The Overview Effect

Her eyes fluttered open just before the first rays of sun peeked over the horizon. From a height where she swore she could just about start seeing the curvature of the Earth.

This was a whole lot earlier than she was used to waking up. Then again, she hadn’t slept all that well, given everything that had happened. And when she remembered what had happened, her hopes of it all being just a bad dream were suddenly dashed.

Nope.

With her range of motion limited to wiggling her rigidly swollen fingers & toes, came the stark reminder that her situation was all very real. Like an untethered balloon, her swollen, spherical body had only continued to drift higher & higher off the ground below.

At some point, the wind current must have caught her. Sent her blimped up, helpless body bobbing along the breeze, out to the countryside. Nothing from this vantage point seemed remotely familiar. Rolling hills, farmland. A highway a bit off in the distance with a couple of truck stops & stores sprinkled along its stretch. Certainly not the cozy little college town she had initially, inadvertently "launched" from, for lack of a better term. How far had she traveled? Would she have any idea where she was if she was even capable of touching down again?

Her limbs ached. Each stretched all the way out to their further extension, & locked in that position, for hours at this point, constrained by her own puffiness. Even the very thought of moving was out of the question, dashing the thought of potentially ‘air-swimming’ downward. All she was capable of this point was bobbing, drifting, & surveying the horizon, while occasionally reminding herself to breathe the thinning air.

Then again, maybe it was good she was so far up. So far out of sight. She must've been quite the spectacle at this point. Not that she was all that vain, just that she must've been so ridiculous looking. With just how much gas was in her body, she realized she was probably more balloon than person at this point. Just as a fact, simply by volume. And quite nearly spherical too, the center mass of her body having pressed out in every direction to subsume her limbs & neck. Hell, if it wasn't for her cheeks puffing up with everything else, keeping her face above the rest of her body? She worried she would have otherwise suffocated herself.

Besides, the remaining tatters of her outfit were seemingly doing very little to keep her modest. Not that she could see for herself, so big & swollen like that. She could simply tell by the way the cool breeze was hitting her in certain, delicate places.

Oh god! She suddenly remembered feeling ashamed for herself given how oddly she seemed to enjoy the feeling of the area between her legs growing puffy & pushing further & further down between her legs. That brief moment it even brushed the ground? Seconds before lifting off? Those feelings were sure something to stick a pin in, & bring up to her therapist later. If she ever had another session anyway. She had much more pressing issues currently. Like her bloated, half-naked body entering the stratosphere.

Then again, as embarrassing as all this was, there was still some solace she could take. Heck, at these current elevations, she was probably nothing more than a mere spec from the ground. Even for as ungodly wide as she was in this moment. Any prospective peeping tom would probably need binoculars to catch a view, she giggled in her head, as the corner of her mouth fought to fold into her puffy cheek into the slightest smirk. The thought was enough to put her mind at ease. On that front anyway. Her modesty seemed in check, just so long as there wasn’t any air traffic nearby anyway. Then again, if anyone did see her like this, in this shape? Would they recognize her as a woman? Would she even register as a person?

At least she didn't feel as though she was growing still. Or at least not anywhere as rapidly as she was when she first 'took off.' That was another thing to take solace in, she tried to rationalize. It felt as though her condition had stabilized, for the most part. The initial pressurized growth had seemed to finally run its course. Still rather unbearable, all thing considered, but at least no longer mounting, continually getting worse. Accompanied by that feeling of being worryingly explosive. Even if it did stop just on the verge.

Still, she felt somehow even bigger, puffier than from when she seemed to nod off. With what little she could try & remember back from high school physics, she wondered if that was simply a matter of the pressure changing the higher she rose. The air within her spreading outward, pushing her bloated sides out further, stretching her frame even bigger. Would that only continue, the higher she drifted?

At least it was a very slow ascent, allowing her body to almost acclimatize. Adjust gradually to the ever climbing elevation. And yet she still felt quite fragile. Delicate. As precarious as a bubble. Probably because she was very much like one.

And that fragility spurred a slew of other anxious thoughts to start racing through her head.

Would she reach a certain height where the pressure would suddenly just be too much? Or would she keep going until she reached space? And at that point, would she freeze or asphyxiate? Or even just burst then, from the vacuum?

She didn’t want to think about any of that. Not right now.

Hopefully someone noticed she was missing. And hopefully they would find her before any of those terrible fates. So long as they were smart enough to look up. And devised a plan to bring her down. Safely.

Just then, the sun finally started to peek over the horizon, pulling her attention. She watched as the rays of light shot across the landscape, almost the way water ran down through the cracks in a stone, as it stretched daylight across the world. There was a beauty & majesty to it.

Her high school physics class fresh on her mind, she remembered a video they watched the one day there was a substitute. The cart was rolled in & instead of the curriculum, they watched a video talking to astronauts, & asked them about their experiences. She remembered a part of it talked about the Overview Effect. The rush of emotion from seeing everything from a removed position.

And sure, maybe she wasn’t quite in orbit just yet, but as tears welled up, she could certainly understand that feeling, now in this vulnerable moment. And the fact that save from maybe a pilot or two, through the glass of a commercial jet liner or perhaps a very ambitious bird or something, no other living being had ever witnessed this particular view? That this vantage point was hers & hers alone?

Even if this was potentially the end of her story, she could see the world, or at least a much bigger chunk of it than she usually could, & realized it was still going to continue on, for better for worse. Watching the sunlight start to reach the further end of the horizon, farmhouses greeted by the first rays of morning light, like it must have almost every other morning in this same, magnificent way? There was something so majestic about it. Something that calmed her mind as the world below kept spinning.

Sure, blowing up like a blimp was awful, deeply disconcerting, humiliating, & would probably, ultimately spell her doom...

But maybe? Just maybe, it wasn’t all bad.

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Partially continuing off of some thoughts I had when I was writing A Very Rough Night, partially because I always feel like I need to do more floaty style inflation stuff in general, & enjoy the helplessness of drifting off endlessly from anyone or thing that could help.

How did she end up in this condition? Who knows. Does she perhaps pass wind & realize it could lead to her gradually descending? Perhaps. These would be things to explore if it were a full story, & maybe sometime down the road we can explore things further. But as of right now, it's a just a vignette. One where I wanted to explore the idea of coming around despite all the anxiety of becoming a floaty drifty balloon person to suddenly enjoy the view, Madan Senki Ryukendo-style. Because I like the idea of their feelings shifting & finding something to be optimistic about.