wrong, and I wish I am wrong, but the whole universe follows a rotating pattern with Earth as the centre of orbit…”
Behind a desk full of energy drinks, Tann sat cosily in a fury sofa. She popped open a can of ‘Monster Energy’ with her left hand and at the same time, took notes on a virtual keyboard with her right hand. For the past hour, she was watching the ‘bot tv’ or the news in the world of the program. Although it may be boring to hear the story across many different programs from different broadcast stations, it was very entertaining for Tann to look at how the bots panic over a few changes caused by her in a matter of minutes.
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Across the Earth, science organisations were lost in debates and re-calculations. The government cancelling any further space programs. However, the most interesting response came from the religious community. No matter of their religion, the same message was presented, ‘It is all according to God’s plan’.
“Phurder,” Tann just switched to another religious program that caused her to spit her mouthful of drink, “did you mess with the ‘belief’ function? These bots are literally starting to sacrifice animals for their god.”
“Not at all,” said Phurder, “I think that’s a question for Bino.”
“I am pretty sure Bino only manages the hardware…” Tann took a sip from an energy drink with a bright green label shaped into a scratch mark, “Aha, Cotanian! Are you there?”
“Yes, Dr Angle,” Cotanian spoke up timidly over the radio, “did I do something wrong.”
“Not necessarily wrong,” Tann switched to another program, “it’s just I think your psychology functions are a bit too extreme…”
“Nah,” Bino Distry’s voice appeared suddenly, “think about it Tann, imagine you living in a world and you kind had spent thousands of years trying to understand the world, but suddenly, all of these understandings were proven wrong by an unimaginable change.”
“Yea,” Phurder could be heard munching on his snacks again, “it’s gonna be hella weird to realise that the whole universe orbits around you trashy planet.”
“Guys stop!” Cotanian cried, “Dr Angle is right, I think the bots are behaving way too extreme. Dr Angle, I’ll try to change it after you come back.”
There was a short pause, but Tann managed to break the silence, “Don’t be hard on yourself, Cotanian, your psychology function is close to perfect…”
“Her psychology function,” Phurder let out a high pitched laugh, “Tann, you don’t need to be humble, you literally did 90 % of the work…”
“Shut it Phurder,” Tann said coldly, “no matter how much Cotanian had done, it is still better than someone who messes around and could possibly ruin the whole simulation.”
“…”
Tann muted the radio and refocused on the television. Apparently, all the astronauts from the ISS were evacuated back to Earth since the gravity equation was no longer applicable. However, despite many bot-experts predicting a world-wide signal break down, the low orbit satellites were still functioning as to how they should be. Tann looked out the window, the sun was still high above in the sky, but the former giant of the Solar System was orbiting around the tiny planet named Earth.