The virgin & the bad boy (Gravity)

Chapter 22/Sunrise in London

Image:Early Hyperloop World Map Video: Hyperloop video

A/N Wonderful week with 4 new chapters! We thought the whole hyperloop think is a bit assumed so the video expalins all. 

Earth/North America/Atlanta/Io's Apartment/

It was a Wednesday morning and yeah! college was over for the week. I gone up in the elevator with Kentro to collect Io from her apartment. The door recognised me, and we  went inside to discover it was filled with metal parts. My earrings told me they were all parts of a Nova class deep space vehicle, they must have been bought on e-bay. You looked around and wondered if she was trying to build a Nova space ship in her living room. We had inspected her 'charging station' it was her bed surrounded by a tank of water. People used water shields like this on Mars if they lived or explored near the surface, and could be exposed to radiation. I remember you slept in a bunk in the middle of the tank to get maximal shielding from radiation. In deep space people had them to protect from radiation at night you can watch little lines of gamma radiation shoot like tiny fast fireflies in a bottle. In space Even with your eyes closed you get the occasional flash of light in your eyeball. I guessed Io found the tank of water was reassuring.

"Don't tell me you always wanted to be a gold fish" I said while Io emerged. She was still in her goth princess get up.

"Lying?" said Io.

"Lying but a joke" I said.

"Joke?" said Io.

"Advanced lying" I said.

Call me dull but I saw program about humour in Animals. Apes, Dogs and Rats all laughed. Not cats though. Do you think Dogs and rats have like cat jokes? Like a Dog watches a cat walking in with a rat in her mouth and the dog says to the rat. 'Did you hear the one about the cat walking on a plane with two dead rats and the stewardess says 'sorry but you're only allowed one carrion per passenger' and the rat laughs and says 'what do you call a cat with half a brain?' the dog says 'I don't know' and the rat says 'gifted'. So the dog says back 'what is 4 miles long and has an IQ of 50? A cat parade' and the cat looks at them and goes 'huh? What you two talking about'. So if animals have laughter and humour you would think Io would have had some sense of humour. Perhaps she was raised by Shaker robots or something.

Or perhaps robots have a sense of humour but all their jokes are about humans, you know like

'Why did the human put six bullet holes in the mirror.... they were trying to shoot themselves' or 'What do you do if a human throws a pin at you? .. Run they are holding a grenade' and Io is smart enough to know we wouldn't get them so she just comes over as humourless.

Io made sure Cleo got the weird rucksack and they argued in binary over who got to hold it. Then we left.

*****

Earth/London/Waterloo Station ( nowhere near Waterloo in Belgium don't get fooled on the hyperloop map) 

We got off the hyperloop line in London. Kentro had informed me that Casey was a genuine artist 'of some standing in the  Terran art scene which is considerable'.

I liked the idea of a genuine artist as the idea of a fake artist seemed drenched in fun possibilities.

On Earth machines made any art to sell, they wrote about it,put it on display and then hid it in corporate vaults,  but many people made art anyway, it was called 'outsider art' Casey was one. Rather than get a taxi we walked out of the hyper loop station called 'Waterloo Station' to the Gallery showing Casey's work.

In the distance you could see the great walls that kept the sea back. The sea had risen considerably since the cities construction. I stood in amazement here was a victorian station built when the idea of a steam engine was science fiction and a canal was the height of modernity. A station still in use today. We walked outside - I still got a slight sense of wonder when there was no ceiling. Misty eyed we walked past large wheel which dominated the sky. We turned right near the wheel and walked along the river bank past, galleries, theatres, museum ships and more weird and wonderful things you would not believe.